Today felt like India. And it also felt like Japan. I think it just felt like home.
So far, most of our interactions had been with other foreign tourists. It’s understandable that hostels and guesthouses seem to cluster people like us together. But today, for the first time in a while and in greater numbers than usual, we actually connected with Japanese people.
No, mom and I did not magically get blessed with superpowers and start speaking Japanese overnight. But we did encounter some Japanese people that spoke English. (We threw in the occasional arigatou gozaimasu just to try to fit in, but they knew as well as we did that we were functionally useless in the language.
Not that it’s mattered much, though. People here been nothing but kind. I overheard another foreigner joking to his friend on the street earlier: “As a pedestrian here, you can cross the road whenever you want. The cars have to stop.” It was a joke, but it wasn’t inaccurate. There’s a gentleness to the way people behave, and unlike other places I’ve lived, you’re respected by default.
We traveled to Utsunomiya today and arrived a few hours before check-in time. The inn we had booked for the night was only a short distance from the train station, so we thought to swing by and see if we could drop of our luggage early. The inn owner, Nao, agreed and invited us in. We thought we would only be able to drop our suitcases, but he took us upstairs and showed us our beds, effectively checking us in.
The staircase was quite steep and narrow, and while Nao looked much older than mom, he insisted he carry both of our suitcases upstairs himself and refused to take no for an answer.
Then, once we’d freshened up, rather than just handing us our keys and sending us on our way, he sat and talked with us for a long while in the living room.
He’d converted his own residence into a guesthouse, and now lived in a room at the back of the ground floor while renting out the rest.
He told us about the town and gave us his own personal recommendations, and when he learned of our plans to go on a day trip to Nikko the next day, he warned us to watch out for monkeys that lived there and would be eager to snatch our food.
One of his recommendations was Hayao Miyazaki’s former residence, which had now been converted into an art gallery. It wasn’t a very known fact and we had no idea until he told us, but it was immediately of great significance given how much Studio Ghibli meant to us (and especially Onkar, who I wanted to get pictures to show). Gallery Hanna hadn’t been open for quite a while, but Nao checked the schedule for us and we were in luck — today was its first day back open.
It wasn’t instantly obvious to the gallery owner why we were there. She wasn’t used to people showing up to tour Miyazaki’s house. Once we told her, she confirmed that he did indeed use to live here, and that while it wasn’t frequent, people did occasionally show up to check it out. It would’ve been natural for her to be disappointed that we weren’t here for the gallery itself, but instead she welcomed us regardless, helped us put our coats up and guided us around the jewelry exhibit in the living room.
She introduced us to a jewelry maker there who had made some of the items on display, and he happened to use some precious stones from India, which led to quite a meaningful conversation.
The gallery owner was a Studio Ghibli fan herself (naturally), and pointed out some parts of the living room that had inspired various scenes in different Studio Ghibli films. The stairs in the landing, for example, were the origin for the stairs in My Neighbour Totoro. I haven’t watched the film yet, but I’ve been recommended to watch it by a few people and at this point, I’m convinced.
She also brought up a movie with aeroplanes and the house’s significance in that, but I told her I didn’t know about that one.
I took a shot in the dark though, and asked if I could also see upstairs. I wasn’t optimistic because she’d mentioned it was her own private residence, but she’d also mentioned a window there that inspired the train scene in Spirited Away (a film I love), and I figured there was no harm in at least asking.
She was understandably hesitant, and I immediately backed off saying that it was completely fine. Still, after pondering for a minute, she led the way and beckoned mom and I behind her.
Mom’s knees aren’t in the best shape right now and the steps were rather steep, so she told me to go on ahead.
I saw the train tracks out of the window. I didn’t even properly remember the scene she was referencing, but simply imagining that the great Hayao Miyazaki probably stood where I was standing, looking out of the same window and sketching what he saw many years ago felt magical.
We thanked her immensely as we left, and even exchanged numbers since she’s been to India for her exhibits a number of times and said she’d love to connect if she was ever there again.
These weren’t just casual interactions. They were people bringing us into their spaces, sharing a little piece of their world with us.
And then, to complete the theme, we went to the gallery owner’s favourite Indian restaurant for dinner, where we were greeted by a waiter from Nepal. He started speaking to us in Japanese, but quickly switched to English when he saw we didn’t understand.
Mom tried her luck and switched to Hindi, and he matched her fluently.
Turns out that while he was originally from Nepal, he’d lived in Delhi for ten years and considered it a second home. Japan, it seemed, was a third, and the restaurant itself emanated that.
In the restaurant, everyone spoke Japanese with the customers, but among themselves, they spoke in a dialect Mom recognized as Bihari. A familiar language, a shared culture, a small piece of somewhere else.
The kind waiter even got me salted chhach (Indian buttermilk) — which wasn’t on the menu — just because I asked for it.
We walked back to the inn from there in the cold, but feeling warm on the inside. We’d actually connected with people today, and the feeling they left behind was of being welcomed, of finding pieces of home in unexpected places, of realizing that sometimes, home isn’t a place at all.