Ushinawareta Furusato

Furusato (故郷) is often translated as “hometown,” but its resonance is much deeper; it signifies one’s soul-place, a landscape of belonging and origin. When prefixed with Ushinawareta (失われた)—meaning “lost,” “vanished,” or “forfeited”—the meaning shifts from a warm memory to a cold reality.

Ushinawareta Furusato is the realization that the “home” you remember is not just changed, but extinct. That’s the feeling or realization I have been avoiding for years, and maybe the main reason why I haven’t been back to my home country until now.

Writing this down feels like closing a chapter, and clearing the tears that have been waiting behind it.

Chile is a beautiful country. Its people are warm. I visited them a few weeks ago. I took only a handful of photos, choosing instead to spend time with family, with old friends, and with the places that shaped me.

I’ve always stayed close to the culture, the food, the news — the internal struggles — but from afar, precisely because it hurts. Even while imagining a return, imagining a life in the south, something in me kept hesitating.

This time, that illusion evaporated the moment I faced reality.

People there don’t notice it, but after being away for 10–11 years, the first reverse‑culture shock hit me as soon as I landed in Santiago. Walking around, listening to people speak, I wondered if I had arrived in a different country. Locals don’t see it, but the accent has shifted. Older generations still speak with the familiar cadence; you can even tell who is from the south. But younger generations speak with an intonation that feels almost musical — short phrases, plenty of emotion — with a tone closer to Central America or the tropics. The very young mix or drop consonants entirely. It’s strange, disorienting.

The Ushinawareta moment came after meeting old friends and family, trying to reconstruct the story of the past decade through their eyes. It felt like trying to understand the final season of a TV series after skipping several years of episodes.

The sadness was realizing how divided the country has become — polarized, blaming each other, blaming immigrants, the government, the system.

Concepción, the place of my youth and university years, feels frozen in time. The roads haven’t changed. Yet the cost of living keeps rising. It makes no sense. And that killed any remaining possibility of moving back. That hurts more than I expected.

And yet, I had a wonderful time. Seeing relatives and friends was refreshing, grounding.

I only wish I had taken more photos. It’s surprisingly hard to find images online of the places and local histories from my childhood. It feels as if the past is disappearing as time scrolls forward, and that hurts too.

So below I’m sharing a mix of photos — some taken during the trip, others found from here — fragments of a place that shaped me.

Visiting Lota, though, sparked something. It inspired a story, something half‑buried in time.

It will be my love letter to Lota, to Chile.

Until then…