Okay, last chance to try to solve the mystery of The Passport That Wasn't There. Click into the entry below, read it, and when you're ready, come back and read the rest of this one. I'll wait.
So. Some of the clues you might've picked up on:
- [...] Every morning, on my way out the door, I'd pick up all three items and route them to their appropriate pockets. It was a decent system, and it hadn't failed me yet.
- [...] On Friday morning, the wallet and keys were right where they were supposed to be. The passport was not.
- [...] Frankly, I couldn't even remember getting dressed yesterday at all. The whole morning had been a frantic blur.
- [...] According to my sense-memory, my passport should be in my suit pocket, which it just... wasn't. Only logic could offer an explanation.
- [...] I yanked open the company armoire and shoved my way through a forest of indistinguishable black suit jackets, scanning the floor for a passport I knew I wouldn't find.
- [...] "Lost my passport last week," I said. "Today's the first day I've been able to do anything about it."
The Passport That Wasn't There, Part II
"Hey Mike," Darren said, as he passed by. Due to our schedules, I only saw Darren once a week, though today was, as I mentioned, my day off. "Carl mentioned you were looking for your passport?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Well, I haven't been able to find find my suit jacket. I figure someone must've taken it last week. When I was looking through the closet for it, I noticed that one of the jackets had a passport in the pocket."
"Well that can't be mine," I said. "I would've noticed if I'd been walking around in someone else's suit all week."
"Just thought I'd mention it."
"Well, Is your suit black, Italian-made, with four buttons?"
"It's black," he said. "I dunno how many buttons it has."
"Uh... I think I'd better make a phone call."
You can guess the rest. Darren's suit was an Italian four-button design. In my sleep-deprived state, I had grabbed the wrong jacket on my way out the door and had somehow managed to wear it twice (and to search through it a dozen times) without noticing the difference. Ten minutes later, I was on the train to the Narimasu office to pick up my precious passport from the closet where it had been sitting, nonchalantly, for the past week. In my suit jacket pocket. Right where it was supposed to be.
I'll assume you've been thorough and have already read through The Account's modest archives, the contents of which should hopefully speak for themselves.
Each of your questions could probably justify its own journal entry, but since I've only been here for six weeks, I'll confine myself to blog-comment-style brevity.
1) I like my experience just fine, though it's worth pointing out that I was a fan of Japan before I came here. And that I have a high tolerance for culture shock. The harshest aspects of this type of experience, of course, are the personal aspects. Once removed from all your friends, all your possessions and 98% of your culture, the only thing you're left with is you. Which means any major personality flaws you've been keeping buried are about to become a lot harder to hide. But Japan is an ideal place to deal with this, in my view, as it is one of the quietest, safest places on earth—in both the literal and the figurative senses.
2) This is an easy one. What I like about Japan the most are the Japanese.
3) The suckiest part about living here is the inescapable sense that Japan's best years are behind it. The so-called Bubble Economy (a ten-year, macro version of what we experienced as the dot-com era) is long gone, and while the resulting recession is a bit of a drag, it's far overshadowed by the palpable sense of depression among the inhabitants themselves. Even though they're still among the richest people in the world, the feeling of having lost everything hangs over the culture like a shroud.
4) Would I recommend this experience to others? To a few others, maybe. Certainly I'm glad to be here. But working at Nova is—and there's no other way to put this—demeaning. Its reputation as the McDonald's of language schools is remarkably accurate. So why am I okay with that? Because I love my students. And in my free time, I get to hang out in Tokyo. And that's good enough for now.
(Naturally, if anyone out there is interested in doing this sort of thing, please write me and I'll break it down for ya.)
I'm just catching up on your blog Mike, and I think its an interesting read.
Living in another country does change you and bring you out of yourself in different ways. It also allows you to see a culture in ways you will never uncover as a tourist. So, while you might want to go see and do touristy things, I imagine you are already getting the most out of your transplant by just being there and doing your everyday thing.
True.
When I was first planning to move to Japan I thought I'd take day-trips to every cool spot in the country. But now that I'm here, I think I'll be happy just to feel like I got to know Tokyo a little. There's a rhythm here that I haven't even come close to matching--it's like visual jet-lag. Until I get it, I'm not really seeing anything.
So, yeah, I think you're right.
I'm really enjoying reading this, particularly since in my project to fill in the pre-Web years in my blog I happen to have just started adding posts representing the journal entries from my year in Wales on the University of California's Education Abroad Program. There are some common themes. Re-reading what I wrote then & what you're writing now is making it easier to remember how it felt. Awesome, awful, awe-ful; such a mix and so intense.
From the far side of that experience, I can say tell you that it took me a year after I got back just to process the experience. A wonderful, though sometimes painful, process of shuffling and transforming my sense of self and place.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Hope it doesn't really take a year afterwards to digest, though. I have stuff to do.
So the questions of the day are; 1) How have you liked your experience in Japan so far? 2) What about Japan do you like most? 3) Have you been disappointed with any aspects of your experience? 4) Would you recommend teaching English in Japan to other gaijin?