In her column “Nostalgic Thoughts,” Alaina Zhang ’27 reminisces on the past and reflects on why we miss it at all. 

A soft tide of osmanthus greeted me this morning in Kyoto. 

I was at Doshisha University’s Imadegawa campus, where summer has quietly faded to the backstage for fall. Today felt almost like spring though, and as I walked by the trees which have begun to become familiar, I caught the faint, sweet scent of osmanthus. It is one of my favorite smells in the world — in Wuxi, I would often have desserts sprinkled with osmanthus, and the fragrant smell and sweet flavor always reminded me of home. 

I was walking and reflecting on my first two weeks in Kyoto, a place I first visited with my mom ten years ago. Ever since then, I had wished to return to Japan to study abroad. Ten years later, as I promised myself, I have returned, as if nothing has changed at all.  

Wandering through Kyoto felt like walking through the past. Interlocking power lines, narrow streets, dancing shadows on translucent umbrellas and the passing bikes were all traces of an era that has remained even as modernization continued. One of my favorite things to do was to stare into my reflection on a trundling train — it was not really about my reflection, but about how in those moments, I could feel time passing more vividly than anywhere else as the train snaked underground. 

My first two weeks in Kyoto were a mosaic of images. Fushimi Inari as the sun began to set, the kitsune statues gazing back at me. Deciphering the stream of impossibly quick words on a karaoke screen. The comforting buzz at an izakaya. Hearing the rain patter against my umbrella. Watching the world rush by from a shinkansen window. Late night walks to the convenience store. 

The warmth between people here felt the way I imagined my hometown was long ago. When I went into an izakaya on the first day, I was struck by how lively and down-to-earth the place was. The young part-timers with towels strung around their necks yelled orders across the room and greeted customers.

There is a saying in Chinese called Ren Jian Yan Huo, which I would translate as “the glow of fire in the human world.” It was the kind of atmosphere I craved as a child, to exist inside a bustling community full of chatter and joy. In Kyoto, a place far away from home, I’ve experienced once again the feeling of being a kid, wide-eyed and curious about the action around me, yet safe and content.

I suppose my journey through this column about nostalgia has been searching for the feeling of being alive. Whether it’s going back into my past, my family’s past or a past that I could never quite touch or live in, I have been thinking through how, as a kid, the world seemed so expansive and inviting. Perhaps my entanglement with nostalgia is an escape mechanism back to days when my emotions were simple, pure joy or sadness. Perhaps nostalgia is a mourning for what has been lost.

Whatever I have been missing about the past, I seem to have found a fragment of it in Kyoto. Just like the osmanthus, my nostalgia will perhaps bloom again and again, in a different city, in a different season, when that familiar scent arrives upon a welcoming wind.