A big travel plan

And how I think about writing about vacation photos

I’ve made some summer plans. Similar to last year, when Dave and I camped in a rental car for three months, we will travel again.

I sit at the kitchen table to write this, feeling like three more cups of coffee would not touch my exhaustion, my stomach cramping, and wondering how on earth I can possibly live up to my expectations.

Someone asked me how I deal with the changing routine of travel. I actually find travel, in the way we do it, falls into a routine once you’ve started. It’s the change from house to camping and the fear of inadequacy that comes with it that’s hardest.

But anyway, (my writing group says I should start pieces with the exciting part, and they are right, but I like to explain first…sigh), we’re planning to travel to Japan for 19 days, then arrive in California and live out of a rental van for three months.

I’ve never been to Japan before. I find the prospect intimidating. The rental van - well, we've done it before.

In Japan, we’re going to stay in Nagoya, primarily, not the more popular cities for tourists like Tokyo. I don’t enjoy tourist destinations that much—I prefer to experience what it’s like to live in a new place. But we’ll hopefully be able to take the train to Kyoto and Nara, relatively nearby.

I first saw and learned from Sensei around 2009, watching him teach a camp in Boston. I wasn’t dedicated to aikido at that time, but I was fascinated by Sensei’s skill.

From about 2015 through 2019, I attended all of Sensei’s camps in the US, four times per year. Dave trained with Sensei frequently for several decades.

Winter Camp 2020 should have been the first weekend in March. It was cancelled due to Covid just a few days in advance.

Sensei is in his late 80s now. So this is most likely a first, last, only trip for me to see Sensei in his home city of Nagoya. I haven’t known Sensei anywhere near as long as some folks I train with. But he has made a huge impact on my life.

I shared a piece of writing about my black belt test with a writer friend recently. I asked, “What is the point of the reader reading this?” What would someone want to know about a martial arts experience I had? I asked, “I mean, isn’t this just like showing off vacation photos?”

My friend had a really insightful response, “Sometimes people want to see vacation photos.”

As someone who writes a lot about frustrations and injustice, sometimes I assume that’s *real* content. Somehow writing about joy or entertainment feels less meaningful. Which is not true. Our interesting, joyful experiences are also meaningful. Understanding what’s good is perhaps just as important as understanding what needs to change.

And so I will be writing about my real life experiences, sharing them with you, even if they seem gratuitous or privileged or vacation-photos. The way I wrap my head around that as a writer is to realize that in these cases, I am the entertainment.

If I do something unusual like test for black belt or decide to take a trip to Japan, that’s not necessarily a story for the reader to learn something about LGBTQ+ rights. That’s a story for the reader to think, wow, I’ve never considered doing that before but this is new and different and interesting.

Although the trip to Japan is intimidating, Sensei is intimidating, and not knowing all the details of international travel in advance is intimidating, it’s comforting that I’ve already experienced many pieces of this experience while traveling in the US. I’ve practiced aikido in classes Sensei teaches. I’ve booked relatively low-cost places to stay on the internet. I’ve packed a suitcase with all the things I need for a few months at a time.

I’ll keep you posted when I leave for this summer’s adventure!

Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.

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Take care,

Rey