(This is part two of what’s becoming a series of blog posts about my experience studying abroad in Japan this semester. I plan to talk about how I made the decision to study abroad, as well as what my experience here is like. You can find part one here.)
One of my favorite things about being a liberal arts student is when something I’m learning in a class suddenly gives me insight into something that I’ve been idly thinking about.
Some backstory: this past week, I went to Kyoto to go for a run. I mapped out a route that would take me up the Kamo River, over one of the city’s famous turtle stepping stone bridges, up past the northern extent of the train line, and into the hills surrounding the city. As I was putting together this plan, and again later when I was riding the train to my point of departure, I noticed something odd: the avenues had numbers.
If you’re an American, you might wonder why that’s strange. The answer is that the Japanese address system doesn’t work exactly like the American system. In America the system goes address number, street, city (i.e. 234 Oak Street, Somethingville). In Japan, that system doesn’t work, for one very simple reason: most of the streets don’t have names. But even so, on the train line to Kyoto: stations named “Seventh Avenue," “Kiyomizu / Fifth Avenue," “Gion / Fourth Avenue," “Third Avenue."
This struck me as strange. It felt doubly strange when I went to Nara (a nearby city with very famous, very cute deer) a few days later. Nara, like Kyoto, used to be Japan’s capital city. It’s smaller, but just as flush with historic shrines and temples. And it also has avenue numbers. “Third Avenue / Main Street.” “Fifth Avenue Neighborhood.” I saw plenty of amazing things that day: I went to one of the world’s largest wooden buildings, I had okonomiyaki, I fed crackers to some of those famous and furthermore cute deer. But I couldn’t stop thinking about those numbered avenues. What, exactly, was going on?
Fast forward to a class I had later that week. The class was about Japanese literature and history; we were talking about the eighth-century Asuka period. We discussed how, around that time, Buddhism had begun to influence Japanese society. In fact, Chinese culture in general had a broad influence on Japan: they adopted a writing system inspired by Chinese characters, and they were even inspired by the Chinese political system. In the year 708, the empress of Japan ordered the capital of the country relocated to a new city, called Heijo-kyo, which was modeled after the Tang dynasty Chinese capital, Chang’an. When the move was completed, in the year 710, it ushered in a new age of Japanese history, synonymous with the modern-day name of Heijo-kyo: Nara.
If you look at the street layouts of eighth-century Chang’an, Nara, and Kyoto, they’re almost identical. The answer to the question I had been idly wondering about had spontaneously arrived.
I think that, even more than all the sights I’ve seen, this is my favorite thing about studying abroad so far – it’s also, in my opinion, one of the best things about a liberal arts education. Not only have I learned things I never would have known, I’ve learned those things in ways I never could have imagined.
And who knows what’s going to happen next. I have an overnight trip planned to the nearby Awaji Island. Awaji Island is, according to Japanese mythology, the first island created by the Japanese creator deities. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do there yet. (That is, other than keeping my eyes open, paying attention to museum displays, and trying not to miss the last bus to my hostel.) I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
