Blast from the Past - Gaijin Chronicles

Bamboo forest, Kyoto

Well, isn't this a step back in time…

In 2007-2008, Sean and I went to Japan to teach English. Well, actually, HE went to Japan to teach English, I just hoped to get a job once we were there.

While we were there--and before I was blog-savvy--I wrote a series of posts and sent them to friends and family via e-mail. I called these (ir)regular emails the Gaijin Chronicles. For various unknown reasons, they'd been on my mind a lot lately, and quite coincidentally Sean found and restored most of the Chronicles while looking for something else on the computer. I spent much of today reading them, and wonder why the heck I never finished. I think I got busy, and I think that I figured they were boring. In reading them again, I did NOT find them boring--granted, I'm not objective, but I liked them enough I thought I might re-post them.

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to post them up on my blog, because even friends and family who have read them already might find them interesting, and for those who haven't read them already, well, you might find them interesting, too.

What I plan to do is post one of these regularly, but I also thought it would be fun (at least for me) to annotate each post with additional thoughts, anecdotes, and reflections. In addition, I'll be going through our copious photos of the time, and may even provide some new stories along the way--and I will certainly do my best to finish them all, though I stopped at quite a strange (and busy) time. I'll do my best!

It's interesting to see my evolution through the year. As a girl who's heart had always been set on Europe and had NEVER considered Asia, I was slightly less than enthused to go. Oh, I was excited because I'll go just about anywhere to see the world, but it was Sean's dream, not mine. Flying alone and completely ignorant of the language, I was intimidated, anxious, and perhaps even a slight bit resentful. This obviously colored my first entry, which I started while I was waiting for my connecting flight to Osaka in the Seattle airport. Reading it now, it almost sounds forced to me… I can remember trying to cover my trepidations with an attempt at almost grating humor.

And so I present Issue 1 of the Gaijin Chronicles. Any photos used throughout these postings (there may be as many as 50 or more by the time I'm done) are mine or those of my family/friends. Mostly ours, though there have been some photo swaps, and I can no longer tell whose is whose. Also, I won't make any significant edits to any of the posts… I'll only correct typos or other minor errors.

Enjoy!

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Minority Ad Nauseam 

First off, I have never really had an interest in visiting Japan.  When I realized that Sean’s dream was to go and teach English, I began to encourage him (even before we got married) to apply to the Japan Exchange in Teaching (JET) program.  After all, there’s no better time than now, right?  No kids, no real debt, “no worries.”  In the interest of moral support, I also applied to the program.  When Sean got accepted into the first round of the approval process and I did not, my thought was “oh, great.”  When he went all the way through and got placed in Kobe City, my next thought was a panic-stricken “oh, crap!” 

But, I continued on, at least pretending to be supportive (Sean understood), seeking employment and even turning down an offer to teach for a private institute (funny how having an employer being served an injunction by the Japanese government sours one’s taste for potential employment).  Not finding anything that suited our needs, and being assured that employment is ridiculously easy to find once you’re in the country, I found myself in Spokane on a Saturday morning on a wing and a prayer—and waiting very impatiently for a hazelnut latte that was taking longer than the Exodus.

After grabbing a dish of fruit that shockingly didn’t cost as much as, say, Canada, and with my “guaranteed-not-to-regurgitate-any-in-flight-meals” patch tucked conveniently behind my ear, I navigated the Disney-land style ropes cordoning off the security zone, endured a TSA agent’s attempt at humor, and safely made it to Seattle on a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy, puddle-jumper.   After checking the monitors, I was relieved to find out that I would not have to switch terminals.  I was even more relieved that everything appeared to be on time. 

So, having an hour or so to kill before boarding, I decided to get something to eat.  What I really wanted was a nice burrito, or something of the Mexican persuasion.  I mean, come on!  How many Mexican joints are there likely to be in Japan?  After making a clumsy circuit of the terminal twice, I was forced to come to the conclusion that I was out of luck.  Glancing at my options (a bagel shop, a sports bar, Burger King, or Starbucks), yearning for something that I could pretend had nutritional content, I was once again forced to submit.  The line for the bagel shop appeared to be moving at a rate slightly speedier than a glacial recession, and the line for Starbucks was longer than a State of the Union Address.  Burger King it was. 

A young Japanese woman with thigh-high black velvet boots teetered past me on recklessly high heels.  And that’s what she wore flying.  While negotiating a busy international airport.  While she ate her burger.  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I thought.  Open minded as I try to be, I will never be able to absorb that bit of fashionable Japanese culture.  I simply don’t have the skill or raw athleticism required.  With a sigh and a small shake of my head, I set off to find a women’s restroom that was slightly less busy than Tokyo Station.  Yeah, right.

After fighting the masses in the restroom (I should have donated one of my “guaranteed-not-to-regurgitate-any-in-flight-meals” patches to my neighbor, if you know what I’m saying), I found myself a nice cozy seat among the even greater masses at the gate.  And that’s when it hit me.  Surreptitiously glancing at the faces around me, I realized (no shock to you, the enthralled reader, I’m sure) that most of the faces surrounding me were Japanese.   And what’s more, most of the babble around me was Japanese.  And the nice gate people were making their announcements in—you guessed it—Japanese.    I was outnumbered.  My ability to eavesdrop on conversations was gone.  And for the first time in this whole adventure, I began to wonder how ready I was to become a true minority.