My Gap Year

My sense of humor died on Monday, February 9, 2026 at 9:56 a.m.

That was the time of my scheduled train departure from the Tokyo central station, heading to Nagano so I could see the snow monkeys. I arrived at the station at 9:30, assuming I’d have plenty of time to make it to the train. Visions of Penn Station in New York or Union Station in Los Angeles led me to believe I’d have no trouble finding my train in short order.

One problem. I don’t speak, read or write Japanese. I found myself wandering aimlessly through the station, trying to decipher the listed departures but not seeing my train number anywhere. My gap year trip has not been about running for planes (or trains); in fact, that was an important component of my travel plans. I wanted to feel comfortable about getting where I needed to go without sweating profusely and panicking about immigration lines or security checks. I used to laugh at my mother’s desire to get to the airport three hours before her flight, but I’m not laughing now.

Making matters worse, I couldn’t figure out why, when I put my ticket into the automated gate, the red light would come on preventing me from passing. I did it over and over again, to no avail. People were queuing behind me, looking over my shoulder trying to figure out what the hell the problem was. Finally, one of the train attendants came over and showed me that there were actually two tickets I needed to insert in the machine – my actual ticket, plus the payment receipt ticket (which, thankfully, I had kept). I got that same feeling I get when I’m talking to tech support about my computer – how in God’s name am I supposed to know that I need to access the subroutine on my .sys file and hit F2, shift and control all at the same time? Aggravation was expanding exponentially.

I finally made it through the gate at 9:55, leaving myself one minute to find the appropriate track. It was at that moment that I started muttering aloud about “what bullshit” this was, and “where the fuck am I supposed to be going?” My sense of humor about travel snafus collapsed and I was unable to rescusicate it. I became “that guy.”

We all know “that guy.” He’s the one who yells at customer service representatives when they don’t speak English. He thinks that the world should cater to his needs. He tries to overcome language barriers by speaking louder.

I found the train ticket office (after some more aimless wandering) and, thank the Lord, was able to use Google Translate to explain my situation and get on another train. The irony was that the snow that was falling in Tokyo delayed the original train I was supposed to be on, so, if I had just been able to read those damn signs, I would have saved myself a boatload of frustration and taken that original train.

The few times I’ve been in Japan, I’ve found that it wasn’t particularly “user friendly.” In other words, Japan doesn’t cater to English-speaking tourists. It was true when I was here in 1984, and I was surprised to see that not much had changed in 40 years. I’ve always considered myself relatively adept at figuring out languages – I can decipher signs in German, Italian, French and pretty much all the Romance languages. But Japanese is impenetrable.*

I did get on a later train and I made it to Nagano in plenty of time to have dinner at my ryokan, but the aggravation stayed with me like cigarette smoke on a sweater.

As the evening wore on, and after I had taken a good long soak in the hot spring onsen, it gave me a chance to clear my head and think more fully about what had happened. I forced myself to put myself in the shoes of the non-English speakers in Los Angeles. How many street signs (outside of Japantown) are in both English and Japanese? Imagine being a tourist in the United States who speaks no English; are we any more hospitable than Japan? Most of us Angelenos can speak enough Spanish to at least communicate basic needs or questions. But what would you say to someone who comes over and asks a question in Japanese and clearly speaks no English? Would you be annoyed? Would you feel bad that you were unable to help?

It struck me that this issue is undoubtedly more common than I would have thought. There are at least 224 languages spoken in greater Los Angeles, and over 50% of families speak a language other than English at home. Apparently, the most frequently spoken languages are Spanish, followed by Chinese (including Mandarin and Cantonese), Tagalog, Korean, Armenian, Vietnamese, Persian, and Russian. All these foreign language speakers either need to learn enough English to get by, or remain insulated in their own particular neighborhoods and speak their first languages.

If I were to emigrate to Japan, how long would it take me to be able to communicate comfortably? If I had to find a job, how would I manage that? How lost would I feel? Given our current political climate, what would I do if I were confronted by law enforcement who didn’t speak my language?

As I wrapped up my inner dialogue and started to feel sleepy, my sense of humor began to return. I told myself that I was going to laugh at travel snafus (or at least accept that they are an unavoidable part of travel), and wasn’t going to be “that guy” if I could help it. And if I found myself going down that path, I would endeavor to remember to take a breath and accept the fact that the world is sometimes a complicated place to navigate. It’s not incumbent on everyone else in the world to accommodate me. I need to make the effort and accept the inevitable frustrations. I’ve heard that patience is a virtue.

We’ll see how I do when I have my next train to catch.

*This applies to menus too. I got a list of the courses I was having for dinner at my ryokan (in Japanese) and had a similar problem code-breaking my waiter’s explanation of one of the dishes. I got a soup that had something that looked like brains or intestines in it, and when I asked what it was, I was told that it was “roe.” In fact, I found out later that it was shirako, which is cod semen. It’s considered a delicacy. Thankfully, I learned that after I had already eaten it. Not much taste, but the texture was a challenge.