They are so FAKE!!! The Travel Lie
I’m back at the studio after being in Japan for close to two weeks. Yes I am feeling the jet lag, as it’s a 13 hour difference and sleep isn’t feeling restful just yet. But I am happy to be home. I generally like getting back into my routines. Usually I hit an anger stage of being home, but I think after two weeks away, that anger stage wont be too bad this time.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to reflect on my trip when I’m flying home. This time around, I had a good 13 hours to do so. It’s one of the last places I can choose to stay disconnected from the world. I don’t want WIFI, I don’t want to be txting or scrolling IG endlessly for hours. Often times I just put my ears in, cancel out the noise and just sit back, breathe and think. Sometimes I listen to music, audio book or watch a movie…I ended up watching Walter Mitty, but I kind of want to go off the rails for the next little while before coming back to the movie, so bear with me.
How many times have you flipped through socials, only to see a friend, family member or some “influencer” going on and on, about how “Amazing” and “Life Changing” their travel has been? And if you ever go to that place…”You MUST” visit XY or Z. Yea, leading up to Japan, my IG was filled with these types of videos and posts. “Don’t miss this hidden gem in Kyoto”, “You have to try out this vending machine in this random alley”…and so much more. It becomes overwhelming, but worse yet, it sets what I think is a false exception of what your experience might be.
I think people glorify travel or places way too much. Which in turn, sets these expectations that if you don’t have the same exactly experience as someone else…something might be wrong with you. When in fact, the reality is often times different than the instagram. What I mean by that is you only see the glamours side of everything. You see some 20 something somewhere in Japan, trying some “viral” food out of a vending machine and telling you it’s life changing. It’s really NOT! Or that you have to try the food at 7-11, “it’s so amazing”. Look, I went into 7-11 to look for this “amazing” food, and even bought one of those rice triangle things with salmon in the middle. Disappointed would be an understatement, there was barley any fish in it, it was all rice and I tossed it. It’s like all those people who tell you how amazing In and Out burger is…and it should be your first stop after you land in LA. It’s not, it’s fast food garbage, stop perpetuating bullshit.
On top of that, even though you felt something wasn’t great, you’re afraid to share your true feelings out of fear of what others might think. So often times, you perpetrate the false narrative of how “amazing” or “life changing” something was. There’s nothing wrong with calling BS on something, or being honest if you didn’t like it. You don’t have to like everything everyone else likes, or feel bad that you don’t see it the same way.
Another issue with so many of these travel videos, is the time it takes to actually do those things. All you ever see is the “thing”. You don’t see the hour it took to travel to the outskirts of Kyoto to go on this “MUST TRY” white water boat experience thing…that ends with the most “mouth watering food ever”. The truth is, you need to put aside most of your day to do this thing.. It might take an hour to get out there, then the experience could last another 2+ hours, then you need to get back to where you’re staying which will take another hour…and guess what, that’s pretty much the one thing you’re doing for that day…before going somewhere for dinner.
I’m not trying to be a downer around travel, I’m trying to be a realist. There’s so many things to do, yet you can’t do everything, but you feel like a failure if you don’t get to do that thing…or on the flip side, you do do that thing and it ends up sucking. It’s a lot of stress and unwanted or needed pressure put on your travel.
I personally went about my trip in my own way. I didn’t chase unicorns, or check off every viral hot spot on a list. I didn’t feel the pressure to fully stick to my schedule if I didn’t want to. In fact, on my last day in Osaka, which so happened to be my last full day in Japan. I saw there was a Hanshin Tigers Baseball game and bought a ticket for an outfield seat. Hopped on a train or two and 40 minutes later, I was at the stadium. I took my camera in, wondered the stands, took photos and smiled. These fans were like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They were chanting and singing and banging their bang sticks, or whatever they are called. They cheered, they screamed, they ate and drank their beer. They were having a great time.
I’m not saying you should go to baseball game…because if it’s not your jam, you wont enjoy it.
I’m saying, just because someone else said something was amazing, does’t mean it’s right for you. If you’re into museums or art, then find the museums and art and skip the other BS. I didn’t want to go up to the observation deck of the tallest building in Osaka that my tour guide suggested…why? Because I don’t care about going up in a tall building and looking over the city.
On a side note, I’m tired of people thinking they know the “best photo spots”. So many people think photography is about, standing in that spot everyone else stands at and snapping a photo. Literally taking a minute and then moving on to the next destination. I need time in a location, I need to find my angles, find the lighting, do my thing. It doesn’t happen in 3 seconds…so people need to stop attempting to rush us along. Side Rant Over.
Now back to the 13 hour flight back to the states. Luckily for me, I was flying Business Class on Japan Airlines (thanks Canon). Which meant a large seat, large TV and really good food. When seeing what movies they had on board, I saw they had Walter Mitty. Now I’ve seen this movie before, but decided to watch it again, since I loved how it made me feel in the past. If you haven’t seen it, it’s basically about a guy played by Ben Stiller, who works at a magazine in the negatives department, who’s never really experienced life…until he decided to experience life. But it’s the ending of the move that brings tears to my eyes every time. If you’ve seen it, you get it, if you haven’t, I’m not going to ruin it for you.
The movie made me stop and reflect on what photography has done for me, as well as what it means to me. You don’t need to travel around the world to live…or to make meaningful images. You can do that in your own backyard (contrary to that social media influencer posting in all those fancy spots). You can do that in the center of your town, no matter how big or small. Images can happen anywhere, don’t over think it, don’t over complicate it, just capture it.
Photography has taken me all over the world, but I’ve realized something on that long flight. Every place is pretty much the same after a while. People go to work, people play, people eat and people sleep. It doesn’t matter if it’s in Japan, or India, or Topeka Kansas….the scenery might be different, the languages too, but life tends to follow the same paths everywhere.
The more I travel, the more I realize it’s not about the destinations or the journeys, so much as it’s about the people you meet along the way or the people you choose to share your time with. Because that’s what truly matters.
Be yourself, not what you think people want you to be. Don’t be afraid to share what’s on your mind even if it’s not the popular thing to do. Just because someone else says something is amazing and you so happen to disagree…doesn’t make you wrong, just as much as it doesn’t make them right. Go live, experience and capture your little slice of the world.
Jared Polin FroKnowsPhoto
