Here comes the long delayed 7th installment of my Japan posts. Scary as it may sound (to myself), I have been living and teaching in Japan for 3 months now.
As much as I love writing and as much as I want to be narrating my story, there is simply an overwhelming amount of events happening, and sadly, there exists negative time for me to compose well-thought-out posts detailing all of them. Of course, lethargy has also been a good friend recently.
That being said, I miss writing a lot. Life here has been an incessant flow of excitement, misadventures, joys, frustrations, todos, hardwork, and most of all novelty in the process of assimilation into a new culture. Sometimes I wish I could simply sit at a coffee shop alone, read a good English book over a cup of good coffee, and jot down my thoughts as they come to me.
How do I even begin to process these piles of new experiences that have been left unanalyzed?
Other than writing definable terms such as “Undoukai” (sports day), “Bunkasai” (cultural festival), and “urusai” (aka my 8th graders on a regular class day), I feel very lacking in my ability to convey the meaning and connotations that these simple terms can carry at my schools. For example, when I say my students are “urusai”, I literally mean that I cannot hear myself speaking English in a room of 25 or so people because a few students are chattering/yelling away. I also mean that the Japanese Teacher of English (JTE, an acronym widely used here) whom I team teach with doesn’t do a thing to control the class. When I say “bunkasai”, I mean a school wide chorus competition where each class from each grade compete against each other. The finale is delivered by one hundred 9th grader singing a tear jerking song about graduating from their beloved junior high.
Those are just simplified summaries describing what my world is. The question still remains, where do I begin?
Perhaps it’s forgivable to simply list the things I’ve been holding:
Working overtime nearly everyday meaning that my typical workday is from 8-6
Getting addicted to the hot delicious 100 yen milk teas that pop out of vending machines
Barhopping and visiting izakayas with my JET friends
Dressing up as Waldo’s girlfriend Wilma for an awesome Halloween party with the Nara JETs
Going to a festival called Hase Matsuri which involved carrying a giant Taiko Dai (Taiko Shrine) along with 30 other people and probably developed shoulder problems for life
Making my JTE wear a cat mask and getting very drunk with my school teachers at a nomikai
Teaching junior high students the history of Halloween and showing the Prisoners’ Thriller Dance video while dressed as a witch
Eating every delicious food imaginable and discovering just how delicious food can be
Running into students pretty much anytime I step outside of my door
Going to a tourist cave in the Yoshino-gun inaka (countryside) and nearly got stranded in the inaka because my senpai dropped his car keys in the gushing underground river
Becoming better at reading Hiragana and Katakana
Planning winter trips to Thailand and Hokkaido and succeeded in booking flights, miraculously
Watching my bank account double on payday and halve 2 weeks later and becomes very worried
Spending 10,000 yen on trains every 2 weeks
Taking guitar lessons from a very cute Japanese boy and teaching the said boy English
…
and today I ran in a 5km race and got a personal best time, then ate free kitsune udon afterwards
You see, this list can go on ad infinitum depending on how detailed I want to get with my life. There has been never a dull day. Everyday is different, filled with highs or lows. Somedays I get so sick of Japanese culture and just want to shout at the top of lungs all those things I hate about teaching or the injustices in the social structure. Other days, I’m in pure bliss from how beautiful Japan is and how wonderful life can be. My weekdays are full of long hours at work, my weekends are full of long hours out and experiencing Japan in a myriad, and sometimes fantastical ways.
This weekend was the first weekend in a long time that I’ve had some time to reflect. Perhaps it’s thanks to two things: art and running. The Hanarart festival was this weekend and one of my favorite teachers (an art teacher) was participating in it. Seeing his art and the variety of amazing Japanese talents at the festival was so refreshing and invigorating. It made me realize that I’ve been too fixated on my teaching job: I’ve been too quenched, too satisfied with NOT learning, NOT progressing, NOT stepping outside of my routines. Perhaps it’s because in Japan, it’s most important to master your job, your club activity, or something that’s repeatable and established. Certain changes are not viewed as good things, especially when it comes to jobs and hobbies. True, I’ve been doing a lot of social activities, and I feel mentally at a good place for the first time in a very long time. But, I had forgotten that I’m supposed to be developing myself. I’d forgotten that I shouldn’t get so caught up in my role as a teacher. I’d forgotten that I and no one else is a one dimensional being and as much as we should devote ourselves to our priorities, we shouldn’t forget those other things that make us better human beings.
Maybe these reflections stem from a wake up call that I had.
It was a mysterious moment (Haruki Murakami moment, as I’d like to call them) when I met the shop owner where the art teacher had his paintings on display. It’s a small and quaint antique shop in an older district of Yamato Koriyama city. I had finished viewing the paintings and was about to walk out of the shop when the owner (who was wearing a classy 70s suit and John Lennon spectacles) busied over and asked me in perfectly accented British English, “Are you an artist?”. Surprised, I quickly replied no, and explained my where froms in the scripted small talk manner. When I finished, he cut right to the chase and said to me, “You are wasting your time! What are you doing not pursuing the arts?” Astonished, I asked him why. He proceeded to say, “You have the face of an artist. Other people can read palms, but your fate is written on your face. You have a round face. You can feel art. But not just art–you can feel many other things: photography, theater, music, anything to feel for. Feeling–that’s the most important thing to you. You need to feel. So hurry up and don’t waste anymore time. I’m 400 years old. Of course, I live by the fact that every year is 60 days. So every 60 days, a year is over. Many year will go by quickly, so what are you doing?”
What is the correct response to this kind of interaction? The mannerisms and words of the antique shop owner are that of an otherworldly being. Having been trained in the sciences, I find it difficult to believe in ideas that lean toward superstition. Yet, I was enchanted by his words. Perhaps he was just an astute person who’s has superb observational skills. But he was much too astute. He went on for a couple of minutes describing my personality traits, and hit them straight on the mark. He voiced my inner most desires at the glance of an eye. Then he said goodbye, “Come drink coffee sometimes–it’s delicious and only costs 200 Yen”.
This is where I shall conclude my post. There are no photos here, only fragments of an image painted by my words. Words are put down here but new words are already materializing. Time is racing. I raced time today and realized how fast time has been racing by. No paper notice delivered to my mailbox. Nothing to say “Carpe Diem! Your time is racing!”. So, I value my time here. Everything is familiar yet new, everything is strange yet friendly, everything is unbearably heavy yet unbearably light, everything here is everything there and everything there is everything here.
Time is racing.
Dreaming in J Minor 