(I029) When You Feel Stuck: What Japan -and My 20-Year-Old Self Taught Me About Belonging
I never wanted to talk about it. Because it felt like failure. My first year of University, I was so proud to make the Varsity Volleyball Team, but then I quit.
Even now, the word quit sticks in my chest. I had never quit anything before. I prided myself on being the gritty one. The reliable one. The athlete who kept going, even when it got hard. I was my High School’s Female Athlete of the Year. From Hero to Zero.
So when I stepped away from the team, I didn’t say much. But inside, it felt like something cracked.
What I couldn’t see then—but can now—is this: I didn’t quit because I was weak. I left because I had the strength to recognize that I was in an environment that didn’t support my growth.
Still, I felt lost. I gained weight. My confidence unravelled. And quietly, I wondered: “Maybe I don’t belong here. Maybe I was never meant for university at all. Maybe I’m not a great athlete after all.”
That’s when my Mom and Aunt offered a different path. A kind of invitation to discovery.
“Why don’t you go to Japan?”
I had never been before. Not once. I paused—for a long time.
I didn’t realize it then, but that pause was the moment. The stillness. The space between the noise. In Japanese, there’s a word for this: ma (間). It means the space between. The silence that gives shape to the sound.
It’s the breath between notes in music. The quiet between questions and answers. The moment was just wide enough to let a crack of light in.
And that pause, ma (間), was what I needed. To step away from what was unravelling. And toward something I didn’t yet understand—but somehow already trusted.
But something in her voice, and something in me, knew it was the right thing. A chance to connect with my roots—and maybe, with a part of myself I hadn’t yet met. What I didn’t know then is that it would become my first big AHA moment of adulthood.
My Jiichan and Baachan (Japanese Grandparents) had arranged something special for my Hatachi (二十歳) —my 20th year.
In Japan, Hatachi (二十歳) is more than a birthday. It’s a threshold into adulthood, honoured with Seijin no Hi (成人の日), a coming-of-age ceremony where you wear a formal kimono and are recognized as someone stepping into new responsibility—and new freedom.
My mom, full of hope, offered me her treasured kimonos. But as we tried them on, it was clear: they didn’t fit. I am 5’9” to my Mother’s 5’0”. So my aunt and I searched for the longest kimono we could find.
Even then—it still didn’t fit.
At the kimono studio, the women were all around five feet tall. I walked in, 5'9", unsure and carrying the weight of that word—quit—still lodged in my chest. Still felt the judgement to myself of the weight I had gained.
They looked up at me, eyes wide, grinning. "Takai!" they said in unison—so tall!
They craned their necks, dramatizing the moment with laughter, tugging at the hem of the kimono, adjusting the obi, trying to make it all work. “You’re the tallest Japanese person we’ve ever dressed!” one of them said, eyes bright with delight.
They didn’t call me gaijin—foreigner. They knew my jiichan and baachan. They saw me. Not half. Not outsider. Just Japanese.
In that moment, where so often I was made to feel other, I felt completely and quietly home. And there we were—laughing together in a room full of too-short fabric and too-much joy. And something in me cracked again—but this time, open.
I stood there—wrapped in tradition that didn’t quite fit—and felt more me than I had in months.
I had always admired my best friend’s height—she’s 6’2" and radiant. I never thought I carried that kind of presence. But in that studio, I didn’t shrink. I let myself be seen. And I let myself belong.
Not because I fit. But because I stopped trying to.
山谷 蘭（蘭ちゃん）
二十歳 記念写真
2000年、日本 青森県 五所川原市にて
Yamaya Lan (Lan-chan)
Hatachi Commemorative Photo
Taken in Goshogawara, Aomori, Japan – 2000
After the photo shoot, I walked through the streets of my jiichan’s town. Not in the kimono, but still wrapped in something softer than silk—something like understanding.
He pointed out buildings with pride, tracing their histories with his fingers. His calligraphy—the brushstrokes of his own hand—was still painted on shop signs. He told me stories in Japanese, his voice warm and animated. I barely understood the words back then. But we didn’t need translation.
We spoke with gestures. With pauses. With feeling. And somehow, it was enough. That quiet walk, that shared pride, that moment of being his granddaughter—not half this or not enough that—just his—taught me something I’d been aching to learn:
Belonging isn’t given. It’s remembered—felt deep in the body before it’s ever understood by the mind.
There’s a rhythm to life that no textbook teaches. The rhythm of Shu-Ha-Ri (守破離). First, you follow the form. Then, you break it. And finally, you transcend it.
That trip to Japan was my Ha to find my AHA. The moment I let go of what didn’t fit—so I could step into who I actually was becoming.
We don’t always get to ride the waves. Sometimes we have to sit in the ebb.
Let the tide pull back. Let the silence settle. Let ourselves see what’s been resting on the ocean floor all along.
We can’t flow all the time. And we don’t have to.
Because even in the ebb—even in the stillness—growth is happening.
🌿 And so, a tree still grows.
