…and a Japanese/English translation app, where using the amazing 10-key swiping system, she blazes through Japanese words to have the app spit out their English equivalents.
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At some point, the girl indicates that the next train is two minutes away, and then punches something into the translation app. “Guides you” comes out. I nod.
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The next minute sees us running through the rush hour traffic to another platform. I’m having trouble just following my guide. Eventually we arrive, and she points up to the staircase that leads directly to my train. But her other hand, the one holding her phone, is raised too.
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On the screen, there are a few Kanji characters she thought of typing in during the brief moment we were navigating the tough crowds of what Guinness recognizes as world’s busiest transport hub. And below, the translation: “A pleasant journey.”
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299. These two weeks in Japan made me wide-eyed, and happy, and amazed, and lost, and overwhelmed. But one thing that surprised me most: it also made me *kinder*.
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At some point, I started going above and beyond to come back and say “thank you,” or to fix the shoes facing the wrong way, or to do whatever little I could to make things better in this culture I still understand so poorly.
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Thank you to all for joining me in this big experiment. I loved your comments, and questions, and suggestions. Twitter didn’t make it easy for either of us, but we persevered!
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If you’ve read this far, your goal is to take one of the above things, and bring it into your world. I know I’ll try.
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But everything good needs to come to an end. I’m writing this, jetlagged, back at my San Francisco desk. It might be a trip that will change my life; the possibility of me moving to Japan is now bigger than zero. I don’t know how much bigger. I guess we’ll find out.
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Replying to @mwichary
Didn’t you find a magazine on keyboards or buttons? They have fanzines for practically everything. I once had a crew over just photographing European offices. Japan loves your kind of dedication to a single subject.
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I’m afraid I wouldn’t even know how to look for one. :·(
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