The author enjoying his asian experience. Photo by unknown.

As I drop my belongings to the ground aside the waiting area at Narita Airport’s Gate 61, I see, out of the corner of my eye a frail-framed American guy roll his eyes. You can tell by the look of him that he’s the type of person who has renounced his banal Judeo-Christian name and adopted something Japanese-sounding. Something like Yamada. And since his eyes show that he’s clearly judging my Western aura, I’ll judge right back.

Yamada is unlike your average Caucasian thirty-something. He’s the oh-so-cultured-and-enlightened meditation advocate. He’s dressed in Japanese-influenced garb (i.e. sandals, linen pants) to complement hair pulled back Shinto-style in a pony-tail; and he’s posing like the few self-righteous Americans who believe that they’ve mastered the Japanese culture, and are therefore intellectually above everyone else.

Yamada’s opinion of me probably didn’t waver after I pulled out my Snickers bar. I was about to say, “What–you want some? I’m extremely hungry and before I embark in a closed cabin for twelve hours to New York, I want this peanut-caramel-chocolate candy bar so kindly return to your meditation.” …and he did, now he’s doing stretches right in the middle of the congested waiting area.

I haven’t mastered an Asian language, nor do I know much about the East, but give me a break. I traveled more than 8,000 miles. Doesn’t that show my appreciation enough? “Ar-ee-gah-to” and “nee-hao” roll off my tongue rather fluidly and I’ve been complimented on my use of chopsticks. I don’t deserve a look of repulsion at the airport gate simply because I was wearing my exhaustion on my shoulders from a six-hour layover after my flight from Beijing (but I was carrying a rice hat—what? It was $2).

While I sat in the Narita Airport (which by the way, makes JFK look like a dirt runway) waiting to go home, I began to review my last four weeks in Asia. I spent the first in Tokyo, and the rest mostly in Beijing with a weekend in Shanghai. Most of what I learned was simply confirmation of my initial stereotypes (in case you haven’t picked up, I’m a big proponent of stereotypes). But seriously, I found out that the Japanese are actually really obsessed with anime. China really is huge. You can feel the sheer multitude of the population when walking around the Beijing.

What I wasn’t expecting, perhaps, was the extent of pollution in Beijing. Everyone has an idea of what pollution looks like, but you don’t really know it until you actually see a sky that’s one gradient light gray, as if you’re living in a dome.

I asked one of the students whom I was teaching English to what he thought the best part about the Olympics was. He responded, “I can see the blue sky.” Kind of depressing, right? Although, after all, the Chinese have been pouring concrete into Beijing for the past twenty-odd years; it’s clearly not the same city it was at the turn of the century.

I’ll admit to being a bit spoiled for having the opportunity to venture to Asia on a whim for four weeks. And honestly, it still hasn’t hit me that I was actually there. I had thought I, like Yamada, might go to the East when I was desperate for a change of scene or some spiritual enlightenment (via Zen Buddhism, perhaps). What I took away was an interest in Asia I never had before. And although Yamada did rub me the wrong way, I think it’s safe to say that he got what he wanted from the East.

That’s what I learned about the East: it is what you bring to it and so much more. I started off sure that the stereotypes I’d learned about the East were true and although some of them proved to be, there are truths hidden within the stereotypes. And there are truths yet deeper in hiding that the East, the Orient, China will forever, perhaps, keep to itself.