Sweet Justifications

In exactly four months, I will no longer be living in Japan. It’s such a strange fact for me to ponder. It’s even more strange for me to ponder that fact that I’ve been here more than five years.

Why Japan? After university and a year of intensive language training in the Czech Republic, I was determined to start a grad program in Russian and East European studies and journalism. My dream was to become a professor of REES with a focus on changes in media and journalism education in the former Soviet Bloc. If that didn’t work out, the back-up plan was to become a REES section librarian and spend all day digging up the answers to difficult questions posed to me by curious students and, of course, reading all the REE-related histories, biographies and travel tales ever written.

I didn’t have the money for grad school, not to mention the confidence to even freaking apply.

I kinda bummed around for about 10 months, working a crap job and having lots of fun with friends but doing a lot of damage to my self and my future in myriad ways. Finally, I decided to buckle down, move in with the parents in Virginia and start looking for a real job in DC and work on those grad apps.

Just a month or so after I moved, I called an old friend in Texas and she told me that one of her old uni professors called her to ask if she wanted to work at a university in Japan. She was in the middle of a PhD program, however, and didn’t want to leave it.

“Wait!,” she thought out loud, “The school is also looking for high school teachers. You don’t need a master’s for that! You could go!”

My friend called the professor, the professor called me and then the Japanese recruiters (also grads of my uni) called me. By the end of the evening, I had a job! A real, decent-paying, cool job! A real, decent-paying, cool job halfway around the world.

Why didn’t I hesitate? Well, I had a lot of experience tutoring English to Czechs and I’d long considered teaching secondary school and I had a very close friend teaching English in Japan and another long-time e-mail friend doing physics research there… it just seemed perfect. And it also seemed like a good way to spend a year saving money for grad school and polishing those applications.

I went to the living room to tell my parents about my new job. I was a little scared. I hadn’t been home long at all. I’d spent two years in the Czech lands. I had other plans for my life. I hadn’t consulted with them about this!

My father was thrilled and ready to book the tickets right then and there. Not tickets for me – tickets for him and my mom!

My mother, who had often discouraged me from teaching in the States, thought that teaching in Japan at an all-girls school would be a great way to enter the field. After all, who could ever have any problems teaching a group of quiet, polite, clever and studious Japanese teenagers? Hah!

Two weeks later, with the support of my parents and two very heavy pieces of luggage, I left for Japan.

After that it’s all a very big blur.

I was literally thrown into the classroom with nothing more than a textbook and an attendance chart. When I called the students’ names and they replied “Hi!” I thought they were just being friendly. I hadn’t even had enough time to learn that “hi” is actually “hai” and it’s the Japanese word for “yes”. Talk about green!

I lived in school-owned apartments with other foreign teachers from various English-speaking countries. I traveled around Japan every free moment I had. I started taking Slovak language courses in a nearby city, just to keep up with my REE studies. I chatted on-line in Czech to keep up my language skills and I refused to learn any Japanese so as not to confuse said language skills.

I signed on for another year.

And another.

And another.

I made life-long friends of all nationalities. I learned how to teach English as a Second Language. I learned more Japanese than I ever wanted to. I ate foods I never thought I’d allow to pass my lips. I got over myself and started to strip down to my birthday suit and bathe with hordes of other women – and sometimes men – in the hot springs. I studied tea ceremony and learned how to move gracefully with every small thing I do – even washing dishes! I came to respect (and question) many of the rules of Japanese society.

I fell in love… and never really fell out. I watched a baby being born and attended a wedding in the park, under the cherry blossoms. I spent crazy, wild, alcohol- and fun-filled afternoons at Japanese pro baseball games and evenings at food stalls with lecherous, but very generous, old men. I visited remote, pristine islands and overcame my fear of sea creatures – except for the whale that swam right under our boat. I learned to downhill ski pretty darn well.

I figured out how to navigate Tokyo on my own. I passed a Japanese driving test and learned to drive on the opposite side of the road and avoid hitting small children walking to school. Well, that one took a couple of tries. The test, not the avoiding hitting children!

I taught a group of siblings in my free time and was rewarded with fresh vegetables from their grandmother’s garden, homemade plum wine and a birthday party in my honor… where they performed and sang “Amy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Another student and her family gave me an expensive summer kimono, complete with purse and undergarments and sash. I received two more summer kimono and gorgeous pearl earrings from my school.

I was yelled at and spat upon. In a crowded train. While everybody else stared at their shoes. In a bar, I was scolded – for an hour – by a Japanese man for the way my (white) people treat the black people in my country. I had a brief run-in with the police. I saw hundreds of Japanese penises. NOT by choice, I might add. I lost my will to live (had nothing to do with the Japanese penises!) and I regained my will to live. I was humbled by my experiences being, for the first time in my life, the minority.

I paid 100 bucks to sit in the nosebleed section and watch a Czech opera that I would have paid nothing to see in Prague. And I would have had box seats! Then I did it again with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra!

I left my first job and moved to the remote countryside. I negotiated with the moving company and they cut their estimate in half – and threw in a free bag of rice! I learned how to use chopsticks and slurp my noodles with crazy mad skill. I introduced this amazing country to seven (soon to be 10!) relatives and several friends. I found a job that I love and, I believe, I’m good at. I found my voice and my reason for being.

I grew up. (a little)

Who and what would I be now, if I never took that first job?