Random Memories #78 - the last weeks in Japan - part 11

This final installment is more of an epilogue than a memory, though it will include memories. I'm sure that people who have gone away for a short trip or even a somewhat long one imagine my return to the U.S. was like a breath of familiar air as I stepped out into the world into which I was born. It wasn't. It felt more like being expelled from the womb into the bright, noisy, painful light of day. Coming home taught me a whole new understanding of the phrase "gaijin bubble".

For those who are not Photoshop geeks and don't know what a gaussian blur is, I offer this example with the right half blurred and the left half clear.

The bubble that I lived in in Japan was one in which I was outside of society and not entirely aware of what was being said, written, or done in my presence. Because of my incomplete language skills, much of my life in Japan was like a version of reality that had had a gaussian blur applied to it. I could work out most of what was going on, but I had to focus and concentrate. If I didn't feel like paying attention or studying a situation, it was easy to not even know it was there. Tuning out was far easier than tuning in.

Suddenly, I had popped out into a world in which everything was crystal clear. I knew every word. I had to communicate with every person because I had no excuse for not doing so. There was no shaking my head and smiling while waving my hands and either pretending that I didn't understand in order to abdicate any responsibility or escape a situation or actually not understanding enough to fully take part in it. I was fully engaged and had no way to walk away that I didn't have to be fully responsible for. After years of purposeful tuning in, I was utterly out of practice when it came to tuning anything out and it was a full assault. Even now, two years later, I find it hard to place much in the background and remain hyper-aware. I can't undo over two decades of patterns in such a short time.

Living in Japan was like having spent 23 years in a cocoon that both protected and isolated me from the outside world. Sometimes, I hated it because I wanted to be more engaged with things and I resented the limits that shell placed on my life. Only after leaving it did I realize how well and truly it protected someone of my nature from things which would potentially do me harm. I'm a highly sensitive person, as I've said before. I see, hear, smell, and feel things more strongly than average people. I'm easily startled and my nerves are quickly jangled. I'm like a wind chime that tinkles in the slightest breeze whereas others are like rocks that are only moved by great force. I have no choice in the matter. It's the way my nervous system is built, but I didn't realize how being in a different culture buffered me in ways I did not appreciate until after I'd gone.

What was worse than being fully present in this seemingly new reality was the fact that I was a child in the ways it now worked. I didn't know how to use a debit card, work a gas pump, use a self-check-out, or when and how to pay for things in various circumstances. I didn't know that you could sign your name on a credit card transaction on a screen using an electronic pen or that you could tip on your credit card bill at restaurants (as I didn't have a credit card before I went to Japan and they don't tip).

I spent a lot of the first six months of my time in America apologizing to people for my ignorance and mistakes by mumbling about how I'd been out of the country for over two decades and didn't know how things worked. In essence, I fumbled around everyday things in the U.S. the same way I used to bumble my way through them in Japan in the early years. The only difference is that, there, I was a gaijin (foreigner) and my ineptness was excused because no one expected me to know what I was doing. Here, I was just an idiot who couldn't do or understand what even many kids knew and understood. A ten-year-old had greater mastery of the American environment than I did.

I've realized all too often, even now, that Japan isolated and insulated me in ways I failed to appreciate while I was there and being able to bumble and not be snorted at derisively was another piece of the gaijin pie. My foreignness kept me in and others out, but that had enormous benefits that I failed to see until I'd lost them. Yes, it was harder to keep and make good friends, but I've found that the free and easy access that people have to me here has been enormously disruptive and disappointing at times. People contact me when they need something from me and don't when they aren't in any need of my assistance.

Often, the lack of that old cocoon means people can be invasive and blocking them is awkward for me or impossible without alienating them. I'm sometimes taken aback at the vitriol that can be incited by putting up any sort of boundary with people in the U.S. It's as if there is no greater insult to them than failing to meet their needs. The attitude seems to be that I am obliged to give them whatever it is that they want to take and my not permitting them to barge in and grab as much as they want when they want it is an affront. There is frequently no consideration for me or my needs. There is little understanding of boundaries. The entitlement people display is shocking in its size and boldness. The boundaries in Japan were often frustratingly thick and often impenetrable, but they protected me, too.

While Japanese people often had curiosity about my life and asked about me, often because they saw me as an alien being that they wanted to understand - an objectified way of seeing me - people in America rarely express any interest in me or my life at all in social settings. Curiosity in the U.S., it seems, is dead, or at least wheezing its dying breaths. I have had social gatherings with people for hours and hours and often multiple times in which not one question, including "how are you," has been asked of me.

I've also had people act as if my asking them certain questions, ones that I routinely asked of people in Japan and an eyelid was never batted, is an affront or invasive. In social situations in the U.S., I'm not sure how we're supposed to talk to each other if they don't ask me anything and they're so touchy about what I ask them that I have to navigate a field of social landmines. Most people think you magically "know" what is right according to their values even when they are not explicitly offered and they won't offer helpful feedback about them when you trespass on their issues. There is an assumption that "correct" social mores and manners are their own private ones despite the lack of an organized social code or set of manners in the U.S. When you unintentionally step on one of their (often idiosyncratic) landmines, they are offended and hold a grudge, often acting out passive aggressively in future interactions as they continue to lick a wound you never meant to inflict or anticipated would be hurtful.

In Japan, this was far less of an issue for me. My foreignness engendered rapid forgiveness. Sure, I was the dull-witted pet gaijin, but the underestimation of me that accompanied their sense of my inferiority in comprehending their culture also meant that they forgave me when I piddled on their cultural carpet. The fact that the rules are more explicit and most people shared a common mentality also meant that, at least eventually, one could figure things out and act in rough compliance. If you screwed up, you were forgiven. If you did things right, you got a lot of credit. It wasn't always that way, but it often was.

There is less of such forgiveness in the U.S. in my experience. I'm simply supposed to be like everyone else magically in social circumstances while also being an individual who is unique and different from everyone else. Is it any wonder Facebook is filled with drama when we all operate by different unwritten and unspoken rules because we're all just so non-conformist and individualistic yet we expect others to read our minds? We expect order and are offended when life does not unfold in accord with our sense of it, yet the culture is incredibly chaotic. Having been outside of that long enough, I can see that about American culture now. When I lived inside of it, I had no idea that it could be any other way.

Since returning, America has very often felt like the "foreign" land full of people who have ways of living which annoy and frustrate me. Their unfamiliar ways cause me to hate it here sometimes and be angry and disappointed a fair bit of the time. Frankly, it's just like my early time in Japan when I was going through the stages of cultural adjustment, but it sometimes feels worse as this is supposed to be my home and it "shouldn't" be so difficult. Part of the reason for that is that this is supposed to be my home culture, but a bigger part of it is that I don't have that nice hazy, gaussian-blur-like filter of not understanding exactly what is going on to block out a lot of the annoyances or that big, comfy cocoon that separates me from the outside world.

Sometimes, it feels like I'm being pelted by hail the size of baseballs and there's nowhere to run for cover. This sense of being under siege by a culture I lost touch with has abated somewhat, but I strongly miss the odd sort of "protection" I had in Japan more than anything else. This, more than anything, in my opinion, forms the unconscious backbone of why many people find it so hard to leave Japan and the sense that it's a Neverland in which we can avoid the pain of growing up and responsibilities of the "real' world of our home countries.

Random Memories #77 - the last weeks in Japan - part 10

I wish that I had written my memories of the last weeks in Japan shortly after I'd lived them. Two years down the line, there are things I remember with perfect clarity and things that I'm sure have slipped away. The same goes for my early experiences after returning to America. There were some very important things which happened when I had just gotten back that I wish I had taken the time to type out, but I think that it was just too difficult to manage emotionally. Even now, two years later, it's a chore for me to go back to those last moments. It has been the case on more than one occasion that writing about my memories has brought  me to tears and I'm sure the writing on some of these posts has suffered for it.

The final day in Japan is still hard for me to write about and I don't know if I can really make others understand how difficult it was to just let it all go. I can say that I knew something for sure that I can't easily make others completely comprehend. That was that I knew without a doubt that I would never live in Japan again and I was nearly as certain that I'd never go back there again for any purpose. 

I've talked about that sense - that strong feeling of knowing - with others and they have generally misunderstood what I've meant. They seem to think I'm saying I don't want to go back or don't feel I can afford to. It's not that at all. I want to go back. In fact, I'd love to go back again, but I knew in my gut that the chances that I'd ever set foot on that island again were infinitesimally tiny. This "knowing" amplified my grief in the last day. It wasn't simply a "see you later" or "maybe... possibly... ", but it was "I'll never see you again." The book of my life there was finished and no new chapters were going to be added on. Everything that has happened since my return to the U.S. has confirmed this and I have not for a moment felt otherwise. What I want is not a part of the equation, but rather what I "know".

I had my last twenty-four hours completely mapped out long before the day came. As I mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to go to Akiyoshi for our last real meal and I wanted to wake up and walk around and have "choco cro" for breakfast. Those two things accomplished, it was time to face getting in the cab and heading away.

The landlord and his wife were incredibly kind and supportive of us that final morning. They helped us haul our four enormous suitcases out and put them in the cab. I am a person who believes in mindfulness of experience and not simply blowing past life or sleepwalking through it. This has not only helped me as a writer, but also helped me understand the world. The last thing I did was purposefully look around our home of the past 23 years and take in the atmosphere that it held for us. It was, as could be seen in the previous post, dirty and decimated of most of its belongings with nothing but trash left behind. It was also as or more familiar to me than the home I'd grown up in as a child.

I'd spent 24 years of my life in the same place in rural Pennsylvania and 23 years in which I was much more self-aware and verbally capable in our apartment in Tokyo. How could it be any less of a space that I'd strongly identify with than my family home? It wasn't. It was more of a "home", especially since my childhood home had long been sold and plowed to the ground and covered over with earth during my long absence.

I looked out the window of the bedroom where the osmanthus tree had grown, bloomed, and aged during our stay. The tree had some weathering or bark loss on the side that faced our bedroom and I always felt it had absorbed some of the negative energy of my life from the frustrations I'd felt living in Japan and taken on some damage. It also gave up its fragrance every autumn and reminded me that, though I lived in a concrete box, nature would find a way to be a part of my life.

The window behind the living room showed the view of the noisy old neighbor's entrance. I thought about how they'd stood out there so many times having loud conversations punctuated by "ne" so many times that it seemed as though that word constituted a quarter of the vocabulary. They also banged around their miniature garden and loudly snapped shut their screen door more times than I can remember, yet I never got used to it or learned to tune it out.

Of course, despite its poor condition, I looked at the space itself inside the apartment. I loved that small space and the way that it was shaped like a square and had sliding doors that opened or closed off compartments as needed to capture heat or cool air according to our needs. I loved how it was small, but felt bigger than it was. I loved that I could always feel my husband's presence no matter where he was and the sense that he was never very far away from me. Most of all, I thought about how much we loved each other and whether or not any of the positive energy of two people who felt passionately about each other would have embedded itself in the walls or the earth. We knew that nothing materially would be left behind, but would anything energetically remain for the next inhabitant?

As I stood at the door giving it a final look, I started to cry and cried all the way to the cab and during the loading of our things. The landlady looked at me sobbing away with such compassion and kindness that it made me weep all the more. We had always had a very cordial and formal relationship with the landlord and his family and I think that was the first time that we connected on a profoundly emotional level that quite clearly made us all humans rather than partners in a contractual relationship.

The cab drove along a route with which I was extremely familiar. It was along Ome Kaido avenue from Asagaya to Shinjuku. I'd traveled this path hundreds, possibly  over a thousand of times in 23 years and walked or ridden a bike the entire length dozens of times. When the big quake hit on March 11, 2011, my husband walked home along that large street. As the cab made its ways, I intently watched every building as it went by in an attempt to burn the experience as deeply into my memory as possible. I can still recall with perfect clarity how it felt as I watched those all too familiar buildings go by.

I hadn't gotten on a train for Narita in 20 years nor set foot in the airport since 1992. Things had changed a lot since then. Service had gotten far worse and more perfunctory as well as automated. We arrived early, as one is supposed to for international flights. It turned out that the United counter didn't open until 12:30 and we spent a lot of time standing in line watching the staff mill about doing nothing while they waited for the clock to force them to start managing passengers. We had hoped to check in to relieve ourselves of our heavy bags and then wander the airport, but some of our precious time was being stolen away by unexpected changes in availability.

When we finally were allowed to check our bags and get boarding passes, we were confused by the way in which you use machines to feed in your passport and get a printed pass. We were regarded as being dim-witted because we were unfamiliar with the machines and a woman who was in Japan as a tourist rather smugly instructed us in how to manage. At the time, I thought that I'd like to see her manage the Tokyo public transport system. Everything is easy when you're familiar with it.

Mochi sweets, explained in English (which is not usually the case in Tokyo)

I'm sure that being in an airport is not a meaningful experience for most people. For me, however, it was a way station between two worlds. It was the point at which I was in limbo in a spot which straddled life in Japan and life in America. The mix of travelers, the shops that catered to both domestic and foreign tastes, and the bilingual services made it feel like the last stop that would fully cater to the Japanese on the road to the rest of my life.

As we headed down the escalator after passing the security checkpoint and into the final area through which we'd end up boarding, there were signs (shown at the top of this post) saying Japan awaited our return. Seeing them made me start crying again because Japan will be waiting a very, very long time to ever see me again. It was an incredibly bittersweet moment when I saw what to most people was a meaningless PR move.

My husband and I had popped for the extra couple hundred dollars to get seats at the front of a row because my knees are pretty bad and the idea of keeping them bent in a tiny cramped space for nearly 12 hours was not a happy one. I had my plan in place for how to kill the time. I'd saved Baye McNeil's book to read on the journey. This was a good idea as the book was incredibly engaging and helped pass the time and distract me from thoughts of what was to come and what was happening.

I've flown away from Japan three times in my life and I spent two of those trips crying my way through the trip to America. The first time was because I was flying away from my boyfriend (later husband) and the last time was because I was leaving the place where I'd spent most of my adult life and had built a tiny little place that was "home". Japan wasn't home, but the space I occupied was all I had and could conceive of as home. I sobbed all that much harder when the plane touched down and I entered a world that was both familiar and alien. (to be continued)

Random Memories #77 - the last weeks in Japan - part 9

The, mostly, empty living room. That box is the cable box, which the landlord said he'd look after. I also realized that we left behind not one, but two carpets that we'd installed (layered on top of one another in that room) and that power strip mounted on the wall. Oops, but there were no hard feelings. The landlord has written to us a few times with nothing but positive feelings.

The last two weeks before we left Japan, besides being filled with goodbyes, were filled with whatever it took to get things done. My husband spent no small amount of time filling and rearranging our suitcases with our possessions so that they wouldn't exceed the seventy-five pound weight limit. We didn't have a proper scale for such things, so he'd get on our bathroom scale and weigh himself, then pick up the suitcase and see how much it added. He spent hours doing this to balance things across four cases. Part of the process was packing all that we wanted to take and then removing what wasn't essential when the suitcases were too heavy. 

The chore of packing and repacking was nothing compared to the grief of sorting out mementos, well-meant gifts from friends, and necessary possessions. Throwing out what didn't make the cut was difficult because of the mental energy spent on thinking about things such as how this student who I liked a lot and taught for a long time gave me this, but it's not as useful as that item and it's heavy so it gets left behind. Weight and bulk also was an issue. Anything that was flat or super light made the cut. Fragile items or things which weren't particularly Japanese (like a set of utensils which were pretty generic fork and spoon kits) were far more likely to have a date with a trash bin. All of the things made of fabric (and many of them were beautiful) made the cut.

My memory of the overwhelming generosity of those we knew - a lot of this made it home with us, but not all of it.

The guilt of this sort of culling was with me throughout the entire packing process. It wasn't only materially wasteful, but it made me feel as if I didn't fully appreciate the sentiment behind the gift. Nonetheless, we knew we'd be moving a lot in America and we couldn't be dragging a lot of "stuff" behind us like an anchor. I took pictures of everything both individually and en masse so that I'd remember what was given even if I couldn't keep the item itself with me. It was the best I could do under the circumstances.

I have to say that the student who gave my husband $200 in cash will forever have my gratitude. It's not that the money was useful, though it was, but that it spared any sort of emotional considerations. And, though the money is gone, he is not forgotten for his thoughtfulness. Besides, the money is no more or  less gone than the items I had to toss away (like the goofy eyeglass holder house that the woman who ruined our departure from Narita gave us).

The trash men, tossing out the desks we used for over a decade in our apartment. The was part of a multi-stage abandoning of our furniture. 

The next to last day saw one of my students dragging away my one-year-old washing machine. Her parents needed a new one and I was more than delighted to give them mine. It wasn't only that I didn't want to waste a perfectly functional machine, but also that it was one less enormous piece of furniture that we would have to arrange to have carted away. I tried to give away more of our stuff, but, as I said before, it was hard-going. It was supremely annoying that the old machine crapped out so near our departure time, but we figured it was no more expensive and far more convenient to just buy another machine than to schlep our clothes to one of the not-so-local "coin laundry" shops.

The worst and most difficult item to rid ourselves of was our sofa. I don't know how Japanese delivery people get things in through narrow walkways and doors, but I imagine they must have extensive training in puzzles in which they have to figure out a way to maneuver large and heavy objects through narrow holes without damaging either the orifice or the object. They probably start with trying to get a stick of gum through a keyhole and, if they bend the gum or get any residue on the keyhole, they don't get to move along to the next task.

My husband and I had a horrific time getting that sofa out of our place, and the men who brought it in seemed to do it so smoothly and skillfully that we had no warning that it would be a nightmare. Both of us were in our late 40's when we left and not especially strong (and probably both on the verge of developing stress-related colds). If you've seen the scene in Friends where Ross is trying to get his sofa into his apartment, you have only a small idea of how awful such an experience could be. By the time we'd wrangled our sofa (which you can see hosting all of our gifts earlier in this post) outside, we were hot, exhausted, and fairly close to being at each other's throats due to multiple failed suggestions to figure out a way to get it through the door and pivoting it down the narrow walkway. The fact that it was a sofa bed that would flop open if you held it at certain angles only made it harder.

The last night, we went out for dinner with my brother-in-law and his wife at our favorite yakitori place. In pictures from the dinner, I look as haggard as one might expect someone to look who had been in a state of stress and chaos and who was getting sick. That evening was an oasis of peace before the final morning. We reminisced and talked about what we were going to miss as well as talked about our plans for the future when we got "home".

The state of that wall is the product of 23 years of humidity behind our dresser and other furniture. Also, the closet floor is warped and cracking from the same moisture issues. Oh, and the closet doors fell off along ago, but we didn't bother to have them replaced because, you know, we didn't care - I just hid the doors behind some shelving and covered the front of the closet with a curtain. This was what our bedroom looked like on our last day. You can see the tatami is also worn through (we had it covered with a carpet for years). It never looked so terrible when we lived in it because those decaying bits were always covered with other things. It was monstrous when we peeled everything away.

We were lucky that our landlord agreed to manage getting our queen-size bed out for us so we could sleep in our own apartment up until the end, but also the memory of that sofa struggle made his kindness even more appreciated. If the sofa was that hard to remove, I couldn't imagine how tough it would be getting the enormous mattress and box spring out as well. We left them behind with the proper large trash ("dai gomi") stickers sitting on the shelf in the closet. Buying those stickers allowed us to pay the expense at least. We had to pay, but he or whoever he paid to clean up the place was going to have to fight their way with our bed through the door.

A small selection of items that I was giving to another student - that's an iPod speaker box there (a nice one), a relatively new microwave, and my coffee maker. I think the coffee grinder is in the paper bag on the right. Those post-it notes say that my student will take them after we leave. Of course, this had all been arranged already with the landlord, who graciously put up with all of this nonsense.

Just because the landlord was managing the bed did not mean the last morning was the leisurely affair I'd hoped for. I knew what I wanted to do and that was to buy a couple of croissants at ChocoCro, brew some coffee on the coffee maker we still had, but would be picked up by another student later on (along with the microwave that I was going to use to reheat the croissants), and take one last walk around the neighborhood, particularly the shotengai. I didn't think it would take so long to complete certain activities that last morning. We did take a little stroll around the neighborhood, but it was the calm before a considerable storm of activity.

The refrigerator was going to be picked up by a recycling shop (down the street from us) and those bags contain our sheets, pillows, comforter, and my winter coat which I abandoned at the 11th hour for weight purposes. The wall there is discolored from the toaster oven and years of various items being placed in front of it and, of course, moisture damage from the Tokyo summers and rainy seasons. I realize I also left behind my Apple magnets. :-(

There were things that had to be bagged and thrown away that final morning and I filled up an enormous space in our kitchen with "trash" - our pillows, sheets, and blankets that we'd been sleeping on for many years. It took a lot longer to cram everything in the bags than I'd thought, especially since everything was insanely bulky. If you ever get a job cramming bedding into plastic bags and you're paid by the piece, trust me when I say you'll make a lot less money than you think. It is like herding cats because they're so unwieldy due to being large, puffy, and squishy.

The way in which trash goes out in Japan (certain types of trash only on particular days) made it impossible for us to get rid of our garbage. I also had to abandon a pretty nice carry-on suitcase at the last minute due to weight issues. The bags are labeled by trash type so the landlords could sort it out and put each out on the proper day. That horribly dirty wall was created by the washing machine being in that space for so many years - it was humidity central with very little space between the wall and machine (which breeds mold). We never saw it until the machine was taken away, then it was pretty ugly.

Emptying a space sounds pretty easy in theory, but, in practice, it's the death of a thousand cuts. The time that we had before we needed to hop into a cab and leave for the airport felt ample when we mapped everything out. In the end, despite my best laid plans (and they were very good plans indeed) it was rather rushed and hectic. Our apartment also seemed to be in an enormous mess despite my thinking (hoping) I'd leave it relatively tidy and hollow for the landlords. I looked back for the last time at our dirty, crumbling apartment with no small sense of guilt at what I was leaving for them to manage as well as a great sadness of leaving behind this place I'd settled into for nearly 23 years. Be it ever so crumbled, it had been "home". (to be continued)

Random Memories #71 - the last weeks in Japan - part 3

The beautiful laser-cut card that the two sisters gave me.

Here is part 1 and part 2 of this series.

When you have met as many people as my husband and I met during our time in Japan, there are a lot of goodbyes to offer. Our last few weeks were full of trying to balance preparation to leave with meeting people and saying goodbye to them. Some of them would see the last of us in classrooms or in my apartment for a final lesson. Others were actually going to go out to dinner or lunch with us and finally meet the "real" us. 

One of the sometimes trying aspects of life in Japan for my husband and I was that we never really felt that we could "be ourselves". There was always the gaijin mask that we had to put on in which we accommodated the passivity of the Japanese, the need to be gentle, quiet, patient, and always being responsible for the conversation and comfort of the other person. Even in social situations, we were always the ones who had to hold back as our natural assertiveness could so easily overwhelm our Japanese friends and acquaintances. We weren't exactly "pod" versions of ourselves, but we often felt like the hosts of any exchange even when we were actually the guests. 

During those final weeks and outside of situations in which we were teachers, we allowed some of that to slip away. I had two students who I truly loved teaching and treasured knowing. I taught the older sister for awhile and then her younger sister came on board. Both of them were intelligent, educated, sophisticated, well-traveled, and more Westernized in their demeanor than average. 

The older sister was actually born in Tennessee and could have chosen to be a U.S. citizen or a Japanese one. Unfortunately for her, she didn't have the option to be both since this is not allowed between her home country and mine. She was only in the U.S. as an infant, and left by age one, and chose quite reasonably to become a Japanese citizen at the age of 19. I've always felt that it was unfortunate that dual citizenship was not possible, but I'm pretty sure that this choice is made on the Japan side since American permits dual citizenship with many countries and, as far as I know, Japan allows it with none. So, my student who is not fluent in English and belongs to a family of Japanese people chose Japan.

The older sister told me that she got into trouble on more than one occasion because of her propensity for being blunt. I'm pretty sure that she didn't pick this habit up from being born in the U.S., but it is a very American personality trait. She told me that she could "scare" men in particular with her habit of speaking her mind and that she really needed to tone it down. She once made a grown man cry, though sometimes that is like shooting fish in a barrel - especially in Japan where men aren't accustomed to being challenged in general and especially not by women. The truth is that she reminded me of myself when I was younger in this way. I frightened all but the strongest of men away and I married the one who was never intimidated by me. She and I had a lot in common in terms of our "rough edges". A lot of mine had been filed away, but this made me like her all the more.

Teppanyaki - manly food for manly men who eat slabs of cow. If he touches the bean sprouts though, he's a big fake!

Since I liked these sisters so much, I was delighted when they suggested that we all go to a goodbye meal. My husband and I had been to a teppanyaki restaurant in Takadanobaba which we really enjoyed the first time around and suggested we do our goodbye meal there with the sisters. As the end came, we found we felt more and more melancholy about all of the places that we'd enjoyed going to, but knew we wouldn't be able to go to again. The place is called Daitokai Honkan and their web site says they are located in Meijiro, but we accessed them via Takadanobaba station.

We were to meet the sisters at around noon, but they were both late and my husband and I were avoiding cell phones up until the bitter end so there was no way for us to contact them. The younger one was less late than the older one, who arrived tottering a bit on high-heeled shoes about fifteen minutes past the appointed time. I did mention that they weren't typical Japanese, and this type of lateness was just one of the smaller indications of this point.

Tofu chicken burger... which felt a little unclear on the concept of vegetarian food, but I'm sure that was not what it was all about.

The main point of teppanyaki is grilling meat in front of the customer, but I am not a fan of steak or any of the other popular types of meat so I ordered a "tofu chicken burger". The concept seemed a bit strange as the point of tofu in the eyes of Western folks is to avoid the shedding of animal blood in the interest of satisfying human appetites. There was minced beet with soy sauce on top and a big side of bean sprouts. This entire meal would have been an experience in total gustatory virtue if it weren't for the fact that a big bowl of white rice came on the side, as is required by Japanese law, I'm sure. I really enjoyed it though, and would have had it again had I not been planning to leave the country pretty much forever in a few weeks.

A lot of the time was spent talking about our plans for the future. The older sister remarked during the end of our two hours there that she realized that she didn't really know the "real" me and that the "teacher" me was not truly me. I felt that this was particularly astute on her part as I'm sure few of our students realized this fact, though I guess even fewer got to spend two hours with me talking and not worrying about their impressions of me.

You can conclude that we are all wanted by the law for some reason (in Japan, it could be for not eating all of the rice they served) or that I'm trying to protect everyone's privacy.

Near the end of the meal, as we were enjoying coffee and tea in beautiful china cups, the people in the restaurant offered to take our photo. I wondered if this was like one of those things that used to happen in the 1960s and 70s when they'd take your picture and then make you pay for a copy of it, but they said that it was a free service and provided us with a card and the photo. The people at the restaurant were incredibly nice and professional. This wasn't even an especially expensive place, but the service was excellent. 

After sitting with these two lovely women and having the sort of conversation that you have when you're not a teacher and responsible for helping someone advance their language skills, I thought about how an opportunity had been missed. Since we were leaving, it was also one that would never come again. Of course, you cannot know how such goodbyes will go or what people will do until you try, and this was the best of all of the farewell social occasions that we had. Some of others were far more difficult and complex. (to be continued)

Random Memories #70 - the last weeks in Japan - part 2

Seiyu supermarket with shelves picked clean in the wake of the March 11, 2011 quake.

This is part 2 of short series on my final weeks in Japan. Part 1 is here.

As I mentioned in my previous post, as my husband and I headed for the wire on our planned departure - a date which was chosen three years ahead of time - there were some late complications in the form of the discovery of a tumor in my neck. There was, however, an even bigger event which threatened to upset the apple cart on our time line and that was the March 11, 2011 earthquake.

Though very few people knew well ahead of time that we were leaving (for reasons I mentioned before), our families had been told of our plans. When the big quake occurred and the subsequent nuclear crisis in Fukushima, family members were encouraging us to leave a year ahead of our planned time. The thinking was, since we were planning to go anyway, why risk remaining? 

The temptation to join the flocks of what people were waggishly refering to as "flyjin" ("gaijin"/foreigners who were flying away in the wake of the disasters) was present, but neither my husband nor I were really "ready" to leave on multiple levels. Dropping everything and running was possible, but we were neither physically nor emotionally ready to leave. Ironically, remaining for that extra year boosted our economic gains prior to leaving since I got an additional part-time job rather easily with all of the Western chickens flying the coop. We saved more money than expected in that final year.

At any rate, both of us lived in the crisis with the thought in the back of our minds that it would have been "nice" if all of this could have waited until after March 2012 instead of happening a year before we left. The truth is that we were glad to have toughed it out, but would rather have been spared. There remains a sense of living through a shared experience with the other inhabitants who endured the quake, but I'm not sure if it has enhanced my life in appreciable ways. Mainly, it's about a sense of solidarity with people who were also there. 

When I say "tough it out", I'm not only referring to the shortages in food, water, and, oddly, toilet paper or managing the jishin yoi (earthquake sickness) and the moments of panic at the multitudes of aftershocks. It was also being surrounded by people who were more scared than we were. The emotional impact of being surrounded by panicky people who had to be talked down all of the time was also stressful. I spent more energy calming my students' fears than my own and it wasn't alwasy trivial keeping a lid on my own nagging concerns about drinking potentially radioactive water or breathing in winds blowing from Fukushima's nuclear zone. 

Knowing we were going to leave anyway made the entire experience that much more complex. We were the least settled we'd ever been and the "stay or go" question was a very serious one and our quality of life, at least in the moment, was not especially good. What was worse was that we couldn't talk about this quandry with anyone except our families since our planned departure was essentially a secret up until the last moment. And our families, who had our best interests at heart and were concerned for our health and well-being, were, in the most subtle of ways, pushing us in the direction of leaving. 

In the end, we decided within a week of the Fukushima crisis to definitively remain for another year. Making the decision and pushing early departure off the table made everything easier as we did not have to occupy a state of emotional limbo. After a brief period of indecision, in which even Japanese people were trying to escape their own country, we decided to stay on schedule for our March 2012 departure.

(to be continued)

Random Memories #69 - the last weeks in Japan - part 1

OK, I lied. It was four suitcases and two backpacks (and my husband's jacket).

Time is a far more complex and odd business than we generally give it credit for. It can appear to move fast or slow. We have sayings which indicate that time moves rapidly when we're enjoying ourselves ("time flies when you're having fun") or glacially when we're waiting for something to happen ("a watched pot never boils"), but time is supposed to be a static thing which can be objectively measured.

Time can also appear to match our conception of self or be vastly divergent. There's a scene in the television series "Roseanne" in which the title character asked her mother how old she "feels" on her 62nd birthday. Her mother says, "62, I'm 62." This frustrates Roseanne because, inside, she feels 16 despite her middle-aged exterior. Sometimes we feel younger or older than we look. Though most tend to go the Roseanne route - feeling like a teenager in an old person's body - I have always felt like an elderly person in a young body. When I was 17, I felt like I was 70. If I thought I could know what it was like to feel over a 100 years old, that'd be where I am now at 49.

Of course, if you get into some theoretical Physics, they'll tell you that time can't be proven to exist at all. This has actually been my stance for many years. I think time is an illusion through which we experience this particular reality. That being said, even if it is simply some sort of imaginary prism through which we experience life, we cannot escape looking through it every moment of our lives on earth nor living through that reflection.

As of March 29, my two-year anniversary of returning to the United States passed by. I mention the experience of time because it has absolutely flown by and I feel like I have aged a decade in a short time. My time here has been filled with adjustments of all sorts, many of them logistical and experiential, but the hardest ones have been psychological. I would not be exaggerating if I said that being here has not made me happy. Despite this, I have never wavered from my firm conclusion that this was the right choice.

The truth was that I "knew" in 2009 that it was time to leave Japan. Everything between 2009 and 2012 was preparation in every conceivable way to go. Emotionally preparing myself to leave over a three-year time span was probably the best possible choice after having been there for 20 years (as of 2009). Logistically speaking, spending three years paring back possessions and changing our lives to be one oriented toward leaving rather than staying was just barely enough. It wasn't because we had so many possessions (though we did - but less than many people have), but just that it was so hard to divest ourselves of what we'd spent so long building.

It wasn't just "moving". It was dismantling our entire married life and much of our adult existence. Few people can really embrace what it feels like to intentionally throw away nearly everything you've owned. We took back four large suitcases. Everything else had to find a new home or be tossed out. We didn't ship back anything. That's a lot of memories to toss on the scrap heap. Most people leave some boxes at their parents' houses when they move on or take it all with them if they're old enough to have consolidated everything they've owned. We didn't have that luxury. If you sit down and truly imagine what it is like to throw away everything you own but what can be crammed into two suitcases (two per person in our case), then you can begin to understand how Herculean a task this might be.

The last two weeks in Japan were a whirlwind of getting things done after quitting our jobs layered with trying to squeeze in a few more journeys to places we'd never been but wanted to go, or places we'd been to and wanted to see once more. It was also full of incredibly difficult goodbyes. In fact, that last few weeks was so awful that it has taken me this long to write about it. It did not go as I'd hoped in many ways and was better than expected in others. Before it fades too deeply into the recesses of my memory, I'd like to write about it over several posts. Since it was one of the hardest experiences I've ever had, it's one that I want to remember.

I will start by saying that I had told my students that I was leaving Japan in March 2012 over a span of about a week in January 2012. Though we had planned this departure in the late spring of 2009, the truth was that there was a fallback plan in place all along and various life issues made the delay in telling necessary. We were committed enough to get things in order, but not committed enough to do anything that would irreversibly rupture our lives should we for some reason change our minds.

One of those things was not telling students until it was very late in the game because telling them earlier may have seen some of them deciding to abandon us as teachers. Though it would have been kinder to give them an enormous lead time, it would have been incredibly stupid economically, and a little premature considering we weren't at the point of no return until we actually purchased tickets to leave Japan.

The biggest factor in our decision not to tell them until January 2012 was my surgery for removal of a thyroid tumor shortly before Christmas of 2011. The fact that I even might have a tumor wasn't known until September 2011 and wasn't confirmed until November of the same year. Despite some encouraging pre-operation tests, I was told that they could not be certain that it was not cancerous until after they'd actually removed it and could do a little puree of thyroid gland.

Early tests indicated that it was benign, but there was no way to know for sure until after they'd done their slice and dice. If the tumor had been malignant, there was a very  high chance that we'd have to remain in Tokyo and I'd have to receive treatment for cancer. If that had happened, our planned departure schedule could not be kept. Indeed, we may have had to remain for much longer than expected depending on the prognosis. With no health insurance in the U.S., I could not go back home and get treated without going into deep debt.

The stress of leaving was greatly compounded by this uncertainty, not to mention the reality of having my neck cut open and bits of my original equipment excised. It was as if we'd been planning our ball game for three years and now someone was saying there just might be an enormous storm on the horizon which would indefinitely wash everything out. Telling my students that I would be returning to America in light of this 11th hour complication did not seem like a good idea from either side, so I told them only after the coast was clear.

Fortunately, for more reasons than one, we got to keep our date with destiny. I told my students we were leaving after I was told with certainty and finality that the tumor was benign. That was the green light from fate letting us know that we were good to go. It was confirmation of what I so strongly felt in my gut in 2009. It was "time" to leave. We were ready to move on, but not without some unforgettable final weeks.

(to be continued)

Random Thoughts: Leaving as a solid citizen

Foreigners are often roundly criticized for coming to Japan and not acting as "good citizens". This means that they don't pay their city taxes, health insurance, etc. nor do they sort trash according to the strict rules and guidelines of their areas. Unlike small cultural issues like cooking smelly food or being too loud, these things are more about government regulations than simply irksome cultural preferences.

Because my husband and I know that foreigners get a bad reputation for not taking care of business before they go and we want to be upright citizens, we have been making every effort to exit this country on the up and up, even if it costs us some money on the way out. What we have discovered is that the bureaucracy here makes it as difficult as possible. In some cases, you get the royal runaround such that you believe they would rather you gave up and left them alone. In others, there simply does not seem to be a tried and true path to completing things neatly under conditions in which you are leaving and never coming back. For those who are curious about how things work here, or those who may one day have to leave and want to also depart in compliance with all regulations, I'm going to talk about various aspects of extricating oneself legally and (hopefully) appropriately. Note that this is by no means a complete list, but merely the things we've faced as of the writing of this post. 

1. City taxes.

In Tokyo, there are what are referred to as "ku taxes" by the foreign community, or city taxes, that must be paid to the ward you happen to live in. If you lived in New York, it would be equivalent of paying borough taxes. These are above and beyond your federal taxes and like local taxes back home. They are actually a bigger chunk of your tax bill (10%) than your federal taxes (about 5%, but it depends on income) and one of the reasons foreign folks dread them.

City (or ward) taxes are tricky because they are not issued for about a year after you come to Japan. They are calculated based on annual income, but there's no income from which to make such calculations until you've been here and filed an income tax return. Note that many language school chains often handle this for their teachers, so many people who spend a year or so here as teachers for more paternalistic companies may never know about this. Unfortunately, even those companies who don't take care of such things (and many don't) don't tell foreign employees that they need to look after such things. If you're lucky, the accountant will offer a vague message about how not all of your taxes were deducted and you have to take care of the rest. You do not get any instructions about where to go, what to do, or what other taxes might be due. I didn't know ku taxes even existed until I had lived here for more than 8 years. No one ever told me at my places of employment and no one sent me a bill.

Because the tax calculations lag behind by about a year, it's not uncommon for a foreigner to blithely spend about a year here and then suddenly get a huge tax bill for about one month or so's income. You suddenly find that you need to pay 300,000 yen ($3,600) and many people don't have that sort of money just lying fallow in their bank accounts, especially in the first year when there are more expenses to set up a home and more money spent on sightseeing and enjoying the country and people. 

The lag means that when a person is leaving Japan, arrangements need to be made to pay the previous year's taxes. They are usually issued around June, but I'm leaving on March 29. In order to leave without an outstanding city tax bill, I went to the local government office and asked them to submit a bill for me now (meaning two weeks ago when I originally asked) so I could pay them. Considering the fact that I already filed my income tax form in February and got my refund deposited, they have all they need to calculate my income and taxes for the previous year. Apparently, that is not enough though. They essentially said they couldn't (or wouldn't) do it, nor would they forward the tax bill to me in America so I could pay them from there. The only conditions under which they would assist me would be to send the bill later this year to someone I know in Japan and have them pay it for me. If I did not have a contact here, then I'd have no choice but to leave and default on the taxes. They simply left no other option. Since many short-term visitors may not have a person who they would like to burden with this responsibility, is it any wonder many foreigners simply walk away with city taxes unpaid?

2. Postal forwarding

After we leave, we don't want the next tenant of our apartment to receive mail addressed to us, nor do we want the landlord to have to deal with it when said tenant comes to him and asks about it. The truth is that we receive almost zero mail of value in Japan anyway (just our bills and advertising), so we don't really care about the mail in general. Every personal and professional contact was given our contact information on a card and they know where to send things to us in the U.S. Setting up postal forwarding was only a courtesy and not for our benefit in any way. 

You would think that this would be simple because all postal services in all countries around the world should have basic address change procedures in place. That may be so for domestic mail, but when it comes to leaving the country, things get monumentally hairier. Before I launch into the full story, let me say that we live near the main ward post office and went there to conduct business. We did not go to some piddly little branch that rarely handles more than a parcel or two abroad a year. This is the central deal and is enormous and where you go for any serious postal business. 

Our first step in all of this was to call and ask what the procedure was. We were told that they would not be able to forward domestic mail from Japan to the U.S., but they would send international mail or parcels to us there at our own expense. Armed with this information, we went to the post office and were greeted with nothing but confusion about what we were talking about. We called information again and went to the post office once more on another day with the promise that the person who was telling us one thing would call the people and explain things to them. This time, we got the name of the exact form in Japanese. It's interesting to note that they were extremely reluctant to tell us the name of the form. However, on another day, we went back. A middle-aged woman took us into a secure area (with a locked entry and exit) on the second floor in which major sorting was being done and talked for awhile with the information people. They told us they didn't have the form and that we should come back on a particular day and they would have it. 

We returned on another day and they not only did not have the form, but told us that no mail forwarding of any kind was done between countries. They would only do it from domestic address to domestic address. At this point, we decided to give up on it all and just tell the landlord that we tried, but mail addressed to us may come after we leave. Later, we got an apologetic call from the information people we had been dealing with saying that they would get it straight next time. On our fourth visit, we were lead back up to the secure area again and finally given the proper form. With much waiting and other people talking on the phone, this process was finally complete (we hope) after four visits.

3. Health insurance

Health insurance is another thing that many foreigners are accused of abandoning as it operates on the same year-long delay as the city taxes. When we went there, we also looked into a refund document that I had been sent based on my medical expenses and low income last year. They kicked back about 40% of what I paid in costs and agreed to deposit it quickly because of our departure date. This was unexpectedly kind and helpful. 

We told them that I was leaving and they went off and said something about my having "overpaid". Instead of my paying them for the previous year's bill, they gave me back about 1300 yen ($16) and asked if I'd like to turn in my health insurance card then or later. I'm still not sure if they got what I was trying to do (pay what may be issued later this year), but that is what we told them we were there to do. I can only say that I did my best to pay what was owed, and that somehow I either didn't owe anything, or they didn't comprehend what I was saying and I will not have been squared away my "debt". I may, indeed, be a "defaulter" by Japanese government estimates, but not because I didn't make an effort to be otherwise. I couldn't exactly insist on giving them money or paying bills they didn't acknowledge will come in the future, so we left it at that.

4. Bank

There were two stages to our dealing with the bank. The first was transferring our remaining funds to our U.S. bank. We've done this about once every 8-12 months for the past decade and the process seems to take longer and be more fussy every time. This last time was no exception. Though the bank has full access to every bit of our information (and have our bank card and identification), they were unable to process our forms this time around without having our passbook in hand. In the past, they did not require the passbook, but my husband had to run home and get it as I sat there feeling sick with a pre-departure cold. This transfer took a full hour when it has taken as little as 15 minutes in the past.

I've read that Japan has been tagged as a country in which money laundering tends to occur and the Japanese government has demanded more and more information from people when they send money home. One of the boxes we had to check on the form was one promising we were not funneling our money to Iran, North Korea, etc. We also have had to state why we are transferring money the last 3 or 4 times we've sent it back. We always just say, "family reasons", which is true and vague. However, I have read blogs and comments by other people who are rather seriously grilled about the reason they're sending money back including being asked about family history (parents' address, jobs, etc.). We were not given the third degree, but if things keep getting tighter and we had remained, I wouldn't be surprised if that would have been our future as well.

The other stage of dealing with the bank was closing out the account.This was a far tidier affair, though still fairly time-consuming as I was issued a Japanese credit card about 17 years ago and it had to be canceled as well. After much fretting about whether or not all automatic payments that tapped into the card had stopped and filling out a few fairly simple forms, we were given our remaining funds and our bank and credit cards were cut in half in front of us. Of the processes we dealt with, this was the simplest.

5. Telephone (NTT land line and ADSL internet)

When it comes to bureaucracy, I'm guessing few businesses are as monolithic and rigid as NTT (Nihon Telephone and Telegraph). My husband and I refused to move ahead into the age of cell phones, so we did not have to cancel such contracts. Our situation was set up in the stone age of telecommunication. We purchased a land line 23 years ago for around $600 (54,000 yen). Yes, you heard that right. Back in the day, NTT sold its numbers to you for a huge fee. Ours was actually a "bargain" as the full price was around $800. Used lines, which ours was, were sold through classified ads or you could purchase a fresh, shiny new one from NTT directly.

As cell phones have taken over, NTT has pretty much lost the monopoly that allowed them to shaft people with this practice, but holders of the lines can't really sell them to anyone else anymore. They are worthless now, but if you want to disconnect from your line, you have to pay NTT $25 (about 2100 yen) in fees. The most economical way of dealing with it is to "abandon" the line. That means that you legally surrender the rights to the number and NTT can reclaim it and probably sell it to some sucker who still thinks land lines have value (I guess). At any rate, we were at least a decade and a half past recouping our investment in the line and just had to do a bunch of useless forms to say, "we surrender our rights to our number". NTT would not even consider cancellation of our service until we did this so we had to twiddle our thumbs waiting for them to do their paperwork.

After the line abandonment documents were received and acknowledged, we thought we were in the clear except for the DSL modem they "leased" to us for a monthly fee. The modem has to be returned to them, but they refused to send us the postage paid special bag so that we could send it back ourselves. They also refused to issue a bill and allow us to pre-pay prior to departure. No, the only way to leave on the up-and-up with NTT was to give them the address of a person in Japan and have them receive the bag, send back the modem, and pay the final bill. There was no other option but this or default on the bill. Obviously, we made the proper arrangements, but, again, if you have no trusted contacts in Japan, this would be difficult to arrange.

6. Gas, electric, water

My husband and I are very fortunate to have a great landlord who agreed to speak with these three utilities companies and help us arrange final payments. I'm not sure what would have happened if we had tried to do it ourselves, but he arranged for each of them to come to his home (he's our next door neighbor) and then ours on the day before we left to collect final payments in cash. They're going to calculate the bills to the best of their ability and shut off our gas (but not water and electric) on the evening of the 28th at around 7:00 p.m. (Note: these posts are written pre-departure and queued for publishing as I expect not to be in posting from the 28th-31st while I'm in transition to the U.S.). This isn't so strange as these things were turned on by the landlord when we moved in. He arranged for them before, so this may be something he handles for all tenants, or just special treatment for us. 

****************

All countries have their bureaucracy, and I'm in no way suggesting it is harder to extricate yourself from Japan than other countries as I frankly have no experience doing it anywhere else. I'm merely writing this post as a chronicle of my experiences and some of my efforts to depart as a solid citizen (this is not a complete list). I say that because I'm sure I'll be misunderstood and people will think that merely talking about the experiences implies that they I am saying they are extraordinary in some way. That is not my intention.

My impression of all of this is that anyone who leaves without a person who they feel comfortable saddling with their final bills and paperwork may simply decide it's easiest to blow this popsicle stand without settling their tab. Some people may simply have no choice. Most, I'd wager, have a way to make it work if they're tenacious enough and try hard enough. When I say that, I don't mean that they push the companies or bureaucrats to cooperate, but rather that they search far and wide for someone who can look after their interests after they have departed. That's the only area where effort is going to count. I didn't try to say, "if you don't send me my bill now, it won't be paid at all," but I don't believe that would change much. If anyone has tried that, I'd like to hear about their experiences and whether or not it worked.

Most people who come to Japan come with some sort of support system which likely handles all of this. When my husband first came to Japan (alone, pre-marriage), he did so as a contracted teacher for a a large language school chain. They looked after everything for him (except a phone, he never had one) including utilities, rent, taxes, etc. Many foreigners are shielded from these kinds of situations and never face having to extricate themselves from them depending on the types of jobs they do. This is another reason that people sometimes walk away from bills like outstanding taxes and health insurance. Someone else looked after it all and little magic fairies tidied up the mess for them.

I should note that the consequences of walking away without squaring away your debts doesn't just give all foreigners a bad name. It can also hurt your sponsor. The person or company who has your back for your working visa is ultimately responsible for your financial situation. One of my husband's former co-workers placed some folding screens that were in a rental apartment outside and they were destroyed from exposure to the elements and he disputed their value and his culpability. The landlord took 100,000 yen (about $1250) from his security deposit and he refused to pay his final rent in retaliation. He felt he was being cheated and this was a way to get back his unfairly taken deposit money. In the end, the person who paid was his former company. As his sponsor, they had to pay the outstanding rent.

I strongly dislike the notion that each bad foreigner makes it bad for everyone else. However, there is truth in the idea that people who did as my husband's former coworker did (leaving the company holding the bag) make companies decide not to sponsor their employee's apartments or create more Draconian contract conditions such as withholding final income until all debts are confirmed fully paid. Sometimes, people default because it's difficult to do otherwise even when you try your best to be a solid citizen (as my experiences seem to show), but sometimes people just rationalize away their bad behavior and depart knowing there is no way they will ever be held accountable. The arms of the law of Japan don't stretch over international waters.

Regarding the difficulty of leaving with all of your ducks in a neat little row, my feeling is that the Japanese paper pushers in some cases and as individuals working in soulless jobs with a lot of repetition would prefer that you simply not bother to wrap up all the loose ends. The Japanese government or companies, on the other hand, would like to get their dough. In the scheme of things, very little is lost to the entire country and it puts the workers who have to handle such special cases in a bad position of trying to do something they rarely need to do and therefore do not have procedures in place to handle. Walking away leaving things hanging is easier for them to process than pushing them to try and figure out ways of making things work. This is a country which acculturates people into the notion that they do what they are told, follow the rules, and do not substitute their own judgment when there is a gap in the procedures. It also means that they are forced to go up their byzantine chain of command to try and find non-existent answers to your questions. That may be the way it is everywhere in the world, but I think that it's more common for people to adapt and be flexible back home. I guess I'll find out about that soon enough. 

Random Thoughts: Leaving On a Jet Plane

The two faces of Japan. For that much, the same two faces are present in every country. 

Some time ago, my husband and I started talking about leaving Japan. That was, to the best of my foggy recollection, at least six years ago. As I may have mentioned in one of the over 800 posts I've written for this blog so far, or in another personal blog some time ago, we knew we were never going to be here "forever". In fact, we were offered the chance to apply for permanent residence at the immigration office about 12 years ago and declined because that was not what we had in mind.

Deciding to leave is quite different than contemplating departure. Many people urged us to go after the March 11, 2012 quake, but we were not yet "ready" to leave. There is a time for everything, and we've been waiting for that time to come for a long while. This blog was created, perhaps in part, as a way of finding my way emotionally to that point. It has been and will continue to be a review of my experiences here, both psychologically and experientially. It has helped me take account, remember, and notice. It has helped bring me to this point in time. My husband and I are leaving Japan after nearly 23 years for certain. The tickets have already been reserved and paid for. We are going on March 29, 2012. 

This decision came on the heels of a lot of personal changes including some very tragic and hard ones related to our families, but mainly it is driven by the fact that we are ready to move along to the next phase of our lives. Our deeper contemplation of the path our lives has taken and should take relates quite smoothly with Erikson's Generativity vs. Stagnation stage. In fact, without realizing it, we fell right into that age range when we started contemplating departure. Frankly speaking, we are happy in Japan. We love many things about it and in many ways, our lives here are better than they have ever been and that is part of why it is time to leave. We've hardly experienced everything there is to experience nor seen all there is to see, but from a personal growth viewpoint, this is as far as we believe being here is going to take us. Other people may find life here endlessly challenging, but we all have different goals and needs. My husband's and mine are taking us back home, finally. We could stay and be happy, but relatively stagnant in the areas that matter to us personally.

Though I'm only blogging about this now, the decision was made before this post was written. I didn't want to announce it publicly until all of the people who deserved to be told face to face had been notified. That mainly meant students and employers, but others as well. This was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do because it feels like a betrayal to leave them. Some of my students cried. I wanted to cry, too, but didn't because that would only have made it worse. All I could say was that I was sorry, and that it wasn't an easy decision nor one that I was overjoyed about. I'm ambivalent about leaving for many reasons and one of those is the relationships with the people I have here. Much as many people believe English teachers are floating garbage that should be skimmed off of the pristine beauty of Japan and thrown away, I know that I've had a great and positive impact on people's lives in ways that strangers would never believe were possible and the people I've met have had similar ones on me. A handful of Japanese people didn't want me here and let me know it. Far more wanted me here and would prefer that I not go. This is a good feeling, but it makes what we're doing all the harder.

In terms of what this means for this blog (as that is really the point of this post rather than my sentimental blathering), it really doesn't mean much at all because I'm going to finish my 1000 posts regardless of where I am. At this point, I'm having a hard time coming up with "won't miss" posts though since the decision to leave has me deeply mired in sentimentality and seeing what I will miss, but I'm sure that it'll all come along at a pace as time goes by.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll stay with me for the duration.