Refactor: A Self-Restructure on a Trip to Japan

Refactoring is a term from software development. Put simply, it means reshaping a program's internal structure without changing what it does—making the code cleaner, saner, and easier to live with.

I think the same thing happens to people. Your life may look exactly the same from the outside, but the way you see the world, and the logic you use to make sense of it, can quietly shift after certain experiences.

This trip to Japan turned out to be one such refactor for me.

I. Before Departure: The Unknown

Traveling in my thirties feels nothing like it did in my twenties. My energy isn't what it was, the urge to roam strange cities has faded, and yet another pedestrian snack street just wears me out.

One day a close friend suggested I go abroad.

I first leaned toward Southeast Asia. For one thing, a few destinations are easier on a Chinese passport—some let you in visa-free if you qualify. For another, being able to speak Chinese would take some of the pressure off the language barrier.

Then another friend floated Japan. It's close, yet different enough from everyday life to feel like somewhere else. Unlike the easier destinations, Japan meant pulling together documents and applying for a visa ahead of time, and thinking through far more before I left.

In the end I decided to give it a shot.

Putting the visa paperwork together showed me something: the steady job and income I'd always treated as just background noise of daily life were now the very proof I needed to show I was a sensible person with ties back home. The visa came through.

It was my first time leaving the country. At exit they asked me a few extra questions; I answered honestly and was waved through. Once in Japan, immigration was simpler than I'd braced for.

So it wasn't so complicated after all.

But before I'd even left, my head was already running ahead of me. Some things I read online about Japan made me curious; others left me bracing for cold shoulders or being treated differently. I had no idea who I'd meet, yet I was already rehearsing every possible scene.

I told myself this was just me preparing for the unknown.

Only once I was standing inside those unfamiliar places did it dawn on me: getting ready for risk and assuming the outcome are not the same thing.

II. Expectation vs. Reality

1. The Wallet I Left Behind

Near Sensō-ji in Tokyo, halfway through a meal, I realized I'd forgotten my wallet.

Worried about card skimming, I'd left the physical card at home and put it on Apple Pay instead. There was a little cash in the wallet, but the restaurant's card reader didn't take Apple Pay—cash or a physical card only—and WeChat Pay and Alipay were out too.

The meal was done; paying had become the problem.

Through a translation app I explained to the middle-aged owner that I had no cash, and asked if I could run back to my hotel in Ningyocho to fetch some and come back to settle up.

I was a wreck. I was sure he'd think I was trying to skip out on the bill, and sure the language gap would make it worse. It was just a forgotten wallet, yet in my head I'd already staged the argument.

He looked up, and nodded.

No argument came. I went back, got the cash, returned, and paid in full. The whole thing was under two thousand yen.

Looking back, what I'd been afraid of wasn't only being unable to pay—it was being pegged, in a place where no one knew me, as the guy who doesn't play by the rules, over one small mishap.

Before anything had even happened, I'd already supplied, on other people's behalf, the suspicion they might feel toward me.

That little incident can't tell me how everyone feels. But it did show me this: sometimes what drains me isn't the problem in front of me, but all the endings I'd invented in advance.

2. A Chinese Menu I Never Asked For

The other moment was in Osaka.

On my first night there I found a rather sharp-looking yakiniku place in a mall and ordered a two-person set that came with the house unagi rice.

Right after ordering, a server walked straight over. My stomach dropped—here we go again, what did I do now.

Instead she handed me a Chinese-language guide to the unagi rice: add the soy sauce first, stir it in, then pour in the broth, and follow the restaurant's steps to taste it properly.

Truth is, I'd already eaten unagi rice in Tokyo and knew the usual way. What surprised me was that this place had its own ritual, and the server had brought the Chinese guide on her own so I'd enjoy it more.

What really got me, though: from the door to the order, I'd spoken nothing but English. Not a word of Chinese. That's when it hit me—she'd already pegged me as a Chinese tourist.

Before paying, I couldn't help but ask why she thought so.

She said Japanese people eating alone rarely order a two-person set, and on top of that there was my short hair, short sleeves, shorts, and the loose, unhurried way I walked.

I laughed and thanked her.

Before leaving I'd worried my identity would color how I was treated—had even pictured the coldness I might get. But this time, being read as Chinese brought none of that. It brought me a small, thoughtful gesture instead.

Of course, one Chinese menu can't prove everyone will be kind to Chinese visitors, or answer everything about identity and bias. But it did show me reality doesn't always follow the script I'd written beforehand.

3. The Same Service, an Unfamiliar Ease

In Tokyo and Osaka I stayed at the same hotel chain. Seeing my Chinese passport, the staff still walked me through the self-check-in machines patiently and explained the house rules without rushing.

Just ordinary service—yet it let the worries I'd carried from home slowly unwind. Some fears are grounded in something real; others you can only know once you've actually lived through them.

III. The Edge of What I Know

Looking back, the visa, the language, the unfamiliar surroundings—none of it became the wall I'd imagined before leaving.

The trip showed me how easily a person who stays inside the familiar takes the information they've absorbed, the experience they've had, and the judgments built on both, and mistakes all of it for the whole world.

Sometimes we think we understand the outside world. Really we've only grown comfortable with the version others have described.

Stepping out, I found how much less I knew than I'd thought. The convictions I'd held without question didn't all survive contact with real life; the things I'd been sure would happen didn't all happen.

A single trip can't prove the outside world is better, or erase the limits that are real. But it did at least give me a chance to re-examine my own picture of things—to see how much unknown lies past my experience, and how much I still have to learn.

IV. The Refactoring Continues

Back in ordinary life, the job is the same job, I'm still on my own, and the walk home is still that walk.

What changed wasn't the life around me, but the way I see it.

Next time something unfamiliar shows up, I want fewer untested assumptions and a little more room for what actually happens. Not recklessness—just not rushing to write the ending before the story starts.

The faraway place didn't fix everything for me. It only showed me that the world I know isn't the whole world.

The system is still running. The refactoring continues.