A Journey Through Wonderful Confusion

Has it really been a month already? Time dances away while the music plays and you attentively listen. Isn’t it always the way once your time has slid through your fingers as tiny hourglass grains of sand you feel as though the small hill remaining at your feet should be larger. Maybe a few loose grains have fallen into your sneakers. Shaking them only reveals collected lint from your socks. Surly there is more time then this. Where did it all go? Who has robbed me of my moments? Did I even experience them? I feel this way now, a man searching for minutes and hours and days that tumbled away so quickly. I’m a man lost in reflection, looking back at his first month here and looking ahead to the remaining twelve as he cranks up Muddy Waters singing about his “old fashioned ways” to drown out the clanging of the crosswalk. There is nothing quite like the blues on a gray day to punctuate your whimsical reverie.

Twenty-nine days ago I boarded a plane, hugged, kissed and waved back to my loved ones and off I went into the unknown. Why did I do this? What possessed me a year ago to suddenly develop the wish to live in another country for a prolonged period of time? A lot of it has to do with fear of a n unfulfilled existence. I am always facing the elderly me, that even grayer haired man, wrinkled and feeble, of my future and I ask him what has he accomplished and has he realized everything he aspired to. The me of the future never seldom opens his mouth and when he does only silent breath is exhaled. No profound answers and pearls of wisdom are divulged. Nope, the old me is mute and in his silence he tells me that all I wish to know I must discover on my own. What point is there to questions and journeys, he silently states, if you already know all the answers and destinations?

In his silences I find fears. I look at my future self and tremble at the thoughts of failure, shattered dreams and goals placed above were a climb was never attempted. I am a person who needs to keep feeding himself knowledge and experiences or risk shriveling like a grape in the sun. Primarily, far from the realities of having to ease financial burdens, my reason for boarding that plane was to fill the void of discovery and in one month here I have done so, even if the hunger has been appeased by tiny little crumbs here and there and one big bite to start the meal. But as I have noticed on this day twenty-nine, time’s river runs quickly and you are carried with it sink or swim regardless of how much you try to swim back against the tide. You will just exhaust valuable energy if you try to struggle backwards as you are pushed forward. This is not to say that you cannot change the course of your ultimate destination when you are finally washed up against the banks of your personal oceans and rivers but you cannot go back. The test is to try to hold onto, take in and learn from everything that quickly rushes passed you as you move ever forward to the confrontation with that older you and hope that, once you get there, the journey was all you wanted it to be.

So far I am confident that my discussion to come here was a good one. Yes, I am in the early stages here and a squall could arise, a waterfall drop could be just around the corner or a whirlpool may very well slurp me down like a noodle in a ramen shop but I don’t dwell on the could be’s and instead try to construct what may be. I am not homesick yet. Canada will be there when I return and I can forego little luxuries (mainly edible ones) that I have slightly craved in my four weeks away. There have been moments where I felt I would kill for a box of Smarties or some Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey as I sifted through the Crunky and Menji bars on the 7-11 or MiniMini shelves. Those little colorful candies suddenly become the most buxom maiden in my mind and for fleeting seconds my hunger for their milk chocolate sweetness is relentless. I know I should be embracing these foreign foods and teats but I have stood once or twice in front of those hot coffee vending machines mourning the loss of Bridgehead. Again, little pangs of lust for the known that pass once I realize that there are Chocolate Pillows and Bubble Man out there.

I, of course, also miss all of you. It is not so much that I miss being with you, seeing you laugh or smile or bantering around humorous conversation. I feel, mainly, a want of you all to be here experiencing with me. I am not lonely for your companionship, per say, but I want to share all of these new experiences with you here to witness them. Megs and Teo, I want you to sit with me watching these strange game shows and commercials knowing how much you’d enjoy the oddities or, Megs, to have you on walks with me when all I have for company is my camera. Des and family, I’d love to take you in and out of the shops to see all the anime. Jay, you and me in a Mr. Donut would certainly be an international incident. Mom I’d love to introduce you to some amazing Japanese food and Todd, sir, you’d love the waters in the hills around my place to fish in. Dad and family, would it not just blow your mind to ride a train through the Japanese countryside? I carry you all inside with me in my experiences but, to quote the great Pink Floyd, “oh how I wish you here”.

The newness is wearing off with each passing week. I no longer feel so strange on the trains, for example. Eating noodles has become as natural as eating steak and potatoes. I have found ways to get beyond the language barriers and have started picking up new Japanese words here and there. I have a bank account now in another country, an address and bills. I have a job and soon will have a paycheck. An internet account is in the works now that the fine folks I had been thieving wireless from have discovered me and have locked up there serves (maybe it was the downloading of 5 gigs worth of movies that tipped them off). I am finding new things to replace the usual routines of mine back home. Renting films has now become journal updates while downloading a flick. Looking over the dusty stacks in used books stores has been replaced with discovering the tacky items in Y100 shops or finding a new store specialize in unique Japanese items. Reading the newspaper over coffee has now become mentally planing lessons over some new food I randomly pointed at. More and more I am becoming institutionalized to Japan. One of my favorite Bruce Springsteen lyrics is: “You get used to anything…sooner or later it becomes your life”. So true. There is still much to discover, don’t get me wrong, but the general feelings of displacement are leaving and I am adapting at a much more rapid pace then I thought I would. It has been a more difficult task of easing into a teaching roll then the transition into a new culture.

Yesterday was my first class alone without any parents of Japanese teachers to observe my work. I panicked for a few minutes when the first child walked in. She was loud and genki (a word tossed around frequently here to mean energetic) and suddenly I could not recollect what to do next. All my lesson plans left me and the games went with them. The child sensed this, a weakness, and started to exploit it by rushing to the Jenga game I had put out as a welcome activity instead of coming to me to check her homework cards (this is always the start of a lesson). I thought of one thing: a line of angry customers arguing trivial aspects of their cable bills and was brought back to Rogers. It was enough inspiration to swallow my panic and take control. The student tried to push against me but I was a rock and her homework cards were soon checked and the others came in and after an hour I felt as I had that first day with the kids that this was something I could do but a honing of the craft was in order. This time my pace was off and I did not incorporate all aspects of the lesson and, yes, maybe I forgot to put out the welcome activity the second time and, okay, I didn’t ask for the kids nametags when they left prompting me to rush out in a downpour to meet that first genki loud one mounting her bike to retrieve her tag and, yes, there was a yawn or two during my regimented instruction. I cleaned up the class, readied my materials for the next lesson and as I walked back to the train station in the rain I thought “It will come.” Yes, it will come and, like the month that has just gone by, it will all be quicker then it appears during the experiencing and the realization will come in the looking back.

If I were asked to explain my first month in Japan in a single sentence it would be this: it has a journey through wonderful confusion. From winding train maps, to streets aglow with neon, from trying to tell a waitress I want a Diet Coke to kids talking to me in words I don’t comprehend, from grocery shopping to shrines I didn’t realize were shrines and gas bills I didn’t realize were gas bills, from magazines you read backwards to food enjoyed even if I didn’t know what it was and, oh yes, crazy, crazy game shows…it has all be wonderful confusion. And to think this is only the first month.