(no subject)
I’m still here in Japan and at the moment I’m glad I chose to stay. I have so many things to see, so many things to do. My new apartment makes me feel like I am actually living here, like I belong. I feel like I’m doing something with my life teaching kids. After discussing staying and my frustrations with work, I was told just to say what was on my mind. If something bothered me, I shouldn’t worry too much, just say it and so far it’s been working. I told my manager that the apartment I had been living in was depressing and for the most part led me to my final decision of quitting. The school had hired another teacher because of the expansion and he was a past teacher, he had asked if he could have the apartment I had been living in, so I asked if I could move out and let him move in, after figuring out the fine details I was able to take a look around and actually pick out an apartment. It may actually be the nicest place I’ve lived in. I moved in with almost no furniture but after scouring Hard Off (the Japanese version of Goodwill) I’ve fully furnished it, making it possibly the nicest apartment out of all the foreign teachers who work at my school. Coming home I feel happy for once.
I decided to stay in Japan when I took a trip up north to Sendai to visit a friend. On the bullet train I watched as towns passed by in a blur. Neon lights streaking by. I realized if I left I would never have the chance to see those places. I had seen so little of the country. When asked what I was going to do when I went back to Portland, I realized I had no plan, I was going to give up a job I had finally started to enjoy as well as one that paid the most out of all the jobs I had held in the past.
In Sendai it snowed all weekend long, my friend showed me around and we talked and talked. He told me about Buddhist beliefs and practices, how each person can become possibly attain a sort of state of enlightenment if they try and belief. He talked of the universe and all that inhabited it. I listened interested in another way to view the world, not sure if I agreed with it or not. That weekend I asked if it was still possible to stay. There had been problems with the teacher they had hired to take my place and they had said they wanted to hire another person but he had not signed his contract yet. The head teacher talked with our manager and I was able to stay. Maybe it was fate or destiny, I never know the difference between the two.
It was hard to tell Nicole I wouldn’t be coming back and harder to tell the person I had said I felt like I was falling in love with. Both of them were upset. It still feels weird to live in a place with no friends from my past, no one who has been in my life for over a year.
I’m still getting used to living in Japan. I wake up some mornings because of the ground shaking, my furniture rattling. Recently it seems that every other day there is an earthquake, like the island is trying to shake all of us off. The language still fumbles off my tongue, but recently I feel like it’s coming back, I’m starting to remember more of it. One of my friends knows very little English and I stumble with my words, but I know she likes me and we understand each other for the most part. I still feel people watching me when I am in public. I try to meet their eyes now, to show them that I know that I know they are watching me. Sometimes it feels like the majority of the Japanese are very close minded. At a supermarket an older lady bumped into my legs with her cart at the checkout and when she apologized I told her it was alright in Japanese, I told her not to worry about it. In return she told me she was shocked that a foreigner could speak Japanese and then laughed and said it was entertaining to hear a foreigner speak in Japanese. It made me feel stupid, like I was a monkey banging drums for her, watch me, laugh at me! When I go places with friends like restaurants, the waitresses always speak to the Japanese person we are with, even if one of us pays the receipt is always given to the Japanese person. At a store I asked if I could get a spare key made and when I came back to pick it up with my friend, I was ignored and my friend was the one being talked to even though she wasn’t paying attention to the clerk. I wanted to say, hey, talk to me, I can understand what you’re saying, don’t just assume I can’t understand you.
At night I look up at the sky and I can find Orion, and seeing the stars makes me feel some sort of comfort, knowing that I’m looking at something maybe someone else I know in America will be looking at in so many more hours. I’ve realized I fall in love with everyone I meet and I can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing. I talk to someone and I wonder what my life could be like with them, all dreams and romantic notions.
When I walk around at night, my mind is filled with observations and words and phrases that I think naively sound eloquent but when I try to put them onto paper, nothing comes, I can’t remember what it was that I was thinking. I haven’t been writing so much these days, but I’m going to try and work on it more, as well as my Japanese. Maybe if I could be a bit more confident with the language I would feel like I actually fit in here in some way. I wonder if while I’m away I will form romantic notions about America, like the expatriates from the 1920’s, only like them, to realize America was never a romantic place in the first place. My head is always full of romantic notions, that no matter what I try to do I can’t seem to shake.
I decided to stay in Japan when I took a trip up north to Sendai to visit a friend. On the bullet train I watched as towns passed by in a blur. Neon lights streaking by. I realized if I left I would never have the chance to see those places. I had seen so little of the country. When asked what I was going to do when I went back to Portland, I realized I had no plan, I was going to give up a job I had finally started to enjoy as well as one that paid the most out of all the jobs I had held in the past.
In Sendai it snowed all weekend long, my friend showed me around and we talked and talked. He told me about Buddhist beliefs and practices, how each person can become possibly attain a sort of state of enlightenment if they try and belief. He talked of the universe and all that inhabited it. I listened interested in another way to view the world, not sure if I agreed with it or not. That weekend I asked if it was still possible to stay. There had been problems with the teacher they had hired to take my place and they had said they wanted to hire another person but he had not signed his contract yet. The head teacher talked with our manager and I was able to stay. Maybe it was fate or destiny, I never know the difference between the two.
It was hard to tell Nicole I wouldn’t be coming back and harder to tell the person I had said I felt like I was falling in love with. Both of them were upset. It still feels weird to live in a place with no friends from my past, no one who has been in my life for over a year.
I’m still getting used to living in Japan. I wake up some mornings because of the ground shaking, my furniture rattling. Recently it seems that every other day there is an earthquake, like the island is trying to shake all of us off. The language still fumbles off my tongue, but recently I feel like it’s coming back, I’m starting to remember more of it. One of my friends knows very little English and I stumble with my words, but I know she likes me and we understand each other for the most part. I still feel people watching me when I am in public. I try to meet their eyes now, to show them that I know that I know they are watching me. Sometimes it feels like the majority of the Japanese are very close minded. At a supermarket an older lady bumped into my legs with her cart at the checkout and when she apologized I told her it was alright in Japanese, I told her not to worry about it. In return she told me she was shocked that a foreigner could speak Japanese and then laughed and said it was entertaining to hear a foreigner speak in Japanese. It made me feel stupid, like I was a monkey banging drums for her, watch me, laugh at me! When I go places with friends like restaurants, the waitresses always speak to the Japanese person we are with, even if one of us pays the receipt is always given to the Japanese person. At a store I asked if I could get a spare key made and when I came back to pick it up with my friend, I was ignored and my friend was the one being talked to even though she wasn’t paying attention to the clerk. I wanted to say, hey, talk to me, I can understand what you’re saying, don’t just assume I can’t understand you.
At night I look up at the sky and I can find Orion, and seeing the stars makes me feel some sort of comfort, knowing that I’m looking at something maybe someone else I know in America will be looking at in so many more hours. I’ve realized I fall in love with everyone I meet and I can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing. I talk to someone and I wonder what my life could be like with them, all dreams and romantic notions.
When I walk around at night, my mind is filled with observations and words and phrases that I think naively sound eloquent but when I try to put them onto paper, nothing comes, I can’t remember what it was that I was thinking. I haven’t been writing so much these days, but I’m going to try and work on it more, as well as my Japanese. Maybe if I could be a bit more confident with the language I would feel like I actually fit in here in some way. I wonder if while I’m away I will form romantic notions about America, like the expatriates from the 1920’s, only like them, to realize America was never a romantic place in the first place. My head is always full of romantic notions, that no matter what I try to do I can’t seem to shake.