Talking to the Moon

Traveling from Italy to Tokyo isn’t easy. Not at all. The flight lasts about fifteen hours, if you don’t get a layover, those fifteen hours are all straight and well let me tell you, I love planes and I love being on planes but my love was being put to the test.

After about 7 hours I started feeling like I needed a walk and the aisle of the plane wasn’t enough, knowing 7 more hours were to come kind of killed me a little bit. But hey, it’s Japan we’re talking about. Literally the other side of the world! I was finally visiting the east!

After those that felt infinite hours in the airport for the wait and the visa, and then the infinite hours in the plane, we finally landed. Jet lag was getting the best of me. I was feeling so weak and tired. The airport was so far away from the place I was going to visit first: Mie.

Narita Airport: me dragging my bag while I look for the exit with my eyes closing for the lack of sleep I had in two days. Finally, I find the exit.

Alright, I already took a bus, a train, a flight, now I needed to take another train then another bus and then I could see my destination. Just a couple more hours.

I was starting to wonder if this place was really worth visiting. Landed in Japan, I didn’t even think of the fact I was actually on the other side of the world. In one of the most fascinating countries, in the extreme east! I was too taken away from my tiredness I couldn’t realize.

Eventually I got to my hotel, did the check in, dragged my bags a little bit more and found my room.

I threw myself on the bed. I couldn’t even tell what time it was to be honest, as I was so so confused and tired. I looked around a little bit, found the strength to get up and opened the window: Then I realized all at once where I was.

In front of me the magnificent Pacific Ocean: the moon so full and shiny reflecting back on the water and right into my room illuminating like a lighthouse. This massive expanse of water in front of me, I slowly realized that was the first time ever in my life I was seeing the Ocean. I felt like I got all the poems and books about it.

On the balcony of my room, in the middle of the night I could hear the waves hitting the shore gently and then revolving back again. Like the slow rhythm of the earth. I just felt so full and so in perfect harmony with the world around me. I felt like that was the perfect moment and that was the exact place I needed to be in my life. I looked back and I felt like everything before was meant to be just for that moment to happen.

Me, at only 18 in an hotel room on the balcony alone, in Japan, jet lagged and not able to even tell the time, in front of me the moon and the ocean, two of the most poetic and inspiring elements for humankind. I didn’t do much in my life back then, but I still felt like I made it. I felt so blessed by that view, that moment, that place that I felt there was so much more to do but at the same time, all of that was enough.

I was lucky, I was lucky and I could tell just by looking around. I said ‘thank you’ out loud.

Maybe someone saw this girl on the balcony, moving slowly for the tiredness, talking to herself all alone, probably looking a bit crazy.

What I saw was a design, I saw a meaning.

The lyrics of a song came to my mind “I know that things can really get rough when you go it alone, don’t go thinking you gotta be tough and bleed like a stone, could be there’s nothing else in our lives … and you feel like an ocean warmed by the sun” Well in this case the ocean was being warmed by the moon, but when I think of that moment I still think ‘thanks’.