My summer vacation this year was a belated trip to Japan in September.

The village where I live is situated somewhere between the Pyrenees, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean; traveling from this deepest recess of France to the pays du soleil levant (the country of the rising sun) is always an around-the-clock trial race and an emotional roller coaster.

The first stage of my trip was to fly to Amsterdam where I could catch a direct flight to Tokyo. My companion drove me the 30 km to Toulouse Blagnac airport to take the KLM cityhopper to the Dutch capital.

My first shock came when I landed at Schipol airport. Walking along the endless, shiny boutique-lined corridors past all the restaurants and PR automobiles, and among all those people, I was dazzled -- I wasn't sure if I had landed at an airport or at the grand casino in Monte Carlo.

I am used to a serene, (almost) material-free country life (there is not much to buy or browse in my village) and to someone with a light purse, those enticing, capitalist lures were (almost) a call from the devil. Putting Satan behind me, I walked quickly to the next boarding gate.

The second shock occurred when I boarded the Japan Airlines flight to Tokyo and found myself surrounded by hundreds of my compatriots loaded with bags full of duty-free shopping.

In France, I inhabit a Tower of Babel: I speak and listen to French, watch movies (sometimes read and write) in English, learn Chinese and Arabic -- and yet I have very few opportunities to use Japanese.

I once tried to teach my French companion Japanese, but when I realized that he would never be able to grasp the difference between foot (ashi) and chopsticks (hashi) -- you see the French don't have the aspirate "h" sound -- I threw in the towel.

Whenever I haven't heard "live" Japanese for a long time, at first my brain doesn't react quickly to the sound; then the information begins to cascade into my gray matter, to be decoded miraculously well. It feels somehow so nice, so supernatural to be able to understand a language without actually trying.

Each time I travel between East and West, I feel as if my brain switches its rotation. For example, my brain turns clockwise in Japan, but in France I feel it turns the other way (perhaps because I'm not a natural bilingual person, this is the way I absorb the shock of switching language zones) and my mind is a little blurred, even though I've been learning French for 15 years.

Usually I don't sleep up in the sky, so during the long flight I browse a dozen or so magazines, walk around and between in-flight-meals that I force down, I dream voluptuously about the things that I will have when I arrive: unagi? sushi? Or perhaps soba? Then my mind flies faster than the jet stream toward my favorite restaurants.

When I finally got to downtown Tokyo, exhausted, I was dazzled again -- as always -- by the surfeit of shops, illuminations, Asian faces and omnipresent cries from loudspeakers: It was ultimate journey shock.

I enjoyed walking for a while sustained by a strange euphoria, as if I was walking on another planet.

Back in my French hermitage, it takes some time for my body and mind to readjust to the local clock. I dream about Japan, remember what I forgot to eat . . . . oops, I also remember the season's Beaujolais Nouveau that I had planned to write about for this column. Sorry, but my head must have started turning anti-clockwise again.

I'd welcome any comments or opinions, in Japanese or English, about my column. You can write or fax me at The Weekly, or e-mail me at jtweekly@japantimes.co.jp

The Japan Times Weekly: Nov. 20, 2004
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