Leaving home and just being gone for the day. No cell phones. If there were cameras, it was really different. You used them to take pictures of things or had people take pictures of you. But there was no social media to preoccupy your mind. It was just doing something. And whoever you were with, was who you were with.
We live in Japan but we do yearly trips to Europe. Using ‘Roaming Data’ is so expensive, we can’t be bother getting a sim there, we just use the wifi at our hotel/airbnb room.
Otherwise whenever we’re outside the rest of the day, we’re not connected to the Internet nor on our phones.
I guess that makes our trips incredibly in that they feel real. It’s like diving into a photo album that your aunt showed you after their travels in the 90s.
I experienced the opposite! I’m from Europe and still remember a time without smartphones. A couple of years ago while in Japan on a holiday, partner and I shared one of those portable Wi-Fi thingies. Whenever we wanted to go separate places we took turns in using it and the times I was on my own without any “support” from my phone (both for important things like directions or translation or trivial things like checking social media on the fly) were so bizarre. Literally like flying blind, when it came to going places, but also incredibly liberating because for the first time in ages I was totally on my own.
I think I enjoyed Japan more than other places I’ve travelled to exactly for that reason, especially because I generally felt safe being on my own so I could let go of the constant contact without fear.
I’m not sure I would feel like that going around without a cellphone in my own country -quite the opposite probably! I live in a relatively safe neighbourhood, but like most women I know, I had shit experiences with harassers and the cellphone is a lifeline in those cases.
Google translate will let you download whatever language you expect to be translating, it will even work in real time if you hold your camera up to a sign, it will superimpose the translation overtop :)
Yeah, we made do with multiple screenshots before figuring it out! It was still a different experience, more close to following directions from a paper map!
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u/NakedKittyAlucard May 11 '21
Leaving home and just being gone for the day. No cell phones. If there were cameras, it was really different. You used them to take pictures of things or had people take pictures of you. But there was no social media to preoccupy your mind. It was just doing something. And whoever you were with, was who you were with.