There and Back Again

I’ve been home for a week and I’ve already fallen into the everyday rhythm of preparing for school, doing last-minute summer homework, and catching up with old friends. My life is back to normal, and as senior year approaches, I find myself being swallowed by a life familiar.

But I am not the same girl who left Texas over a month ago. She disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, and I haven’t heard from her since. While I’m far from uncomfortable here in my hometown (except for this “fork” thing; I need my chopsticks back), I feel a bit like a stranger, seeing everything for the first time.

My friends seem different, and yet, so unchanged. They are the same goofy kids I left behind, with darker tans and longer hair, and somehow, I know I can’t truly share the amazement of my trip in its full entirety with them. They just can’t understand.

I’ve been wondering if this is how the hobbit Bilbo Baggins felt as he returned to the Shire. He’d had a marvelous adventure, one no one he knew could fully comprehend, and returned to his warm, safe home feeling very much a stranger. And even more than a lingering sense of foreignness, Bilbo felt the need for more adventure.

Now that I’ve tasted a crumb of this wide, sprawling world of ours, I want more. Japan was a goal, and I’ve met it. My goal now: everywhere else.

I also wish to further my exploration of the Japanese language. Even in its complexity, it fascinates me, and not continuing my study of it further is just not an option. I will master Japanese one day, and I will return to Tokyo to utilize those skills.

But, much like Bilbo Baggins, I am glad to be home. During my adventures I did long for the world I left behind, even if those longings were short-lived. Japan will forever hold a special place in my heart, but, like they say, there’s no place like home.

“Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.”

-J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit

Bittersweet Farewell

“Don’t cry because it’s over – smile because it happened.”

Whoever originally said this should be stabbed. With a pair of chopsticks. Immediately.

Of course, I’m smiling as I write this. I went to Japan. I made so many unlikely friends. I learned so many things. My dream happened.

But I am crying, as well. There’s no sappy quote in the universe that can stop me from crying right now. I had to leave a place I consider my second home. I had to part from friends so close I could have sworn I knew them since birth. I had to wake up from my dream and return to Texas. So, yeah, I’m gonna cry.

Saying goodbye was easier and harder than I expected it to be. Easier because I wasn’t nearly as tempted to fulfill my plans of running away and living in Yoyogi park until my parents called in a SWAT team, but harder because I never, ever expected to become this close to a group of kids in such a short amount of time or to fall in love with a place so far from home. I miss my new friends (my roommates in particular), my teachers, my room. I miss eating with chopsticks, rice and seaweed for breakfast, all the tea. I miss Harajuku, Yoyogi, Kyoto.

But the last week wasn’t all about goodbyes. We toured every single shrine and temple we could fit into our schedule, we explored (got lost in) a whole new city, we bonded in a way that only children with nothing and everything in common can. We grew up and acted like five-year-olds, went on midnight missions to the vending machine, laughed and talked about our futures (always forgetting to mention that our AYUSA friends would be vacant from said futures).

The last week, while crazy and hectic and hot, was probably the most fun, in retrospect. Sure, we were without our dear Japanese friends, and we had to adapt to a new environment after so long in Tokyo, but the 31 of grew so close and had so many adventures (and obtained a little bit of sunburn) that it didn’t matter at all.

The memories will slowly fade as we grow older and move on with our lives, but I will never, ever forget the feelings of excitement and fatigue and love that came with that last week. That’s the kind of thing that stays with you until the end.

Butterfly Feet

My shoes are worn, my toes are calloused and blistered, and my legs are aching. It’s been a long three weeks, but I’ve never been so happy and I’ve never slept so well. Even now, as I venture past the shrines and shops of Kyoto, my mind keeps wandering back to a quote I saw written on the wall of a shop in Harajuku, many weeks ago:

”Did you know butterflies taste with their feet?”

I’m sure it was only there for fashionably random ambiance, but a deeper meaning has stuck with me this entire trip (and don’t worry, I’m not about to get all philosophical here).

Japan, specifically Tokyo, is best discovered on foot. From the first day on this trip, I have walked until my feet felt like shriveling up and my legs burned like they were immersed in a vat of acid. My friends and I stumbled over other fashion-seekers in the packed streets of Harajuku, sprinted, laughing, from Yoyogi to the dorms to meet curfew (with one minute to spare), jogged down the stairs of the subway stations, padded quietly through shrines and temples, danced happily on wooded paths and ride paddy trails, tripped out of the way of cyclists and cars in the narrow, sidewalk-less streets, and ran down the halls of our dorms, shouting silly things and crying about our inevitable departure from this wonderful place.

Sure, I’ve traveled by train and subway and bus and car while here, but those were not memorable experiences. The traffic is horrible and the streets are thin and the view from the subway is atrocious. After the first time, the novelty of these experiences wears off. But walking never gets old. There is always a new detail to see, an interesting person to talk to, a poorly-worded sign to mock, a bird to chase. There are songs to sing and stories to tell and even though it can be tiring, walking stretches out our desk-cramped legs quite nicely. You can’t buy ice-cream crepes from a vendor on a bus. You can’t listen to a rag-tag hippie band on a train. And you most certainly can’t stop and window-shop by car.

So, yeah, it’s totemo atsui (very hot) here, but we have fans and water and besides whining can be fun when you walk to Shinjuku with your friends. It starts up conversation and funny stories about pools and sunburns and suddenly you forget the air is like a sauna. Everybody is sweaty anyways, so you don’t feel alone and gross, and once you see the oishii (delicious) udon shop ahead, all thoughts of sore feet and sticky necks are gone. Besides, to quote one of the other students here, “It builds character.”

Normally, I wouldn’t compare myself to a butterfly (if you look up “grace” in the dictionary, you’ll find my name in the antonym list), but here, in Tokyo and Kyoto, I feel like one. I can’t fly, and I’m too sweaty to be anywhere near pretty, but with my clumsy, gawky feet I have tasted the culture of Japan.

Food Fun

I consider myself an adventurous person. I mean, my first time out of America and I’m parent-less in a country that doesn’t speak English. You have to have some sense of adventure to do that.

Eating Japanese food, I have discovered, is an adventure.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s flippin’ delicious. I arrived expecting bland, boring food and, boy, was I wrong! Sure, it lacks the spice of the Tex-Mex I’m used to (I’ve only seen wasabi once), but it compensates in flavor. But, even though the food is delicious, you can’t have a closed mind and eat in Japan.

For one, it is considereed INCREDIBLY impolite to leave food on your plate (how they all stay so skinny is a mystery). So, on occassion, you’re forced to choke down a large plate of icky food. That hasn’t happened to me yet, but many of my friends here have learned to bite the bullet and shovel down their less-than-appetizing food.

The meal that takes the most getting-used-to is, surprisingly, breakfast. There is no cereal, no poptarts, no bagels, no waffles, no coffee. A typical breakfast here is miso soup, rice or a roll (or both), some salad, meat (the fried squid rings are the best), fruit or a delicious type of gelatin, and a drink (water, peach juice, blueberry juice, grapefruit juice, orange juice, milk, or tea). Some may call it weird, but I call it the best meal known to mankind.

For lunch we’re on our own. On busy days I go to the kombini (convenience store) for onigiri, ramen, or anything else new and exciting (orange-flavored M&Ms, anyone?) The juice there is always exotic (aloe and grape, apple gelatin, mystery flavor because I can’t read the label…) and the desserts are entertaining. On less busy days I venture to the nearby shopping area for soba, udon, curry, ice-cream-crepes, and more! Ordering is a bit of an ordeal (especially in larger groups), but everyone here is so friendly and willing to help.

For the days I don’t want to feel like a Japanese failure, I go to the ubiquitous vending machines. They. Are. EVERYWHERE. I’m not exaggerating. There’s one on every street corner, seeling goods ranging from Cokes and water bottles, to chilled cocoa (yum), french fries (ew), and all sorts of Japawnese brand drinks.

Dinners are my favorite meal, though, and the best time for those close-minded people on this trip, There are five options every night, and they change daily.

The cafeteria workers kindly serve Western food every night (which I avoid like the plague — it’s too safe for my adventure) so those picky eaters don’t starve. But for fun-lovers like me and most of the kids on this trip there’s curry, eel, sashimi, tempura, tofu, sardines, fish, shrimp, stir-fry, more curry (it is served almost every night), raw things, cooked things, fried things, sauce-drowned things, and, always (ALWAYS), rice. Rice, rice, rice, rice, rice. A warning right now: if you don’t like rice, never go to Japan.

So the meals here are totally different than the food in America. But different is good. Very good.

So, sure, it takes a sense of adventure to get past the fact that the food on your plate is foreign/raw/covered in tentacles, but once you close your eyes and take a bite, you honestly wont regret it.

Grocery-store sushi has nothing on this stuff.

Survival Japanese

Hajime mashite! Watashi no nama`e wa Anna desu. Nihon ga suki desu. Amerika kara kimashita. Yokoshiru onegai shimas.

(How do you do? My name is Anna. I like Japan. Nice to meet you.)

Japanese, while being a very difficult language, is incredibly interesting. There are two alphabets used to spell out words, Katakana and Hiragana, and a set of characters called Kanji, which have meaning on their own.

Confused yet?

I am too. But it`s all starting to make sense now because of my lovely teachers, Hayashi-sensei and Kawamura-sensei. I am in J3, the beginner class, or the baka (stupid) class, as we fondly call ourselves. Our constant cries of Watashi wa baka desu! (I am stupid!) can be heard at any time of the day, on the train, in the streets, anywhere. (Ususally followed by an enthusiastic shout of DEUTSCHLAND! from our loud-and-proud German friends.)

In this first week I have made use of the simple phrases Arigato gozaimas (thank you very much) and sumi masen (excuse me). I greet my classmates in the morning with ohiyo and bid my teachers farewell with sionara. Slowly, but surely, I am using more and more Japanese in my everyday speaking.

Being immersed in the culture really helps too. While English is a prominent part of said culture here in Japan (much like Spanish is in my home state of Texas) not everybody can speak it, I have to apologize to people I run into in the streets or hallway, order off-campus meals, and try to understand what`s going on when strangers ask me where the trash can is (that episode was not my finest moment. It mainly consisted of me staring blankly at the woman, trying to remember how to say I don’t speak Japanese until someone else asked me in English. But after the embarassment I felt like I had survived some great battle and was quite happy that I didn`t insult anyone.)

I have to rely on my friends in J2 and J1 (the kids who weren`t cool or baka enough to be in J3) to help me translate at times, but they`re willing and I`m learning.

So while I`m nowhere near fluent (I can`t even say compound sentences yet) I`m learning at a quick, do-or-die pace in an enviroment that forces me to interact with incredibly friendly people in their own language.

So much better than Spanish class.

First Days in a New City

I love Japan.

So after stumbling off a plane after sitting in the very middle of a five-seat row for ten hours (dear god, help me), it is an understatement to say I was overwhelmed by the city. It was big (to point out the obvious), bright, and beautiful. Everything looked so unique and mismatched that it all went together so well. Of course, I was so exhausted I couldn`t really appreciate that my first night.

After surviving the plane ride from Texas, the incredibly long wait in San Fransisco, and the ten-hour plane ride together, my new friend Katie and I stuck by each other`s sides as we sleepily walked into the National Olympic Memorial Youth Center (try saying that five times fast). The NYC was a sprawling compound of brightly painted buildings and eye-catching architecture that causes even the most sleep-deprived to stare in wide-eyed wonder.

I was thrilled — no, ecstatic — to find that I was in a single room, as tiny as it was, so I could experience an alomst-completely independent lifestyle.

I was finally able to appreciate the eclectic beauty of Tokyo the next morning when our on-sight coordinator, Andy, and one of the senseis took us around the nearby shopping area. The buildings were jam-packed, the roadsnarrow, the shops tiny and bustling with brightly painted signs on every inch of solid surface. The scent of curry and ramen wafted through the air hastily and everywhere we went the constant chatter of Japanese and broken English followed.

That is when I fell in love with Japan. It only took a day — less than 24 hours — to realize that this city is truly one-of-a-kind.

Preparations

With the dawn of the summer here in Texas (okay, okay, really, summer in Texas begins in April) has come the end of “the nightmare that makes all other nightmares soil themselves in fear and run away screaming like little girls” – junior year.

So for the past week I have been celebrating; shredding old tests and lounging around the poolside with friends (burning like a vampire in the sun, I might add). The sky is clear, fire ants are biting, life is sweet, and I never have to face a Physics AP test ever, ever again. But underneath those feelings of immense relief and heat-induced laziness dwells a festering anticipation for July to arrive. The weeks ahead are going to be long as I wait for that plane ride across the Pacific, but luckily, for my patience and my sanity, I have plenty of activities to keep myself from going crazy.

I would be blatantly lying if I said that I was not preparing for Japan by reading manga and watching anime – because I totally am. I have dusted off my old Fruits Basket collection and popped in Spirited Away and while that may seem ridiculously nerdy to most (and it really is), it’s something I have missed doing this past school year. All that time away from reveling in my own geekiness is something I haven’t gotten enough of lately, and with the welcome end of school and the trip approaching, I wouldn’t put it past myself to watch old episodes of Pokemon on Youtube (and by old, I mean old. Like, where there are only 151 pokemon and Ash’s sidekicks are Misty and Brock).

Of course, besides geeking out and annoying my friends with talk of Japanese pop culture, I have been perpetually thinking about the trip. Not so much daydreaming or fantasizing, but just thinking.  Thinking about where I’ll be staying and the kinds of kids I might befriend and the inevitable culture shock and the strange food and the fact that everything will be written in a foreign language and so many other things that my head is hurting a little bit and my adrenal glands are worn out from the constant anticipation and excitement. There isn’t too much I absolutely plan on doing – of course, I want to learn as much of the language as I can and immerse myself in the culture until I forget that I am, in fact, an American citizen – but mostly I just want to find adventure in Japan, try crazy new things and meet crazy new people. I want to just be there, truly be there and blend in with the surroundings (as well as any 5’7’’, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, English-speaking girl can in Tokyo).

One day, I’ll probably look back on this and laugh. Not so much out of condescending adoration for my younger self’s borderline-fanatical enthusiasm with Japan or inability to write without using italics and parentheses, but more out of nostalgic memories of the excitement of forthcoming adventure. One day, I’ll read this and remember all the escapades I got myself into and the fun I had and the friends I made. One day I’ll look at this blog and smile.