(Note: I apologise for the day-late post. I just got back from Japan and couldn’t write this one in advance because the events happened while I was away. This is also a bit of a longer post than usual, sort of a half-and-half between my normal style and a travel blog. Hope you enjoy!)

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I’ve been travelling around Japan for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve been struck by how quickly you can get used to a new place. How in a matter of days, its magic can fade, going from fresh to familiar.

On my first night in Osaka, I felt that magic. I like to journal while I travel, and I wrote the following. We step out of Namba Station, and the enormity of the city emerges. This place has a pulse, I can feel it – a current sending shivers through my nerves. As I walk down the street, I feel alive. My head is on a swivel – every street sign, advertisement, and restaurant menu demands my attention. I’m disorientated. The world zooms past like a choppy motion blur filter has been applied to my eyes. I love it. We arrive at Dotonbori with its iconic neon billboards and restaurant-lined canal. The sun sets behind a thick layer of grey clouds, turning the world a surreal shade of orange. Twilight Zone by Ariana Grande plays at a nearby bar – the perfect song for the occasion, like it’s the soundtrack to the movie of my life. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.

I felt all of this on my first night in Osaka, but five days later, as I prepared to leave, it was a different story. The signs were just as bright, the restaurants just as abundant, but they didn’t leave me with that same feeling of awe. By that time, I was starting to understand the city, how it moved and when and why. I knew all the life hacks that the tourists arriving with fresh eyes and suitcases in hand were yet to learn. Everything that captured my attention on that first evening had become second nature.

And this, I think, is the problem. Familiarity is the enemy of wonder. When the novelty of a place washes away – as it inevitably does – is what remains enough to keep the magic alive? The answer to this question is often no, as was the case in Osaka, so when I leave somewhere with that same sense of wonder I arrived with, I know that place is special.

It’s only happened a couple of times in my life. The first was in Zermatt, a little ski village in the Swiss Alps. I spent four days mountain biking through forests, gawking at landscapes straight out of The Sound of Music, and watching the majestic Matterhorn glow red at sunset. It was the first time I ever fell in love with a place. As I packed my suitcase and walked to the train station on the last day, the mountains stood just as tall, the air just as fresh, and the rivers just as impossibly turquoise as when I arrived. I knew I’d be back.

The second time was this week when I visited Takayama, another alpine region (a bit of a theme here). On the train ride there, I stared out the window for two hours straight as we rocketed past foggy mountains and river rapids, taking videos that I knew would never fully capture how I was feeling. I had many amazing moments in Takayama, from relaxing in a beautiful Zen garden to eating lunch overlooking a dramatic mountain-scape with smooth jazz blaring in the background. My favourite moment, however, was catching a sunset overlooking the entire town (just like I did in Zermatt). We found a lookout spot high up in a forest at the edge of town, surrounded by the greenest trees I have ever seen. When we arrived, the sun was just dipping below the mountains in the distance, creating the perfect golden backdrop. It was magical.

I think what draws me to these locations in particular is how peaceful and quiet they are. Living with ADHD, my mind is rarely undisturbed, so I really appreciate the slower moments. There’s something about Zermatt and Takayama that allows me to just completely let go of everything, and that feeling doesn’t fade over time.

While touring Japan, one of my mates brought up the idea of getting a tattoo at the end of our trip, and I knew this was an opportunity to memorialise these two places that mean so much to me.

Tattoos have hardly featured in my life. Nobody in my family has one, and I never thought I would either. They seemed like a waste of money at best, and a huge mistake at worst. In the last couple of years, however, more of my friends have gotten their first tattoos, and it’s starting to seem like less of a big deal.

Still, tattoos scare me for two reasons. Firstly, I worry about how people would react. Some members of my family are very much against them. I never thought I was the kind of person to have tattoos, and I wonder how getting one would impact the way others see me and the way I see myself. Secondly, tattoos are (pretty much) permanent, and I fear I might regret getting one in the future.

As I listed these worries out, I came to a realisation – I need to learn to let go. Let go of the fear of being judged: it’s not my responsibility to manage the way that other people view me. Let go of the fear of regret: my future self isn’t going to agree with everything I do now, but that’s okay. And let go of my fear of challenging my identity: I’m allowed to change and to try new things, and it’s fine if my sense of self shifts along the way.

This whole year is about pushing myself. Doing something that a week ago I thought I would never do fits the bill perfectly.

That’s why this week I: Got a tattoo.

In fact, I got two.

After making the decision, my mate and I booked into a tattoo shop in Shibuya (Tokyo) on the second last day of our trip. We rocked up and confirmed our designs, then pretty quickly got down to business.

My mate was up first, and watching him really got the nerves churning. I felt like I was somehow betraying people in my family back home who would not approve of what I was about to do. Seeing the actual ink on my mate’s arm, rather than the texta we’d been practicing with, made it seem very permanent. I had to let go of these feelings – that was the whole point – and as I took a moment to myself to stare out the window at the people of Shibuya, I did. Let’s do this.

Pretty soon, it was my turn. I got the stencils lined up, laid down, and the tattoo artist got to work. The first one, on my right wrist, was a bit painful but not too bad. The second one, on my left forearm, hurt like hell. We had to use Google Translate to communicate with the artist, and at one point she accidentally told us she was going to ‘carve’ us (a poor translation). That’s about what it felt like.

After 30 minutes, it was all over. I honestly didn’t know what to think. Did I like them? Was I glad I got them? My brain was a mess, and it was too early to answer any of these questions.

We went straight for lunch, and while I waited for my food, I looked down at my still-inflamed tattoos, realising that they were permanent. My gut reaction was to freak out, but that’s the thought I want to challenge. Life is short: I want to let loose and not take things so seriously. If this was a mistake, I want to feel at peace with that. At the end of the day, it’s just ink.

It’s four days later now, and I’m still processing how I feel. There were some pretty heavy themes this week – identity, regret, fear of judgement – and I’m not going to work through them all in a couple of days. For now, though, I’m proud that I took the leap. I love Zermatt and Takayama because they allow me to let go of all my stresses. This week, by getting these tattoos, I chose to let go of trying to live a perfect life with no mistakes and of trying to please everyone else. I don’t know how I feel about them yet, and that excites me – I am truly stepping into the unknown of my own feelings, beliefs, and self-image, and that’s a place I’ve rarely travelled.

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