An Oldie but a Goodie

I was browsing through some old pictures today and came across this little gem from last year. It made me smile, so I thought I'd share it.


I've actually had several junior high school students assume that my name ought to be spelled "Mergan." Don't ask me why.

This is gonna be tough.

I found out today that I can't cry and speak Japanese at the same time. When I tried, only strange sound combinations came out of my mouth. Hopefully those present just assumed I was speaking unfamiliar English.

Today I had my last visit to Yamazaki Minami Elementary School. Somehow I thought it would be easier than last Friday's final visit to Nishidai Elementary; it wasn't. The minute I walked through the front door of the school this morning, a fifth-grade girl spotted me and began imploring, "Please, don't go back to America." By the end of fourth period, when the same girl erupted into sobs and the teacher and some of her classmates joined in, I finally gave into the pressure of the moment and let the tears fall. When the principal came by the room after the lesson to thank me for my hard work, I found myself temporarily rendered mute. Finally, I managed to squeak out a "Thank you." In English.

I know that a lot of it is just to be polite: the teachers going on and on about how much they will miss me, the principal telling me that she felt she and I had made a special connection, the children shyly passing me letters that thank me for all the "fun English" I taught them over the past two years. But each of these gestures strikes a resonant emotional chord in me. To them, my going home to America is a bit sad; but, from my perspective, it's my whole life. They are saying goodbye to just me; I'm saying goodbye to hundreds of children and their teachers, all of whom have held an integral role in constructing my experience in this country. I feel so much pressure--most of it coming from my own end--to imbue these final days with meaning. To make every moment count. But each goodbye I say is a little unsatisfying: there's no momentous sense of moving on from one era of my life to the next. It just sort of slips sloppily by, with a few sniffles, an awkwardly elongated procession of bowing, and me, regretting that I don't know the proper formulaic Japanese phrase for this sort of situation, settling with just saying that I'm grateful, and then not even doing that properly.

As sad and difficult as it is to say goodbye, both today and last Friday, as I rode my bike down that specific route home from elementary school for the last time, there was also a sense of relief at being done. Even though, over the last year, my elementary school visits have transformed from something to be dreaded to my favorite part of my profession, I'm still very unsatisfied with my job in general. At junior high school I'm rendered useless by the main English teachers' determination to exclude me as much as possible from the actual practice of teaching. And, while elementary school proves to be much more personally rewarding in the fact that I get to design my own lesson plans and teach most of the lesson on my own, maintaining a physical energy and vocal volume sufficient to hold the attention of a classroom full of young children is so exhausting that I could never see myself sticking with it long-term. I'm looking forward to being finished with all of it.

But I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye to two more elementary schools and--the big kahuna--Yamazaki Junior High School, where I've spent Monday through Thursday every week for the past two years, developing relationships and learning a lot about Japanese culture and about myself. I'm planning to give my goodbye speech in Japanese. I just hope, when it comes time for me to do so, I'm able to get the words out.

The Way It Is

Here is an excerpt from a recent email I sent to a dear friend...

I'm really starting to feel done with being in Japan. Certainly, the prospect of saying goodbye to the place and the people that have constituted my home for the past two years is sad. There are lots of things I will miss. A lot. And I could certainly see myself living in Japan again some day, if the right job and community presented itself. But this really hasn't been the environment "for me." I feel bored and discontent. Most mornings, I dread going to work. And many evenings I dread coming home, too. I've been wondering a lot lately whether it was a good decision for me to stay a second year. It's probably been the most difficult year of my life. But being in Japan for twenty-two months has been way more meaningful than being here for just eleven months. I feel like I've learned so much (and un-learned plenty, as well), that I couldn't have accomplished in America. And I'm sure I'll continue to process and learn from my experiences here long after I've left Japanese soil.

I'm looking forward to coming back to California. I'm gonna buy a car. I'm gonna be in my sister's wedding and help my other sister plan hers (yeah, both my little sisters are getting married within five months of each other). I'm gonna visit friends that I haven't seen for a year or two or even longer. I'm gonna try to figure out what to do with my life (not as exciting a prospect, currently, but still, I'm optimistic). The other day while I was bored at work with nothing to do, I made a list of the most important stuff I want to accomplish in the two months after I return from Japan. Visiting you was definitely on there.

Get ready, America. You'll be seeing me real soon.

May Day Surprises

To get into the spirit of spring, I made these little bouquets to leave on the doorknobs of unsuspecting gaijin friends.


I would have loved to have made some May Day bouquets for my Japanese friends--despite them not knowing what May Day is--but there's just one problem: I don't know where any of my Japanese friends live. Inviting one's friends to one's home is not common practice in Japan. Dinner parties are always held at restaurants. And, well, when it comes down to it, my house is just a preferable place to hang out. It's much more spacious than your typical Japanese apartment. And who could fail to appreciate the added bonus that I don't have any grandparents living with me?

Japanese-y Creations and the Sources of my Inspiration

Let me just say that I feel as though I've completed an important rite of passage. I have stepped over the threshold into a new realm of personal identity. At last, I can call myself a true cook. I have made ice cream. From scratch. Without a machine. And it was delicious.

This is kurogoma (black sesame seed) ice cream. Since the first time I sampled this unique flavor a little less than a year ago, I've been enamored with the distinctive creamy-nutty quality that makes it, quite possibly, my favorite flavor of ice cream (Maybe even better than mint-choco-chip. Just maybe.). And, if the taste weren't already enough cause to hanker for a bowl of icy goma goodness, top it off with the exciting bonus of getting to eat something that looks like it should have just come out of a cement mixer. See the full recipe here.

Tonight, however, my creative juices flowed not through culinary canals, but rather into a reservoir of of a more crafty nature. A few days ago, after thoroughly admiring some innovative scrapbooking techniques by giddy giddy, I was all pumped up to make a shadowbox/scrapbook/diorama/collage of my own. Well, shadowboxes are lots of fun, but tonight I only had the energy to make one, rather than a full-on collage of shadowboxes. My own creation ended up looking very Japanese: it kind of reminds me of a butsudan, a Buddhist family alter found in Japanese homes. My version, of course, is not explicitly religious; rather, it commemorates a small paper crane that was anonymously left in my bicycle basket and which I discovered, with much delight, as I was leaving school one afternoon. Anonymous gifts from students are the best. Even if it's just origami.

From the Yamabeguchi Bus Stop

Leaving day. Shigemi drove me up into the mountains so I could see a spectacular view of the town from above. Rice paddies were stacked like a giant staircase up the hillside. It’s hard to imagine the effort that must go into growing food up there on such steep terrain, and the enormous amount of work that went into leveling these “steps” out in the first place, hundreds of years ago.

On the way up the mountain, I saw a house of similar age and architecture to the one I’ve been staying in the last five nights, only the one I spotted had a straw, rather than a tin, roof (Shigemi told me on the day I arrived that the tin roof had been installed about twenty-five years ago). There is a different kind of life going on here, one that I don’t usually get to witness in the booming metropolis (or so it now seems) of Moka.

The amazake that I spent eleven hours making yesterday turned a bit sour, which means that the temperature dropped below 50°C while it was cooking. I don’t mind the sourness so much – in fact I rather like it – but I know it’s not the way it’s supposed to taste, and so I feel a bit bad that the family is now stuck with the rest of the batch.

I’m waiting at the bus stop now. The bus should be here in about ten minutes. It feels like I just got here, and yet the time before I arrived (i.e. Nagasaki) seems so long ago.

Wonder-full.

Now, at last, I understand the reason for the existence of quarter tones. I will never be able to relive this moment. A realization that’s been plaguing me all day: I am in Japan, and in four months and two days, I will not be.

This is real Japan, with a realness that I’ve been utterly missing out on for the last year and a half: the click-pop of the strings of the sanshin as I warm my legs beneath the blanket of the charcoal-heated kotatsu. I am living in a world that I never could have dreamed existed in even the most imaginative years of my childhood.

Japan. It has tortured and changed me. I have loved and hated it in almost equal measure. What will I be, exactly four months from now, when I say goodnight to my last day on this island for who knows how long? Perhaps I will never come back. I am prepared for that. But, oh! I will miss this country so much!

Today was Good Friday. It was also the last full day of my homestay on a Japanese farm, organized through the network of the WWOOF program. Through email, I got in touch with Shigemi, the woman of the house, and we agreed that I would come stay with her, her 86-year-old mother, and her two teenage children for a certain period of time, during which I would work on her farm in exchange for room, board, and a chance to learn a little bit of what she has to teach (which is a lot).

I almost didn’t come. Standing in front of the ticket machine at the train station, I nearly decided that it all sounded too difficult and I was feeling too homesick and depressed lately, and I just wanted to go home. I had a bit of an emotional breakdown. I called Josiah and told him I was having second thoughts. He encouraged me and, in the end, I went ahead and bought that train ticket. And, wow. I am so glad I did. I learned things I never expected, like how to prepare takoyaki (bits of octopus fried in batter and rolled into spheres about the size of golf balls) and that, if your house is cold enough, you don’t have to refrigerate perishable food but can just leave it out on the kitchen table for days at a time (the house was definitely cold enough). The entire experience was a little bit miserable. But it was also a little bit life changing.

Just a little.

Shigemi finished practicing the sanshin and put it back in its case. When I said, “Maybe this is my only chance to ever hear this instrument played," she replied, “No! When you go to Okinawa you will find that they have one in every house.”

When I go to Okinawa? Yes, I suppose I do want to go. “Yes,” said Shigemi, “you have to go.” It seems that every word of conversation that passes from Shigemi to me is a bit awkward, but it's also laden with wisdom. I nodded. "Okay," I said.

After five days, I’ve just about come to like being here. But five days was enough. Or, maybe, it was more than enough. Maybe it was everything.