“When you arrive at the destination, never forget where the journey began.” The journey to Japan was truly an escape. From my marriage.
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"Let those who wish have their respectability--I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farther most corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous, and the romantic" --Richard Halliburton I guess that is what Japan was to me--freedom. My whole life, I have lived with someone else, always had to be conscious of how I behaved and how it would affect them. In Japan, I lived alone. Well, not necessarily. I mean, I had Rodger and Ariana just next door, across the balcony, and Meagan was down the way, as well as all the other teachers in the building, but I was living in an apartment by myself. No roommates, husband or family. I did buy two goldfish after a few months, though--Aragorn and Legolas. They were pretty awesome company. Didn't ask for anything except food every once and a while. "That's what I like about traveling--you can sit down, maybe talk to someone interesting, see something beautiful, read a good book, and tha's enough to qualify as a good day. You do that at home and everyone thinks you're a bum." --Richard Linklater and Kim Krizan Towards the end of my adventure in Japan, I was sitting on the sunny side of the train on my way home from Midori no Mori. There was a group of young foreigners--20s--standing in the same train car, talking amongst themselves. I wasn't in the mood for talking to other foreigners (I was of the mindset that this was my territory; my piece of Japan--as some long-term expats come to think), so I had my earbuds in.
Close to my stop, I removed the earbuds and put them away. That's when one of the males came over and asked me, "Where are you from?" "America," I answered, as nicely as I could. "Yes, I figured that, but where?" "Oh," I said, flustered and slightly offended--only foreigners would be so direct. "I'm from Iowa." "Oh, we thought you were from New York or some big city place." "No, I'm not." I responded, offended, again. This time at his lack of appreciation of where I came from. "What is traveling? So, since I have been in Japan for a while I thought it was high time to buy some new bras.
But, there was the problem of size. I did not know what size I was in Japan. Therefore, I had to get a bra fitting. Before I came to Japan, I did this thing called BodyRock. It is an online workout program that you can do in your home. It uses minimal or no equipment and usually takes no more than 12 minutes. It was awesome and it is what has kept me in shape the past four years of my life. I also participated in other running and obstacle course events, but I knew those weren’t going to happen in Japan. The whole gift-giving culture in Japan is rather ridiculous—if I do say so myself. If you travel somewhere, you must buy presents for everyone in your office. If you receive a present from someone, you must give them a present back. If you have just arrived from a foreign country (or if you are starting a new job) and are going to be working at a new office, you must bring something for everyone. Et cetera, et cetera. When I first learned that my predecessor was called by her first name, I was appalled. How disrespectful, I thought. I made a silent vow to have my students call me by my last name, at least, if not Mrs. Smith. And they did call me by my last name. For a while. I think what was confusing was the fact that I didn’t mind if the teachers called me by my first name, so they called me Melanie in front of the students or referred to me as Melanie-sensei instead of Smith-sensei. Also the fact that in Japan, names are given family name first, so it could have been confusing as to whether Melanie was my family name, or Smith was my family name. So, for a while, I was able to have students call me Smith-sensei as I told them to do in my self-introduction lesson (and some still do), but now it is mostly Melanie-sensei. And for some reason, I am okay with that. I think it makes me feel closer to the students, in a way. Also, they can pronounce it better than Smith, which comes out su-mi-su. However, when I am a teacher in America, I will most definitely have my students call me Smith-sensei, as is proper. It started off as an innocent question: why was the drinking party cancelled? I had waited a few weeks until I had returned to the school to be able to ask the question to my JTE. However I did not have the courage to ask him face-to-face, so earlier that day I had messaged him on Facebook. After classes were over, he came over to my desk and told me the truth: a student had died in a car accident and the teachers didn’t feel right about going out and celebrating that week (which makes perfect sense).
Wow. Not what I was expecting. In Japan, there is a common practice of wearing a facemask when you are sick so that you do not spread your germs to others. This starts as soon as kids are able to walk, i.e. around 2 years old. When I saw pictures of this, I thought, “Aw! What a cute idea!” But then, starting in the middle of October, it was like the plague had come out and suddenly one-third to one-half of my students were wearing the masks. I was shocked and couldn’t understand why they would even come to school if they were so sick they needed to wear a mask. And then I realized that it could be anything from a sore throat to a small cough to a stuffy nose to a full-blown cold. |
Myself
Video blogger and now a blogger as well. My life in Japan has changed me for the better. However, it wasn't easy... Archives
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