Dealing with coming home
I just received an email from one of my old coworkers in Japan. (Actually, I received it quite a while ago, but hadn't opened it yet. For some reason I was scared that it would ask more of me than I'm able to give.) It turned out to not be so scary, and I think I will reply, when a moment comes round that I would like to. That's probably one way to wimp out- even by just not replying right now this instant- but sometimes there are some things that you just don't feel you have enough hit points for. I've gotten a lot better at doing things that I don't want to do, but I don't think it will ever be easy, and I don't think I ever will be perfect.
Writing about Japan is another thing I would like to do.
Today in the shower I was thinking about the place and I felt a rush of the loving-fondness I only know from England-- that being the reason I would like to go back to England someday-- and it came clear to me that Japan is not now such a foreign place that I can't love it. If I got nothing else from my time there, the solving of cultural riddles that delighted me most of those things I did, actually, with other people (the riddles were my riddles, no one else's, their solving lifting one or two veils from my sight) then this familiarity allowing love is surely the most precious. It's hard to be afraid of a place you love- or at least you can't be afraid any more in the same way.
Coming back and being here, completely distracted with other things for these two months, is probably what got me far enough away to notice that love. While I was there I was distracted by new things every day, the daily routine, the daily grind of going under a thousand stranger's stares, and these effectively kept me from noticing any love that was mine alone. So it's grown, secretly, in a box garden somewhere, that wasn't fertile til I felt I had the right to keep it and keep it for myself. It isn't my country, after all. The thousand stangers- it's their country. But this is my love. It's a nice feeling, like a coal in my chest.
So I haven't seen the last of Japan in my life. I'll have to consider how to work it in, but I think I'll have time for that.
What were the accomplishments I wanted to list, again?
(1) Learning to throw a baseball
(2) Learning to bake bread (in a rice cooker)
(3) Mastering JR Tokyo and going all over Tokyo
(4) Getting along with TV and starting to enjoy the dramas.
(5) Sharing a bit of American culture in a way that seemed to take
(6) Asking some of the right questions about Japanese culture
(7) The other day, sharing with a visitng obasan and giving her someone to talk to for a bit- because I felt like I knew her, and so I could talk to her.
(8) For some reason, I have a fondness for the nomikais too. It felt so good, in some undefinable way, to speak frankly and not worry if I made mistakes speaking-- to grapple with the unwieldy words and use them to persuade, cajole, enspell, or gently whap someone upside the head.
I know I did quite a bit of manipulation, even to the simplified image of myself that I presented, but I don't think any of it was falsified. Going out into that rare air makes it hard to sink back into the cobwebs here. Here, it seems like people can never really know me, and what's more, people don't try, here, to know others like that. In Japan usually it's as cobwebby as here, but I was in a special position. There were nice things about it. I'd like to be as shorn, as defined, here sometimes. I'd like to be the same person both places. Coming here felt like putting my skin on again. But your skin shouldn't be a part of you that you have to take off.
I remember Shimada-san telling me how she remembers Canada, and feels like it's so close- -so close-- like if she rode the train a few stops further one day, she'd be there.
I don't know if I have the same feeling about Ichikawa, but as I think about it now the places are so real in my head, so much a part of me and so much of me put into them, that I could imagine being there tomorrow. They are real, nothing of a dream about them, no feeling whatsoever that I'll never be there again. So it feels like at any moment I could go back. That's maybe how I think she feels. In my case maybe I'll come upon a JR station in Ravenna or Wallingford-- pulling up to the Shinjuku traffic circle on a Metro Transit accordion bus somehow strains the imagination-- ride it for three stops and get off at Akiba with the same gut-level recognition I get now from seeing it in Densha Otoko.
Writing about Japan is another thing I would like to do.
Today in the shower I was thinking about the place and I felt a rush of the loving-fondness I only know from England-- that being the reason I would like to go back to England someday-- and it came clear to me that Japan is not now such a foreign place that I can't love it. If I got nothing else from my time there, the solving of cultural riddles that delighted me most of those things I did, actually, with other people (the riddles were my riddles, no one else's, their solving lifting one or two veils from my sight) then this familiarity allowing love is surely the most precious. It's hard to be afraid of a place you love- or at least you can't be afraid any more in the same way.
Coming back and being here, completely distracted with other things for these two months, is probably what got me far enough away to notice that love. While I was there I was distracted by new things every day, the daily routine, the daily grind of going under a thousand stranger's stares, and these effectively kept me from noticing any love that was mine alone. So it's grown, secretly, in a box garden somewhere, that wasn't fertile til I felt I had the right to keep it and keep it for myself. It isn't my country, after all. The thousand stangers- it's their country. But this is my love. It's a nice feeling, like a coal in my chest.
So I haven't seen the last of Japan in my life. I'll have to consider how to work it in, but I think I'll have time for that.
What were the accomplishments I wanted to list, again?
(1) Learning to throw a baseball
(2) Learning to bake bread (in a rice cooker)
(3) Mastering JR Tokyo and going all over Tokyo
(4) Getting along with TV and starting to enjoy the dramas.
(5) Sharing a bit of American culture in a way that seemed to take
(6) Asking some of the right questions about Japanese culture
(7) The other day, sharing with a visitng obasan and giving her someone to talk to for a bit- because I felt like I knew her, and so I could talk to her.
(8) For some reason, I have a fondness for the nomikais too. It felt so good, in some undefinable way, to speak frankly and not worry if I made mistakes speaking-- to grapple with the unwieldy words and use them to persuade, cajole, enspell, or gently whap someone upside the head.
I know I did quite a bit of manipulation, even to the simplified image of myself that I presented, but I don't think any of it was falsified. Going out into that rare air makes it hard to sink back into the cobwebs here. Here, it seems like people can never really know me, and what's more, people don't try, here, to know others like that. In Japan usually it's as cobwebby as here, but I was in a special position. There were nice things about it. I'd like to be as shorn, as defined, here sometimes. I'd like to be the same person both places. Coming here felt like putting my skin on again. But your skin shouldn't be a part of you that you have to take off.
I remember Shimada-san telling me how she remembers Canada, and feels like it's so close- -so close-- like if she rode the train a few stops further one day, she'd be there.
I don't know if I have the same feeling about Ichikawa, but as I think about it now the places are so real in my head, so much a part of me and so much of me put into them, that I could imagine being there tomorrow. They are real, nothing of a dream about them, no feeling whatsoever that I'll never be there again. So it feels like at any moment I could go back. That's maybe how I think she feels. In my case maybe I'll come upon a JR station in Ravenna or Wallingford-- pulling up to the Shinjuku traffic circle on a Metro Transit accordion bus somehow strains the imagination-- ride it for three stops and get off at Akiba with the same gut-level recognition I get now from seeing it in Densha Otoko.