Time To Go Home

my once-upon-a-time rations in days of yore

“Are you excited to be leaving?”

The nearer my August departure date, the more often I find myself fielding this loaded question. So often, in fact, has it come up in the last four months that I’ve unwittingly created a standardized reply that goes a little something like this:

“Yes, and no. I’m excited to see my family and friends in Canada, but I’ll be sad to leave. I’ve had a really great time in Japan.”

However, despite the fact that my two years in Tottori have been terrific, that I’ve met some incredible people (who I plan to keep in touch with), and that I’m rarely ready to say "goodbye" to a place I may never see again, I’m always happy to go home. 

It’s time.

 

You know it’s time when:

you’re correcting student notebooks, and your pen hovers to change the “l” in “English” to an “r.” On more than one occasion.

you find yourself losing the ability to employ adjectives beyond the requisite “enjoyable”, “beautiful”, “difficult”, “delicious,” and the ever-popular and all-encompassing “interesting.”

, after a year and a half of “I like baseball” ending the conversation, your junior high school boys are getting brave enough to ask such follow-up questions as, “Do you know Yankee players?” and “What players Red Sox do you know?” as well as what team you cheer for (“I cheer for the Toronto Blue Jays” partly because you’re patriotic and partly because they don’t know any of the players…yet.)

the English-loving music teacher starts quizzing you on the names and locations of the forty-seven Japanese prefectures, and you both quickly realize that, due to your lack of knowledge, it’s less fun and more embarrassing than other conversation topics. 

you’ve mastered the art of looking busy. Be it pushing around dirt during 掃除 cleaning time (no point in doing it properly, as five other people have already or will soon clean the exact same spot before the allotted fifteen minutes are up), reading about fascinating and fun English activities your students will likely never get to do, or shuffling papers that will eventually get shredded, it seems to matter less about whether you are, in fact, busy, and more that you appear to be. Especially if others are (or are pretending to be.)

you reluctantly wear skirts to school because your dress pants are in a shameful state, and regularly fantasize about setting fire to your entire wardrobe.

bowing and/or nodding feels normal. Waving feels weird.

“itai!”  (“ouch”), “sumimasen!” (“sorry”), and “arigatou gozaimasu!” (“thank you!”) have become your automatic exclamations.

you, who’ve never been good at saying “no” in the first place, have substituted the hesitant oh-so-Japanese head-tilted teeth-suck rather than risk a verbalized refusal.

something as simple as picking up a package or making a phone call becomes an ordeal to be considered, scripted out, and ultimately (except in the most dire cases), left for another day.

every conversation with old Japanese men concludes with their wish for you to marry a local. To which you respond, “けど、日本語　は　ちょっと…” (basically implying that you can’t speak/understand/function in Japanese.) To which they invariably reply, “大丈夫、大丈夫！” (“It’s alright! No problem!”)* 

you rush to your apartment on a sunny Monday holiday afternoon to escape the celebrity fishbowl you have no choice but star in each time you step into the street.

the opening lines of “Bohemian Rhapsody” cause you to question how many different cultures and continents you can simultaneously straddle before shizz gets surreal.  

you’re running out of granola bars, natural peanut butter, and old cheddar cheese, and have been out of Sour Patch Kids** for longer than you'd care to think about.

  

you haven't accomplished everything you set out to do, and are perfectly okay with that.

*This at times awkward at times hilarious conversation topic may shed some light not only on why young Japanese women are not rushing into wedlock, but also on why the population of Tokyo is projected to decrease by twenty-five percent by the year 2050.

**Courtesy of the marvelous Milo and her fantastic folks!

That's Not My Name*

the eighty-four students and twenty-some teachers
of Mochigase Junior High School (R.I.P.)

When I first came to Japan, I decided that I wasn’t going to worry about learning the language until I had figured out my students’ names. Given the endless possibilities of the former and finite latter (at present, I have about three hundred junior high school students plus their younger elementary school siblings), I thought I was onto something.

A year and a half later, I have not only failed to remember all of my students’ names, I also do a bang-up job of confusing them or blanking completely when out of a classroom context.

In my defense:

I have a Kaito and a Keita in the same class. To make matters worse, one’s last name is Nakayama 中山 and the other is Nakamura 中村.

I have three Ashikawa 芦川 brothers spread over elementary and junior high school. Luckily, they are all extroverted baseball boys who excel at English, so I know their first names, too. But I confuse classmates Y. Otani 尾谷 and H. Ogura 小椋 despite both being active in English. Go figure.

It's not encouraging that I find boys’ names easier to remember than girls’. This is generally because the boys are more memorable, either because they are loud and love English, loud and can’t stand English, or are falling asleep in English. On the other hand, the girls – be they star students or completely confused – tend to keep quiet, united by a (not unfounded) fear that if I learn their name, I may call on them in class.

Case in point: in one of my (now graduated) classes, I had a Rima and a Rina, an Akane, an Ayane, and an Ayano. Three were pretty good at English, but all except one were quiet in class. Guess who got coaxed into giving answers most often?

This year, my grade one girls include a Rena, a Runa, three Rinas, and a Riho. Even if I do call on them correctly, the Rinas have the option of staring at the floor while blushing furiously until I can produce a clarifying last name. I rarely can.

That said, not all of my girls are the stereotypically shy Japanese youths. Like kids across the globe, some are downright cheeky. Miyu, Mayu, and Maho sit one in front of the other, but have such different personalities that it’s no problem to tell them apart. It also helps that Mayu and Miyu are usually together and experimenting on me in a mixture of intermediate English and inappropriate Japanese.

Hibiki is a girl’s name. So are Haruka, Natsumi, and Ikumi. However, Haruki, Namiki, and Itsuki are boys. May some Shinto-Buddhist god be with you if you call a boy by a girl’s name (unless it’s Yuki, which is apparently unisex.) It will be forgiven, but not forgotten.

I also have a Yuna, a Yuka, a Yuri, a Yui, a Yuiko, and a Yurika. They are girls. However, Yu, Yuta, Yuto, Yuya, and Yusuke are boys’ names. I wish I were making this up.

Then there are the names that are so similar (Hiroto and Hiroko, Tomoki and Tomoaki, Miki and Miku) I sometimes get away with slurring "soandso~san" (the suffix used to indicate respect and politeness) to avoid unnecessary embarrassment.

And don’t even get me started on the repetitious last names: Nishitani 西谷, Nishimura 西村, Nishida 西田. Yamamura 山村, Yamamoto 山本 (I have three in one class, and no, they’re not related). I've lost track of the Tanakas 田中, the Moritas 森田, and the Kobayashis 小林.

Mercifully, a handful of my students have English-sounding names. Karen, Charlene-Ann (Shara to her classmates), Sarina, Erisa, Arisa, Anna, Kenii, Jyouji (which, despite its spelling, sounds a lot like “Georgie”.) These, of course, I remember.

Next week, it’ll be a new school year, and I’ll not only have more than seventy new junior high school first grade students’ names to learn, but also a number of new second and third graders, as Mochigase will combine with the neighbouring village of Saji to form a new junior high school – Sendai Minami. 

It's a losing battle. 

*Although my students are rarely brave/outspoken/assertive enough to correct me, I know they think it.

I Was Made For Sunny Days

Still more things I've learned and confirmed in Japan:

I am solar-, sleep-, and sugar-powered. When one is unavailable, impossible amounts of the others are required.

It is important to establish and maintain one’s own work/life balance. Even if no one else agrees. Especially if no one else agrees.

I am not kawaii enough for this country. I am perfectly okay with that.

I am not okay with sexism (traditions are no excuse), homophobia (ignorance is no excuse), or racism (geographical bad blood is no excuse).

Where dodgeball is concerned, I am the strongest sixth-grade boy. Where kanji is concerned, I am a first-grade dunce. 

Be they in English, French, or Japanese, there are few things more unbearable than sitting in staff meetings as delegates "umm", "et ben..." and "eto" through their respective reports.

Sick days are counted as precious nenkyu (paid leave) unless you have proof that you were, indeed, sick. A doctor’s note or prescription proves that you were byouki (sick) enough to drag your sorry butt to a clinic to obtain said evidence. So, on the rare occasion when I’m really, truly, can’t-get-out-of-bed-or-I-might-pass-out sick, I take nenkyu.      

Choose your battles. Or, better yet, choose not to battle, and chalk it up to cultural acclimatization.

I am not gifted at giving heartfelt speeches to a roomful of people in another language and without preparation. Au contraire. Give me a computer and a week’s notice, and it’s possible I’ll produce some semi-precious nugget of something. 

Sometimes my lack of understanding into the way Japan works is a direct result of poor language skills. Sometimes I pretend that’s the reason to avoid disturbing the harmony with my radically permissive world views impossible to articulate in 日本語.

I would visit a fundamentally conservative land in the Middle East (or rural Alberta), but I would not live there. Countryside Japan is as pre-1950s as this girl gets.

“Reading the air” in Japan is the equivalent of “reading between the lines” in Canada. Both are essential, so long as I’m careful not to “read too much into it.”

I could use a little more shame and a lot less guilt. 

If the weather’s fine, get outside, even if you don’t feel like it or have time. Otherwise, when you really need to clear your head and suck in some fresh air, it’ll be pouring sideways. Guaranteed.

If it’s raining in the morning, it’ll be clear by quitting time. More often, it’s the other way around. Always carry an umbrella.

Sometimes, Canadians need to wear five layers, too.

Scarcity makes the things you took for granted (toothpaste with fluoride, stick deodorant, Sour Patch Kids, sunshine) precious.

“Forgive” is the most useful f-word. “Forget” is runner-up. Use them on others. Use them with yourself.

No matter how neglected, my violin is a friend.

I don't like being a tourist. I prefer to unpack and “when-in-Rome-it” for a while.

There is a place for pop music. Namely, all around the world. Repetitive and rhymed at a third-grade level, the accessibility and catchy-ness are undeniable. Hence “pop music.”

If I had to choose between going blind or going deaf (and, yes, this is the sort of thing I think about at school during spring vacation), I would choose the former. Life without sight would undoubtedly be difficult, but I can't imagine living without music.

To quote my celebrity girl-crush Serena Ryder, “you gotta sing sing sing sing sing…” In Japan, karaoke has been key. When I return to Regina, I’m finding a choir. Or four.

Never underestimate the power of being included. You have no idea how important it is until you’re not.

A simple, sincere “thank you” means the world.