Random Memories #76 - the last weeks in Japan - part 8

Among the earliest of my tribe of returning students was a woman who contacted me late in 2011. She had studied with me for about six months several years earlier and had stopped when she ran out of money. I will call her "M", and the memory of how I finished my time with her is one I've been dreading telling.

"M" was almost the same age as me and, like me, she grew up in a rural area and in far less than the best of family circumstances. At the time that I taught her, she was in contact with her mother and had a brother who she infrequently talked to, but with whom she didn't have an especially close relationship. Her situation with her father was the type that you see in movies, but people don't imagine happen in "normal" Japan. All too often, I found that they weren't that unusual and that people just didn't talk about them because of the shame involved in revealing the skeletons in the family closet.

M's father hadn't been in her life since she was in her early teens. He had gotten involved with organized crime and had some debt because of a business failure. When she told me he had made a lot of debt, I asked specifically if he had gambled and she said he had not, but had pursued a business interest that was not profitable for far too long. In order to not taint his family with the shame that he'd brought upon himself - and possibly to isolate them from any strong-arm tactics or harassment - he divorced his wife and abandoned his family. M hadn't seen him since that time and had no idea where he was living or what had become of him.

From my ethnocentric viewpoint, the father's choices were an act of cowardice. This was an opinion that I did not share with M because it really was not my place to do so and I knew it was a culturally biased perspective. She felt that he'd done them a great favor and made a sacrifice for the greater good. This was despite the fact that her mother had to work hard at a relatively menial and low-paying job to support her kids. In fact, her mother, despite being around 80 years of age, was still was doing the same job. My vague recollection was that the job had to do with preparing bento meals. I imagined it was the type of work that is behind things like the super cheap bentos (400-500 yen) sold in stands in busy districts in Tokyo.

When I was teaching M. She focused on how things turned out okay for everyone in her family, but I thought about how things would have been better if her family hadn't been impacted by her father's mistakes. She saw self-sacrifice as a bigger part of the situation and I saw her father's poor judgement which lead to the need for the choices he made. This difference in our perspectives on life illustrated something very important that was to later become an issue in our lessons.

M's  English was fairly advanced. Her vocabulary and listening comprehension were quite high because she had lived in Canada for some time, but her vocabulary since leaving our neighbor to the North had atrophied to a great extent and her pronunciation could be rather tenaciously poor at times. Her katakana English was something she was aware of and wanted me to help her correct, and I did my best, but such issues are one of the hardest to overcome. In the years between her initial lessons with me and those taken before I left Japan, this problem had only worsened. Since she occasionally needed to communicate with guests from abroad at her work, and had sought me out specifically to prepare for certain guests, she wanted to be able to speak more clearly.

M's job was one of those non-descript office jobs that Japanese women tend to hold. It was so unremarkable and she discussed it so little that I cannot remember what she did besides sit at her desk and work with office software and do paperwork. She wasn't paid poorly, but she also wasn't paid especially well and I think she was conservative with her spending because she knew she had no support system if she didn't save her yen. Her mother had no assets to leave her and her brother was looking after his own interests.

I'm sure she saved a fair bit of money by Western standards, but not nearly enough for someone who was facing retirement alone and without property, prospects, or connections. One of the other things M and I had in common was that we had no financial safety net if our lives fell apart and we had to work hard and make our way entirely on our own. Sure, I am married, but my husband was in the same boat as me. No one paid our way. No one was helping us with anything and, no one would catch us if we fell. I knew why M lived a simple life and saved. I was doing the same thing for the same reasons.

From her description, M lived an small, old apartment with no air conditioning. Her style of apartment is called a 1DK (DK = dining kitchen) in Japan. She rarely ate meat and said she was fine living mainly off of tofu because it was a far cheaper source of protein. Unlike many people in offices who went out for dinner and lunch, she usually prepared her own meals because it was so much cheaper. Sometimes she felt quite vulnerable in that place as she'd been telephone stalked at one point by a former boyfriend, but she was generally okay with living alone.

M's social life wasn't vast and mainly seemed to involve the occasional meet up with old friends for lunch, but she complained to me that her life had become incredibly "small". She expressly said that she felt her life was stagnant and wanted badly to "grow" beyond her little life, but expressed fear at ever doing so. She couldn't bring herself to strike out in ways that might have improved her quality of life. She didn't have a cell phone (nor did I at that time) nor did she even have internet at her apartment. Her free time was spent doing daily chores or reading books, mainly second-hand English books that she purchased at a dingy old shop in Koenji.

It's important not to mistake her saying her life was "small" with seeing her as "small". She was not only physically larger than most average Japanese women - that is to say, somewhat taller and with bigger bones - but she was no wilting flower. M was much more assertive than the average Japanese person when speaking to me. She never mentioned much in the way of difficulties with her Japanese compatriots, and I suspect she knew where to draw the line with various people, but the fact that she had lived abroad for some time showed in her personality.

M was a curious mix of rigid Japanese mentality with Western assertiveness. I'm sure it got her in trouble from time to time with people, but it likely caused her more suffering than anyone else. She knew the box that Japanese culture expected her to live in, but she also had the impulse and energy to want to break out of it This is what happens when one has lived outside of that box for some time and knew what it felt like to be free of such thinking. I know this feeling well since I also lived abroad long enough to feel like an alien in my home culture. It creates internal forces that make you constantly feel at odds with everything around you, but you cannot act on your feelings without appearing strange or even crazy.

I've written before about women who dream of landing a Western husband, and M's path in life was an example of what happens when such hopes do not play out as planned. The reason that she had lived in Canada for some time was that she had been co-habitating with her Canadian boyfriend. They lived together for a number of years, but the relationship fizzled out. There were some cross-cultural issues, some of which I experienced with M in discussions in our lessons, and ultimately he ended it.

The problem with what happened to M was that Japan, at least at that time, was an especially unwelcoming place for women who allowed themselves to be "sullied" by consorting with a foreign man. She was essentially "tainted" after years of living abroad with a foreigner and she came home at an age that was considered too "mature" to be appealing. Keep in mind that the idea of "Christmas cake" (no good after the 25th - in the case, a woman lost her appeal after she passed beyond her 25th birthday) was still in play when M was younger, so she was fairly well past her sell-by date by the time her Canadian relationship had fizzled.

M invested a lot in a dream of marriage and life in Canada and I think she gave up to some extent after coming home to Japan. Part of the smallness of her life was likely related to pinning her future on the wrong person in the wrong place and finding the window of opportunity for a conventional path to happiness tightly sealed. She lacked the confidence or the personality type to strike out on an unconventional path. She knew the limits she was putting on herself, but didn't have whatever that special something is that makes people take risks - or she once had it when she moved to Canada and was burned sufficiently badly that she decided not to take such a chance again.

When M got back in touch with me, I told her immediately that I would be leaving soon. In the first lesson, she told me that she admired how I'd changed my life since she'd last talked to me and wished that she could take the risks that I was taking to move ahead with life and expand my life and experiences. I told her that I thought she could do it, too, and tried to encourage her as much as possible. She said she wanted to do so, and that my situation inspired her to want to try a bit more to branch out.

Since M only wanted to take lessons with me for a finite time - again - because she didn't have the money to do ongoing study, she didn't mind that I was leaving soon. She told me that she really thought I was a good teacher and was very happy to have the chance to study with me again. The truth was that she was one of the very few students who I'd taught who I saw as a true contemporary and the only Japanese person with whom I thought I could have been "equal" friends with had we not gotten to know each other at first through a business relationship.

When I say that we could have been "equal" friends, I mean that I felt there was a chance that I could be, at least to some extent, the "real" me with her instead of the me that was carefully designed to cater at every moment to the needs, wishes, interests, and limits of my students. In fact, I entertained the possibility that she and I might have a distance friendship of some sort after I had left Japan. Unfortunately, I blew it.

In my lessons with M, she was fairly candid with me in ways which other students were not. She would tell me that I was being impractical or unrealistic about what was possible in life and needed to simply accept what was rather than complaining or asserting that things could or should be different. At one point, during her next to the last scheduled lesson with me, we had a conversation about the medical system in Japan and America. This happened naturally, but it was a time in my life when such issues were very much on my mind. At that time, my sister had been diagnosed with stage 3 cancer and had lost her health insurance at work due to down-sizing. She was staring down the barrel of enormous medical expenses and her prognosis was uncertain.

M was lecturing me about how the medical system was what it was and that I should just accept that there were economic limits and some people simply couldn't get the best care. She was telling me how we had to live with what was rather than complain about what should be. I wasn't in any state to put up with her compliant Japanese mentality and instructing me with an air of exasperation to just placidly accept what was without complaint and I rather emotionally (holding back tears - not shouting or angry) told her that my sister had cancer and that, for some people, the issue was not just an academic topic. Real people were sick. Real people might die. Real people's lives were destroyed or damaged by such things, and my sister was one of them.

The truth was that I lost it and the way things turned out was all on my shoulders. She was being insensitive, but she didn't know that was what she was doing as she had no way of knowing what was going on with me. I allowed my real life and feelings to intrude on a lesson and, unsurprisingly, this put her off rather badly. She felt guilty for what she'd said and apologized at the end of the lesson. I could tell that she was very shook up and wasn't surprised with she cancelled her last lesson with me.

We also had arranged for a "goodbye dinner" at a local curry restaurant at which she was going to meet my husband. She apologized for not being able to make that engagement as well and gave some flimsy excuse that I'm sure she knew I wouldn't believe. She didn't say that this was because of what happened in the lesson, but I knew that it was. When I e-mailed her back, I told her little more than "I understand." "I understand" is frequently code in Japan for 'we're both lying to avoid the unpleasant truth and to spare embarrassment on someone's part'. If you ever deal with a Japanese company, "I understand" is a pretty loaded statement most of the time so consider reading between the lines when you hear those two words.

I left it at that, because, though I could emotionally justify what had happened, I could not do so professionally or humanistically. I closed the distance between us when I should have kept it intact. It may have happened because I had hopes of being friends with her after I left Japan. It may have occurred because I was on edge due to my sister's cancer and extremely tenuous situation. It may have been the result of my change in attitude toward life in Japan as the date of departure drew near. It was probably all of these things and more, but this memory of how I messed up has stuck with me and made the thoughts of the end of my days even more complex.

It's important to make it clear that I wasn't upset about what happened because of the lost chance to be friends with M. Chances were that not much could have been built through correspondence anyway. I'm not even especially angry with myself for a lapse in professionalism, though that is a tiny piece of it. I did pride myself on being able to keep my interests at bay with students and my feelings in check, but this was an unusual situation on my part. I don't often have my only sibling and closest family diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease and facing complete economic ruin. I still wish I'd done things differently, but I can "forgive" myself such a lapse as I would forgive anyone else in a similar situation.

The biggest piece about this that I'm unhappy with is how I left things with this woman with the small life. I'm concerned that she felt bad about herself for what she said and how it made me react. I'm unhappy that I could have been a small conduit through which she could have found the courage to make her tiny, boring life bigger and that was lost because I lost my composure in a situation in which I had no right to do so. One of the messages that I took away from my time with students in Japan was that, for the most part, my presence changed their lives for the better. In this case, I left with the sense that I certainly left M no better, and may have left her slightly worse. I'll never know for sure. (to be continued)

Random Memories #75 - the last weeks in Japan - part 7

My previous posts about goodbyes with students may lead my readers to believe that every student loved me to pieces and sobbed herself into a state of apoplexy at my impending departure. In fact, the reason for my focusing on those people in my initial posts about goodbyes was more about what left the biggest impression on me than an attempt to self-aggrandize or paint myself as someone who left an indelible impression on everyone who crossed her path. No small number of people simply did not care when I left, and one of those was a student who I taught for quite some time, went away for a year or so, and circled back into my life three months before I left.

When I first starting getting private students via a referral service, they sent me one student at a time. After I collected a few who gave me very positive reviews, I started getting offered more people more often. Anyone who knows the private tutoring game in Japan knows that building a stable of private students is difficult, but more profitable than teaching in a conversation school on an hourly basis.

Because of various health problems, I wanted to get as many students as possible to help build up an income that I could generate from my apartment. Due to my limits, I accepted nearly anybody who was sent my way regardless of their level. This was not only to pad my coffers, but also because I wanted to agency to believe that I would not arbitrarily reject anyone based on idiosyncratic preferences.

After about six months, I was offered my fifth private student and the oldest person I had taught to date. This student, who I often referred to as "little old man" ("LOM") to my husband, was 74 years old and had worked at NTT for his entire life. His life was a classic example of that of a middle class Japanese man. He started at the bottom, rose through management, and remained at the same company for his entire life. He made more money over time and did less work, and very likely was nearly useless by the time the door failed to hit his ass on the way out.

When retirement came around (at around age 65 for him, I believe), NTT did something which is very common in Japanese companies. They told him that he could keep working there doing the same job, but for about half of the salary he had been receiving. LOM decided he'd rather spend his days golfing and puttering around his house than put in a day's work at NTT for less scratch. He had a son and a wife, but neither of them factored much into his retirement plans or activities. Like many men of his generation, his family was something he had to fulfill specific needs and expectations, and he conducted much of his life separately from them.

In his lessons, LOM rarely talked about his wife or son other than to mention an occasional visit to his son's out-of-town home. When I asked about his wife, he essentially said the same thing so many older men do about their wives - they were more like siblings and stayed out of each other's way for the most part or they would argue too much. Even when they traveled together, they didn't tend to stick together unless logistics dictated that it be so.

There were a lot of things that LOM preferred to talk about and I spent lessons hearing a lot about golf and the tiniest details of his daily life. In one lesson, he announced that he wanted to tell me about how he brushed his teeth and meticulously described how he'd brush each part of his dental structures and in what order. "First I brush my top teeth on the left side, then I brush the top teeth on the right side. Then, I brush the front teeth." It was scintillating stuff.

He was much more interested in talking about what he did than how he interacted with anyone and the more detailed the talk about his mundane activities, the better. The only excitement that he ever talked about with me was when he had all of his luggage, wallet, and passport stolen from a rented vehicle during a vacation to Hawaii. They were stolen, in part, because he left his car unlocked, but he did so because he subscribed to the all-too-familiar notion that Hawaii is a part of Japan and not the United States. It's an easy enough mistake to make when the tourist areas cater so lavishly to Japanese interests, including providing Japanese language services.

It was my job to be the teacher that he wanted me to be, and he asked me initially to teach him English "from the beginning" and I tried to do as he instructed by starting with a low level English book. It's important to note that his English was not high level and he had a lot of grammar and pronunciation problems. His issues were the sort of dyed deep in the wool variety that is so common among older learners who never studied long or hard nor lived abroad. Though he asked me to teach him from the beginning, he soon grew impatient with the process and that's when he started planning his own lessons and talking about things like how he cleaned his house step-by-step using a floor sweeping thing which has a big roll of weak tape on the end (these are popular in Japan for picking up small particles on floors, but are usually used as lint removers in the U.S.) and how he conducted his dental hygiene routine.

LOM needed to run the show, even when he told me he wanted me to do it. On several occasions, he'd tell me he wanted a particular type of lesson and I'd comply only to have him change course shortly thereafter. First it was starting with a textbook from basics, then it was practicing various grammatical structures, then it was talking about everyday things, and so on. He knew what he needed or wanted to learn, but he didn't know what it would entail to actually do it so he kept rearranging the lesson structure and focus. I did the dance he asked for awhile, until he asked me to do a different one.

For most of the years that I steadily taught him, there was one thing which always made him happy and that was talking about golf. Much of his desire to learn English was based in his hobby. He had done a homestay in Florida at one point and met some nice folks there, but he did it not to meet those people, but rather to gain access to the golf courses at the retirement community there. Note that he did this homestay after retirement. While the image of the typical homestay person is that of a student who goes to school, it is possible for old folks to do homestays as well (often with other older folks). He needed to keep his English level where it was if he had any hope of communicating with these people and gaining access to their compound and accompanying golf greens.

LOM's lessons were very boring for me for a variety of reasons. One was that he wanted to talk about such mundane things. Another was that his English level was so low. Yet another was that he wasn't making much headway no matter what I did. This was in part due to his age and entrenched problems, but also because he never stuck with any plan that addressed his weak points. Since he had no compelling reason to improve (such as getting a TOEIC score or needing English for work), I never counseled him about how his inconsistent and idiosyncratic approach was derailing improvement. I think he already knew it, but he chose autonomy over better skill. Based on his demeanor and whimsical approach to study, I'm pretty sure that he would have stopped taking lessons if I pointed out that he'd never improve if he kept going as he did.

The biggest reason that the lessons were tedious was that LOM was the most self-centered person that I had ever known in Japan. He rarely missed a lesson, so I had nearly 300 lessons with him and he never once even asked a perfunctory "how are you?" He never asked me a question about myself or my life and it was clear from his focus that he had no interest in talking about his family or friends. It was always about him - every little detail was about him.

However, it was not a student's responsibility to amuse me or show interest in my life and I always knew this and kept it in mind. It was my job to give them the type of lesson they wanted and to show interest in them. That is what I diligently did for LOM until his interests changed and he decided to stop studying English in favor of his new passion. After years of learning English because he loved golf, he decided that he liked social dancing more than improving his swing or score. With a loss of his need to make annual pilgrimages to Florida, he stopped studying English except for contacting me once or twice a year to help him understand and reply to the occasional letter from his former homestay family.

In January 2012, shortly before my departure in March 2012, I got an e-mail from LOM asking about studying with me again. I told him that I would soon be leaving Japan and would no longer be available to teach him. The response he gave me was... nothing. He didn't wish me well in America. He didn't say, "thank you for your reply, can you recommend another teacher?" He didn't even say, "I'm glad you're going. You suck!" I was greeted with nothing but silence.

The truth was that I was a tool for him to use and he paid me for the privilege so I have no complaints or criticisms. For some students, that is what the teachers are, and he not only didn't shed a tear at the news of my departure, but didn't bother to put in a socially appropriate word. I was something useful that he picked up when he needed and put it down when he didn't. Now, that tool was going to be out of reach so he'd have to find a different one and that was all there as to it. (to be continued)

Random Memories #74 - the last weeks in Japan - part 6

The red bag has my name embroidered on the other side. It's from a well-known maker, or so I was told. K. also gave me a picture frame and rusks. It was quite a generous pile of gifts considering she hadn't seen me for a very long time.

Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, human babies are born essentially premature and quite helpless. A calf will be up and walking soon after it is born, but a human baby takes between nine and twelve months to accomplish a similar feat. This is one of the many things that separates us from animals, and what may appear to be a big mistake on the part of mother nature is actually a means of accommodating an enormous advantage.

Humans have big brains compared to other animals. This is so because they have a highly developed prefrontal cortex. This is the part which essentially separates humans from animals and requires that our mothers give birth to us early. If we were more developed, our enormous heads wouldn't fit through the birth canal, so we are born in a more helpless state and take longer to mature than other animals. It's also speculated that this big brain is what allows humans to possess a certain consciousness. It is theorized that that is what has us talking to ourselves, speculating about the past and the future rather than living in the moment or acting only on current needs, and what allows us to weave complex philosophies of life.

I've spent a good deal of my life knitting, crocheting, and embroidering life philosophies. I'm not claiming that I have all of the answers. In fact, I'm not claiming that I have any answers at all - at least not for anyone other than myself. In the end, that's all any of us have and I do my best to respect that other people aren't going to share in my worldview or weave the same philosophical and, yes, spiritual cloth that I am choosing to wear. To each their own. I won't push my views on you, though if you're reading this, you're sort of asking for it to some extent, and I'd appreciate it if you don't force yours on me.

That being said, I can't talk about some of my parting experiences in Japan without mentioning a particular philosophical bent that I possess. My big human brain (which is no bigger than other human brains - they're all big) compels me to look for patterns and to find meaning, even if neither actually exists. One of the patterns that it has discovered and, in one of the conversations with myself that my unconscious has revealed, is that we are all in some way connected to one another. The longer and more strongly we associate, the stronger the bonds between us.

I tend to think this  has to do with energy and the way atoms and molecules communicate with each other beyond human sensory capacity to detect. If I feel linked to someone, I think that my molecules have formed some sort of atomic-level relationship. You can frame it any way you want, or reject the concept entirely as utter poppycock or new age drivel. However, I can say that, as my days in Japan dwindled, several of the chickens that had flown the coop came home to roost. That's my colorful way of saying that students who had stopped taking private lessons with me years before suddenly started popping up again near the very end. The timing was very peculiar, and the truth is that I hadn't actually "lost" that many students anyway. Only one that I had a long-term  (more than six months) relationship with didn't come back or remain with me throughout the 6 years that I was doing private lessons in my apartment.

One of them contacted me a few weeks before we left. That one was the biggest shock. For simplicity's sake, I'll refer to her as "K." She was someone who I had taught for about a year - an accountant for a French insurance firm who studied English for her job - and I hadn't had contact with her for at least two years. To my husband, I often referred to her as "the sad sack". She rarely smiled and every week when I started the lesson by saying, "how are you?" She'd reply with "not good".

K. was in her 40's, a little older than me, and lived with her father and brother. She wasn't particularly happy with them as they tended to be lazy and her father was prone to not doing any housework. The house she lived in was old and dirty, but she wasn't sufficiently unhappy to move out into her own place. It was bad, but not that bad.

When I first started teaching her, K. worked for a Japanese insurance company in the accounting division. She was often worn out and had little time of her own. Occasionally, she'd complain about her bosses or coworkers. She was the student who first introduced me to the concept of "amae", or someone who depends on others selfishly. In her office, she had a coworker who she said often behaved in that fashion and she resented this behavior, yet still indulged it as a means of keeping harmony within the office.

The truth about my feelings regarding K. was that I felt bad for her. She seemed to work hard and to not be appreciated for her less tangible qualities and had a low estimation of her own worth. Though she had a Master's degree and accounting certifications, she was unhappy in her career and talked often about changing jobs.

I think a lot of her sense of her lack of value stemmed from her physical appearance. Her teeth were bad, worse than even the somewhat average Japanese badness because some of hers were brownish and looked like they were decaying. I never asked her about her teeth, but she did occasionally mention trips to the dentist and how she had problems and toothaches. She also talked about her dental hygiene habits and I was certain that her issues were genetic and not based on a lack of personal care.

Besides her teeth, K. was slightly thick-bodied. For a Japanese, she may have been considered overweight, but she simply was not slender or petite. If she had extra body weight, it was minimal, but she wore clothes that constantly made her look older and frumpier. When she arrived at my apartment wearing pieces which I found attractive, as she sometimes dressed up to meet former classmates or colleagues after our Sunday morning lesson, I always complimented her on her choices. It seemed she got very little in the way of affirmation of her value, so I gave her what I could when I sincerely felt it.

K.'s English lessons were often more tiring than those of other students. It wasn't that she was incapable or didn't try hard, but I think she was often taxed in her energies before she even showed up at my door. She'd progressively rush through repetitions or words and not focus. Her problems were persistent and intractable. I don't know if I was helping her at all to progress. She possessed a high level of vocabulary already, but she often pretended to understand when she didn't and her pronunciation problems seemed set in stone.

I also found her negative outlook and energy exhausting at times. Though I wasn't pouring energy into pepping her up, it was hard at times to not be drawn into the grayness of her worldview. She felt trapped and unhappy, though she did actually get a new job at a French insurance company after some time. That helped her escape her old work environment for one at a foreign company that would follow a different working culture. I was very happy for her when she changed jobs, especially since she seemed to work a lot of overtime and weekends. After awhile, K. decided that she needed to invest much more energy in preparation for certain types of accounting qualification exams than English and she said she'd study English independently. I understood, and I was slightly relieved as it often felt as if she walked in with a storm cloud over her head that colored my day as well.

K. was with me for going on two years and, once she left, I never expected to see her again. I was shocked when, quite suddenly, she sent me a message asking if she could friend me on Facebook. When I replied, I told her that I was leaving Japan very soon. Much to my surprise, K. asked if she could come and see me to say goodbye in person.

I never felt especially close to her, but the day before I left, she showed up bearing gifts. While K. looked very much like herself when she came to my apartment, the cloud she'd carried with her seemed to be gone. Her face looked brighter, and her hair, clothes and make-up were done better. I told her that she looked great and she replied that she was making an effort to "look more beautiful". Her pictures on Facebook reveal that she challenges her body with weight training and she's going to parties and socializing more. I was so happy for her that she seemed to be doing better.

During her visit, the sisters that I'd said goodbye to earlier came around for another "goodbye" because they'd forgotten to bring their gifts when we met for dinner. It was a little weird having them all there, but handy in getting pictures taken since I could pose with one person/party while the other took the shot. The strangest part was that the sisters started crying when I talked to them which caused K., who I hadn't seen in ages, to also start to cry even though she didn't have nearly as long or intimate a relationship with me.

The fact that K. made the effort to come over and say goodbye to me personally as well as arrange for personalized gifts was a real testimonial to how generous the Japanese can be. It also reflected how much they value and nurture the connections they make with others. Her kindness in the 11th hour of my time in Japan is something I will never forget.

(to be continued)

Random Memories #73 - the last weeks in Japan - part 5

S's goodbye gift to me – a beautiful, colorful shawl and her lovely note which said, “It's very sad that you leave Japan. But is already decided with your husband. I understand because a Master wonderful to you is in a side. On Thursday, I remember, and miss you every week. Thank you for the great time. Please, don't worry, and don't hesitate. Everything OK!! Because it's you. I'm believe your future. I hope you and your family's happiness and health far from Japan. Keep in touch. See you again!”

At the start of my previous post, I mentioned that talking about my final weeks has been much more emotionally difficult than I expected. I feel that words are insufficient to convey the experience and that what I say may come across as overwrought and much ado about nothing, particularly to those who have not been in such charged situations. For an impassive people, my departure certainly brought out a lot of passion in those that knew me fairly well. Being on the receiving end of that over a compressed period of time was trying to say the least. Today, I'm going to talk about the hardest one.

One of my students was one of the best souls that I have ever known. For simplicity's sake, I will call her "S." S. is/was a nurse who was born in the countryside and came to Tokyo to work as a surgical assistant. She wasn't walking around taking temperatures, blood pressure measurements, and setting up bags of saline to go into I.V.s. She was setting up operating rooms, monitoring everything that happened and assisting, and cleaning up afterward. When a sponge was unaccounted for, she had to find out what happened and she had to do a ton of paperwork documenting everything that occurred. Sometimes, she'd do 8 operations in a single day. She also was called in for emergencies, not infrequently in the middle of the night. Her work was exhausting and required a high level of skill, ongoing training, and a lot of time on her feet.

S. had lessons with me in the evening after doing an early full shift at the hospital. On an "easy" day for her, she would assist with only three surgeries. Often, she would have the personality problems of her coworkers to contend with in addition to the rigors of the job itself. At the start of every lesson for each student, I sincerely asked about their week and how things went for them. For her, it always sounded exhausting, but she said it was okay. She said that she had chances to rest and spend time with her friends to help her relax. This often, but not always, included drinking and copious amounts of eating, though S. generally made up for the indulgences by eating little to nothing the next day and she only drank when she went out with people. She never drank alone.

When S. discussed her week, something which she had to prepare carefully to do as her English level when she started taking lessons with me was very low, I always expressed my admiration and sympathy for her. I was truly amazed at what she could do in a day, but even more impressed by her compassion for her patients. One case was when she told me that she recommended that an older gentlemen receive a particular pain killer injection because the more common type would be painful for him to receive. S. explained that old folks, with their thinner skin, couldn't tolerate conventional injections very well. The doctor on duty rejected her recommendation because that medication was more expensive than the conventional one. She told me she felt very bad when the man cried out in great pain when he received the shot.

I taught S. for about three years. She came on Thursday nights most of the time, and rarely missed a lesson. Despite her lack of English skill, I learned a great deal about her personally. She had a depth, warmth, and wisdom about her that was impressive for her young age - she was 26 when I started teaching her and I was in my mid 40's. I never had the sense that I was her "elder" in the lessons. Her energy and character were more mature than her age, even if she did have a tendency to wear clothes and make-up which were more akin to what you'd see in Harajuku like short shorts and tights and cat-eye eyeliner.

S's. limited English skills couldn't cover up the fact that she was clearly very bright. She was an expert on the abacus when she was younger and had won contests in which people did calculations on them. She carried a medical Japanese to English dictionary and used it to talk about her work and did her homework and improved markedly over the time that I taught her. Her progress was all on her. Unlike many students who expect to magically improve by sitting down for one hour a week with an English speaker and refuse to do anything else, S. put in the time at home, too.

Among the many things S. and I talked about were spiritual beliefs. I rarely talked about such things with students, and I didn't speak exhaustively about it with her. However, she had visited some psychics on occasion and I always asked her about what was said. Generally, she did it for fun, but sometimes she was told things which were on the nose or struck her as having a strong personal resonance. One of the things was that she was told when she was quite young that she'd be a nurse. This was no surprise to her as she told me that she had decided to be a nurse at the age of four, though she hadn't shared that information with the psychic. A few years into my lessons with her, she saw a psychic who told her that her soul was very old and that she'd been through at least 70 incarnations on this earth. Given her personality, it certainly wouldn't surprise me if that were true.

She had often struck me as an old soul in a young body. There was a peaceful acceptance and a calm warmth about her that was uncommon. That being said, she was not invincible and sometimes the pressure and difficulty of her day would break through in a lesson. We'd be practicing something and she'd burst into tears. The fatigue and psychological pressure of the day or week would just wear her down and she couldn't concentrate or focus on the lesson. I felt terrible when this happened, and she felt bad as well, but she also told me that she found studying English liberating and relaxing despite these (rare) breakdowns.

There was a bond between S. and I that built up through the time we had. It was one that she felt more acutely than me, though I was not aware of it until the end. During our last lesson, she told me that her time with me "saved" her. It was a beacon in her life that helped her get through the hardships. As she said goodbye, seemingly for the last time, at my apartment at the end of that last lesson, she cried and cried and I hugged her several times, but she could or would not leave. Standing there with nothing else to say, watching her sob and hold her hand on the door knob, all I could do was occasionally hug her, thank her, and tell her that everything would be okay. She would be okay without me.

It took ten minutes of emotion-packed talk and reassurances peppered with expressions of gratitude for what I'd done for her before she left. This was incredibly draining for me. It was a drawn-out process that came from a good place and displayed the meaning I'd had for her all too clearly. Dealing with that much emotion, and knowing that my decision to leave was taking something that she had found so profoundly important in her life, was extremely difficult for me to manage.

I'd like to say that that was the end of it and that that one exhausting goodbye was all there was, but she e-mailed me and asked to say goodbye the morning of our departure from Japan. I couldn't bear that on top of everything else that was to come on our last morning, so I told her that she could come by the evening before instead. I wasn't happy about this because things were so chaotic and difficult for us, but it was hard to refuse. Once more, I went through another emotionally exhausting goodbye with tears and talk of how important I was to her and how she could not have survived emotionally without me and my lesson to help her cope. It was an even longer and more difficult repeat of the first goodbye.

The truth was that, I did find her to be an extraordinary person full of strength, intelligence, and personality. Because she seemed so strong and capable of managing her life, I had no idea though that she would feel so strongly that I had "saved" her. She said "you saved me" so many times during those two wrenching goodbyes that her voice saying those words is etched in my memory. It was a compliment, to be sure, but it was also a burden.

This was a person who genuinely had a need for me above and beyond the trivial exchange of my teaching talent for increased English ability. What was more, she was a person who did an immense amount of good in the world and deserved support and kindness. She needed me more than I realized, and I was leaving her behind. The size of the hole in her life that I was leaving was made clearer by the need for the second incredibly difficult goodbye.

What was worse was that I knew that this was a relationship that had no future whatsoever at a distance. I wanted to keep in touch with her. I wanted even to continue to be a source of support, but I knew from experience that it takes an immense amount of effort and communicative capacity to conduct friendships by distance. After returning to the U.S., I tried to e-mail her and keep in touch, but her English messages were a word salad and I couldn't follow her much. I wrote to her, but I'm sure that she couldn't follow me well either. As bad as her English was, my Japanese was worse. It was pretty hopeless.

S. had talked many times in the last year - before she knew that I was leaving Japan - about moving out of Tokyo. It was clear that she wanted to advance her career and she felt her life's journey would be better served by moving on at some point. Because of this, I thought that I would lose her as a student long before she would lose me as a teacher and that telling her I was leaving would be easier because of her plans. She still cried and cried when I told her that I was leaving, but I didn't know that was just the beginning of her grieving process.

There was a truth about life in general that years of having and losing friends in Japan taught me. I was never happy about it, but I learned a long time ago that it is extremely rare to keep the same people in your life for the duration unless you stay stuck in one place and never move or grow. S. and my lives were never meant to travel along the same track indefinitely.They were meant to touch and we were to walk along together for awhile and learn and grow as we would, and then we were to separate again. I could understand this, and I think she understood it, too, but I think that she found the reality emotionally more difficult than I did. Part of that was that I had a significant other to travel on my separate path with, and she was spending much more of her journey alone. As the supported, it was harder for her to say goodbye than me as the supporter.

Many people think that English teachers are self-serving, greedy, and lazy people who reluctantly wile away the time in lessons and take the money from their students' pockets. I can say that I cared about every student who I taught. I cared about them as human beings and I approached how I managed them at all times with a regard not only for their English skills and their status as paying customers, but also as people who I had the privilege of impacting with my presence. When I asked about their lives, I did so with genuine interest. When I heard about their problems, I listened with genuine concern. I didn't realize this at the time, but this was a gift I gave those who needed this sort of presence in their lives - and many of them lacked such a presence.

The wrenching nature of no small number of goodbyes that I had with people who were generally composed and impassive illustrated this in a way that I could not ignore or dismiss. Much as I may desire to be humble (and much as others will desire to humble or degrade me), I mattered to people in Japan. I mattered in a way that I don't feel that I do in America because people treat others here as another disposable party in a conga line of people they can use and discard because it's so easy to find ears to forcibly bend in the U.S.

Since Japanese people don't impose themselves on people in general as it is not part of their cultural norm, my offering myself as I did was a rare opportunity. I didn't realize that then, but I do now. By and large, Americans don't wait for someone to make an offer to be there for them. They just impose upon you when they want something and make you wriggle free if you don't want to play that part for them. For reasons of culture or situation, my presence in the lives of my students was important in a way I expect I will never experience again, and nothing proved it better than the goodbye I had with S.

(to be continued)

Random Memories #72 - the last weeks in Japan - part 4

H.'s goodbye gift to the husband and me - she chose this because she wanted to give us something to remind us of her house, which is two stories tall, but is not red and brown nor did it have a cat or bird.

When it came to saying goodbyes, my husband and I had to find a balance between his students/friends and mine. We couldn't possibly fit in goodbye get-togethers with everyone, much as we might have liked to have done so. The truth is that we both had to suffer a bit of guilt turning down invitations to go out with people who wanted to spend some time at a restaurant or an izakaya (Japanese pub) with us. We didn't fool ourselves into thinking we were so insanely charming and appealing that people were clamoring to spend social time with us. I think some invitations were as much about a sense that they should be proffered as anything else. Some were, of course, very sincere.

I think most of the people who invited us knew that it was impossible to see everyone and we did have a goodbye party scheduled for our mutual workplace at which many of the students my husband had taught for many years would be able to take part. Since I had worked there for less than a year, it wasn't as sentimental for me, but I was still pleased to be able to go there and feel I belonged since I worked there as well. I will talk about that job and the goodbye party at a later time, but I really did like being there and it made it that much harder to leave Japan.

The one and only invitation from one of my husband's students that we accepted was from a woman who I will call "H." H. was a music teacher who tutored people in her homes and my husband functioned more as her default counselor than a simple English instructor. She was one of those all too common Japanese mothers who formed a stronger bond with her son than with her husband. When the son got a girlfriend, she wrung her hands, gnashed her teeth, and tried to tighten the apron strings. When her son finally decided to get engaged and move into his own place with his girlfriend, he told everyone but his mother. He didn't want to deal with the hysterics so he just vanished and she was told after the deed was done.

H. was a nice lady and she wanted things to go well for her kids, but her own emotional needs, at least at times, overrode their desire for autonomy. This is certainly not uncommon among parents. This selfishness tends to be present as much among Western parents as Japanese ones. It just tends to manifest differently in the West.

My husband was generally quite sympathetic to H. and, when he told me about her, he spoke positively of her. When she invited us to an evening at her home for dinner, we were both happy to accept. She even picked us up at the local train station in her car and drove us to her place. It was rare for us not to have to wander around finding our own way or to have to figure out bus schedules and routes to get around to areas far from the station.

When we arrived, we chatted with her and her daughter for a bit over Coca-cola Zero (purchased just for us) and snacks. Eventually, her son came home by and her husband came home and they rolled out an enormous dinner for us including an extremely gorgeous roast chicken that had also been prepared especially for my husband. The meal also included something that looked like and resembled guacamole, but was made with hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise in addition to avocado. It was one of those things which I'd never make, but is right at home on a Japanese dinner table as mayo by the bucket is not the least bit unusual.

After the meal, at which we spent most of the time talking about food and tastes, we had one of the most memorable and beautiful experiences of our time in Japan when H., her daughter, and her son (who were also musicians) performed Pachelbel's Canon in D for us. This was the song that we played at our wedding in lieu of the wedding march - my husband and I walked in together to this music rather than do a more formal or traditional ceremony. I don't know if they chose this music because he had told them that or if it was just a happy coincidence, but I remember thinking that that was the sort of experience that I would almost certainly never have had in the U.S. I was fortunate to have my digital camera with a video recording capability and have it preserved for posterity.

As I sat there listening to them play beautifully, I cried. It was the sort of moment near the end that I wanted to hold onto. It was one perfect experience that I'd link forever with Japan and I was immensely grateful to H. for providing it. Unfortunately, that memory was not to survive without becoming tainted.

To explain that statement, I have to jump ahead to the very last hours of our time in Japan and over several more events/goodbyes. We visited H. about a week before we left and the time between being at her home and going to the airport was hectic and generally pretty terrible. I'd gone through so many emotional and wrenching goodbyes and worked so hard to get everything together that the stress suppressed my immune system such that I got sick. The morning that we left, I was exhausted emotionally and also physically. It was hectic and difficult on many levels, but I will get to that in a later post.

When we finally got to the airport and unloaded our four enormous suitcases, all I wanted to do was relax for a bit and take in the last moments in Japan in a sort of peace that I'd not experienced for quite some time. I wanted to just ease into the end and be alone with my husband as we closed in on the moment when we got onto the plane and flew away.

As our last bit of "work", my husband and I struggled to use his laptop with the airport Wi-Fi and make a Skype call to his father to let him know what was going on since he was going to pick us up on the other end. Once this was done, we wanted to slowly and peacefully stroll around Narita and reflect on what we were leaving behind and what was ahead. It was a private time, a short window to say an internal as well as an external goodbye after some extremely draining weeks. The truth was that I was a shambles in every way possible. I was at the very limit of any other event happening to me which was going to tax me in any way. I needed some time for quiet reflection desperately and for all of the turmoil to just stop for awhile. I needed both emotional processing time and some physical rest.

As we just started out to make a thoughtful trek around Narita, my husband's name was called out by a woman out ahead of us. It was H., waving and shouting with an enormous smile. We did not invite her. In fact, we did not tell her when we would be there or what airline we would be flying on. She only knew the day we were departing and she had done detective work on her own to track us down.

I was stunned that she felt it was appropriate to stalk us to the airport on our departure day and furious that she would show up cheery and excited at a time when she was not in any way welcome. That last thing I wanted to do at that time was put on my happy gaijin mask and entertain this woman who clearly had no clue about what limits and boundaries meant. I could barely manage to be civil as my husband tried to talk to her pleasantly for a bit. After barely a minute of forced chat, I excused myself saying that I was not feeling well at all - which was true, but not the only reason I extricated myself. My husband talked to her a bit longer then escaped as well. He felt that she had absolutely no empathy for what we were going through. Not a thought in her head was directed at what we might have been experiencing or needing at that time.

I was so furious at H.'s behavior that I will forever associate her not with that beautiful final evening, but with that inappropriate and unwelcome insertion into my final hour or so in Japan. She had no idea what she had taken from me at a time when I was least able to give anymore than I already had. The selfishness and concern for only her needs and feelings which she had displayed with her son was now being shown toward us. She only cared about amusing herself by following a couple of gaijin to the airport on their last day. It was all just a lark to her.

My husband mumbled that, if she was going to drive all the way out to the airport, the least she could have done was offer to drive us and our suitcases there to spare us the hassle and expense. However, that would have assumed that she was thinking about our feelings and not her own. It was a bitter experience that left a dark mark on my farewell to Japan. Japanese people can be just as self-involved as Westerners - this I already knew - but this was a time when I least expected it and when it cost me the most personally. (to be continued)