Personal Notes: A look at my journey across Japan 30 years ago and how it paved the way to Taiwan in 2026

I stood in the Hannover Garden in Hiroshima, holding a camera. I looked at the spot in the park where I had been in 1996. It was where I photographed Japanese schoolchildren having lunch. I had no idea how that day would impact my life over the next 30 years.

Those children were long gone and grown up now with their own families. The garden fountain, which had shot streams of water into the air, no longer seemed to work. The local people having lunch were from nearby offices, not classrooms. The Hiroshima Carp’s baseball stadium, once the anchor of the neighborhood, had been demolished and relocated.

The city had rebuilt itself and evolved around the small green space without disturbing it. A random place I happened to walk by without intention or purpose drew me back after three decades.

I returned to Japan in January 2026 and would spend the next several weeks there. While I have visited hundreds of cities across 22 of Japan’s 47 Prefectures, stretching from Hokkaido to Okinawa, I had not made a serious linear crossing of the country since 1996.

I was younger and considerably less worldly. Japan was my very first country to visit. The Internet was merely a couple of years old at the time, when GPS technology was a thing for ICBMs and not tourists.

So I moved through the country with paper maps, following my instincts as much as travel guides, and limited to rolls of film with 24 exposures. In 1996, I went from Tokyo to Hakata and then back to Osaka for a flight to Seoul.

For 2026, I would go from Tokyo to Hakata and beyond to Nagasaki, then back to Hakata for a flight to Busan. I originally intended to go by boat to the South Korean port, but logistics made that problematic for my schedule.

The 2026 trip was mostly a revisit of places I had not seen in years, and an expansion along the way for locations that fate had always held me back from reaching. It was a great mix of the familiar with cities like Nagoya 名古屋, Inuyama 犬山, Okazaki 岡崎, and Hiroshima 広島, while still being a voyage of discovery with places that included Himeji 姫路, Okayama 岡山, Miyajima 宮島, Shimonoseki 下関, Nagasaki 長崎, and Gunkanjima 軍艦島.

In 1996, Himeji Castle was visible from the Shinkansen as the bullet train pulled into the station. The national treasure from feudal times appeared as a white mountain rising above the tiled rooftops of the city. It was not a stop on my route, which was a disappointment as the Shinkansen pulled away from the station. The sight left me with a strong impression and desire to return when I could spend more time there.

When I arrived in February 2026, that magical view from the train was gone. Thirty years of construction had filled in around the station as the city grew. The Himeji of my memory was gone, but it was not some myth lost to history. The castle and the city were still vibrant destinations for me to explore. And 30 years of experience in Japan gave me more insight to process and enjoy what I saw.

Before I arrived in Himeji, I first stopped in Nagoya. I had not visited it in 1996 and was barely familiar with the city’s name at the time. But it was very much in my awareness a few years later, before I moved to the area in 2001 and lived there until 2002. I spent a good amount of time with friends exploring the city.

Being back in 2026 was like a merger of different timelines, where parts of the trip were an anniversary of other trips I had made to Japan over the years. Fun symbolic connections that were not 30 years old, but showed me the threads of continuity that had been woven into my life.

While in Nagoya, I had intended to revisit Sekigakara 関ケ原町 in nearby Gifu 岐阜県, a similar site to Gettysburg, where Japan’s future was decided in an epic battle. But it was halfway to my next destination, the weather was unpredictable that day and, like Gettysburg, the historical locations of interest were spread out. So instead I traveled to nearby Okazaki, where I had lived in 2002. I returned to Okazaki Castle, birthplace of the Tokugawa Shogun, who won the battle of Sekigahara.

It was the first time I had been in Japan on New Year’s Day. One of my fondest memories from living in Okazaki was going to the castle, per ancient tradition, and pulling the rope to ring the prayer bell at the temple at the base of the fortification. The act was said to bring good luck for the new year.

I found the water well where Tokugawa Ieyasu was first washed at birth. I ate at a Yoshinoya near the local train station. It is a popular rice bowl chain that my wife introduced me to when we started dating. They make the Japanese version of Korea’s Bulgogi, which I have eaten for most of my life under different names. In order to fit into Milwaukee with my life and work, there have been many memories I have had to set aside. So I welcomed the opportunity to indulge in the nostalgia of such locations.

Returning to Hiroshima was very spiritual to me for many reasons. Visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was one of the sharpest collisions between my 1996 memories and the present. Back then, a central and highly controversial exhibit was a diorama of life-size mannequins depicting a woman, a girl student, and a boy, posed mid-escape two kilometers from the atomic hypocenter in a radioactive hellscape.

Their burnt skin was displayed as melting from their outstretched hands. The horrific diorama reminded me of photos from the Guinness Book of World Records, which showed people who never cut their fingernails. The unkept keratin they grew out in wild and bizarre directions.

The figures were crude in execution and overwhelming in intention. They had been installed in 1973 and were still there when I saw them for the first time. I remember thinking that the atomic bombing was a terrible experience for the people of Hiroshima, and I had empathy for the victims of war. But the presentation itself had the opposite effect on me, which seemed to disrespect the suffering by making it look cartoonish. It left me a bit confused on how to feel.

The trio and supporting exhibits were removed in 2017 and replaced during a full museum redesign that reopened in 2019. What I found in 2026 was the opposite of my previous experience. Individual objects like a bent lunch box, a child’s scorched notebook, and a stopped watch. Each was tied to a named person, a photo, an age, a location at the moment of detonation. The display was not performative but presented as evidence, and it was powerful. The 1996 exhibit tried to show me what the bomb did. It was well-intended but with a poor result. The 2026 exhibit showed me who the people were, so that I cared. Their relics and stories spoke for their silence and the city’s devastation.

Another memory that has stayed with me was also from Hiroshima in 1996. Not far from the Genbaku (Atomic Bomb) Dome, I walked through a shopping arcade and found a McDonald’s. The first time I had eaten at the “Golden Arches” outside of the United States was just days before in Tokyo, so comparing the taste difference was still interesting. But mostly I was just exhausted and needed some place familiar since my stomach was not reacting well to all the travel and new foods.

At the time, the idea of “American Exceptionalism” was not part of my understanding. But I felt that eating at a McDonald’s in Hiroshima was a personal accomplishment. I felt pride in my homeland’s economic might, with some sad irony to be eating at an American fast food chain in a city that America had turned to ash with the first atomic bomb.

I was not thinking about how deeply American that instinct was to reach for a cultural anchor, something I took for granted and expected because of the status of the United States. I was also trying to make sense of my life at that time, thinking that the solitude of an unfamiliar place would help me process the trauma of my young life.

A place like McDonald’s felt predictable, and after traveling halfway across Japan alone for my first trip overseas, the moment of stability was welcome. It was only a half hour later, as I noted in my journal, that I found myself standing at Ground Zero of the atomic blast. A short distance away was a burial mound with the ashes of tens of thousands of people from the city who had died on August 6, 1945.

Those memories have stayed with me for the past three decades. So returning in 2026 and finding the McDonald’s still at the end of the Hondōri Shopping Street — remodeled but essentially unchanged — added to the weight of those long ago experiences.

I was not looking for answers in 2026 that I did not have in 1996. Time does not resolve everything, but it does give perspective, and sometimes relief for how I carry certain memories. Having lunch again at McDonald’s and walking outside to see the Genbaku Dome down the street, reminded me that understanding often arrives slowly, and sometimes only after a lifetime of distance.

I honestly did not think about how much I have changed over the years, but I do have more respect for my younger self and the courage I had to embark on such an adventure. I may still not fully understand the person I was then, or even the person I am now, but these moments are part of my life journey.

I had not intended to visit Nagasaki in 2026. In 1996, I told myself I could always visit it one day. After 30 years, I had to ask myself if not now then when, because I was not getting any younger. The journey there was not complicated, but it was intimidating because it required more connections from where I was in Shimonoseki. The last leg of the trip was wonderful, using my broken Japanese to talk with a fellow passenger. And then after three decades, I unceremoniously and finally reached Nagasaki.

I did a short exploration of the historic area near my hotel, which was in the old Dutch quarter of Dejima. The trading post had been the only open port for decades when the rest of Japan was closed to the world. Along with the trade of Chinese silk, it has a deeply historical connection to Christianity. I have visited Christian churches in Japan, from historic landmarks in Hokkaido to modern “house” congregations in Kamakura. But such sites were few and far between. So, I was not prepared for the absolute density of Christian iconography I found in Nagasaki.

When I visited the hypocenter of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, there were still remnants of the Urakami Cathedral. It was a vibrant place of worship for the Christian community, later rebuilt where it had originally stood. I explored the graves of the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki, executed in 1597.

On display in that museum was a 17th-century crucifix, made by Purépecha Indians from Mexico using tatzingueni paste. Paintings of “Kakure Kirishitan,” the hidden Christians, and a reliquary with the bones of saints. My experience in Nagasaki reinforced what Hiroshima had shown me, that the way a society chooses to present its worst moments in history changes over time, and that those changes are themselves a form of testimony.

The emotional center of the Japan journey was not a museum or a monument. It was another unplanned visit, which I did not expect to make to a small town near the city of Saga, in the Prefecture of Saga. I had kept in touch with my host family for 15 years after my first visit in 1996. But the distance from the Kanto or Tokai regions hindered later return visits. And my host mother avoided email, so it meant any plans had to be coordinated by letters. Something that was manageable in 1996 but not in 2026.

We lost touch after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. So I was unsure if she had moved or even survived COVID. She answered the door, and it was like stepping back in time. Everything was frozen as I remembered it. The smell of the room, with tatami, moisture of the cold air, wood and the polish for it, incense, was exactly what I remembered. It was a combination I had never encountered anywhere else. It is something small that I have always held onto when I try to relive that first experience of submerging into Japanese culture.

After three decades, it was a joyous reunion. My host mother had wondered how I had been in recent years, and I had so much to share with her. I told her, becoming emotional, that the visit was a roll of the dice. I did not know what to expect when I arrived, but I wanted to express my thanks.

She had not given me wisdom that changed my life all those years ago. But her kindness, and the kindness of her family, were formative for my life. The things she told me about Japan that interested me, that made me want to explore more. The things she told me that I did not understand, was bored by, did not care about, at different times later in my life, stirred my curiosity, awakened my enthusiasm, shamed my ignorance so that I sought remedies to learn and discover. I learned and grew for many reasons, often from my own flaws. And they all stem from the influential time I spent with her in Japan in 1996.

People drift apart for many reasons, from childhood friends to college roommates, to even family members. So this reunion was not something I aimed for or expected. I just saw that my train from Nagasaki to Hakata passed by the station near her house, so it was possible to visit without much logistical complication. It was a wonderful bookend to 30 years of life, and a relationship with both her and Japan.

Japan has meant different things to me at different times in my life. In my younger years, it was a mentor and sanctuary. For a while it was a cautionary tale and an influence I had happily outgrown. And now, it is mostly a reflection of who I was and my life journey.

Japan was never only a destination. It was an education in how to move through a place that does not reveal itself easily, how to read history that is still present in the physical world, how to sit with what we cannot fully understand and keep working anyway.

Thirty years of traveling across Japan did not produce definitive conclusions for me, because I was not looking for any. Just like in 2024, there were no holes in my heart to fill or unresolved issues to confront.

But like 2024, this latest visit reminded me how much I have been shaped by these experiences. They also go far beyond Japan, are very grounded in Milwaukee, but I have a special and tactile connection with Japan from the vulnerability of my youth.

These personal stories I have shared and details, they only scratch the surface of the weeks I traveled. And they are shared not so much to say look at what I did. But to offer permission to others. I had graduated from college and was working, reluctantly settling into the unsatisfactory awareness that I had never traveled abroad and never expected to. And in 1996, everything changed, and I could not conceive of a life that did not involve exploration. Or the ability to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Japan in 2026 was the beginning of a longer journey, not the destination. The weeks I spent crossing from Tokyo to Nagasaki were preparation, not arrival. Every site I visited, every reunion I stumbled into, every moment of recognition in a place I thought I knew — all of it was pointing somewhere else. I had come to Japan to remember. I eventually returned home to Milwaukee with more memories than I expected to carry.