As a pessimistic, nine-year-old kid that doesn’t travel much, I was nearly blown away with the news that we were going to visit Japan. I was so excited! It was December of 2008, and we were leaving in just two weeks.
We arrived to Japan at the airport terminal. As soon as we got off the plane, I was already so excited. The cold air and the black, mysterious night twinkling with sparkly, diamond-like stars electrocuted a spark in me, a spark that wanted to find out what the mystery was. It practically lit a fire in me, an innate passion in me so deep and so beautiful that at that moment…something I’d never felt before. Staring into the deep, black ominous sky, I was seeing a new part of me.
Excitedly hauling my overstuffed suitcase down the ramp with its steep inclination, I was so excited! My heart was overflowing with bubbly, white emotions of excitement and contentment and joy and awe all at the same time.
Inside the airport as people bustled about, I was in a little kid’s wonder land. I felt like Alice from Alice in Wonderland when her whole world turned upside down…when everything went from black and white, to a paradise filled with color, filled with a whole new spectrum that was there the whole time—it just hadn’t been seen before. All of a sudden, I was capable of seeing pink, magenta, and gold, silver— this whole time Yokohama was there, I just hadn’t seen it. Paradise was in my backyard, but I’d never bothered to open the door.
After getting through the airport, we took a taxi cab to the apartment that we’d be staying in. We got inside the apartment, and it felt just like home. The best part was the bathroom…ELECTRONIC TOILETS!!! Woo hoo!
The apartment was compact, but in a good way—it was very cozy, and our family felt a lot closer when we were all living in a smaller space.
The next morning we went to Mount Fuji. It was a heavenly body…so tall, towering and majestic…it was so gallantly, magnificently mesmerizing that I couldn’t even begin to fathom, in my wildest dreams, how such an amazing work of art, could be thrown right onto the raw face of the Earth.
The giant mountain, stretching into the clouds so far up I begin to lose sense of space, is grey in its coarse, rocky nature with big mounds of rock, jutting outwards. Its every nook and cranny is filled with snow. For the first time in my life, in the presence of the majestic mountain, I feel free. I throw my hands up in the air, twirling around, seeing the entire country of Japan like its just a speck in the distance, stick my tongue out to taste the heavenly snow falling from Paradise, breathe into the air to see white smoke. I jump and dance and twirl and am one with the nature that surrounds me.
The cherry blossom trees with their beautiful, pink blossoms and the bareness that surrounds me become one. My eyes sink into the snow and my breath into the rock. The white, misty, bottomless, blue sky becomes my canvass and my emotions become my paint. My inner emotions come flooding out like raw colors on an easel, reds as scarlet as blood, orange more golden and sweeter than honey, blue saltier than grandma’s saltine sardines, pinks that sound like mockingbirds and nightingales singing in melodious harmony, and a cascading, blinding white that glares into my eyes and into the piercing night…breaking away like a terrestrial body. My body becomes a distant memory, an emotion. My heart combines with the nature. I take in the cold, bitterness of the air, the white, powdery snow into my hands…the flying reds and blues and pinks splattering paint all over the canvas. I look into my heart and my eyes and the ocean surrounding us. I’m on top of the world.
For the first time in my life I feel free. Free to dance, to sing, to forget about time, about television, about the drama, about school, about life. I feel free to forget and forgive and let it all go and become one with nature, one with Yokohama, one with Mount Fuji. Standing there on the mountain, time stands still. The clock has stopped ticking. I’m standing on the line between life and heaven. It’s a feeling that you can’t mistake. I don’t just feel “free” in the usual sense of the word. I am free.
About the author:
I’m a high school student that enjoys reading, spending time with family and laughing to anything and everything. I like watching reruns of “I Love Lucy” and older shows that evoke lots of laughter.
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