The Warning

I was on the train when I saw it. A Japan news page I follow on Facebook, the kind of thing I usually scroll past, except this time it stopped me. Typhoon Bavi, heading toward Shodoshima, right where I was due to arrive on July 4th. Oh no, I remember thinking. Just that, sitting there with my phone, the train moving, everything else around me completely normal while my plans quietly started to fall apart.

"I won't pretend there wasn't panic. There was. But underneath it, something steadier too, a strange calm that said, okay, then. New plan."

The Decision

By June 30th, in Nara, it wasn't a maybe anymore. Takamatsu, where I was supposed to spend two nights starting July 2nd, and Shodoshima right after, both sat directly in Bavi's path. If I went ahead, I risked being stuck on an island with a storm bearing down, unable to get back in time for Kurashiki, let alone the Hokkaido trip I had planned with my best friend.

I won't pretend there wasn't panic. There was. But underneath it, something steadier too, a strange calm that said okay, then. New plan.

I asked Claude to help me think through where else I could go instead of trying to force the original plan to work. Hiroshima, Miyajima, and Onomichi came together as the new route, inland enough to be safer, and honestly, places I had never seriously considered before.

Cancelling on Booking.com was the moment it became real. Tapping cancel on Takamatsu, then Shodoshima, felt heavier than it should have for two hotel reservations. Thankfully I was still within the free cancellation window, small relief in the middle of everything else. I'd also booked a bus already, Nara back to Osaka, then Osaka to Takamatsu, because I love a good bus ride. Luckily that one let me cancel too, for a 100 yen fee. Phew. But then I started reading about where I was actually going instead, and somewhere in that reading I stopped grieving long enough to get excited. Miyajima has a floating torii gate, Itsukushima jinja, rising straight out of the sea at high tide. I hadn't even known that existed an hour earlier, and suddenly I couldn't wait to see it.

"There's a particular kind of ache in that, knowing a place will still be there, knowing you'll probably return, and still having to release your grip on the version of the trip you'd been carrying around for a year."

Why Japan, Again

This is my fourth trip to Japan. People around me ask sometimes, why Japan, you've been there so many times already, why not somewhere new? My answer is always the same. It holds an important space in my heart. There's a reason behind that, one I'll tell you properly another time.

For now, what I can say is this: my goal isn't just Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, the places everyone goes. It's every corner of it. The islands, the hillside towns, the places that don't make the highlight reels. Hiroshima wasn't supposed to be one of those corners yet. Bavi decided otherwise.

What Changed

Old plan: Kyoto, Nara, Takamatsu, Shodoshima, Kurashiki, Hokkaido New plan: Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Miyajima, Onomichi, Kurashiki

The island hopping, olive grove version of the trip I'd pictured was gone. In its place: a city I'd been quietly avoiding, a shrine gate rising out of the sea, and a hillside town of temples and cats I knew almost nothing about.

The Unplanned Places Always Win

If there's one thing every Japan trip has taught me, it's this. It's never the places I plan down to the hour that leave the biggest mark. It's the yolo let's go here, let's explore here moments, the ones I stumble into sideways, that take my breath away and become the stories I actually tell my friends afterward.

Hiroshima almost didn't get the chance. I'd assumed I already knew its shape: visit the Peace Park, pay respects, and then what. I had no idea how wrong that assumption was.

If you're wondering how long to stay, for my pace, I wish I'd had at least three nights in Hiroshima, plus one night in Miyajima. Three nights sounds like a lot for a city I almost skipped entirely, and that's exactly the point. In the end I gave myself two days in Hiroshima and two in Onomichi, and even that felt like just enough to start, not nearly enough to finish. Onomichi especially, I'll tell you properly in its own post one day, all the getting lost, all the slopes I somehow ended up hiking without meaning to.

This is also where I think my travel style shows itself the most. I'm drawn to places with fewer people, more culture, more of the local everyday life, that's just more my tea. I don't like the go, check it off, move to the next spot kind of travel. I'd rather slow down and let a place unfold at its own pace. You'll probably notice this about me the more you read.

Getting to Miyajima meant a slow tram ride, then a short JR ferry crossing, and somewhere in that slowness, little Ad woke up. Not loud, not excited in a jumping around kind of way, more like a quiet, settled kind of happy, an inner chill I don't always get to feel. I realised I was about to have my sea. In Wuhan, where I live and work, there's no sea, only a lake. It sounds like a small difference until you're standing in front of it. The sea is never the same twice, the waves keep coming, keep hitting the shore, and something about that rhythm is deeply therapeutic to me. That ferry ride was the moment I properly understood why I always call myself an island girl.