two days!

For the last few days I've had an incessant queasiness in my stomach that seems to intensify whenever I think about packing or the fact that one week from today I'll be half way through my second day of work. A rough self-diagnosis concludes: reality is beginning to settle in. The fact that I'm actually leaving for Japan in less than two days is finally feeling like just that--a fact--and the excitement and anxiety concentric with this realization are making me physically ill.

This day was filled mostly with a great deal of last-minute shopping for omiyage (gifts to present to my bosses and co-workers in Japan) and was highlighted with the excitement of a new haircut. I feel that the new 'do corresponds nicely with my upcoming transformation from a post-college freeloader living with my parents for the summer to a mature (but still kinda funky) English teacher working in Japan. Perhaps you will understand what I mean:


Old me (immature)


New me (very professional)

two weeks?

Stalkers: you’ve got your work cut out for you. Exactly two weeks from today I shall board a plane at LAX and fly across the Atlantic Ocean to Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan. In Japan, for the next year of my life, I will be working for the Moka City Board of Education as the Assistant English Teacher (AET) at Yamazaki Junior High. As the days dwindle away until my departure date, I wonder how long it will be until the reality of it actually sets in.

I’ve spent the majority of this largely uneventful summer putting off the looming obligation to start packing or at least to begin considering exactly what from my nearly 23 years of life I can cram into two 50-pound pieces of checked luggage and one carry-on. When I went to the Japanese consulate in downtown L.A. last week to get my visa, I had a moment where the immediacy of my future suddenly threatened to overwhelm me. As the man at the passport window to my left spoke rapidly in Japanese to the woman behind the counter, a sense of anxiety swelled up in me as I realized, all at once, that I really have no idea what the hell to expect when, before the month is over, I arrive at my new home and workplace. I don’t speak Japanese. I don’t know much about Japanese culture. I don’t know how to teach a classroom, let alone a classroom in Japan. In the waiting room of the Japanese consulate, I realized that I was scared––a realization I quickly squelched by forcing myself to focus on more immediate concerns, like the backpacking trip I would be leaving for the following day. This worked nicely. No more anxiety. No more nervousness. No more helpless ineptitude for grasping the pervasively advancing unknown. Just me looking forward to five days of hiking in Sequoia National Park.

But now the backpacking trip is over. I’m forced to accept that the next major event in my life is moving to Moka. I’m sort of terrified. But, even more than that, I’m excited. And even more than either of these, I’m just plainly incapable of grasping the reality that I’m actually going to Japan.

What it comes down to, I’ve accepted, is this: whether I can believe it or not, at this time next month I’ll be standing in front of a classroom of Japanese preteens and attempting to smooth out for them the rougher points of this one peculiar language that is so highly coveted around the world. Two empty suitcases sit on the floor of my bedroom and I have fourteen days to fill them up. Somehow, this seems like too daunting of a task to get started on quite yet. I put it off by composing the first entry of my Japan weblog.

So here it is: a little place on the internets where you can, if you so desire, track the events, thoughts, and habits of my daily life as an AET in Moka-shi over the upcoming year. As I expound on the details of my life, continue to keep in mind that the opinions and ideas expressed in this blog are in no way intended to reflect those of the Moka Board of Education or the Glendora-Moka Sister City Program. And, while we’re at it, please don’t draw any conclusions about Americans based on my ignorance and ethnocentricity; don’t judge Christians on account of my frequent failure to live according to the teachings of Jesus; and don’t judge women on account of my occasional regression into passivity when I ought to be a strong leader. All that being said, I hope you will enjoy this blog. I write it for you.

Peace,

Meghan