why i'm going to japan

i sat down to write about why i'm going to japan and how it came about and why i started this blog, and, two hours later, i ended with 1,400-plus words. i don't think posts are usually this long, but i guess this is my blog, and i don't need to worry about word limits. but, welcome, enjoy, and if you have any experience in or knowledge of japan that you'd like to share, i would love to hear it.

I tell people I fell into going to Japan. A year ago, six months ago, teaching children English (although I had considered going back to school to become an elementary school teacher or an English teacher) in Japan (although in my heart of hearts I was trying to figure out how in the world I could be so exotic as to live in another country), would never have occurred to me. I got involved by chance, a happenstance encounter with a woman – a very warm, kind and enthusiastic woman – who my sister worked with when I happened to sit next to her at a volunteer training in February. She happened to ask if I would be interested in teaching in Japan. I didn’t turn her down, but didn’t take her seriously – it wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, I just never considered it a possibility. The next Sunday, I was thinking about my future and my current job that would end in less than four months, and what was I going to do. “Why not go to Japan?” something said. “Really, why not go? You want to do something different, you’d like to try teaching, you’re ready for an adventure, you only live once. Why–not–go?”

As a reporter I feel like I’m constantly asking people questions that I myself don’t know how to answer, not about my upcoming international experience, anyway. “Why are you doing this? What do you hope to get out of the experience? What are you looking forward to? What are you afraid of? What is your long-term vision for your life? Ideally, where do you see yourself in five, ten years?” But maybe it’s not entirely fair to say that I don’t know the answers to these questions. Because that assumes that everyone I ask those questions (and when I think about how I don’t know what I’d say, I’m amazed at the insightful responses people often give), just naturally had those answers. That assumes “you have it or you don’t” - not that someone can initially NOT have the answers to those questions, realize that that’s something they’d like to figure and then develop answers – honest answers, answers they feel comfortable with. Just because I didn’t know how to articulate why I feel like this is going to a really great thing for me as soon as I said “yes” doesn’t mean that I won't ever have those answers.

Before Donna left, we talked about interviewing each other about our respective upcoming adventures overseas. When I interview people sometimes and another person they know (significant other, mother, sister, etc.) is also there, I’m really surprised at how often the other person will stop and say “I didn’t know that” during the interview. At first it made me feel like ‘yeah, I’m an awesome (there’s a word I have to stop using) journalist, a fantastic interviewer who knows how to make someone feel comfortable and share.’ Then, I realized that this information that was new to family and/or friend usually came out after a pretty mundane question. And this April when Donna was here and I started listing off the usual questions, I realized that those aren’t the kinds of things (“What will be the most challenging? What do you think you’ll miss most?”) that you usually talk about with people – even the people you’re really close to.

We never did the formal interview, but on our trip down the coast we asked each other a few questions. I can’t remember if it was on the beach at Gold Beach or when we were driving back from "A Winter's Tale," but for some reason I remember the conversation happening under a sort of cloud (of drowsiness from dark and driving, or from sun and surf and seagulls, or neither at all I don’t remember).
When Donna left, we sat on a bench in Union Station, while a line of people who also had tickets for the Empire Builder stood in the center of the building, waiting for boarding to start. We looked at pics on meisties' digital camera, I (innocently but not wisely, it turned out) struck up a conversation with a woman in a wheelchair who had parked herself near us. But, for some reason, it wasn’t until that line started moving – and it moved fast – that we really acknowledged that we wouldn’t see each other again until we had both begun pretty transformative experiences. After Donna got on the train and I walked outside, I felt like I had two choices: I could continue to feel sad about saying goodbye, and think about the fact that our lives are changing and the next time I see Miss D might be a year or more. Or I could stuff up all these powerful emotions – emotions about life events that I’ve envied other people for having – go to Target, buy deodorant, get some high-fat comfort food, and go home and watch “Deal or No Deal.” But the latter, while tempting because it’s safe and familiar (and it’s my fault that it’s become familiar), is not living. Not really. So, after I left Union Station, I drove the Rose Garden, walked around barefoot for awhile, got some Starbursts out of my bag and read. I bought a Mother’s Day present for my grandma and went to Uwajimaya (Japanese market just outside of Portland). I looked around at the tanks full of live crab and cellophane bags of dried fish snacks, selected some ramen from an aisle almost completely dedicated to ramen-related product and bought some gelatinous strawberry cookies. I listened to “This American Life” on the way home, and I felt happy.

And that is one thing that I’m working to change and hope my time living in another country will facilitate: taking advantage of the fact that, right now at this very instant, I'm living and breathing to try new things that I really want to do. I’m going to Japan for the same reasons that most people travel: I want to see new things and meet new people. But I also want to prove to myself that I don’t have to settle, that I can create an exciting and fulfilling life for myself. I want to make a home for myself in the unfamiliar. I want to figure out if I want to be a teacher or if I miss journalism after a year. I want to make friends across the Pacific that I can go visit or will come visit me for years. I want become a better person, break out of the mold that my life has fallen into, prove to myself that I can do it.

About a month and a half ago, I remembered that when I was in high school, one of the things on my “list of things to do before I die” was to learn to speak Japanese. I bought a “teach yourself Japanese” book at Media Play and everything (I’ll bet it’s still in the basement somewhere…). But I lost interest in later high school years and didn't pursue it at all in college. I didn’t remember that one-time interest in Japan when I was considering if I should take the position, or when I learned more about the job and life in Japan, or even when I accepted. I don’t know exactly what prompted that once and future goal to come back to me, but I’m glad I remembered. It makes me feel comforted, like snuggling with the blankets up to your chin or hearing someone that you know loves you say ‘I love you’; it’s like a warm wash of good feelings and reinforcement, like maybe this whole thing wasn’t so random.

I decided to sign up for this blog (my first!) in the hopes that it will serve as a good kind of “scrapbook” for the trip – a place to collect images and thoughts about my first time living in another country and within a different culture. And, of course, it’s also a way to share what’s going on in the life with family and such. But writing for a blog is a bit odd. I feel tempted to write confessionally, as if this was a journal. But, I know, I know, this is for the “world wide web” accessible to any and all who happen to search for “Cannon Beach” or “Japan” or “Ludacris tattoo” (which, really, ask me some time about the “rappers for emergency preparedness” tattoo series). Plus, there’s the issue of writing for the audience, which will likely be people who know me. So there is literarily-sound reason for mentioning Ludacris.