This may be one of the strangest posts on my blog yet, but it came from an unusual source of inspiration during an uneventful day in Osaka.
Going through my photos from Osaka, I was reminded of one of the most boring days of my life. Perhaps it’s a strange thing to say given my entire travel blog of over 700 posts that quite literally glaze Japan with every word. So it’s strange that I would openly talk about the day that I felt an overwhelming sense of boredom during the time I spent living in Osaka’s Nishinari district.
A Gloomy Day in Osaka
This is the side of Japan you don’t see in colorful travel magazines or from YouTube influencers. The reality of living in Japan is that you get just as many gloomy days as in any other country, and all it takes is for the clouds to cover the sky and suddenly the whole vibe is down! Well, I can remember a time in Osaka when this feeling (or lack of feeling, rather) simply overwhelmed me. Some may call it an episode of depression, while others might say it was just bad weather, but I believe the answer was much deeper.
Walking along the industrial areas of Osaka’s ports and bays on this particularly cloudy and quiet day, I realized something crucial that would better my life in the long run. This realization, or lesson, if you will, was the simple age-old saying that “the grass is always greener on the other side.” Of course, this quote was never to be taken literally, but rather sarcastically, to reveal that things always seem better in some far-away place, when in reality, our perceptions are often biased by imagination.
Fantasizing about living in Japan for years and years before making the move, I never quite comprehended how a “boring” day would feel, or if it would even be possible. Alas, the exhaustion of work and the stresses of trying to make one’s dreams come true will always take their toll on the mind, body, and soul. Coupled with a cloudy, gloomy day, and you’ve got a situation of utter helplessness and just plain boredom, a feeling I never thought I’d experience living in the country of my dreams.
What I Learned…
For whatever reason, the mountains of Japan, which I adored, and the rivers and lakes that I so often wrote about their beauty, no longer sparked my soul as they once did. Sad and melodramatic as it may sound, I was forced to question everything about what I like, what’s interesting to me, what I’m passionate about. However, as many days passed since this fateful walk along Osaka’s industrial complexes, I had learned the most valuable lesson of all.
Your perception is everything. It was never the beautiful mountains and rivers of Japan that sparked my soul, but rather, it was the way I chose to view them. I wasn’t simply gazing upon these aesthetic displays of nature and waiting to feel something, but I was already driven to see Japan’s beauty and experience for myself how it would feel to be there in person. Upon achieving my goal, the beauty of Japan’s mountains smiled upon me as though to say, “As a reward for following through on your promises and being persistent with your goals, you may enjoy our beauty to your heart’s content!”
Contrastingly, that gloomy day in Osaka had taken place at an uneventful time in my life, and while my ego-driven mind tried to blame the weather or a lack of energy from the outside world as to why I felt such a lack of joy, the reality was that the answers were all within me. To end on a positive note, I will say the gloominess of that day did not leak over to the future, but it did give rise to more dedicated and purpose-driven action on my part, such that I could gaze upon those very same mountains and those very same lakes with renewed eyes, and appreciate their beauty like never before.
To learn more about life in Japan, check out my book: The Japanese Pursuit of Perfection. This book features my most profound observations of Japanese culture and society as a foreign resident. Available in e-book, paperback, and hardcover. Grab your copy today!