I had one of my worst days in Japan so far today. And it should really have been a good one - in fact, several good things happened and I will share a few anecdotes later, but all in all it was pretty terrible. The following run down is bad enough to sound cliche. You'll be expecting most of the twists and turns. However, it's not the sum of the individual events that made this a terrible day, it was my mindset trend lending its slowly revolving spiral to this day's accelerating affects.
I've known for a little while now that I miss home. It's not in passing - I miss America. I miss the midwest. I miss English. "O Home Beloved" has been playing through my mind for the past week. Maybe the knowledge that my parents are coming soon has triggered this longing. (I tried writing a haiku in Japanese about yearning for one's homeland on Monday). Or maybe it's been the stacking months void of tombstone pizza, colby and cheddar cheese, pop tarts or chicken patties. Cereal. There are a lot of staples that I've had to go without. For sure it's been missing friends. I want to hang out and have fun with the people that I love and I can't do that.
And my work environment has been stressful. It's such an unknown. It's difficult to know if I'm moving in the right direction or accomplishing goals. I never really hear anything so I don't know if I'm doing the right thing or the wrong thing, and if I'm doing the wrong thing, are people just being "Japanese" and not telling me? I wish I could read the social clues. I'm having a hard enough time learning the verbal language, am I ever going to understand the non-verbals?
I care too much what people think about me and it stresses me out. I'm never trying to upset anyone or step on any toes or do something wrong, but obviously I'm going to fail at several points simply because I'm living in a foreign context (and I'm human). But add on top of that the fact that I don't know how people are going to respond or what they are going to think or what they'll tell me, if anything. Back in the states I at least felt like I had the social aspect of life together - I was socially attentive, I could read situations and figure out what was happening, I was generally well-liked and respected, and I felt in command. I could take initiative, be responsible, be independent and be productive. Now I'm a toddler in a 24-year-old's body getting paid $30,000 a year to have my hand held. It's really frustrating and it makes me feel guilty to be constantly helped at work. I feel like I'm being a burden.
Tuesday we had a field trip. I went with the second year kids to Hamamatsu (a 2 hour drive or so) to go clam digging. (I'm not kidding). It was a great experience, and I have a bunch of pictures so I'll show those to you later. But it also meant I couldn't work on my lesson plans all day and I was going to be taking my scooter (gentsuki) license test today so half of today was supposed to be shot too. So I'm getting nervous and edgy already about getting stuff done on time.
Today began. I got up quite early to be ready for Furuya-san who was picking me up at my apartment at 7am. Today being Wednesday I normally would be at work, but I had taken nenkyu (paid vacation) until 2:15 so that I could use my morning to head down to the driving center to take my gentsuki test. The test is really inconvenient because you have to register between 8:30am and 9:30am on a Monday thru Friday and then start the test at 9:30. So I had to wait for a day when I didn't have any morning obligations. Today I didn't have class until 2:15 so I figured I'd be fine.
Well we make the 1hr 15min drive to the nearest driving center and I pay my $15 to get registered for the test and we wait and then I head up to the testing room and 2 different employees move me around to 3 different desks before everyone's settled in and they give a bunch of instructions in Japanese that I don't understand and I fill in some numbers and then they hand out the test. 52 questions and I have to score a 90%. I had purchased the English study book a few weeks ago and read through it 3 times, studying the gentsuki parts very closely. Yet on this administered test there were several questions whose answers were not found anywhere in the study book. I was getting nervous. It was in English, and I'm very grateful for that, but the translation wasn't perfect. One of the questions didn't even make grammatical sense. It was actually really, really hard - I had to repeat many questions over in my head several times to make sure I understood what they were asking. Afterwards I thought I had failed for sure and would have to make this whole trip down to the center another day. Furuya-san was more confident. His surety was based on the fact that my testing number was 007. My opinion was based on actual experience where I remembered having my butt handed to me by a series of twisted sentences. We were waiting in the lobby for the results to come in. Soon enough they flashed the numbers of those who passed up on a screen - 007 was on the list! I gave a shout and Furuya-san a high five. I had done it, I had won! Now all that was left was paying for my license and I'd be back to work.
How little have I learned in the past 9 months.
Soon after I pay another $16 and "volunteer" 12 more (I was told about some kind of program for teaching elementary kids traffic safety and that it would cost $12 and I said "no thanks" and the lady just looked at me in shock and Furuya-san said I better pay the volunteer money because that's what Japanese people do) I'm herded into a classroom where I learn that I have to attend classes that will last until 3:15 before I will be issued my license. I was shocked. I had a class to teach starting at 2:15, I couldn't stay for the classes. But if I didn't stay, I'd have to do this over again. And Furuya-san would have to take another whole day to take me. But if I stayed, I'd have to miss the class I was supposed to teach and inconvenience my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) and Sarah (the other ALT). I was stuck. And with my mental state already ground into a fine powder, this lose-lose breeze sent me scattered.
I kind of knew that I really had to stay, but people at my school said I really should come back, that I needed to put my students first. That made me upset because I love my kids and have always tried to build them up and care about them individually and know and use everyone's name and what they're interested in and good at. They're what keeps me ticking when I'm at work. (It's certainly not planning curriculum...shudder, another taihen situation this spring). I just felt so bad because I knew I was letting people down and I also was worried about what people would think of me skipping out on work when I said I was going to be back. I worry too damn much about what other people think - I wish I didn't care. It makes it harder knowing that I'll never really be sure what people think because most Japanese people aren't going to give an honest answer. My JTE ended up saying it would be ok if I stayed, but I'm not sure if she was just saying that. Later on this evening when I finally got back to school I asked a different teacher if she was upset with me for skipping out on work. She said she wasn't personally upset but she worried because my JTE had said it was ok but that Japanese people will say things are ok when really they're not. This is what one of my Japanese teachers told me. If even she couldn't figure out if my JTE was mad or not, how am I ever supposed to know what they're thinking?
So you see the circles I start playing out in my head and then all of a sudden I'm looking at people out of the corners of my eyes trying to analyze their gestures and plot their movements because I think they're holding a silent grudge - this is not a good place to reach, and I realize I need a paradigm shift to work my way out of it.... anyways, on with the day.
Furuya-san did his best to encourage me and tell me everything was going to be fine, and I made a long phone call to my dad to talk through the situation and that was encouraging. I was convinced to just enjoy my afternoon of gentsuki class since I was staying and there was nothing more I could do about work. The afternoon was the bright spot in my day - maybe too bright since I had been sunburned on Tuesday while clam digging and now I was spending another unexpected afternoon in the sun's fierce rays. This was annoying, but I was determined not to let it ruin my fun...
We were pretty much stuck at the driving center for lunch, and the only food available was a la carte pastries sold by some lady out of her car in the parking lot. My stomach grumbled on. At the end of the classes Furuya-san drove me back to my apartment. I arrived at 4:30, 9 1/2 hours after I left for this license excursion. If anyone had told me beforehand that it would take 9 1/2 hours to get a scooter license I wouldn't have believed them. And if I had, I don't know if I would have come to Japan. Certain things can be so damn inconvenient. I really have a hard time imagining every single Japanese person having to take off an entire day of work just to get a diver's license. But I guess that's the way it's done. Once at home I was starving. I needed to get to school asap to try and salvage some relationships, so I just boiled some water to make instant yaki soba. When I went to pour off the excess water the top fell off and all the noodles fell into the drain in my sink. I swore but stayed calm and moved on, deciding to get something to eat at the convenience store on my bike ride to work. (You'd think I'd ride my gentsuki since I just got my license. But alas, my school won't give me permission to drive it to or from work because they say it's too dangerous - even though many other teachers drive gentsukis.) I ate my meal of ham steak on a stick and fried rice with soy sauce outside the convenience store and continued on to school. Once at school I answered a few e-mails, organized the pile of papers that had collected over the past day (biofuel farmers got nothing on my school when it comes to clearing forests) and talked with my teacher about missing school. I tried lesson planning for awhile, but couldn't find the teacher's manual that I had been working out of for one of my classes and got pretty discouraged looking EVERYwhere for that gosh darn book. I finally packed it up at 7:30 thinking that I could work on my lesson plans at home. (You can see how far I got on that project based on the length of this entry and the time of publication). Once at home I really just wanted to relax and clear my mind for once in this day so I hopped on my gentsuki and booked it up to McDonald's about 15 min. away. McD's was pleasant, however it started to rain when I was eating so I rushed through it and jumped back on my scooter to get back home. I of course wasn't wearing any rain gear, and my passport, cell phone and electronic dictionary were all in my pockets exposed to the rain. It started to pour. And it poured. I stopped under a bridge to try and wait it out since I couldn't hardly see anything and was afraid of getting run over or hydroplaning and dying. As I was waiting by the side of the road a car zoomed past me way over the speed limit and sent a giant wave of water over my entire body and bike. It was incredible. And that's when I finally lost it. The expletives have been left out of this publication.
I made my way swearing all the way home and into my house I peeled off my soaking clothes and set up my passport to try and get aired out - I hope the electronic chip in it still works. When I took off my sweatshirt I noticed my favorite white t-shirt (the monkey on a surfboard one from Horan Hall) was stained with big black splotches from the dye in my leather jacket. Here's where I started to cry for the first time. I really felt sorry for myself. I wanted to come home. (I guess I still do - reliving this day through words on the page calms my expression, but it isn't changing my resolve.) I took my t-shirt and my sweatshirt to the washing machine to wash them immediately and found that the load I had started before I left for McDonald's had tilted and quit with a bunch of soap suds in it still. And it had drained water on the floor. So I had to restart that load and hold off on my clothes with stains setting in. With the laundry started again a new round of swearing began during the mopping of the floor. And when I burned my thumb on an instant package of rice round 2 of my bout of crying began. That's when I said screw it to getting anything productive done at sat down at my computer. (Halfway through typing this my computer froze and I had to type part of it over again).
This day just isn't letting me go.
Well, deep breaths I guess. The encouraging words have come scattered throughout this day - I hope I can talk some more positive into me tomorrow. For now I have to sleep.
Luther
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