isn't it enough that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?
"More than the glory of flowers and fall leaves that season by season capture everyone's heart, it is the night sky in winter, with snow aglitter beneath a brilliant moon, that in the absence of all color speaks to me strangely and carries my thoughts beyond this world; there is no higher wonder or delight."
"Frozen into ice, water caught among the rocks can no longer flow,
and it is the brilliant moon that soars freely through the sky."
~the Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu, pp. 373-374 (trans. Royall Tyler)
* * * * *
There's another aspect to the question of whether to stay or go, and that is my life in Japan.
Let's look at the negatives first, shall we?
I remain rather abysmal at Japanese. It's is a difficult language to learn, it's true, but I think that the failing is mainly on my part. I don't study hard enough, I don't get enough practice, I don't do the many things that I could do to improve at a faster rate. I'm not a good student of languages to begin with (any skill I have with English was picked up in an entirely unintentional manner, such that I am somewhat bemused thinking about it), and my lazy nature doesn't really help here. I have the materials and I have the means, I just don't do it, and it's no one's fault but my own. And surprising though it might be, it is perfectly possible to live in a foreign country without really using the language at all. All the basics of everyday life don't actually require language at all, not in our modern world of department stores and supermarkets.
Partially because of my lacking Japanese skills, I don't have many Japanese friends. To be fair this is also due to my own nature; I am choosy when it comes to who I spend time with, and I'm horrible at making small talk or presenting myself as anything other than a weirdo. I don't know what to say to people in English, let alone Japanese. My colleagues are all older than I am, and so while we interact amicably we don't spend any time together outside of work. Most of them have families, too, which means that our interests are largely divergent. Most of the people I consider friends, people to hang out with for a casual dinner and karaoke night, are other JETs . . . which is perhaps to be expected, since we all are here sharing similar experiences and frustrations. But it also means that my friends are regularly departing for scattered locations around the globe, and the likelihood that I'll see them again is slim. Once they leave, the commonality that made us friends disappears, and so does the relationship. Every year I have to make new friends to replace the old . . . which worked out fine in my second year, I managed to do it, but I've been entirely unsuccessful this year.
There are plenty of small annoyances that mount up, too. Running head-first into a solid wall of unnecessary bureaucracy is one of those, but that's about the same wherever you go in this world of ours. I've gotten used to being stared at wherever I go, and it no longer bothers me. Dealing with people's assumption that I don't live in this country and don't speak any of the language is harder, but usually I just laugh it off and enjoy people's surprise when I prove able to talk to them (at least a little) or know this-or-that detail of Japanese culture and procedure. And sometimes I want to go outside and have a picnic or play Frisbee or something . . . and there's nowhere to go. No parks anywhere nearby, no free public space, no private space. Every inch of it is houses or roads or businesses or rice fields or wooded-- as is natural for a small country, but it can be horribly confining when the weather is beautiful yet there's nowhere outside you can go to enjoy it.
I shiver all winter and sweat all summer, since climate-controlled buildings are not precisely the norm outside the commercial sphere. Forcing myself to get into the shower, to get out of the shower, to do the dishes, to hang out the laundry, to take in the laundry . . . well, in winter it's truly an exercise in willpower. At work, my hands become so stiff with the cold that I wear fingerless gloves. I finally bought a fleece to wear at work; it used to be that my back was in knots from the cold by the end of each day.
There's a great deal of stuff that you simply can't get here, from food items to amenities. No one has a fireplace here, or a rocking chair. Every time I visit a bakery I think longingly of rye bread and bagels. Shopping for clothing is an exhausting and humbling experience-- going from being a "small" to being a "large" or "extra large" still manages to bruise the ego. But I'm lucky compared to some people-- at least I'm able to buy clothing here, and shoes. My poor roommate has to shop in the men's section if she's to find anything at all. Books are a rare and precious treasure, and helluva expensive to buy here. Of course there's always the option of ordering over the internet, but then one has to pay shipping.
Probably the biggest drawback to living halfway around the world is the fact that I'm separated from my friends and family, the people that I love. I'm not very good at keeping in touch, either. I don't call, I haven't been writing letters or emails, or even going on AIM or Skype. I call my family usually on a weekly basis, but even that's been slipping over to bi-weekly in the past two months. The reason is half being busy and half my own laziness-- it just seems to take so much effort and time, when I could be doing other things. And sometimes "other things" is really another way of saying "nothing." Of course as time passes our paths diverge, and it's natural to have friendships peter off a bit as new ones replace the old . . . but there's no excuse for being as bad about it as I am.
And the positives.
I can say this with perfect truthfulness: after two and a half years living here, I still love Japan. I'm still fascinated by Japanese culture, and there's a never-ending well of things for me to learn about it. I still visit and enjoy temples and shrines despite having been to at least a hundred by now. Just this weekend I visited a sacred mountain, Koyasan, and stayed overnight at a temple there. I toured a temple there (I'd never seen temple kitchens before, that was really cool and different), and also a large graveyard. Recently I visited Eikan-do, a lovely temple containing my favorite Buddha image, for the night-time illumination of maple leaves in its garden. While I was there, I got to hear a performance of traditional Japanese court music. I went to a performance of Kyogen, Buddhist morality plays, back in October.
What I call "touristing" fills up my spare time on a regular basis. I also have aikido lessons, which I go to at least once a week. The people at the dojo are very kind and friendly, and I always have a good time with them. No matter what state of mind I'm in when I arrive, I almost always leave feeling refreshed and happy (if tired). My shakuhachi lessons are similar. I don't practice nearly enough, but the longer I play the more I love playing. Sensei retains his astounding awesome, too, so I always enjoy myself. And then I also have Japanese lessons once a week, which are also attended by very kind people, which link me to the community in which I live, and which actually force me to study and keep me at least somewhat honest in that regard. If anything I wish I had them more often.
There's plenty of things available to me here that I can't get easily elsewhere, too. I haven't seen an okonomiyaki restaurant anywhere else in the world, even in an international city like New York. Mochi cream, gyoza, Japanese-style fried rice, eel, conveyor-belt sushi, awesome tonkatsu, black sesame-butter, green tea-flavored snacks and chocolate, sembei, warabi mochi, shabu-shabu . . . crepe-fabric products, Japanese design clothing items and apparel, pottery, tatami, manga, kotatsu, nabe pots, bento boxes, furoshiki, yukata, noren, puri kura . . . so many things that I love are only available here, and are hard-to-find and expensive even when they're present in other countries.
Being separated from my family is also, believe it or not, a plus sometimes. Like right now, with my mother and sister fighting and the whole family locked in misery because of it. I don't have to deal with all the drama and bitterness any more, not personally. If I find out about conflicts at all I get them second-hand and blunted. It's not a part of my everyday landscape. I have a tendency to forget just how miserable it can be-- precisely because I'm not there. My family also tries to shelter me and only tell me the good stuff over the phone-- and while this is often annoying because I don't have a clear picture of what's going on, it is done for my benefit and does in fact benefit me (loath as I may be to admit it).
And . . . well, this is hard to express, but I'm not in the US. There are so many things that annoy me about the mentality of the average American, and so many practical things that drive me nuts me when I go back. Like going home for a visit and realizing that I'm trapped in the house and literally can't go anywhere because I don't have a car and public transportation is lousy. Or I go to the store to buy ingredients to cook with, and find that I can't buy what I need. Not because it isn't there, but because it's only packaged with two or three times what the recipe requires. Like I need one chicken breast and they only come in packages of three. Or I need one can of beer for beer fish and I have to buy a six pack. And then there's the fact that everything is so far apart that one has to trek across vast amounts of parking lot to get from one store to the other, or just from your car to the place you want to be. People are often just plain rude, but even when they're not, they're careless to a degree that Japanese people rarely are. No one stops for you when you're trying to cross the street, or moves out of your way so that you can see, or puts their bag aside so that there will be more room for you to sit. Japanese people have their own foibles, it's true, but overall I find there's a great deal more consideration towards others here, and it's something I greatly appreciate.
And perhaps the biggest consideration of all is the fact that right now, I'm living an incredible adventure. I live half a world away from everything that was familiar and normal to me. I have sufficient money and time to travel, to explore, to see the world. Already I've been to China, to Tibet, to Korea. India is going to happen in the spring, Russia whenever I'm ready to move on from Japan. I want to go to Cambodia and various other Southeast Asian countries. I still have destinations in Japan I'd love to visit: Hokkaido especially. majochan pointed out to me that when I leave Japan and start on the path of a career, most likely these opportunities will dry up. I won't have the vacation time, I won't have the money. I'll be stuck in one place for years until I've managed to establish myself.
This has been weighing heavily on my mind every time I think about the to-stay-or-to-go question, because I don't want to stop. I don't want to be stuck in one place. There's so much of the world still to see. And ultimately, I don't want my adventure to end. I don't want to return to a life more ordinary, to an inescapable routine. I want to keep going as I have here, to step off the edge of the map, to continue my headlong flight through the void of the world. And will I have that, will the same opportunities be available if I change my situation? I have no idea, but it seems likely that they will evaporate.
"Frozen into ice, water caught among the rocks can no longer flow,
and it is the brilliant moon that soars freely through the sky."
~the Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu, pp. 373-374 (trans. Royall Tyler)
* * * * *
There's another aspect to the question of whether to stay or go, and that is my life in Japan.
Let's look at the negatives first, shall we?
I remain rather abysmal at Japanese. It's is a difficult language to learn, it's true, but I think that the failing is mainly on my part. I don't study hard enough, I don't get enough practice, I don't do the many things that I could do to improve at a faster rate. I'm not a good student of languages to begin with (any skill I have with English was picked up in an entirely unintentional manner, such that I am somewhat bemused thinking about it), and my lazy nature doesn't really help here. I have the materials and I have the means, I just don't do it, and it's no one's fault but my own. And surprising though it might be, it is perfectly possible to live in a foreign country without really using the language at all. All the basics of everyday life don't actually require language at all, not in our modern world of department stores and supermarkets.
Partially because of my lacking Japanese skills, I don't have many Japanese friends. To be fair this is also due to my own nature; I am choosy when it comes to who I spend time with, and I'm horrible at making small talk or presenting myself as anything other than a weirdo. I don't know what to say to people in English, let alone Japanese. My colleagues are all older than I am, and so while we interact amicably we don't spend any time together outside of work. Most of them have families, too, which means that our interests are largely divergent. Most of the people I consider friends, people to hang out with for a casual dinner and karaoke night, are other JETs . . . which is perhaps to be expected, since we all are here sharing similar experiences and frustrations. But it also means that my friends are regularly departing for scattered locations around the globe, and the likelihood that I'll see them again is slim. Once they leave, the commonality that made us friends disappears, and so does the relationship. Every year I have to make new friends to replace the old . . . which worked out fine in my second year, I managed to do it, but I've been entirely unsuccessful this year.
There are plenty of small annoyances that mount up, too. Running head-first into a solid wall of unnecessary bureaucracy is one of those, but that's about the same wherever you go in this world of ours. I've gotten used to being stared at wherever I go, and it no longer bothers me. Dealing with people's assumption that I don't live in this country and don't speak any of the language is harder, but usually I just laugh it off and enjoy people's surprise when I prove able to talk to them (at least a little) or know this-or-that detail of Japanese culture and procedure. And sometimes I want to go outside and have a picnic or play Frisbee or something . . . and there's nowhere to go. No parks anywhere nearby, no free public space, no private space. Every inch of it is houses or roads or businesses or rice fields or wooded-- as is natural for a small country, but it can be horribly confining when the weather is beautiful yet there's nowhere outside you can go to enjoy it.
I shiver all winter and sweat all summer, since climate-controlled buildings are not precisely the norm outside the commercial sphere. Forcing myself to get into the shower, to get out of the shower, to do the dishes, to hang out the laundry, to take in the laundry . . . well, in winter it's truly an exercise in willpower. At work, my hands become so stiff with the cold that I wear fingerless gloves. I finally bought a fleece to wear at work; it used to be that my back was in knots from the cold by the end of each day.
There's a great deal of stuff that you simply can't get here, from food items to amenities. No one has a fireplace here, or a rocking chair. Every time I visit a bakery I think longingly of rye bread and bagels. Shopping for clothing is an exhausting and humbling experience-- going from being a "small" to being a "large" or "extra large" still manages to bruise the ego. But I'm lucky compared to some people-- at least I'm able to buy clothing here, and shoes. My poor roommate has to shop in the men's section if she's to find anything at all. Books are a rare and precious treasure, and helluva expensive to buy here. Of course there's always the option of ordering over the internet, but then one has to pay shipping.
Probably the biggest drawback to living halfway around the world is the fact that I'm separated from my friends and family, the people that I love. I'm not very good at keeping in touch, either. I don't call, I haven't been writing letters or emails, or even going on AIM or Skype. I call my family usually on a weekly basis, but even that's been slipping over to bi-weekly in the past two months. The reason is half being busy and half my own laziness-- it just seems to take so much effort and time, when I could be doing other things. And sometimes "other things" is really another way of saying "nothing." Of course as time passes our paths diverge, and it's natural to have friendships peter off a bit as new ones replace the old . . . but there's no excuse for being as bad about it as I am.
And the positives.
I can say this with perfect truthfulness: after two and a half years living here, I still love Japan. I'm still fascinated by Japanese culture, and there's a never-ending well of things for me to learn about it. I still visit and enjoy temples and shrines despite having been to at least a hundred by now. Just this weekend I visited a sacred mountain, Koyasan, and stayed overnight at a temple there. I toured a temple there (I'd never seen temple kitchens before, that was really cool and different), and also a large graveyard. Recently I visited Eikan-do, a lovely temple containing my favorite Buddha image, for the night-time illumination of maple leaves in its garden. While I was there, I got to hear a performance of traditional Japanese court music. I went to a performance of Kyogen, Buddhist morality plays, back in October.
What I call "touristing" fills up my spare time on a regular basis. I also have aikido lessons, which I go to at least once a week. The people at the dojo are very kind and friendly, and I always have a good time with them. No matter what state of mind I'm in when I arrive, I almost always leave feeling refreshed and happy (if tired). My shakuhachi lessons are similar. I don't practice nearly enough, but the longer I play the more I love playing. Sensei retains his astounding awesome, too, so I always enjoy myself. And then I also have Japanese lessons once a week, which are also attended by very kind people, which link me to the community in which I live, and which actually force me to study and keep me at least somewhat honest in that regard. If anything I wish I had them more often.
There's plenty of things available to me here that I can't get easily elsewhere, too. I haven't seen an okonomiyaki restaurant anywhere else in the world, even in an international city like New York. Mochi cream, gyoza, Japanese-style fried rice, eel, conveyor-belt sushi, awesome tonkatsu, black sesame-butter, green tea-flavored snacks and chocolate, sembei, warabi mochi, shabu-shabu . . . crepe-fabric products, Japanese design clothing items and apparel, pottery, tatami, manga, kotatsu, nabe pots, bento boxes, furoshiki, yukata, noren, puri kura . . . so many things that I love are only available here, and are hard-to-find and expensive even when they're present in other countries.
Being separated from my family is also, believe it or not, a plus sometimes. Like right now, with my mother and sister fighting and the whole family locked in misery because of it. I don't have to deal with all the drama and bitterness any more, not personally. If I find out about conflicts at all I get them second-hand and blunted. It's not a part of my everyday landscape. I have a tendency to forget just how miserable it can be-- precisely because I'm not there. My family also tries to shelter me and only tell me the good stuff over the phone-- and while this is often annoying because I don't have a clear picture of what's going on, it is done for my benefit and does in fact benefit me (loath as I may be to admit it).
And . . . well, this is hard to express, but I'm not in the US. There are so many things that annoy me about the mentality of the average American, and so many practical things that drive me nuts me when I go back. Like going home for a visit and realizing that I'm trapped in the house and literally can't go anywhere because I don't have a car and public transportation is lousy. Or I go to the store to buy ingredients to cook with, and find that I can't buy what I need. Not because it isn't there, but because it's only packaged with two or three times what the recipe requires. Like I need one chicken breast and they only come in packages of three. Or I need one can of beer for beer fish and I have to buy a six pack. And then there's the fact that everything is so far apart that one has to trek across vast amounts of parking lot to get from one store to the other, or just from your car to the place you want to be. People are often just plain rude, but even when they're not, they're careless to a degree that Japanese people rarely are. No one stops for you when you're trying to cross the street, or moves out of your way so that you can see, or puts their bag aside so that there will be more room for you to sit. Japanese people have their own foibles, it's true, but overall I find there's a great deal more consideration towards others here, and it's something I greatly appreciate.
And perhaps the biggest consideration of all is the fact that right now, I'm living an incredible adventure. I live half a world away from everything that was familiar and normal to me. I have sufficient money and time to travel, to explore, to see the world. Already I've been to China, to Tibet, to Korea. India is going to happen in the spring, Russia whenever I'm ready to move on from Japan. I want to go to Cambodia and various other Southeast Asian countries. I still have destinations in Japan I'd love to visit: Hokkaido especially. majochan pointed out to me that when I leave Japan and start on the path of a career, most likely these opportunities will dry up. I won't have the vacation time, I won't have the money. I'll be stuck in one place for years until I've managed to establish myself.
This has been weighing heavily on my mind every time I think about the to-stay-or-to-go question, because I don't want to stop. I don't want to be stuck in one place. There's so much of the world still to see. And ultimately, I don't want my adventure to end. I don't want to return to a life more ordinary, to an inescapable routine. I want to keep going as I have here, to step off the edge of the map, to continue my headlong flight through the void of the world. And will I have that, will the same opportunities be available if I change my situation? I have no idea, but it seems likely that they will evaporate.