Member-only story
How To Travel and Discover Your Neighborhood
Amazing experiences don’t have to happen in a foreign land.
I love traveling. I’ve traveled all my life on a regular basis until I came back to Japan in 2015. Since then, however, most of my holidays have been used to go back to France to see my family. I won’t lie, I miss going around the world and discovering new places.
In the last 6 months, though, I have found a way to solve this urge to leave: walking around town.
It isn’t about going far.
When we think about traveling, we always picture an exotic land, full of wonders. A place where the culture surprises us. An environment we don’t get to see often.
When I was a child, I would picture myself traveling to Japan, the US, Colombia, Australia, or Indonesia. Traveling within Europe felt like I wouldn’t be surprised. Yet, every summer, I’d go somewhere in Europe and still come back with stars in my eyes.
Nowadays, I live on the tiny island we call Japan. Sure, it’s large. But it’s still only half the size of France. There isn’t any neighboring country to go to in a few hours of train. As a result, found a solution: discovering my neighborhood.
Traveling is about novelty.
