i could stay here

I've been waiting to find something here that I don't like. Some little detail that's out of place, something that jars me out of my enchantment with Japan and makes me long for my familial home because I like it the American way better. Something that's not exciting, or cute, or interesting. Something that makes me think, "It'll be nice to have/do such-and-such again when I go back to the States."

Except that's not what's happening. Everything I do, everywhere I go, I keep having other thoughts. I keep making plans for a future in Japan. At the grocery store today, I thought, "I should learn to de-bone and clean a fish so I can find markets to buy fresh, cheaper fish from." I thought, "When I learn enough Japanese, I should see if I can join one of those community farms to get fresh vegetables." At home, I thought, "It'd be nice to have a little chair in that corner there. Well, I'll save up and buy one later."

I'm not thinking about what I'll do this year. I'm thinking about what I'll do in the next three years.

I know I've only been here, in my apartment, for four days. That's it. I've got plenty of time to be disappointed with something, to meet someone mean, to have something disastrous happen, to have my dream ripped away from me. I'm practical, and realistic. But every day I find myself making plans for the future, investing myself in it in a way I never quite have before.

I hesitate to phrase it this way, since it's still early days, but I think I might very well be falling in genuine love with Japan. The way I feel here is quiet, peaceful. I'm thrilled to go about ordinary tasks because I'm doing things in a Japanese way: sleeping on a futon, driving on the left side of the road, even taking my shoes off before entering my apartment.. Even working tirelessly hard and caring about every detail is fulfilling, because I'm in a country where everyone else is doing the same.

I can't say I'll feel this way in a month, or six months, or a year. But right now, this is my dream coming true. I'm cooking udon noodles, from Japan, in Japan. I'm drinking matcha tea. I'm practicing speaking Japanese to people, and listening, and learning.

I hesitate to say I'm in love. But then again, it's entirely possible I've been in love with Japan for years, only I never thought I'd get here. I never thought I'd get to see the place I loved. And now that I have... it's everything.

it's a quiet village

For the second morning in a row, I went for a jog along the side streets of my neighborhood. The first morning, I went in a straight line, following the road as far as it went. When I arrived at a park, and a sharp turn, I turned around and jogged back.

This morning, I turned left, and at the next intersection, right again, now following a new road as far as I felt I was willing to jog. I passed more houses, more little plots of land growing rice and vegetables, and what I think might have been a Shinto shrine on a wide expanse of cleared land.

Both times, although I passed people and the occasional car, I was mostly on my own along the roads. Last night I remember lying in the dark before I fell asleep and thinking, "It's so quiet." No distant din of traffic, no undertone buzz of electricity, no nearby growl of a scooter engine, no occasional shout or yell from somewhere in the streets. Last night, I fell asleep to the silence of suburbia. It's a marked difference from what I became used to in Taipei, and I think it's part of the reason why I'm adjusting so well (so far).

When the city is busy, you feel caught up in the rush. You feel there's somewhere you need to go, now, and the river of life is moving along everywhere you go. Then even when you're still, you're aware of everything else going on without you. Life is still busy.

Here in Hitachinaka, it's not like that. If you go out onto the streets, there are cars, and people on the sidewalks, and a bike or two, but there's no mad dash. Maybe the fact that I came during spring vacation is why the city is so still, but I think it's just that we're so far away from any major metropolis that makes Hitachinaka so peaceful and relaxed. I haven't gone out driving on my own yet, but the one time I did, I didn't feel pressured to go quickly. When I'm jogging along the streets, I don't feel like I'm going to get so distracted by everything going on that I'll lose my way. Hitachinaka has a comforting sort of calm that's making it very easy to get used to living here.

I still have a lot to do, including learning how to competently drive my car so I can drive to my classes when I start teaching on April 14th. But I don't feel like I'll be diving into deep water. I think I'll manage to tread just fine.

Today's goals include buying a second futon, practicing driving my car on these small side roads, and hopefully meeting up with my fellow Interac expats for dinner.

what a week

So. Here ends my first week in Japan. I arrived last Thursday, and now here I am, seven days later, officially moved into my apartment. I have things to say about Japan. Good things, even. Happy, loving, fantastic things.

But right now, however, I'm just ridiculously tired.

Because from day one, I've been on the move. Not physically, you understand, but mentally. The night my Interac group arrived at the hotel, we were shepherded into a room for a brief and unexpected hotel etiquette orientation (that, in my opinion, was way too full of smiles and long explanations for being given to people who'd just gotten finished sitting on a plane for 11 hours and hadn't eaten yet), plus paperwork.

The next morning, at 8:30am, we had another orientation. Then, we went to join our individual branches and branch managers for company training. This training lasted 8 hours a day for the next four days, and it was, to say the least, intensive. Good, helpful, and necessary, but intensive. And exhausting. By the end of it, I'm pretty sure most of us were stir-crazy and a bit slap-happy. Small things that happened during the week became hilarious inside jokes that caused us all to burst out laughing at a moment's notice. Friendships were established at an exponential rate. Survival instincts kicked in. We drank unending bottles of vending-machine juice, coffee, and tea, and ate our weight in heavily-processed bento lunches.

Finally, on the morning of March 27th (that's today for me, over twelve hours ago) we left the hotel with our bags in tow and got on a bus to Narita Airport, where we loaded up on Starbucks and boarded yet another bus.

For the next two hours, there was mostly quiet contemplation of the unfairly picturesque Japanese countryside and group good-byes when various members of the Mito Branch crew departed the bus at their assigned stops.

My group, the Hitachinaka teachers, were met at Katsuta Station by three helpful Japanese women. We were split up and taken into town to register for National Health Insurance at City Hall, open a bank account at the post office, receive our keys for our apartments, and purchase any immediately necessary items for our first nights on our own.

I was able to accomplish all of this today, with only one thing left to do tomorrow: pick up my car. I'm starting to see that a car will be very necessary in Hitachinaka, as the area is very suburban. There might be several apartment and housing properties along a street before you reach a restaurant, grocery store, or even a 7-Eleven, making walking and biking too much of an effort at times.

After several hours of fighting with my internet, I finally got it to diagnose itself, fix its problems, and connect. Soon I'm going to pass out on my new futon, which, for me, isn't nearly thick enough to be comfortable. I'm going to end up being one of those people who buys a second futon to put under the first.

My apartment is far nicer than I expected it to be, and I'm going to try to keep it that way. For being the size of a matchbox, it does an excellent job of making use of every available space, and in a way that feels roomy. There are two things in it that fill me with joy: two burners for cooking, and an actual bathtub. I had neither of these things in Taiwan. And despite the compact design of my apartment, it's definitely at least double the size of the one I had in Taiwan. Moreover, it actually feels like a living space, instead of just a room.

(PS - What's pictured here is just the main room of my apartment. Beyond the door is more, which I'll photography and explain later.)

Hitachinaka, what I got to see of it, is beautiful. It's full of traditional Japanese houses with well-kept gardens, modern apartment buildings, decently spacious roads, and enough establishments to be interesting without overwhelming. It's a definite difference from Taipei, which was so full of shops and stores that there was always something to explore. Here, I feel it's more of a place to explore yourself. I look forward to doing so.

Here ends my first blog post in Japan.

incoming

I have arrived in Japan.

And I have to say, the culture shock element has been... surprisingly anti-climactic, so far.

I've only been at the hotel and up the road a little bit to visit 7-Eleven. But, because Japan uses Chinese characters in its written language, a lot of signs have characters that are, while not immediately recognizable to me, familiar to my brain. The background noise of Japanese isn't strange because of all the Japanese music I've listened to and the anime I've watched. The food is, while not Taiwanese, definitely still similarly Asian, enough that even the layout of foods in bento boxes isn't a new sight.

I haven't been into any Japanese cities or towns away from the airport, so there's still plenty that could culture-shock me. But the way things are going, I think it may not. I think my brain may be okay. I may have psyched myself out for nothing, but then, I figured my brain had reversed back into full American-mode and it would take another act of extreme will to get it back to non-English-culture-mode. It seems that now that my mind has made space for processing information in Taiwan, getting that part back up and running isn't going to be as difficult as installing it all the first time.

I'm super-tired right now, and it's only 8:30pm here now. I slept like a rock last night, only waking up once at 4am and falling right back asleep. I expect to be asleep by 9:30 or 10pm, at the rate I'm going. That's fine; we were in training for about 9 hours today with only small breaks and an hour for lunch, so even though it hasn't been that taxing, the jet lag is still pulling on me and the millions of interactions I've had all day have worn me down.

I'm actually so tired now, I'm going to wash up and go to bed early. I'll savor that now, because it's not going to happen much once I've adjusted to Japanese time.

I'll write a more comprehensive and informative blog post once I'm feeling more awake. I am here in Japan, though, awake and alive and using yen in vending machines, and munching pocky in bed while surfing Facebook. So, I think I'm okay.

familiar but unexpected

I'm nearly finished packing for Japan right now, and part of me is distressed about it.

The last time I left the country, I was heading into the unknown. Not just geographically, but emotionally. I didn't yet know how the culture shock would feel, or how acutely I'd miss my family and the familiarity of the States. This time, I know exactly what I'm walking into, and even though I'm finally making my dream a reality... part of me is just ridiculously sad. Because I know it may be six months before I get to hug any of my family or friends again, and knowing that... it hurts. Last time I left the country, I didn't think about that. Now, sometimes, it's all I can feel.

Moving to Japan is literally an endeavor that has been two years in the making. I got my TEFL certification in March 2012, and now finally I'm moving to Japan in March 2014. The money I used to get to Taiwan I'd been saving for months, and the whole time I was in Taiwan I saved every kuai I could, because I knew I'd need it in a year to move to Japan. And I will. It's been worth it, but it has taken so much work, so much planning, so much saving, and so much giving up.

Because that's the one thing I've realized while pursuing this world-travelling dream: to do it, you have to give up a lot of other things. Since I landed back in the States in July 2013, I've not had a car, nor health insurance. I didn't search for local full-time jobs because I was applying for ones in Japan. I've foregone cons and trips and indulgent purchases for a year because I knew I'd need the money once I got a job and had to start shelling it out for the move. (Thank goodness I finally had the sense to get a part-time job in December or I'd have fewer savings than I do now.) I've essentially had my life on hold for almost a year, all in the name of getting what I wanted. And even now that I'm going to Japan, I'm going to give up more than ever.

I'm going to miss my niece's 7th birthday, and my other niece's 5th birthday. I'm going to miss Thanksgiving with my family. I may miss Christmas, too. I won't be here for Easter again, nor the 4th of July. I'll be able to Skype friends and family, but I won't be able to hang out with them, or hug them. I won't be able to pet my dogs, and believe me, you don't realize how used to fuzz therapy you are until you're stressed and can't hug a warm, furry dog that loves you.

I'm going to endure at least another three months of culture-shock frustration; the mental overload of too much not-English, of re-adjusting my understanding of social cues. I'm going to have to re-learn how to drive. Until I learn Japanese competently, I'm going to go from being an independent, functioning adult to an illiterate outsider who may need someone's help to go to the doctor.

You get used to it, of course. You adjust. And I will. And I'll love Japan. The first time I see Tokyo lit up at night will be one of the greatest moments of my life.

But I'm going to miss everyone. I'm going to miss home. And right now, at midnight, with my packed bags at my feet and only seven hours left in America, it's all I can think about, and it'll be a good thing when I finally get to Japan, because then I can stop anticipating how hard the hard times will be and start working on having good times that'll get me through it.

rollercoaster ride

I've been going so crazy worrying about everything I have to do before going to Japan that I often forget about how happy I'll be when I get there. Yesterday I received an email with information regarding my apartment in Japan. I decided to look up the location on Google maps to get an idea of my future neighborhood and the nearby coastline.

Hitachinaka is quite lovely. The roads are long, so I can see why I'll need a car. I may try for a bike, anyway, just so I can go riding along this gorgeous coastline.

I'm glad I'll be in Hitachinaka for springtime, to enjoy the cooler warmth before it becomes hot. I'm glad I'll have the ocean nearby.

I can't wait to get my camera out in Japan.

new place, new plans

Dear Readers,

Sometimes I look at my stats. Usually I don't. But I see you guys reading these entries. I see the pageview numbers and it makes me happy, not so much for the count but to see that the experience is being shared.

I haven't been writing much while I've been in the States. Not many exciting experiences to be shared, or maybe it's just that I've been around friends and family who share the experiences with me, so I don't feel the need to write them out.

At any rate, I'll be heading back into Asia in about three weeks, and although I already know I'll be meeting some fantastic expats to go on adventures with, I look forward to again having daily adventures that inspire me to write. So now, suddenly, I find myself wondering: Is there anything my readers would like to hear about once I'm in Japan?
What do you want to know about? Grocery shopping? Train etiquette? Driving? (I'll be doing that, so you'll hear about that. Lots of that. Lordy, you'll be hearing about that.) I'm not promising to answer any and all questions, but if there's something you'd like to hear about, let me know! Investigating and writing about it will help me learn, too. And I realize now there were some things I still don't know about Taiwan. Like, were teabags sold in stores? I can't remember.

Direct your questions either to the comments section of my posts, and I'll do what I can to get them answered. If  no questions come, well, I'll find plenty of adventures on my own. :)

All the Best,
Caitlin