A Foreign Feeling

First off, let me just say that Japan is a dream. I do not live in Tokyo with its streets bursting with people and color. I live in Okayama, where the skyline is consistently green and blue (now subtly changing to orange and gray as fall prepares to land). It has a city with lively businesses and warm restaurants. But it does not seem preoccupied with trying to become the next big capital. It goes about its own pace, trams shuttling people on a strict schedule still, but with the residents having the distinct air of living in a routine that they do not mind continuing. People are never late here, but they are never in a hurry, either. They just move on along. This is especially true in the inaka, Japan’s version of the rural, where the rice paddies meld with the smooth cemented roads and pockets of supermarkets and drugstores. I am smack dab in the middle of this geographic limbo. Work is from eight to four, but what you do after is entirely up to you, the energy you have left, and the amount of trees you are willing to drive by in order to get somewhere.

Every morning, I wake up here in a daze of disbelief. It is not the kind of disbelief where I have to slap myself to ascertain reality, not the kind of disbelief where I jump up and down my worn yellow sofa bed at the sheer blessedness of being here. It is the kind where I half-expect to hear my dorm mates’ faint snores before I open my eyes or feel the toasty heat of sunlight on my legs from the window above my bed in my parents’ house. I absentmindedly tell myself, every morning, “You are not home.” And this unintentional mantra, I suppose, has dictated what I have been and am still feeling about being in this unfamiliar land.

 For others, it may seem grim that I do not seem unequivocally ecstatic to be living in a first world country when my third world origins simply pale in comparison (even by the quality of tap water alone). I hear their curious voices ask if there is anything wrong with my apartment, colleagues, students, or me, because surely, I should acknowledge the absolute good fortune of being one of the chosen ones. But then, do I really need to be that thrilled to appreciate this new world? I think the quiet calm of discovering who I am in the midst of work, travel, and nothing-doing coats my Japanese experience in a fuzzy glow, a foreign feeling, that will linger in my heart long after I leave.

 *This article was submitted for the JET Programme Voices column. Results pending.