GAETSS, Update 3
LETTER TO JASM, OCTOBER 2008
When I decided to sit down and right another update, I couldn’t believe almost a whole month had passed since the second quarter ended! For my lateness, I apologize, but the extra three weeks have been sufficient time to realize that I’ve made great strides in different aspects of my life. Not only have I traveled with my study abroad group to Kyoto, but I’ve also forged my own path to Osaka, Koya-san and Ise for a whirlwind three-day adventure, gathering interviews along the way. Approaching strangers is difficult enough in English, but my Japanese held up to the pressure (much better than my continence to the stress of traveling, at least).
The ensuing time, in which I’ve conducted another interview, reconnected with an exchange student I met in elementary school, taken a midterm in Japanese, and received confirmation of my registration for the JLPT, has been plenty to realize that my language skills have truly improved. I’ve been willing to admit along the way that I’ve matured academically and emotionally, but it was truly a surprise to see how much language facility has actually improved. In the most recent chapter of my textbook, I read a two-page essay about America’s first contact with Japan; I learned the words for shipwreck, Japanese isolationism and whaling vessel and also realized that I can comprehend sentences written in passive and causative-passive when I previously struggled to distinguish them both from the potential form.
As excited as I am to see my language skills progressing, some days I still feel like I’m getting nowhere. I can proudly recall words like hyouryuusha and taiheiyousensou, but I recently had to look up “wet” and “dry” because we’ve yet to learn them in class. So, while I’m pleased with my academic comprehension, some days at the homestay are still a trial. I talked with my host-mother about the American presidential election with relative ease, but when I forgot which button to press to dry my clothes quickly, it became a guessing game of charades and katakana-Japanese. Fortunately, the host-siblings are content to talk about the newest Sanrio characters and their love for Japanese pop bands. My fifth-grade sister can still out-read me, but I showed up the younger in a game of “who can make the craziest face.”
Aside from the language, I’m becoming accustomed life in Japan in smaller ways. In Osaka, I was completely taken aback when I was expected to stand on the right side of escalators while people passed on the left. In Nagoya, people stand in what I’ve come to think of as the “Japanese” way, i.e. everything opposite the way it’s done in the United States. Around town, cars feel like they’re driving on the correct side now, and walking on the left feels normal. Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out sidewalk etiquette, which caused me to graze a passing bike just this week. But one day before I leave, I’d like to be able to navigate a street without breaking out in a nervous sweat. If can’t, at least I know how to say hokousha.
HOMELESS COLLEGE STUDENT FOR THE HOLIDAYS
I’ve been thinking a lot about Tennessee lately. Maybe it’s the awkwardly chilly - but not quite cold - weather, the extremely premature Christmas decorations, or the mysterious smell of an October bonfire in my neighborhood in the middle of November. I’ve realized many things about myself, and ignored just as many, since being here, but I never thought that I would come to the day when I would realize that Tennessee is home. It’s not where my intellect is, or where my ultimate desires lay, but it’s the place that nurtured me for most of my life; it’s the place that made me want to leave for bigger, better things, and maybe ultimately where my heart is. A Dexter Freebish feels especially close to home these days, when I think that I may actually want to go back sometime. Incidentally, I haven’t lost all of my feeling for Chattanooga, but California can certainly expect to see more of me than the Volunteer State.
Now, though, sitting in Starbucks on a cold evening listening to Christmas songs with an intimate group of four, or walking home from school in the rain, as opposed to the snow, reminds me all too sappily of sitting in Rembrandt’s with Abigail, too close to the New Year to be hanging out alone, or walking along the Walnut Street Bridge hoping that next year I’ll have someone with whom to share the experience.
So thinking of home is always a bit bittersweet for me. There are the terrible times when my parents fight far too loudly, the ridiculous times when I work at a coffee shop inside a hospital and then leave to go drinking at my boss’s place, and the times that define my existence; driving down I-95 at ninety miles an hour, blasting “Gold Digger” and rapping with the windows rolled down, studying Japanese at Barnes & Noble for four hours when I just can’t stand being in the house any more, smoking cloves on the bank of the Tennessee River after a particularly annoying shift. Those are the times I miss even when I’m in Minnesota.
Seeing Christmas lights as I walked home from school this evening reminded me that I’ll neither be here nor there, as it were; neither in my real home nor in the place that has so lovingly become such in the past two years. There won’t be eggnog or Mannheim Steamroller. I already forgot the date of Thanksgiving and called my parents a week early. I’ll be with my sister, but it feels like little consolation. Being away from home for consecutive Thanksgivings was nothing, but knowing that I’ll be going to a Japanese middle school to help teach English on Christmas Eve and day couldn’t ever possibly feel right. Those days are reserved for family things, quiet reflection, not fried chicken and a Christmas cake. I wonder if I can make pineapple stuffing in a Japanese so-called oven; do they even have the ingredients?
I’m not even sure if I miss home or simply the prospect of going back to warm places and the usual routine of work (at a coffee shop), coffee shop, another coffee shop and finally to the house with a perfect view. Having my mother tell me she didn’t expect to see me for another summer or winter break only reinforced the feeling that I’ve left for good. No one could believe I worked away from home for a summer, left directly for a foreign country for four months where I would spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas and then spend another semester away from Tennessee. It felt so natural, staying away, and allowed me to appreciate having a car to drive, a steady income and a room of my own.
Maybe I made the unconscious decision to leave home long ago, but it wasn’t until this season that I realized I’d done so. I intended to escape Tennessee, not leave it entirely behind.
When I decided to sit down and right another update, I couldn’t believe almost a whole month had passed since the second quarter ended! For my lateness, I apologize, but the extra three weeks have been sufficient time to realize that I’ve made great strides in different aspects of my life. Not only have I traveled with my study abroad group to Kyoto, but I’ve also forged my own path to Osaka, Koya-san and Ise for a whirlwind three-day adventure, gathering interviews along the way. Approaching strangers is difficult enough in English, but my Japanese held up to the pressure (much better than my continence to the stress of traveling, at least).
The ensuing time, in which I’ve conducted another interview, reconnected with an exchange student I met in elementary school, taken a midterm in Japanese, and received confirmation of my registration for the JLPT, has been plenty to realize that my language skills have truly improved. I’ve been willing to admit along the way that I’ve matured academically and emotionally, but it was truly a surprise to see how much language facility has actually improved. In the most recent chapter of my textbook, I read a two-page essay about America’s first contact with Japan; I learned the words for shipwreck, Japanese isolationism and whaling vessel and also realized that I can comprehend sentences written in passive and causative-passive when I previously struggled to distinguish them both from the potential form.
As excited as I am to see my language skills progressing, some days I still feel like I’m getting nowhere. I can proudly recall words like hyouryuusha and taiheiyousensou, but I recently had to look up “wet” and “dry” because we’ve yet to learn them in class. So, while I’m pleased with my academic comprehension, some days at the homestay are still a trial. I talked with my host-mother about the American presidential election with relative ease, but when I forgot which button to press to dry my clothes quickly, it became a guessing game of charades and katakana-Japanese. Fortunately, the host-siblings are content to talk about the newest Sanrio characters and their love for Japanese pop bands. My fifth-grade sister can still out-read me, but I showed up the younger in a game of “who can make the craziest face.”
Aside from the language, I’m becoming accustomed life in Japan in smaller ways. In Osaka, I was completely taken aback when I was expected to stand on the right side of escalators while people passed on the left. In Nagoya, people stand in what I’ve come to think of as the “Japanese” way, i.e. everything opposite the way it’s done in the United States. Around town, cars feel like they’re driving on the correct side now, and walking on the left feels normal. Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out sidewalk etiquette, which caused me to graze a passing bike just this week. But one day before I leave, I’d like to be able to navigate a street without breaking out in a nervous sweat. If can’t, at least I know how to say hokousha.
HOMELESS COLLEGE STUDENT FOR THE HOLIDAYS
I’ve been thinking a lot about Tennessee lately. Maybe it’s the awkwardly chilly - but not quite cold - weather, the extremely premature Christmas decorations, or the mysterious smell of an October bonfire in my neighborhood in the middle of November. I’ve realized many things about myself, and ignored just as many, since being here, but I never thought that I would come to the day when I would realize that Tennessee is home. It’s not where my intellect is, or where my ultimate desires lay, but it’s the place that nurtured me for most of my life; it’s the place that made me want to leave for bigger, better things, and maybe ultimately where my heart is. A Dexter Freebish feels especially close to home these days, when I think that I may actually want to go back sometime. Incidentally, I haven’t lost all of my feeling for Chattanooga, but California can certainly expect to see more of me than the Volunteer State.
Now, though, sitting in Starbucks on a cold evening listening to Christmas songs with an intimate group of four, or walking home from school in the rain, as opposed to the snow, reminds me all too sappily of sitting in Rembrandt’s with Abigail, too close to the New Year to be hanging out alone, or walking along the Walnut Street Bridge hoping that next year I’ll have someone with whom to share the experience.
So thinking of home is always a bit bittersweet for me. There are the terrible times when my parents fight far too loudly, the ridiculous times when I work at a coffee shop inside a hospital and then leave to go drinking at my boss’s place, and the times that define my existence; driving down I-95 at ninety miles an hour, blasting “Gold Digger” and rapping with the windows rolled down, studying Japanese at Barnes & Noble for four hours when I just can’t stand being in the house any more, smoking cloves on the bank of the Tennessee River after a particularly annoying shift. Those are the times I miss even when I’m in Minnesota.
Seeing Christmas lights as I walked home from school this evening reminded me that I’ll neither be here nor there, as it were; neither in my real home nor in the place that has so lovingly become such in the past two years. There won’t be eggnog or Mannheim Steamroller. I already forgot the date of Thanksgiving and called my parents a week early. I’ll be with my sister, but it feels like little consolation. Being away from home for consecutive Thanksgivings was nothing, but knowing that I’ll be going to a Japanese middle school to help teach English on Christmas Eve and day couldn’t ever possibly feel right. Those days are reserved for family things, quiet reflection, not fried chicken and a Christmas cake. I wonder if I can make pineapple stuffing in a Japanese so-called oven; do they even have the ingredients?
I’m not even sure if I miss home or simply the prospect of going back to warm places and the usual routine of work (at a coffee shop), coffee shop, another coffee shop and finally to the house with a perfect view. Having my mother tell me she didn’t expect to see me for another summer or winter break only reinforced the feeling that I’ve left for good. No one could believe I worked away from home for a summer, left directly for a foreign country for four months where I would spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas and then spend another semester away from Tennessee. It felt so natural, staying away, and allowed me to appreciate having a car to drive, a steady income and a room of my own.
Maybe I made the unconscious decision to leave home long ago, but it wasn’t until this season that I realized I’d done so. I intended to escape Tennessee, not leave it entirely behind.