Returning to Japan: Kyoto

I've been spending quite a bit of time lately talking to my little German brother, Steven, who left his life in Mannheim for a year to come to the US. After a few months back home, he's discovering what I found when I moved home from Japan. When you drop your whole life to immerse yourself in a new experience -- a school, a job, a journey -- it comes at a price. The friends you make in your new locale aren't there to bolster you up when you get home, and the time away has distanced you so completely from your old friends that they are worse than strangers. Steven's life, like mine, is now gloriously shattered by the social San Andreas of "living abroad."



We all compartmentalize our lives: work, friends, relationships, family, that crazy summer with the traveling circus; but in normal, healthy lives, we have cross-over. Our coworkers meet our friends who hang out with our boyfriends who make awkward appearances at family gatherings and so forth. Those subtle links bind our experiences together into one collective mass we call: Life. Without them, we become scattered, disjointed; instead of being multifaceted, we become multi-lived. The problem with Dissociative Life Disorder is that whatever side of your life you happen to be on becomes dominant, reducing its counterpart to that slippery, half-imagined state of dreams. Kind of like the way we all felt about Top Gun after this.



Returning to Kyoto this summer, I was a bit apprehensive. I had been away for three years, and in that time, I wasn't sure how much I had romanticized my experiences there. Kyoto was the epicenter of my life in Japan -- not just a city where I lived, but a city where I fell madly and irredeemably in love. In love with the play of light on the Kawaramachi; with the clatter of bamboo in the wind; with narrow, snaking alleyways and a thousand little bridges; with the startling white glide of a crane; with soaring orange tori and ten-story buildings dripping with neon; with the lullaby rock of subway trains; with 7-Eleven sushi and one very well-worn blue sweater. In love with a lifestyle, with a rhythm, with an aesthetic, with a man. I was afraid that returning to Kyoto might shatter its magic for me -- might flip the garish house lights on after an enchanting show.



Instead, I discovered that even my most vivid memories didn't do any more justice to this incredible city than snapshots do to a mountain range.



Kyoto embodies the best of Japan -- a deep reverence for tradition interlaced with freshness and vitality; a startling juxtaposition of nature's stillness and the steady urban buzz; a cultural character that is rich, unique, and always surprising.



I should not have worried about Kyoto disappointing me. Coming back was like coming home, not just in the familiarity of the winding streets (a maze I long ago committed to memory) but because the rhythm of the place was once the rhythm of my life, the way an old song always takes us back to ourselves. I felt this way as my students and I entered Fushimi-Inari and as we made the steep climb up to Kyomizu-dera, but more than ever I felt myself coming home in the fervent embraces of old friends, in an icy beer and a bowl of edamame, in a smokey bar at three a.m., and in the well-worn, quiet comfort of friendship that time cannot fade.

The Merging of My Passions

The first time I traveled abroad, I was fifteen. I went to Monterrey, Mexico to do relief work in an orphanage for two weeks. The following year, I returned to Mexico, and when I was seventeen, I spent a month in Honduras. These early experiences with travel were central to shaping how I think about the world.



Any English teacher can tell you that we teach a great deal more than grammar and literature. We teach kids how to think about life, the universe, and everything. To some degree, that's true of all teachers -- I'm looking at you, Social Studies Department -- but in English class, this is at the core of what we do. What is literature, after all, if not a centuries-long conversation about the human condition? We let our kids in on what hundreds of voices from innumerable backgrounds have said, and if we're good, we encourage them to make their own contribution.



Because the time I spend traveling has such a powerful impact on me, I tend to tell my students stories -- sometimes comical, sometimes profound -- about the places I've been, the people I've known, the weird things I've done or seen or eaten. I consider it part of my job to pass along to them what I know of the bigness and richness of the world. Perhaps the most important part of my job.

This June, for the first time, I was able to do that in a very tangible way by taking a group of my students on a ten-day trip to Japan.



Not only did they get to experience first-hand a great cross-section of Japanese culture -- like a karaoke parlour and dinner in an izakaya and yes, even spotting a dreaded mukade -- they also got to see places I'd shown them photos of and meet some of the people who star in my best stories.

What's more, at quite a young age, they've already been to the other side of the world, seen a culture very unlike their own, and gotten a taste of what kind of adventures the world might hold for them if they're willing to go out in pursuit of them. I can't think of a teaching experience more rewarding than that.

あ、い、う、え、お。。。

I've been home from Japan for a year and a half now. I can count on one hand the foreigners I know who still live there. The company I taught for there has gone bankrupt. The guy I lived with there is engaged to somebody else. None of this should make me too fussed, since I'm still in touch with the people I like, the company was shite, and as for the ex... well, more power to him.

Still, it's weird.

For months after I got home, I was convinced things in Japan were just as I had left them. My friends would talk about people coming and going, but in my head every aspect of life there looked just the same. I often toyed with the idea of going back, imagining I would find my opal earrings on the corner of the coffee table, just where I had forgotten them on the day I flew home.

Enough time has gone by now that I am thoroughly over these delusions.

My work here keeps me constantly on my toes in a way that is only a pain in the ass 7% of the time and pretty entertaining the other 93%. The Boyfriend is a superstar who keeps me entertained and out of trouble. And if the almighty Admissions Board wills it, I’ll be starting work on my MFA in the fall. Far from settling down as I may be, I finally feel settled in my own life -- the American version of it.


Boyfriend on our epic PCH adventure

Of course, it is in this moment that Japan has come strolling back into my life in full force.

Just before Christmas I received an email from a colleague at school. Unlike me and all of our coworkers, she actually reads our union's monthly newsletter, and in it she’d seen something she thought might interest me – a tiny ad seeking chaperons for an American/Japanese exchange program. My interest piqued, I checked out the website. In short, it was perfect.

I stayed awake until three o'clock that morning writing my application essay.

Not three days later, my mother called me from a dinner party and insisted I come over. The hostess, who has recently moved here from the Philippines, had invited a couple of friends from her English class. As fortune would have it, they were Japanese and delighted to learn that I had been to the fair Nippon.

What's more, they wanted to do an infamous "language exchange" -- a very popular pastime in Japan, but not something you hear about that often on this side. Still, I decided it was a good idea. My 日本語　is downright rusty, and if I have any intention of going back to Japan, もとべんきょうが　ひつようです (I need more practice). To that end, I've been hanging out with them regularly and getting back to the basics of Japanese. I am astounded by how much I've forgotten so quickly, but piece by piece it's slowly coming back.

Last Saturday I interviewed for the exchange program position, and it went swimmingly. I had the interview committee on the edges of their seats -- laughing at my jokes, nodding in pensive agreement at my profound statements about cultural education, and so on. They were eating out of my hand. As soon as I hear back from them, I'll update you.

I'm not sure where all these new endeavors will take me, but I promise I'll bring you along for the ride.


Hikone Castle, April '06

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On a side note, if you follow my adventures regularly, here are some upcoming travels to look forward to: I have a shamelessly wealthy aunt and uncle whom I'll be visiting in Florida in early April. Look for photos of their private chateau & yacht and stories about fancy food right here. In July, I'm attending a convention in Seattle. This'll be my first time in the infamous insomniac city, so expect late-night posts and a detailed description of my trip to the original Starbucks. Also, since I already told you how perfect The Boyfriend is, I might as well throw in the fact that he's taking me to Hawaii in August. Jealous? I knew you would be.