A Wandering Jew

As a traveler, a friend told me recently, I could be described as a flaneuse. Everything sounds better in French, and this is no exception. Flaneuse makes me sound far less haphazard than, say, aimless wanderer. It's "a thing," flaneuse. "Un chose." A meanderer with a purpose.

In travel, as in life, I have always been content to let others do the meticulous planning, perfectly happy to stumble around without an itinerary. I have been known to wile away the endless hours on a plane ride home poring through tour books, reading about what I have already seen. It may seem ass backwards to some, but I love the "eureka" moments. Ah yes, I've been there. Now the sights have  context, and the memory seems richer. If I am lucky enough to revisit, even better.

A few months ago, I traveled to Japan, for the fifth time. My friend, Ellen, came with me, well warned that, despite the long journey, my visit was more about spending time with my son than sightseeing. Tokyo was out of the question for our brief stay, but I guaranteed plenty of wandering and a smorgasbord of shrines and some good eats in Kyoto and Kobe.  Ellen is the opposite of a flaneuse; she researches beforehand. We walked together, the accidental and the purposeful tourist, through a Kobe neighborhood where I had wandered countless times. I had never known about the Jewish temple sitting so comfortably within the Japanese cityscape. Were it not for Ellen's research, I would never have experienced the odd sensation of standing before a bima flanked by a Japanese flag on one side and an Israeli flag on the other. Flaneusing isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Since that visit, thanks to my son, I have learned a little more about Jews and Japan and, I suppose, wanderings. He had just traveled to a small port town, Tsuraga, where there is a museum commemorating the arrival of thousands of Jews escaping the Nazis in 1939. They arrived there, after an arduous journey from Lithuania through Siberia, thanks to a largely unsung Japanese hero who defied orders and hand-wrote thousands of visas. They arrived there, entire families, hungry and filthy, and ethnically different from the towns' residents, and they were taken in. Their caravan was the Trans-Siberian railroad and then a boat. There were no walls. Nobody told them they should not have risked their childrens' lives to make the journey. Thousands of Jews are alive today, thanks to the humanity of one man and the people of a small port town.

Another friend is heading to Japan tomorrow with her family. Everything has been mapped out, and she just called to see if I had any last minute tips. What to wear, what to see, whether to bring an adaptor. I told her to just enjoy the sights and sounds, take it all in without sweating the details. To be a flaneuse. But I also told her about Tsuraga, a town I have never seen, would not have heard about had it not been for my son's curiosity. Flaneusing aside, I will just have to stumble over there,  accidentally on purpose, the next time I go.