Words & Photos By Masanori Nishikawa
My bicycle journey, where despite the apprehension, nervousness, and anxiety, the warmth of the local people I met on my travels brought smiles to my face, and I gradually became able to continue my journey trusting the land and its people.
However, a few months after I started my journey, something happened that made me unable to move forward.
This time, I would like to introduce how that bicycle journey became a turning point in my life.
When I Had Become an Experienced Traveler
After China, I entered Laos, and from there, I continued my journey to Thailand and Cambodia.
Before I knew it, I was no longer nervous about visiting new countries.
Once I entered a new country, I would find someone who spoke English, learn greetings and how to say thank you, and if I could exchange Japanese yen or dollars for the local currency at a bank, everything else would be fine.
In that way, before I knew it, I had become an experienced traveler.
The Reward of Staying in a Town
For me, who always stayed in tents, staying in a town was like a reward.
Asking the price of the accommodation, and having them show me the room.
Once I could confirm whether it was okay to bring my bicycle into the room, it was decided.
Taking a shower after a long time, quickly washing my dirty clothes, hanging them on a clothesline in the room, changing, and then walking around town.
At that time, I didn't have a smartphone, so in an unfamiliar town, I would keep walking while etching the scenery into my memory, so that I could find my way back to the accommodation on my own.
Traveling in Lines, Not Points
In tourist areas with many foreigners, if I met other travelers, I would learn about where they were going next, and we would talk about each other's journeys.
Since I didn't have a smartphone like I do now, if I met like-minded companions, we would talk until early morning.
They were much lighter than bicycle travelers, and they had usually traveled to many more places than I had, which was something I envied.
Bicycles are slow, and if I stopped at every place I wanted to go here and there, I would hardly make any progress.
However, in exchange, I could trace the path they lightly traveled between points by bus or train as a single line.
And it was along that path that I could see the original way of life of the land, not with a tourist's face, and that encounters with local people would arise.
I came to think that there is something important in what I experience and see through my journey, rather than in some introduction of "This is what travel is like" drawn somewhere.
What I Chose
I chose a "bicycle" as my means of travel.
And I chose to travel "alone".
When I was in high school, I saw a man riding a mountain bike with such dashing style, and I fell in love with it at first sight, and bought a mountain bike with my pocket money.
When I met someone who was traveling around the world by bicycle, I was deeply moved by their words, "You can really feel that you're alive every day!"
There were no other particular reasons.
I just wanted to head toward something that had driven me.
I had never imagined that it would become something in my life, that I would walk such a life after this experience.
Finding My Own Travel Style
But in this way, I think I found my own travel style and myself, by jumping into the world with a bicycle without knowing anything, meeting the people of the land who warmly accepted me as I was, and facing the difficulties that came time and again head-on, while sometimes talking with companions I met under the same travel sky.
A clear line is emerging from the vague self I had until now.
It seems like something very cool to put into words.
But what emerged there was by no means something that could be called "good" for myself at that time.
I Wanted to Become Someone
I had always wanted to become someone.
All my classmates were born and raised in a small rural town where everyone was like relatives, and from junior high school, I had to tell myself that I had no choice but to somehow manage in a large class with many students.
I didn't have any particular dreams.
I had played baseball in the club for a long time, but I was always a substitute.
I somehow went to university and started living alone.
I lost my best friend in an accident at 19.
I couldn't go on with my life like this.
I didn't want to live a life that would make me regret it in this world that he wanted to live.
And so I started my journey.
I think I wanted to meet something that would make people say, "That's how he is."
Something away from social evaluation, or a yardstick, or anything like that, but something that would allow me to accept myself as myself.
That might have been my journey.
What Emerged While Riding
So I left Japan by bicycle, and I am meeting new worlds and people every day like this, but what emerges from inside me when I am simply riding mindlessly, what emerges from my heart, is my past self.
I am saying something like a monk, but when I actually talk to monks, we have a lot in common.
Yes.
My past self emerges.
And it is not a good memory, but a bitter memory of the past that I had unknowingly put a lid on.
Hurting someone.
Regrets of not doing.
Not being able to convey my feelings.
My words and actions that always tried to make myself look bigger since I started traveling with the sole desire to become someone.
Those things have always been in my heart, and they will never disappear and will always be there.
I came to understand that.
Suspending the Journey and Writing Down My Thoughts
What on earth am I doing?
Unable to fully accept it, but with the thought that I have to do something now, I suspended my journey and decided to write down the thoughts overflowing in my heart as words.
Over about 10 days.
I jumped out into the world all by myself, and I was stunned to find my true self in the middle of the world.
The "me that wanted to become someone" had been struggling to have myself accepted, and had been making myself look bigger.
However, for me to truly become bigger.
It is only when my heart is free.
That is why I accept the remnants of my life and regrets that I saw this time, one by one, and settle each one, and walk as myself so that I do not accumulate them again.
The difficulty and fear of being myself.
At 23 years old, I had to continue my journey while facing the fear that I might lose myself.
Continued in Vol.4.
"Travel Sounds" by Masanori Nishikawa
Vol.1 / Vol.2 / Vol.3 / Vol.4 / Vol.5 / Vol.6 / Vol.7 / Vol.8 / Vol.9 / Vol.10