11 days left

In 11 days I will watch my Japanese identity as I know it turn into dust and blow away in a large, metal, flying object.

They have not let up: it has been implied again and again that I have somehow hurt this town by staying 'only' one year. One year, apparently, means very little to some of the people here. I guess I was asking for too much when hoping that people would have nothing but thanks after dedicating a year of my life to this town (but that's individualistic thinking, something that rarely exists here). The worst part is that the decision was made almost five months ago.... (For the record, many people don't guilt trip me, especially the kids - they seem to be the most understanding).

Still my heart pours out over this place and its beauty, its wonderful people, its peace. As much as I am still the one tall white man who roams the land here, I have also become somewhat Japanese during my time here. I still hit my head on the low door frames, but I now can communicate on all of the most important levels with the people here. They don't always treat me like a stranger; I am one of them, and now they must see me away. That's why I also completely understand their reaction to my year long stay.

So may the last 11 days be full of life and experience.

dreaming/reality, asleep/awake

If you think about it, you soon come to realize that the ability for your mind to be aware of the reality of the world is extremely limited. Not only do you usually focus on the things that directly surround you, but even when you think abstractly - or perhaps especially when you think abstractly - your thoughts can completely ignore the ""realities" of "the world.""

When you are asleep is when most people dream the most (in the traditional sense of the word). When you are awake is when you are most directly in contact with what we call reality.

But what about those people whose daily lives are more like dreams, whose awake times are more like asleep times?

Here in Japan I have noticed a strong tendency for people's awake time and thoughts to be more like what I know as dreaming, or partially-asleep, time and thoughts. For example, the concept of pure water or Mt. Aso seems to heavily over-power the realities of those two things. People here will positively praise the seemingly magically special water of Ubuyama, or aura of Mt. Aso, even though, in reality, they are just water and a few mountains (albeit beautiful and special, even in reality). But this tendency goes much, much deeper than a romanticization of natural entities: it goes into an obsession for places like Disneyland and Universal Studios that are designed to help people experience a completely fabricated, dreamlike environment. It goes into cultural traditions like festivals and Shinto wish-making. Dreams, as well as their cause (being at least partially unconscious), seem to function in almost every individual's life here.

One could refer to the dreamlike qualities of Miyazaki Hayao's films, or even Kurosawa Akira's film (conveniently) entitled "Yume" ("Dreams"). Also: Murakami Haruki's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Dreams are ubiquitous in Japanese culture and life.

But do dreams necessarily mean a version of life that is less awake and more asleep, and thus less conscious of reality in the traditional sense of the word (or maybe I should say "reality in the traditional, Western sense of the word")?

These kinds of dreams do seem to functionally limit other forms of awareness, i.e. less dreamy, idealized versions of seeing, understanding, and thinking about the world. But does the somewhat extreme idealization that exists in Japan denote a measure of unconsciousness or a lack of consciousness that might be important or useful? I do not know. It is hard to make judgments across cultures of this nature. But I can say that the dreams and idealizations that I see occurring here - as well as in certain parts of British, Irish, and Hawaiian culture (just to mention a few) - can make one's ideas of the world around them more jolly and less sinister (again, I cannot say that one or the other is necessarily am altogether positive thing).

Anyhow, I am getting tired and my mind would like to move from abstract musings to a more complete form of unconsciousness. These thoughts came to my mind as I drove down the mountain today in the mist (on my way to a going away dinner organized by the older ladies of my conversation class) and then were later stimulated by watching the original "Wizard of Oz" with its musical counterpart, Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." Together they produce (for me) a creative rumination on consciousness and unconsciousness (as well as identity, the psyche, time, money, life, and death). (fyi: start the album on the MGM lion's third roar and be sure to have it on 'repeat all').

. . .

A detail from the dinner: of the five ladies at the dinner, there was one who was very disappointed when I couldn't eat all of the large, grilled fish head that was served to me. The fish head, complete with eyes, was one of many dishes, a large portion of which were incredibly unappealing to me. They were Japanese dishes, arrayed in the summer-style of Japanese dining (with particularly summer-esque plates, colors, and foods), and were too decorative and cold for my taste. For example, one dish involved raw octopus and cucumber in whipped raw egg topped off with a few salmon eggs. I avoided eating some of the things served to me, but the grandma became frustrated that I didn't eat the fish head. She said "poor fish, he died and now you won't eat his head," in a frustrated voice. I then offered her the fish and explained that it was just as wasteful to eat food that I didn't need and/or couldn't properly digest. She then muttered something like "gross" (referring to the half eaten fish head) and later ate it along with her specially ordered whale meat. I do my best, even in the face of strange eating morals (and despite it all I'm still fond of this particular grandma).

Mist after rain. Wildlife.

Farewells and Bygones

It is now the middle of the night after the bulk of my major farewell events with my junior high school and the board of education. There was the farewell speech with all of the junior high kids, in which I was one of two teachers leaving. (The justifiably beloved Uchiyama-sensei is also leaving, as she has fulfilled her time as replacement for the music teacher who was busy with her baby for the last 20 months.) Then, after the event in school, I joined my supervisor, boss, their coworkers, and a pair of principals and vice-principals for an enkai in Oita Prefecture's Taketa City. I gave my longest speech in Japanese at the beginning of that dinner; it was the speech in which I tried to contextualize my year for my audience. I talked about the surprise of being placed in a tiny village in the middle of Kyushu, I also emphasized how American small towns would be envious of the quality and depth of the education system in this village.

The junior high kids had their time to formally say goodbye during the ceremony. Their representation (for me) came mostly in the form of Kudou Kentarou-kun's speech in both Japanese and English. He was the kid who had showed up to every movie that I screened during English Club (including the entire old Star Wars Trilogy, for which he was the only student to come for the bulk of those weeks). What a great kid. He may not be the biggest in his grade, but he sure may have one of the biggest hearts.After the ceremony I was chatting online with my pal Mike Gechter, who lives in Southern California. I was trying to cope with the fact that I left the kids, and myself, off easy: I personally avoided crying, and in so doing, helped the kids to get out of feeling too sad to see me go. I guess in the end it's probably best; I am teaching them to take goodbyes in a different way - to feel as though a goodbye can be a positive action - to let someone happily go on while acknowledging that they made a positive impact on your life. We'll certainly remember each other; the absence of tears could not really disintegrate the memories of our interactions.

And perhaps for me it was just as hard to formally part with my superiors; they are a hearty bunch of respectable educators who took me in as one of their own, for the most part. Tonight they made it known that they had noticed, long ago, that I was a "tender, nice" ALT, someone they would've like to have for three years in their town and in their schools. I was wanting to tell them that I wish I could live multiple lives so that I could stay in Ubuyama and also pursue my separate life back in my home country. Of course, saying that wouldn't have changed the reality of my leaving, but it was a feeling I had nonetheless wished to express.

It is a fact of nature that we can't really live out all the lives offered to us during our time here on earth. It is a fact that makes me more than sentimental; I will never forget how this town opened its arms to me, and I will probably also never forget that I could've been here a lot longer. But other lives beckon, and during my farewells I have felt strongly that I am making the decision that is right for my place in life. One can only trust his or her intuition on these matters, for there is no one correct path. So we do our best.

Odd Things

Odd things, like a wannabe Texan Ranch in this town. Like a farewell ceremony in which each grade in an elementary school has been assigned a skit to do about me. I made my speech short and business-like so as not to make the kids get too emotional.

The thing is: in Japan, teachers leave schools all the time! The average number of years for a teacher at a school in this prefecture is three! So these farewell ceremonies happen quite frequently. They are as much for the socialization/education of the kids as they are for the faculty/staff who is/are leaving. They force the kids to appreciate, with emotional force, the presence and work of their teachers. One kid buckled during his little speech to me and almost could not finish the words, poor guy... The rest made it well and I was happy that it was not too painful. I knew that it would have been the pressure of the ceremony, and not just the sadness of saying goodbye to someone, that contributed to a students' tears. Still, it is hard to say goodbye to someone, even if they have played a limited role in your life; when faced with this kind of goodbye, one must also face, to a very small extent, the certainty and sadness of all goodbyes (both future, past, and present).

There is nothing I can do to prevent these goodbyes; I can only try to make them painless. In the end, every encounter with these wonderful kids (and the wonderful dog above) are things that I will forever be grateful for. Nothing lasts forever, but at least they were there at some point.

Sometimes I wonder if nature has a stored memory somewhere of all the things that happen in the universe. Have those things in the past really been forgotten, never to be relived or even recalled? How could that be? Are we really "just prisoners here" as the Eagles' song goes? {Ha}. Is there no justice? Are things even more valuable because they are absolutely and utterly lost? Surely, 99.99999% of the experiences that humans have are lost in the vacuum of time and space; are they really lost though, or is there some secret out there?

Questions, questions, questions. But no answers. It is chaos.

While I sit here with just days left, I look forward to coming back to a place where I can be fluent again, where I can have my old identity back. But somewhere else inside of me I am saddened to know that so much of what I've had here I will not have there.... That's life though.

abandoned hotels, heat spells

Two of the most visible objects in my town of Ubuyama are gigantic, abandoned hotels. I have now entered a total of three of these abandoned hotels and they are creepy. Certainly some people have come in and vandalized them for amusement. I did not take part (perhaps I am too benign for such a form of entertainment).

And the days dwindle... Chaos creeps in to fill the emptiness of days escaping me. Errands, final visits with friends, and a fervent attempt to make up for lost time all keep me and my mind busy around the clock.

As my house starts to look more and more like an abandoned hotel, I feel more and more like I am about to leave one. I do want to get out; abandoned hotels are not the most pleasant of locales.

And yet just the other day I was walking down a road near my house and found a new path leading down to the river. This was not any ordinary river. It had a carved-stone base like those on parts of Maui and those in Takachiho. The light was beautiful and a few medium-sized waterfalls created a very pleasant atmosphere. Strange wildlife throughout the just as impressive array of flora; it was beautiful, goregeous in fact. I felt I still had not seen most of the (hidden) beauty of my town. I felt that perhaps no one ever has. It was stunning and makes me yearn not to leave so soon.

To make matters painfully worse on that beautiful day, the sun was going down (as it tends to do). Not only does it remind you that time will refuse to cease dwindling, but it brightens up the world around you with warmer colors and more dramatic clouds. It was no way for the beauty of Ubuyama to take pity on me.

Ubuyama Lightning

Today is cloudy. Lightning shocks the dark grey clouds as light mists hover over the rows of lush, green cedars.


And the kids... The fifth graders from the bigger of the two elementary schools gave me going away notes because it was my last class with them today.


The love that these kids are showering on me almost knocks me over, literally. Now I understand even better the ways in which kids will our love for them. It really works. (By the way, their teacher helped them with these, just so you know. Still, it's impressive).





Now the rain is falling hard and I am going to miss my little shogakkusei (elementary school children) and their anime drawings.

West Virginia, Japan

Just to be sure, I wanted to let you know that I may as well be living in the equivalent of W. Virginia of Japan. (Although Montana is the actual sister-state of Kumamoto prefecture.) Furthermore, there is really no state in America that could compare to this prefecture (it has a metropolis with an ancient castle, beautiful coastlines on the west, and beautiful mountains in its east. But as far as my town goes, it may as well be W. Virginia (and yet there is an amazing school system in this tiny village of 1600 people).

One fascinating thing about Japan is that it is so densely packed with pockets of different things. Coming from America it's hard to imagine such diversity of landscape and civilization in such a relatively small landmass. It all comes back to what the old famer in the Kokonoe onsen pointed out as the biggest difference between Japan and America: that Japan is narrow and America is wide. You can also throw into that equation that Japan is very old.

Of course I won't be living in this town for much longer... But perhaps you can see why ony year here, for me, is a long time (even though everyone in this town tells me a year is such a short time - talk about a guilt-trip).

Once upon a Time in My Life

I heard these lyrics today to a song called "Once upon a Time" off of an album called "Adore" by a band called "Smashing Pumpkins." This song always gives me a feeling of nostalgia that few other songs can produce. I drove through two hours of lush beauty in Oita prefecture today and thought, almost constantly, about how this nostalgia illuminates an important piece of who I am (and perhaps explains why I am the way I am).

A few of my best buddies from college and I have labeled ourselves "nostalgic" people as if we were more nostalgic than usual. Of course I thought I might feel differently about that since I have not yet become completely nostalgic about college times (for some reason; although I feel it slowly coming on).

But then this song today made me realize just how much a kind of melancholic, yet very sweet, nostalgia matters to me. The Pumpkins song makes me feel the nostalgia acutely as if it were turning one person's memories into something as classic or magical as a fairytale (and that's exactly how they are to me at times).

So my life has occasional bursts of yearning, nostalgic emotion. Sometimes when I drive by a patch of bamboo that hangs over the slick, wet road I feel it. Natural things that are so beautiful and pass by so quickly....

And yet, this way of life is prone to side-affects. For instance, I also feel the sad things of life more than most people do... I feel the imminent loss of things in the future, the impossibility of holding on to things indefinitely. But, as I said earlier in an earlier post, to be able to lose means that you were able to have. So in the end, all is well (who knows, maybe you'll be reincarnated into a golden retriever that lived a hundred years ago and got to eat really good food for almost everyday of her life!).

And to throw a red herring at you I will declare another thing that I "hate" about this country: that the dental care here is even worse than it is in the UK. The other day I saw someone's teeth that looked more decayed than the teeth I have seen on human skeletons. That was shocking.... But what can you expect when no one seems to use fluoride around here and no one knows what floss is?

And still, more and more, I feel as though I am not done with my time in this country. Sometime in the near future I would like to return to a place like Kyoto or Nara (both in the culturally rich region of Kansai) and become an unemployed (or employed...), welfare-receiving, writer. I still haven't written my book yet and I promised myself I would; what better time to be a poor artist than right now as a young, family-less, welfare-enlisted man (I have paid into the welfare system in Japan this year so I am entitled to a couple grand of handouts or I could get them sent to me in the US...)?
. . .

In a sort of conclusion, my realization relating to nostalgia should help some certain folk (including my family) understand why I am the way I am. Or perhaps it won't. Or perhaps I am just trying to reconcile my desires with my identity. Anyhow, I am tired from the long day in the sun and the drive through the rain and I need to cook and eat dinner. (There was a much more perfect post for today in my head during the drive, but alas, weakness of body has not allowed it to be recalled and put it into words here (sorry)).

Above are pictures from some of the last few days. Pre-schoolers (at the bottom of course) and sunny, then rainy Beppu (above).

Life's been like this: remember that scene in "25th Hour" where Edward Norton's character lists all the people in New York that he hates but that, in the end, he actually loves (or is jealous of)(well, something like that)? I feel a little like Edward Norton's character except about Japan. I like to complain in my head about the little traditions that get on my nerves: the taking off of the shoes, the mildewed slippers that don't fit that I must wear in most public offices, the low ceilings that take my hair away, the old women who say "ne" every two or three words and can't stop talking about who knows what. The chopsticks that may seem very practical and good but, in truth, require the logging of millions of acres of South American rainforests annually (to make a wild guess at the figure). The people whose minds seem to be stuck in the confines of their own little town, and that town only. The strange odors. The overwhelming amount (both large ones and small ones) of different fish that are eaten whole. The raw horse. The unbelievable narrow-mindedness of some people. The racism (both the positive racism and the negative racism). The kanji (I mean really, everyone else except China (and a few others?) seems to have already switched to a completely phonetic written system...). The impossibility of truly becoming a part of this society. The people who I love and fear to lose across the wide Pacific Ocean. The culture that I love and fear to lose over the wide Pacific Ocean. The culture I never had but still seemed to have in this tiny village. The shortness of it all (just as Edward Norton's character has 25 hours left before he's incarcerated...). And to think: "This life came so close to never happening."

Life in "The Aso"

Old traditions die hard, and so do places in faraway countries that we inhabit for a year. The farewell parties have just start rolling full speed. It's exhausting; it makes putting together the pieces of my time here (and my time after) so much harder.

Someday, in less than a month, I will find myself back on my home island of Maui. Someday after that I may find myself somewhere else in the states. The mystery continues....

Last night I found myself eating organic, home-grown Japanese food at home of the Otanis. After the usual conversations during dinner and so on, I decided to spice up the conversation. We then discussed karma, reincarnation, morality, etc. I agreed that the concept of reincarnation, on the most practical level, can be a simple way of creating a more positive outlook on life and death. Mr. Otani then argued that perhaps 50% of life is determined by outside factors of which we have no control over. Then it is up to us to believe in the other 50% if we want to make our lives better. I am glad we spoke of these things; as I head into a new era of my life after this I want to do everything I can to maneuver my boat into wonderful waters.

some beautiful days

For fear of doing too much injustice to the indescribable I will limit my words. Very recently I have had days that have reiterated, again and again, the beauty and goodness of this land and its people.

I visited a shrine in a tiny village whose name means "star peace." There I saw a blue and purple worm and butterflies on pink flowers. The natural peacefulness and beauty of that place were unique, unmatched.

And another shrine with dew covered flowers surrounding its quiet existence - a shrine that I had passed many times by car without ever seeing, despite its largeness....

A half-indoor hot spring with a gushing waterfall next to it... Sashimi with the still-alive head of the river fish next to its once flesh....

Sometimes it feels as though I am still getting here and not that I am leaving. Perhaps I will always still be getting here even after I leave.