first love

A friend of mine has recently returned to the U.S. after what I believe is his second stint living abroad. By the time I came to Japan at the end of summer 2007, he had already been working in India for a few months. When I was living in Germany, he was living in Thailand.

These past weeks have been mostly consumed with planning and researching my upcoming trip to Southeast Asia. I wrote aforementioned friend for insider advice, and also to reestablish contact now that he's back on the mother continent. His sentiments about the difference between his experience living in Thailand and India pretty much sum up how I feel about Germany and Japan.

He likened his first experience living abroad to a first love. The first foreign residence, like that first time your heart breaks free, is shocking, intense, blissful, and painful beyond measure. Everything is unlike what you've experienced before. And then, the next place you go--- well, no doubt it is different, and no doubt it has its ups and downs, but maybe you don't have as much of yourself to give the second time around. Maybe some of that youthful exuberance has just been used up. To many Germany likely doesn't seem very exotic or even perhaps too different of a culture than the one I grew up in. But that doesn't change the fact that I took great pride in my understanding of 20th century German literature, or that those downhill midnight bike rides are perhaps the best I will ever have. For a memory that is so often hazy, the vividness with which my memories from being twenty one in Germany burn signify an eternal appreciation for the Germany I knew.

And here I am in Japan. It is getting later on a Wednesday night, and I have been struck with my third bad cold of 2008. I am contemplating not going into work tomorrow, even though that would cost me at least a day and a half's pay. I will probably go to work. But if tomorrow is like any other previous day of this week, it will be a long, miserable stretch. This isn't what I mean to be discussing right now.

And here I am now, in Japan. As my energies naturally focus towards The Next Goal, that is, the Southeast Asia trip, the realization that my time in Japan is drawing to a close is falling by the wayside. It is a reality I know is there... but it isn't one of those things I really know what to do with. I mean, I work full time, which pretty much erases grand ideas for weekend trips. The truth of the situation is that Hylton and I are both bone tired by the time Friday evening rolls around. And even though most weekends we manage to go out and do something, the Sundays I spend lying in my bed sorting wet laundry are the days I often enjoy myself the most.

So what I am getting at is that Japan isn't my first love. Right now it almost feels like a romance that was never meant to be; perhaps I come with too much baggage. But I do love Japan, almost as much as some of it's customs and cultural ambiguities can frustrate me. It strikes me as I type that perhaps the best way I can describe my feelings for Japan is that it is a romance underdeveloped. Even though by the time I leave I will have only spent a few less months here than in Germany, I think I left Germany more confident in my knowledge of it than I will leave Japan. Perhaps its the circles I've moved in. In Germany I was surrounded by literally thousands of students. And... uh... I guess I am here too, in a very real sense, but I am not a student myself. Instead I am one of those ambiguous "foreign workers," who are both a curiosity and a disgrace. My Japanese is basic at best. I provide a service that many would argue is no longer needed in this country. But perhaps no longer essential, at least useful... and if you could see the way I get stared at it'd give you good reason to argue against Japan's heterogeneity.

What probably gives me this "underdeveloped" feeling the most is that I really could conceivably live in Japan longer. I have a job and, though relatively low paying, it is something I have proven to be within my capabilities. The majority of the foreigners I know here put down roots years ago, or are in the slow process of doing so. My Japanese would have nowhere to go but up, and I could continue cultivating the fragile saplings that are my handful of friendships here. But that doesn't look to be in the cards. Even though I don't exactly have future plans, those who I would follow around do, so I am not completely without compass. Without map... perhaps.


Though I still need to devote at least a paragraph each to the wonder that was Takaragawa Onsen and to the fun that was Johnny's visit around New Year's, I (obviously) haven't felt too much of a need to update lately. Once work started back up at the beginning of January, I fell back into the pattern of 9 to 5in' (or in my case, 8:30 to 4:30in'). After work, come home, consume Pocky/ snacks traditionally eaten by Japanese men with sake (without the sake), read articles online, cook dinner with Hylton, watch satirical American new shows via youtube, etc. OH and like I already said, the 900 + students I see on a weekly basis have been kind enough to provide me with a number of happiness-sapping colds, which is a pretty stupid word for an illness when you think about it. It snowed a couple of weeks ago, which was the most shocking check-the-weather-before-I-get-dressed-for-work moment I've had here. So yeah, it's been cold, but luckily I have a heater which works a hell of a lot better than the one I had in Germany. Unfortunately the artificial heat dries out my already raw nose skin (longest drippy nose of recent memory), and this morning I woke up with dried blood on the corners of my mouth. I think I'll leave you with that visual.

As always, more later.