A couple I know lives in northern Tohoku, and every few years, I drop in on them. Back when I was based in Tokyo, I’d take the Tohoku Shinkansen or the expressway and head steadily north. Somewhere past Sendai, the air would shift — you could feel it. On the train, the crowd would thin out. By car, the vegetation along the highway would start to look wilder, more unruly. There was no mistaking it: I was heading north.
But after I moved to Sapporo, everything flipped. The trip became a journey south — down through southern Hokkaido, across the Tsugaru Strait. Same destination, opposite direction.
People have told me more than once that it’s just semantics. But whether you’re coming from the south or the north turns out to matter more than you’d think.
When I traveled north to visit them, the place felt unmistakably like “the north.” Beyond it lay borderlands, remote territories, the edge of things. It was easy to imagine harsh winters, lives lived far from the city. But arriving from the north? The whole impression shifts. Suddenly it’s “warmer country,” a point along the way to Tokyo. Compared to Sapporo, it might as well be subtropical.
Same place. Different meaning. Your position and your line of sight define how you see it.
The same thing happens when I fly to Europe from Japan. When heading to Paris or London, regardless of whether it’s a direct flight or a connecting flight, the way the destination feels differs depending on the route from which I arrive. A northern route takes you over frozen tundra before dropping you into the heart of civilization. A southern route threads through tropical humidity before delivering you to cool stone streets. The path you take shifts where the city sits in your mental map.
Japanese has these neat directional terms: hokujō for heading north, nanka for heading south. English has something similar — the suffix “-bound.” Northbound. Southbound. Simple, but clarifying. It tells you where the perspective is coming from.
Which brings me to a word we hear constantly these days: “inbound.” Inbound means “coming in” — it’s the perspective of the receiver. The tourists arriving in Japan left their own countries, so technically, they’re outbound. No traveler thinks of themselves as inbound.
So imagine a sign that says, “Welcome, inbound travelers.” There’s a weird contradiction baked in. The logic belongs to the host, but the message is aimed at the guest. The viewpoints cross, and the meaning gets tangled.
Maybe that’s a minor thing. But the question of where we’re looking from might be closer than we think to the question of who we are. Every perception depends on where the observer stands.
Where to head next. From which direction, with what kind of gaze, to enter that place. By thinking about such things, the meaning of a journey changes decisively. I’m thinking it’s about time to plan the next route to northern Tohoku. It might also be enjoyable to rotate the Google Maps screen and view the destination in a form I’ve never seen before.
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