A Year Ago Today: The Nighthawk Had Landed

One year ago today I began an online journal entry with this: “Drinking hot coffee in a can from a vending machine I couldn’t read. Typing at the laptop on a table three feet from the ground. Sitting on a mattress that I’d normally call a comforter. My “inside slippers” by the door and my “bathroom slippers” by a toilet you have to pull a lever upward to flush. Four channels on a Sanyo television with graphics I can’t decipher flanking all sides of the screen and upbeat people singing around a cartoon cat dressed up as a loaf of bread. All of my loved ones are now in the past and I’m here in the future. Yes, the Nighthawk has landed. I am in Japan.” Funny what memory chooses to shade.

So much has taken place in the short time given to me in these 365 days since typing out the above and some of the first moments of my time here are buried underneath the still growing collection of memories. This blog acts as a great shovel to help in the digging, pinpointing the exact locations of certain memories with the precision of a NASA computer. As of today a partial goal has been accomplished: the want to live in a foreign country in which I couldn’t speak the language for a year. Check! There are many pages of memories written starting with those amusing days at the Hotel Takutski. But much can change in one year of time and now that tight knit group of people that had formed a bond in the hotel hallway, those who related secrets and fears and joys and bewilderment in lobby over rooms or over coffee in some café have been separated for some time. One of us has left and, speaking only for myself, we no longer speak to each other anymore. As the days rolled on the emails petered out into a puff of nothing as, in the distance, people got on with their lives with the time spent with you behind them and a clean piece of paper in front. When you travel you become used to this, the revolving-door of friendship. You discover that even those you come close to maybe loving, that raven-haired German beauty dripping with the waters of the Atlantic running almost naked up the beach as her footprints chase her through the sand, can fade after a letter or two.

There will be more talk of what I will miss and probably won’t miss here and there will be more on my feelings of departure and what I have collected and carry with me from my time here and what has changed me, all to be included in the last post written from another hotel room with my own blank piece of paper in front of me and a plan to catch. For now I wanted to look back to some of those initial observations that first day the Nighthawk had landed.

Drinking hot coffee in a can from a vending machine I couldn’t read: Since my brief affair with Roots hot coffee in a can I have found another lover named Any cold coffee in a bottle. I consume a lot of coffee, those who once worked with me in that thankless video store gig will tell you, and so one can imagine how when surrounded by vending machines offering multiple choices of my beloved beverage one like me would be in caffeinated heaven! Though I return to the warm touch of my first love behind the back of the other from time to time as a coffee bigamist with no notions of monogamy, I mostly remain embracing the next that is colder to me. Japanese cold bottled coffee comes in all types and prices depending on where you snag it. I have been known to wander at 2am to the vending machine across down to get the certain dollar priced verity I enjoy. Some will tell you Boss is, well, the Boss but I don’t agree. I am a Blendy booster! Still can’t read the words on the vending machine but I have developed a taste for what I enjoy inside them and 95% of the time a cold coffee in a bottle is slipping down into the catch and into my waiting hands. Incidentally, I hadn’t seen Roots coffee since those days in Takutski until visiting the Diamond city. Sorry, my love, it just wasn’t meant to be.

Typing at the laptop on a table three feet from the ground: I’ve become used to being grounded. The Company tables are the same all across the board. From those first days in the training dormitory to other teacher’s apartments to my own, the same small table. I type on it everyday and though I still prefer a nice comfortable spinning chair and an elevated state I don’t dislike the floor seating…well maybe a touch in these cold winter days when my floor feels like an ice rink. What I mean is that the feeling of oddness that first came over me in having to stoop and sit to eat and type has subsided and now it has just become a normal part of the day. I imagine returning to chairs and high tables will feel strange at first but I think there has been a balance here to eliminate such feelings when I get back to Canada. Outside of my apartment I’ve tended to stick to restaurants with high seating. When I have sat low and lotus it has been a very Japanese dining experience.

Sitting on a mattress that I’d normally call a comforter: The on the ground futon, unlike the tables above, still hasn’t quite won me over. I believe I still prefer the elevated bed. I guess I will discover which one wins out when I am in the ladder enough to miss the former. I do find myself awaiting the new hotel room come the end of the month with the Western bed, though. I think much of this may come from the time of her. I may have had a different opinion in April, may have praised the poster correcting firmness of mattress and mattress pad against hardwood flooring but today I awaken as I have since the end of December shivering with only a thin space of comfort separating me from the frigid floor. No, I think I can live without this. Though I have decided that if it came to saving costs on bed purchases I certainly can live my sleeping live on the ground but if it can be avoided it will be. I have also found that having to pack up your bedding daily to be an inconvenience. When ignored, I learned, there are dire consequences. Because of the lack of insulation in Japanese homes you deal with rapid mold attacks. Leaving dishes by the sink with a bit of food clinging to them, for example, will be found the next day growing that sickly gray substance. When I was bedridden and in the claws of the Japanese Super-Flu in December I didn’t pack my bed up as you are supposed to. The main reason was because, after disposing of the couch, I had nothing to sit on except the now unprotected floor. This was uncomfortable. The bedding stayed out. Over night the body heat generated in the middle of the mattress created the perfect breeding ground for mold and one day in January I lifted up the pad to vacuum and found patches of blackish/blue in the middle of the pad. The mold had found a home and, yuck, I had been sleeping on it. The pad was cut up and disposed of and I had to pick up another. Bring on the Western beds!

My “inside slippers” by the door and my “bathroom slippers”…: This policy has been pretty much ignored in my own dwelling. I have no slippers and didn’t feel the need to purchase them. I double up on socks. I really saw no point in bathroom slippers for a room that is no larger then a cupboard nor do I use the bathroom slippers in my classrooms. I have adhered to many aspects of Japanese life but this is one of those cultural things that I disregard. If I had made more Japanese friends and visited their homes where I was expected to do such things out of respect then, if the slipper switching would have been a more frequent occurrence, maybe I’d find myself doing it at home but I don’t think so. On the other hand, I have found myself respecting the cultural no-no of walking into a classroom with your shoes on (even when I have been alone) and I use the special outside slippers when I see the kids off. This happens weekly. I guess I have adapted.

…by a toilet you have to pull a lever upward to flush: Again, this has just become part of every day life as have sinks sitting on top of the toilet. I will say that I find myself going out of my way to find a Western toilet to avoid the squats. More on that latter. A flush is just a flush, up or town. I wonder if I will be trying to pull the levers upward when I get back.

Four channels on a Sanyo television with graphics I can’t decipher flanking all sides of the screen and upbeat people singing around a cartoon cat dressed up as a loaf of bread: I’ve written a lot already about my infatuation with wacky Japanese television, especially the commercials and the game shows. I watched a lot of television in the hotel and training dorm but since moving into my own place I’ve turned the thing on a few times. I realize no matter how crazy there is only so much a program you don’t understand can sustain you. I am also a stickler for saving on my electricity bills and a couple of chuckles over insane game shows isn’t worth the price when I can just flick on the laptop and head on over to Youtube where the wackiness is catered to my mouse clicks. My dislike for cable television hasn’t been altered by Japanese broadcasting.

All of my loved ones are now in the past and I’m here in the future: This still is fodder for jokes about my futuristic existence. Flying cars, moving sidewalks and holidays gone before my friends have even celebrated them. Just now I have wished a Facebook friend Happy Birthday from the future. The time-zone difference just fascinates me. I am going to sleep when friends and family are waking up. This was a conversational border over the year, however. I never could synch up my being online for chats with friends back home as much as I’d like to and when we did manage to get online together the conversation was short as either I was off to bed or work or they were. I recall jetlag from spending a few weeks in Ireland and then back. How is one year going to feel?

From the beginnings in room 101 at the training dorm in Nagoya (walking the empty halls that first week, laying out the bedding the first time, trying to find that blasted internet café) to the close to the ending here in apartment 101 in Kashihara it’s been quite an interesting ride through that not so confusing anymore haze of wonderful confusion I wrote of last February. The man who wrote those words was looking towards the new and he was excited by it and the man now, one year latter, is paddling the same boat…just in a different direction. I ended that February 1st, 2007 post with: “I’m here. I really did it. The first part of the journey is now complete. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.” Sitting here now within the last part of the journey, awaiting it’s completion and looking away for a moment from the past and ahead to Canada or the wherevers and whatevers, you know what, I still can’t wait.