How the Appeal of Travel Has Changed as I've Grown Older

My name is Mikiya, and I share content under the theme of 'Aiming to balance the improvement of welfare services with the reduction of staff burden.' I share this.

In this note, as a public servant working on DX for welfare services, I share real-life insights from the field, honest thoughts as a public servant, and information about community development.

I've been writing about my recent trips to Sendai and Morioka, but this time I'd like to talk about how my perspective on travel has changed.

The appeal of travel is meeting people

I used to think the appeal of travel was 'seeing sights I'd never seen before' or 'eating food I'd never tasted.' In fact, I found great value in finding delicious local restaurants that weren't listed in guidebooks.

However, recently, the appeal of travel has changed significantly. The new value I've found in travel for me is meeting people.

An episode where I felt the appeal of meeting people

Why did I start thinking this way? The trigger was when I revisited the town in Tokyo where I lived for just two years. As a way to reward my son for finishing his junior high school entrance exams, I decided to visit the elementary school he attended at the time.

Through prior research, I knew his former homeroom teacher was still there, so I was able to meet with them successfully. While I was talking to the teacher inside the school building I hadn't visited in years, another teacher asked my son, 'By the way, someone named [Name] wrote in their graduation anthology that a kid came from Osaka—is that by any chance you?'

I was specially shown the graduation anthology, and it was written by my son's classmate who used to go to cram school with him at the time. It described memories from their third and fourth grades. It said that interacting with a kid who came from Osaka would be a lifelong memory for them.

When I read that, I felt an indescribable warmth. Traveling to see new scenery and eat delicious food is wonderful, but people meeting people and connecting hearts—and that remaining in someone's heart and influencing their life over and over again—I was deeply moved by that preciousness. It's what you might call 'teetee' (precious/wholesome).

Come to think of it, 'DIE WITH ZERO' also mentions that experiences continue to influence the rest of your life like compound interest. The scenery in the hearts of those boys who were 10 years old at the time will likely continue to greatly influence their lives for decades to come.

Perhaps the encounter with people itself is the journey

That trip to Tokyo wasn't about seeing anything particularly new or eating anything I hadn't tasted before. But this reunion and the writing in the graduation anthology became the most valuable 'souvenir' of the trip for me. And I felt like I had discovered a new way to enjoy traveling.

A new way to enjoy travel: that is, as I wrote at the beginning, 'meeting people.'

People who were born and raised in that area, or people I haven't seen in a long time after moving there. Discovering new sides to people—like meeting someone of a type I've never met before, or realizing someone has an unexpected side I never knew about.

Meeting or reuniting with people might be similar to seeing scenery I've never seen before.

A sense of the extraordinary is still necessary

Even in my daily work, when I work at the service counter, I experience 'nice to meet you' all the time. But if you ask me if these encounters feel as appealing as travel, unfortunately, they don't. I feel that the emotion comes precisely because it's an encounter that happens as an extension of being in a place different from usual or doing things differently than usual.

This turned into a rambling article, but I wrote about various things I felt from traveling in the Tohoku region at the end of August.

A peaceful daily life where I can travel safely, a financial situation that allows me to afford travel, and a state of health that gives me the physical strength to travel. I intend to continue remembering to be grateful for these invisible but important things.