The Sea I Grew Up Beside

I think many people around the world love Haruki Murakami.

I am one of them.

I have been traveling around Japan lately, and after finishing his newest novel, The Tale of Kaho, I found myself wanting to return to an older one.

So right now, I am reading Kafka on the Shore again.

Have you read it?

It is a strange and beautiful novel, where two stories unfold side by side until the line between reality and dream, and between the living and the dead, slowly begins to blur.

I had read it once before, but for some reason I wanted to return to it, so I have been making my way through it again, a little each day.

It is a wonderful book, and I would recommend it to anyone.

But today, I do not want to talk about Murakami.

Today, I want to write about the place where I was born.

Anyone who follows me online probably knows that I am Japanese.

But I have never said exactly where in Japan I am from.

When I tell people abroad, they sometimes ask, “Are you from Tokyo?” or “Are you from Osaka?”

Those seem to be the first cities people picture when they hear the word Japan.

But I did not grow up in a big city.

It was the opposite.

My hometown happens to be the place the boy in Kafka on the Shore travels to after running away from Tokyo.

Takamatsu, in Kagawa Prefecture.

When Japanese people hear the name Kagawa, the first thing most of them think of is udon.

We are so famous for it that people half-jokingly call us Udon Prefecture.

People who love art might know the Setouchi Triennale, or the art islands of Naoshima and Shodoshima.

Pokémon fans might know us as the home of Slowpoke.

Others might think of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, or Kotohira-gu Shrine.

That is the kind of place where I was born and raised.

But to me, Kagawa has always been more than udon and art.

When I think of home, the first thing I see is the sea.

The quiet Seto Inland Sea, dotted with countless islands.

It lies between three of Japan’s main islands, so it rarely has large waves.

The water is usually calm, and on a clear day it can look more like a wide lake than a sea.

From Takamatsu Port, ferries head out to islands all across the water.

Ferries leaving the harbor.

Islands floating in the distance.

The surface shining in the evening light.

None of it felt special to me back then.

It had simply always been there.

When I was young, Kagawa felt a little boring.

There was no big city, and trains did not arrive every few minutes the way they do in Tokyo.

There were no world-famous attractions.

Tokyo, and the countries I saw on television and online, all looked far more exciting.

I wanted to live somewhere bigger.

I wanted to go abroad.

I wanted to see a world I did not know yet.

Instead of the beauty around me, I mostly felt that there was nothing there.

For a while, I just wanted to leave.

Later I became a teacher, and when I eventually left that job, I spent time living abroad.

I saw landscapes and cultures completely different from the ones I knew.

I walked through places I had never been, met people I never would have met, and slowly learned that what felt normal to me was not normal everywhere.

Those years changed me.

But something strange happened.

The farther I traveled, the more I thought about home.

Before I left, I never truly understood the beauty of the Seto Inland Sea.

I think it was simply too close to me.

We do not always notice the value of the things that sit right beside us.

The same is true of family, of old friends, of the ordinary scenery we pass every day.

Sometimes we only see them clearly once we have stepped away.

Kagawa is not exciting like Tokyo, and not everything is within easy reach.

A young person might still find it boring.

But it has a quiet sea.

It has islands and mountains.

You can step onto a ferry and leave ordinary life behind for a while.

Time moves gently there, as if the place sits just outside the rush of the world.

What I once called boredom, I think I would now call peace.

I am still pulled toward the wider world, of course.

I want to keep traveling, to see cities I have never seen, and to live abroad again one day.

But wanting to go far and loving where you come from are not opposites.

Maybe my love of quiet places, and of nature, began beside that same calm sea.

In Kafka on the Shore, the boy leaves Tokyo at fifteen and comes to Takamatsu.

For him, it is a place far from everything he knows, where he can finally face himself.

For me, it was the opposite.

Takamatsu was the place I wanted to escape, so that I could reach the wider world.

But my hometown never changed.

The sea, the islands, and the ferries had always been there.

I was the one who changed.

I was born in Takamatsu, beside the quiet Seto Inland Sea.

For a long time, I did not think that was worth telling anyone.

Now, I feel quietly proud that it is part of who I am.