Things From Home Travelers Might Not Expect to Miss

Frequent adventurers might run into the following phrase as often as they book plane tickets: “I’d love to do what you’re doing, but I’d miss too many things back home.” Certainly, anyone leaving home for an extended period of time is going to have to do without. Missing things is part of the game, and it rarely stops any hardcore traveler. When I  decided to move to Japan, I expected to miss the important things, like my loved ones. While I absolutely did miss them, I found it was the little absences that rattled me; small things often taken for granted in daily life that I never expected to miss. For example:
Knowing How to Read. So simple, so humbling. If you’re moving to a country where you can’t read the writing system, you’ll have to learn to read again from scratch when you learn the language. Seven year-old children will be able to read signs faster than you will. Ouch.

Eating in Public. In Japan, eating in public (i.e., on the train) is one of the rudest things you can do … apart from the filthy act of nail biting. Sometimes, your new culture will frown upon things that seem innocent to you and you’ll yearn for the days when you could snack on a cookie without receiving a synchronized death glare from a mob of elderly men.

Familiar Toiletries. Every country has their own brands of medicines and drugstore goodies, but they might not work as well as your favorites or they might have undecipherable packaging. Filling my suitcase with Theraflu served me well, as it took me months to learn enough Japanese to read medicine bottles.

Packaged Food. This shocked me, a self-professed food snob. Of all the delicious, natural foods from back home, what I craved was Hamburger Helper and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese – foods I rarely ate when I lived in the U.S. What can I say? The homesick heart wants what it wants.

Knowing What to Do. We take common sense for granted in our home country, but what’s your new country’s etiquette for attending a birthday party or moving into a new apartment building? Your foreign status might get you a “pass” for making a social faux pas such as wearing shoes indoors, but will it get you off the hook if you show up at a Japanese funeral without a funeral envelope? It can be unsettling to constantly require explanations for simple things.

Again, missing things is all part of the game when you venture into lands unknown. In many cases, the things you miss can be turned into opportunities to experience something fantastic and new, or at the very least regale your far away loved ones with a side-splitting story over Skype. In the best of cases, having to make do in your new surroundings can make you so proud of yourself that you long for more unusual situations in which to prove your inner strength and adaptability. But that’s another story … and another plane ticket.