From Being Full of Inferiority to Aiming to Travel the World -Self-Introduction Part 1-

“I’ll just be a normal salaryman in the future, get married, have kids, and that’ll be fine.”

During my student days, I had no dreams or goals.
I truly believed that.

Nice to meet you.
My name is Jessie Katayama.

I am currently a tourism ambassador for
"Machu Picchu", a World Heritage site in Peru, South America.

Thankfully, there are people who follow me on social media and people who say, "I've seen you on TV," which makes me truly happy.
However, what is seen there is only a small part of my life.

In the media, I am featured as


“someone who happened to be in Machu Picchu during the COVID pandemic and luckily became a tourism ambassador.”

Of course, that is not incorrect.

But for me, it wasn't just that one event that suddenly changed my life.
The worries I had as a child.

The things I worked desperately hard at during my student days.
The failures. The steps I took forward.
All the paths I chose for myself are connected, and they make me who I am today.

That is why I have written down once again what kind of person I am and what kind of life I have led.
Like I said at the beginning, why did I, who thought "a normal life is fine," end up traveling the world instead of getting a job?

Why did I, who was just a backpacker, become a tourism ambassador for Machu Picchu?
What am I doing now, and where am I aiming to go from here?
I will write about this in five articles, including the actual events and crises I faced, and what I learned from them.

In the first episode, I will write about how I, full of inferiority and not even knowing what I wanted to do, jumped out into the world.
The miraculous experience at Machu Picchu had already begun from this time.

I hope my experience will be a trigger for someone I haven't met yet to take some kind of action.
I hope you can read this casually, thinking, "So there's this way of living too."


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might make me look like someone who has always had the drive to act and has been moving toward a big dream.But in reality, that is not the case at all.On the contrary, as a child, I was a boy full of inferiority, with no confidence and no dreams.

・A childhood full of inferiority

My grandfather is a quarter-Trinidadian from South America.
(I think it's a country you might not be familiar with)

As a child, I was strongly aware that my name and skin color were different from those around me.
I really hated the name "Jessie," and I seriously thought about changing my name at the city office when I turned 20.

In my hometown of Nara, mixed-race children were rare at the time.
I wasn't bullied by my friends, but I was often told discriminatory things by adults.

I played baseball in elementary and junior high school.

I kept a straight face even when people said various things, but it really stung in my heart.

I was small, and I wasn't particularly good at it either.
In the end, in baseball, the guys with big bodies hit the ball far and throw fast pitches, right?

Deep down, I thought that way.

Anyway, I had no confidence in myself.


I was a crybaby, I was small, and I had nothing but inferiority about my appearance and my name.

In high school, I thought, "I want to do something where I can compete even if I'm small, instead of baseball."
That became my first major turning point.

・The overwhelming confidence that boxing gave me

When I was in junior high school, I was obsessed with delinquent manga lol

“Crows”
“WORST”
“Drop”
“Nanba Dead End” etc...

I collected every volume of every delinquent manga I could get my hands on.

Because the junior high school I attended had quite a lot of honor students, that world looked even cooler to me.

"The strong ones are the coolest"

Ever since I started thinking that way,
I stopped studying.
(Sorry, Mom)

And I went on to a high school that was rumored to be
"where the delinquents gather."

"Since I'm going to a delinquent high school, I can't be weak."

Thinking that, I started going to a boxing gym.

The reason was simple:
so I wouldn't lose to the delinquents.

It'll be fine if I'm stronger than the other students.
That was about the extent of my feelings at first, but
when I actually tried it,





"Boxing is actually super fun!!!!"

I was completely hooked.

Unlike baseball,
boxing is divided into weight classes.

Unlike baseball, it's an individual sport, so the results
come directly from how much you practice.

Every day after school, I went to the boxing gym and
practiced mixed in with the adult professional boxers.

I won prefectural and Kinki tournaments,
and started competing in national tournaments like the Inter-High and the National Sports Festival.

The first turning point in my life was
starting boxing.

Every day was about completing tough training.
The feeling of getting better the more I practiced.
The experience of being number one.
And above all,
becoming stronger as a living being.

Here, I gained an overwhelming amount of"confidence"in myself.

And this boxing would
later become one of the reasons I became a tourism ambassador for Machu Picchu.

By the way, there were no delinquents at the high school I went to, haha

・I don't know what I want to do

But I couldn't become number one in Japan.

Although I continued for seven years through high school and university,
I couldn't become the strongest athlete in Japan.

Thinking about it now,
maybe I wasn't even seriously aiming to be number one in the first place.

In high school, I loved boxing so much that
I practiced like crazy every day.

But after entering university,
I was somehow just "going through the motions."

"I'll become a world champion."

I wasn't continuing with that kind of resolve.

I was just doing it aimlessly.

"I don't have anything I want to do, and maybe a salaryman or a civil servant is a safe bet for the future."

Just as I was thinking that, job hunting began.
I thought about the work I wanted to do again, but





"I don't know"

Of course I didn't.

Up until now, my student life had only been boxing.
I had never thought about what I wanted to do, so there was no way I could know.

Or rather,

"I'm already a third-year university student, and my college life is just going to end with boxing..."

"I want to do something college-student-like."

.
.
.


"I'll be a backpacker!"


This was the trigger for me to aim to become a backpacker.

I had absolutely no interest in going abroad.

But for some reason, inside me at the time,

college student = backpacker

there was an image like that.

And so, I strapped on a heavy backpack and
went on a trip alone to Thailand and Cambodia for about two weeks.

Thinking about it now,
this trip was the beginning of everything.

・A solo trip where I learned about the vastness and kindness of the world

At this time,

if I had met different people,

if I had had different experiences,

I wouldn't have become a backpacker,
and I wouldn't have become a tourism ambassador for Machu Picchu.

That's how big of a trip it was for me.

My first solo trip abroad.

Of course, it wasn't easy.

Before leaving the country, I worked out like crazy to try and make my body look even a little bigger,
and I even got dreadlocks to try and make myself look tough, haha

I arrived in Thailand,
and when I took a motorcycle taxi to head to the cheap hostel I had booked near Khao San Road, the backpacker mecca,
I was immediately taken to a back alley.

And in broken Japanese, I was told this.

Thai person:
"Marijuana, I sell for you."

Jesse:
"I have dreadlocks, but I don't need marijuana."

I politely declined,
and arrived safely at Khao San Road.

Food I had never seen before.
Fake NBA jerseys.
Ladyboys who I really couldn't believe were men.
Backpackers gathered from all over the world.

I can't speak English.

Even so, on the first night I arrived in Thailand,
I tried talking to various people.

Here,
Asians, white people, black people,
skin color didn't matter at all.

In the countryside of Nara,
I used to worry about my skin color being different from those around me,
but that felt ridiculous now.

Once I got out of Japan,
that kind of thing didn't matter anymore.



The day I moved from Thailand to Cambodia.

I had two big encounters that day.

Apparently one customer was late,
so the bus to Cambodia wouldn't leave.

When they finally arrived,
a man who looked Cambodian
said, "Sorry, sorry, I overslept,"
in incredibly fluent Japanese.

His name is Sean.

He works as the Southeast Asia representative for the Aeon Group, and although he is Cambodian, he can speak Japanese.

Sean helped me with Cambodian immigration because I can't speak English.

And the other encounter was,
the children I met at the Cambodian border.

They were looking at me with smiles,
so at first I thought they were street children asking for money, but that wasn't the case.

Maybe they weren't used to seeing Japanese people,
it seemed they just wanted to play with me,
so I played with them for about an hour until the bus left the border.

Children are truly pure.

Especially the children I met overseas,
even if we don't speak the same language, they laugh with all their might.

I can tell they are enjoying themselves from the bottom of their hearts.

Actually, in the articles that follow,
there are many scenes where I interact with children, both overseas and in Japan.

I've always loved children, but maybe it's thanks to the children I met in Cambodia at this time that I've come to love them even more.

On the night I arrived safely in Siem Reap, Cambodia, I went to a bar district called Pub Street with Sean, and Gem and Giselle from the Philippines who were on the same bus.

We drank beer until we were soaked,
and before I knew it, I had made many new friends lol

The next day, I went to the World Heritage site Angkor Wat with Gem and Giselle.

Even though my English was poor,
they tried their best to understand me, and it was a truly fun sightseeing trip.

・"Oh no, I'm going to be killed..."

After parting ways with Gem and Giselle,
Sean invited me to eat with his friends, so I tagged along.

Riding on the back of a motorbike for 20 minutes, 30 minutes...

We were getting further and further away from the city.

When I asked Sean,

"When will we arrive?"

he only said,

"Just a little longer."






"Wait a minute."

"Could it be that I'm being taken deep into the mountains to be killed and have my organs sold?"Bad images kept expanding in my mind.



"Was the plan to be friendly at first and then kill me at the end?"I couldn't stop the cold sweat.

Just as I was about to say,

"Sean, I think I'll head back today,"

we arrived at a hut deep in the mountains.

"It's over."

At this distance, there was no way I could escape.

What should I do?
What should I do?
What should I do?

Thank goodness.

Besides, everyone was incredibly kind.

What they served me there included
grilled frog,
and birds caught nearby using a slingshot like the one Usopp from One Piece has, which they then prepared right there.

It was all stuff I had never seen or eaten in Japan.

But,
maybe because of the sense of relief,

or maybe because I was happy to be welcomed,

anyway, that meal was delicious.

That day, we drank beer until we were soaked,
and I still vividly remember, even 10 years later, that we somehow sang EXILE songs at the top of our lungs on the way back.



For the next few days,
Sean took me to various places.

Without asking for anything in return,
Sean simply,
warmly welcomed me in Cambodia.

For me at the time, that was very strange.

To a foreigner he happened to meet a few days ago,
he was this kind.

"There is this kind of kindness in the world."

Sean taught me that.



That was my first solo backpacker trip in my life.

There was no way I wouldn't get hooked.

An environment where everything was different from Japan.
Culture.
People.
Food.
And even the troubles.

Everything was fresh,
and everything was interesting.

Moreover, when I returned to Japan,

"Solo travel is amazing."
"You have so much initiative."

I was even fawned over.

"I want to go to even more places."

From then until I graduated from university, for about two years,
I traveled to various countries.

My life back then was completely chaotic.

Class → Club activities → Night shift → Class → Club activities → Night shift →
Class → Club activities → Night shift → Class → Club activities → Night shift →

It was normal to sleep in the university common area or club room until class after my night shift ended.

I definitely couldn't live like that now.

But I could do it back then.

Simply because I was young, and
more than that,
having new experiences abroad and
encountering unknown cultures was truly fun.

But the only places I could go were
Southeast Asia, where airfare is cheap.

"I want to visit America or Brazil someday"

"I want to see the pyramids and Machu Picchu"

And above all,

"I want to visit Trinidad and Tobago, where my roots are"
(I hadn't been there yet at that time)

With every trip I took, that desire grew stronger.



"I want to travel around the world someday"

・The first dream of my life

When I became a fourth-year university student and had to decide on my career path,
these were the three things I seriously struggled with until the end.

① Become a professional boxer
② Get a job
③ Travel around the world

I could have become a professional boxer if I wanted to.

But becoming a professional boxer and
making a living from it are two different things.

"I will definitely become a world champion"

Without that kind of resolve, there's no way I could keep winning even if I continued boxing. It's not that easy of a world.

Thinking that, I quit boxing completely.

And probably, most people get a job after graduating from university.

I also thought that was the normal thing to do.

Until I became a backpacker.

But while traveling through Southeast Asia,
the desire to "travel around the world someday"
had changed from a vague longing to a clear"dream".

The first dream I ever had in my life.

I can't die without fulfilling this, at least.

That's what I thought.

Even if I just followed the path and got a job,
I would surely quit soon and go on a trip around the world.

I intuitively felt that.

If so, it's better to start moving toward a trip around the world from the beginning.

And if I travel around the world,
see various scenery, experience various cultures, talk to various people, and learn about the ways of thinking in various countries,

I thought I might be able to find"the job I really want to do".

To find what I really want to do,
I chose the path of traveling around the world.

However, there are two major hurdles.

How to explain it to my family.
How to get the money.

・If you don't decide your own path yourself, you'll regret it later

I didn't tell my family "I want to go on a trip around the world," but
I said something plausible: "I think English will be necessary in the coming era, so I'm going to study abroad instead of getting a job."

Of course, my whole family was furious.

My mom cried and said,
"I raised you wrong,"

and my grandparents also
said terrible things to me.

But I didn't back down.

Because I want to do it.

A dream I'm willing to cut ties with my family for.

For the first time in my life, I had something I could feel that way about.

"Decide your own path yourself"

"You are the one who makes the path you choose the right one"

I told myself that and left home.

Now I think that the choice I made back then was the right one.

Next is money.

Even though a trip around the world is a budget trip,
I thought I would need roughly 1 million yen.

Even if I continued the event staff and bar part-time jobs I was working at the time, it would take a long time to save up the money.

That's when I happened to hear from a senior about
a system called a working holiday, and apparently you can earn a ton of money if you work in Australia...

"This is it"

English is essential to work in Australia.

So, I first made a plan to go to Cebu, Philippines, where study abroad costs are low, for 3 months of language study before going to Australia to work.

Even though studying in Cebu is cheap, it's 300,000 yen for 3 months.
(It's super cheap because it includes tuition, food, and lodging, though)

For a university student like me, it's quite a large amount.

I worked part-time like crazy and somehow saved up the study abroad fees.

But with the airfare to Cebu and overseas insurance, etc.,
the money I had left on the day of departure was only 30,000 yen, haha

"Well, it'll work out somehow!"

The first dream I ever had, a trip around the world.
The first step, to Cebu, Philippines.

30,000 yen in cash, 0 English ability
Will I really be able to survive until Australia?

And can you really earn money in Australia!?

To be continued

Part2is here