Look! I was once a baby-faced youngster too!If this blog were an LP, this would be the point where we take things down a notch and give the wailing guitars, throbbing drum solos and head-banging vocals a rest in favor of something a little softer, and perhaps more emotional (wait, I don't have emotions). Kind of like "Wild Horses" on Sticky Fingers, except that's the one Stones song I really dislike, so if I'm going to stick to this metaphor, maybe I should go with "Indoor Fireworks" off King of America if I am to also be consistent with the title for this blog... but then not everyone's going to know what I'm talking about. Umm... "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" off The Ramones? "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)" off Speaking In Tongues (though I prefer the live version from Stop Making Sense)? Okay, fine, I listen to a lot of old music and I could strain this metaphor all day long because I never get enough opportunities in my day to let my music snob flags fly. The point here is that this is where I attempt some public introspection (which sounds like a contradiction in terms) and not rely on Michael Bay explosives or Godzilla to carry a post for me. I mean, I even gave myself a damn epigraph, lifted from one of the greatest Mad Men scenes.
What's struck me - and quite honestly, kind of disappointed me - the most since I've been here is the fact that I haven't had a moment where the idea that I'M REALLY IN JAPAN has smacked me straight across the face. I thought it might come when I saw all the signs written in Japanese in Narita, or cleanliness of the trains, or even just buying my first tea out of a vending machine, but thus far, it has not. Even as I write this, I'm eating something called "Noodle Goo!" though my best guess is that they meant to write "Noodle Good!" since this is no more than a regular instant ramen with no actual goo of any kind involved; this is a fact that only slightly amuses whereas a few years ago I would've been taking pictures and writing to people "can you believe this??? Goo is good!" I think my host father put it best; after I had been with them for about a day back in Nagoya, he turned to me and said something to the effect of: "I overheard you and Okasan talking this morning and it made me very happy. I was worried it would take some time for you to get used to things here, but really it's like you never left." And honestly, that's about how I feel; that even 5 years on, I'm just picking up where I left off, and moving beyond just the flash of the glittering neon sign of JAPAN to becoming able to make equitable, unbiased judgments.
I've been here for over a month now, and I have been trying to mentally compare where I am now to where I was at this time 5 years ago. As much as I make fun of myself for using these arbitrary distinctions of time to mark periods of my line in order to then draw connecting and self-referential lines between them, I still find it somewhat effective in trying to decide how I have changed over the course of time and honestly examine whether that change has been for the better. Change is a given, but whether it was good or bad is tricky since "good" and "bad" means different things to different people. It would be just as easy to make the argument that I've come a long way in the last 5 years as it would be to say I may have covered a lot of distance, but most of it came in the form of chasing my tail and falling over dizzy. In this case, however, I think by picking this 5-year mark (though that annoying voice in the back of my head is like, "What's the difference between 5 years and 4 years, 5 months, 27 days and 48 seconds? How can you even be sure you're measuring correctly?") because my reactions to Japan in both instances are markedly different, and it's not because Japan has changed (though certainly it has), but because I have.
There is one moment I remember that I relive every single time I call it to the forefront of my mind. It's from the morning after I first arrived in Nagoya in August of 2005. Our sensei had been there the night before to pick us up and whisk us off to the airport without us having to so much as utter a word of Japanese to anyone, and I was just so jetlagged and exhausted that by the time I checked into my hotel room that I just passed out until early the next morning. I got myself cleaned up and then wandered downstairs to get my complimentary breakfast, and I can remember clearly just how bright the morning was and how fresh everything felt as I sat down and ordered a 和食 (Japanese-style) meal, in Japanese of course. I can almost taste the air now that I am thinking about it. I was soon joined by a couple of my classmates, and after we finished eating we wandered around the area near our hotel, and I distinctly recall feeling new, that I had woken up as a different person better able to accept the adventure that was about to come. I do not remember this so sharply because of what I saw that morning (seriously, it was just sitting in a small restaurant, and then wandering out to a drug store), but just that feeling... any time I think about it, I feel some of it again and know I'll never forget it. There's a quote from Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections I want to use in here, but I don't have access to the book and I can't recite it verbatim. Basically it's about how a child as punishment for refusing to finish his dinner is forced to stay at the table long after the meal has concluded, and how even years on that character would remember that moment because he had always been sitting at that table; that it was like staring at the sun for too long and suffering exposure to "time's raw passage." I certainly have memories like that as well where the cringe of humiliation or shame of punishment will come back to me instantaneously at the moment of recollection, but at least with this first Japan memory it never fails to bring a smile to my face.
On the flip side of this, I also know that at that point in my life I was really only able to color in crayons, which is to say there were no shadows, textures or dark corners, but rather a bright, 2-dimensional image much like you'd create in a child's coloring book. Thoughts, emotions, and morals were all pretty black-and-white (ugh, I should be mixing paints here, not mixing metaphors), that there were no shades of grey between good and bad, right and wrong: it just was without any qualifications. Call it the Ayn Rand effect, as it would be another couple of years before I would start to laugh at her as I do now. It may sound like I'm criticizing myself, but I accept that it was the way I could understand this entirely foreign set of circumstances, and if I had to overemphasize that my life was white to get it through my head that there was no point in feeling sorry for myself any more (junior year of college was particularly rough on me for a number of reasons), then so be it.
As I've already suggested, my first day in Japan this time around was a bit different. There was no one waiting for me at the airport, no one to shuttle me to my hotel, and no one to make sure I got to my apartment in one piece. Probably the one thought I had the morning after I checked out of my hotel was "IT IS TOO FUCKING HOT" as I got lost for 2 hours hunting around for my apartment building because I had the goddamned map turned upside down. But even if I hadn't been ass backward and walking in circles only blocks away from where I wanted to be, I would not have had the same stars in my eyes as I did the first time around, unless those stars were floating in front of my eyes because I was about to pass out from heat exhaustion. Things are different this time around: I'm not here as a college student, I'm left to take care of myself, and I am of course, if not more mature, then a lot more cynical and realistic. It's weird to say that because I know that at the time I first came abroad I thought of myself as pretty cynical, but that just goes to show you that I hadn't even seen the half of it yet.
There's a part of me that misses being that girl, when I didn't have to qualify and analyze everything, when my thought process and value system allowed things to be so much simpler. Lately I've also been having flashbacks to 2 years ago when I was just starting graduate school and going out for runs in the misty Seattle afternoon near Cowen Park, listening to Rockpile's Seconds of Pleasure (an overlooked pop gem, but I'll save that argument for another time), and just feeling new again. It was the first time I was truly living alone, and I was soaking in the freshness of the whole situation. And I miss that girl too, as things were quick to turn sour later on for me for a number of smaller reasons and one BIG one, and perhaps her reaction to Japan would also be different. It's funny that I'm listening to Big Star's Radio City right now since this is an album that has seen me through the emotional tumult of grad school, and it's an album that hasn't really lost its shine for me either. I'm always glad when one thing doesn't change but rather - for lack of a better expression - the artfulness of its construction allows the songs to evolve with me, though unfortunately we had to lose both Alex Chilton and Andy Hummel this year.
Anyway, I think I am kind of losing my main point here, and I need to find the wherewithal to pull this all together. In many ways, I attribute my first experience in Japan as catalyzing my push into adulthood, as before I was riddled with insecurity (wait, how am I different now?), and pretty much avoided social contact as much as possible because it gave me such anxiety. I was definitely not bar-hopping and singing The Divynls on stage in those years. And because I've had to grow-up and grow-up quickly over the last 5 years (let us not forget that there are also 2 miserable years working thrown into that mix where I had to learn to deal with office politics as fast as I could if I planned on staying afloat), there is no way that I could ever see Japan as I did as a 21-year-old. Instead I now have to take that picture I first created and give it dimension and texture. Things will never be as they were, except for in my mind where those experiences remain suspended in time. And I mean, it says a lot that the two memories I cite above all seem to center on that feeling of newness and simplicity, more than I'm willing to delve into here. This is just a blog, after all. Suffice it to say that I do wish I were less cynical and skeptical, but even despite those defining personality traits, I have still been pleasantly surprised by a number of things since I've been here (cockroaches and leaky washing machines notwithstanding), just not in a way where the edges are rimmed in a rosy glow. The teachers are great, the students are fun, and my Japanese has improved, and for that I am thankful. Otherwise, I just want to get through the day and make the most of what I've got because I wouldn't be here if I hadn't fought for it.
This was exhausting. I'm not entirely sure I said everything I wanted to in the way I planned ("Let me get this straight: you're telling me that you want to write something, not just anything, that says something about something... Gee who'd ever believe you're having trouble communicating?"), and it's making me wonder if I haven't left those that have made it this far into this missive pleading as Elvis Costello does in one of the songs I'm referencing in the title of this post, "Sometimes I wish I could stop you from talking when I hear the silly things that you say..." But you know, sooner or later you've got to face the big light.
* * * *
And now for something completely different: have I ever mentioned how much I love Looney Tunes? Apparently they're coming out with a DVD collection of essential Bugs Bunny cartoons, and that set me off on yet another spree of Looney Tunes on Youtube. I'd forgotten just how much I love "Rabbit of Seville" as it combines typical Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd absurdity with one of the first classical songs I ever listened to on repeat.
And of course since Bugs runs around in a dress (I'm guessing someone out there has done a thesis on representations of gender through Bugs Bunny, and if not, I think it's time I changed my dissertation topic), I started thinking about Wayne's World and Garth's quote about finding Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress a played a girl bunny, which unfortunately I can't find in a playable form here in Japan, but maybe people in the US can watch this:
Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com
Aaaaannnd I'm back to relying on pop culture references. Thinking is hard, yo.
What's struck me - and quite honestly, kind of disappointed me - the most since I've been here is the fact that I haven't had a moment where the idea that I'M REALLY IN JAPAN has smacked me straight across the face. I thought it might come when I saw all the signs written in Japanese in Narita, or cleanliness of the trains, or even just buying my first tea out of a vending machine, but thus far, it has not. Even as I write this, I'm eating something called "Noodle Goo!" though my best guess is that they meant to write "Noodle Good!" since this is no more than a regular instant ramen with no actual goo of any kind involved; this is a fact that only slightly amuses whereas a few years ago I would've been taking pictures and writing to people "can you believe this??? Goo is good!" I think my host father put it best; after I had been with them for about a day back in Nagoya, he turned to me and said something to the effect of: "I overheard you and Okasan talking this morning and it made me very happy. I was worried it would take some time for you to get used to things here, but really it's like you never left." And honestly, that's about how I feel; that even 5 years on, I'm just picking up where I left off, and moving beyond just the flash of the glittering neon sign of JAPAN to becoming able to make equitable, unbiased judgments.
I've been here for over a month now, and I have been trying to mentally compare where I am now to where I was at this time 5 years ago. As much as I make fun of myself for using these arbitrary distinctions of time to mark periods of my line in order to then draw connecting and self-referential lines between them, I still find it somewhat effective in trying to decide how I have changed over the course of time and honestly examine whether that change has been for the better. Change is a given, but whether it was good or bad is tricky since "good" and "bad" means different things to different people. It would be just as easy to make the argument that I've come a long way in the last 5 years as it would be to say I may have covered a lot of distance, but most of it came in the form of chasing my tail and falling over dizzy. In this case, however, I think by picking this 5-year mark (though that annoying voice in the back of my head is like, "What's the difference between 5 years and 4 years, 5 months, 27 days and 48 seconds? How can you even be sure you're measuring correctly?") because my reactions to Japan in both instances are markedly different, and it's not because Japan has changed (though certainly it has), but because I have.
There is one moment I remember that I relive every single time I call it to the forefront of my mind. It's from the morning after I first arrived in Nagoya in August of 2005. Our sensei had been there the night before to pick us up and whisk us off to the airport without us having to so much as utter a word of Japanese to anyone, and I was just so jetlagged and exhausted that by the time I checked into my hotel room that I just passed out until early the next morning. I got myself cleaned up and then wandered downstairs to get my complimentary breakfast, and I can remember clearly just how bright the morning was and how fresh everything felt as I sat down and ordered a 和食 (Japanese-style) meal, in Japanese of course. I can almost taste the air now that I am thinking about it. I was soon joined by a couple of my classmates, and after we finished eating we wandered around the area near our hotel, and I distinctly recall feeling new, that I had woken up as a different person better able to accept the adventure that was about to come. I do not remember this so sharply because of what I saw that morning (seriously, it was just sitting in a small restaurant, and then wandering out to a drug store), but just that feeling... any time I think about it, I feel some of it again and know I'll never forget it. There's a quote from Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections I want to use in here, but I don't have access to the book and I can't recite it verbatim. Basically it's about how a child as punishment for refusing to finish his dinner is forced to stay at the table long after the meal has concluded, and how even years on that character would remember that moment because he had always been sitting at that table; that it was like staring at the sun for too long and suffering exposure to "time's raw passage." I certainly have memories like that as well where the cringe of humiliation or shame of punishment will come back to me instantaneously at the moment of recollection, but at least with this first Japan memory it never fails to bring a smile to my face.
On the flip side of this, I also know that at that point in my life I was really only able to color in crayons, which is to say there were no shadows, textures or dark corners, but rather a bright, 2-dimensional image much like you'd create in a child's coloring book. Thoughts, emotions, and morals were all pretty black-and-white (ugh, I should be mixing paints here, not mixing metaphors), that there were no shades of grey between good and bad, right and wrong: it just was without any qualifications. Call it the Ayn Rand effect, as it would be another couple of years before I would start to laugh at her as I do now. It may sound like I'm criticizing myself, but I accept that it was the way I could understand this entirely foreign set of circumstances, and if I had to overemphasize that my life was white to get it through my head that there was no point in feeling sorry for myself any more (junior year of college was particularly rough on me for a number of reasons), then so be it.
As I've already suggested, my first day in Japan this time around was a bit different. There was no one waiting for me at the airport, no one to shuttle me to my hotel, and no one to make sure I got to my apartment in one piece. Probably the one thought I had the morning after I checked out of my hotel was "IT IS TOO FUCKING HOT" as I got lost for 2 hours hunting around for my apartment building because I had the goddamned map turned upside down. But even if I hadn't been ass backward and walking in circles only blocks away from where I wanted to be, I would not have had the same stars in my eyes as I did the first time around, unless those stars were floating in front of my eyes because I was about to pass out from heat exhaustion. Things are different this time around: I'm not here as a college student, I'm left to take care of myself, and I am of course, if not more mature, then a lot more cynical and realistic. It's weird to say that because I know that at the time I first came abroad I thought of myself as pretty cynical, but that just goes to show you that I hadn't even seen the half of it yet.
There's a part of me that misses being that girl, when I didn't have to qualify and analyze everything, when my thought process and value system allowed things to be so much simpler. Lately I've also been having flashbacks to 2 years ago when I was just starting graduate school and going out for runs in the misty Seattle afternoon near Cowen Park, listening to Rockpile's Seconds of Pleasure (an overlooked pop gem, but I'll save that argument for another time), and just feeling new again. It was the first time I was truly living alone, and I was soaking in the freshness of the whole situation. And I miss that girl too, as things were quick to turn sour later on for me for a number of smaller reasons and one BIG one, and perhaps her reaction to Japan would also be different. It's funny that I'm listening to Big Star's Radio City right now since this is an album that has seen me through the emotional tumult of grad school, and it's an album that hasn't really lost its shine for me either. I'm always glad when one thing doesn't change but rather - for lack of a better expression - the artfulness of its construction allows the songs to evolve with me, though unfortunately we had to lose both Alex Chilton and Andy Hummel this year.
Anyway, I think I am kind of losing my main point here, and I need to find the wherewithal to pull this all together. In many ways, I attribute my first experience in Japan as catalyzing my push into adulthood, as before I was riddled with insecurity (wait, how am I different now?), and pretty much avoided social contact as much as possible because it gave me such anxiety. I was definitely not bar-hopping and singing The Divynls on stage in those years. And because I've had to grow-up and grow-up quickly over the last 5 years (let us not forget that there are also 2 miserable years working thrown into that mix where I had to learn to deal with office politics as fast as I could if I planned on staying afloat), there is no way that I could ever see Japan as I did as a 21-year-old. Instead I now have to take that picture I first created and give it dimension and texture. Things will never be as they were, except for in my mind where those experiences remain suspended in time. And I mean, it says a lot that the two memories I cite above all seem to center on that feeling of newness and simplicity, more than I'm willing to delve into here. This is just a blog, after all. Suffice it to say that I do wish I were less cynical and skeptical, but even despite those defining personality traits, I have still been pleasantly surprised by a number of things since I've been here (cockroaches and leaky washing machines notwithstanding), just not in a way where the edges are rimmed in a rosy glow. The teachers are great, the students are fun, and my Japanese has improved, and for that I am thankful. Otherwise, I just want to get through the day and make the most of what I've got because I wouldn't be here if I hadn't fought for it.
This was exhausting. I'm not entirely sure I said everything I wanted to in the way I planned ("Let me get this straight: you're telling me that you want to write something, not just anything, that says something about something... Gee who'd ever believe you're having trouble communicating?"), and it's making me wonder if I haven't left those that have made it this far into this missive pleading as Elvis Costello does in one of the songs I'm referencing in the title of this post, "Sometimes I wish I could stop you from talking when I hear the silly things that you say..." But you know, sooner or later you've got to face the big light.
* * * *
And of course since Bugs runs around in a dress (I'm guessing someone out there has done a thesis on representations of gender through Bugs Bunny, and if not, I think it's time I changed my dissertation topic), I started thinking about Wayne's World and Garth's quote about finding Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress a played a girl bunny, which unfortunately I can't find in a playable form here in Japan, but maybe people in the US can watch this:
Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com
Aaaaannnd I'm back to relying on pop culture references. Thinking is hard, yo.
Unfortunately, that initial sense of wonder never really comes back, no matter the circumstances surrounding your next visits. However "Wow, I'm really here" moments will creep up on you, even a decade later. Japan represents similar things to me, but I can't actually translate those into helpful advice or commentary.
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