student

I am busy. I’ve started running again this week which feels so incredibly good. I always forget how fantastic it is, how much my body loves to be worked, how much more powerful I feel in my life when each day I convince myself to keep running when I would “rather” stop and walk. It’s such a simple thing but it definitely keeps more than a few of my common demons at bay.

It’s been a little hard to fit it into my day, though. I get off work at 4:15 and it’s a 2 minute bike ride home. Then I usually bike a ways (only like 4 kilometers) to the river where there are nice (non-pavement) trails to run along. So I start running at about 4:40 and sunset is at 4:50. Makes for a gorgeous background but it sucks riding home in the dark. And at it’s earliest the sunset’s going to be at like 4:20. Holy hell! It seems crazy to me. Obviously this happens every year but it feels so drastic this year because being outside just became bearable about 3 weeks ago. Summer in Japan is, apparently, mind-bendingly hot and humid, a combination that I’ve never been remotely comfortable with. It was brutal. So, now, it’s cool and gorgeous but there’s no light.

Bah, not what I mean to write about. I have a lot of standing commitments. I teach/converse in English with some older Japanese people every Tuesday evening. I have Japanese class with an adorable retired high school Japanese teacher every Wednesday. And every other Thursday is shodo, or Japanese calligraphy, which is absolutely awesome.

I never feel like going but once I arrive I usually spend about three hours there in total bliss. Apparently I love writing the same japanese characters over and over again with a big paintbrush until getting them just right. The teacher for the class is a very lovely old man who doesn’t speak a lick of English but really likes looking up the meanings for the characters I’m writing. Usually the translation makes decent sense but tonight I wrote a character that he told me means “Gaudy” about 15 times. Pretty sure there’s a different meaning or a better word for the idea of it in english, but, *shrug*. It’s pretty! It’s so interesting to me to be writing things that have significance to everyone around me but are nothing but lines and stops, slow and fast, hard and soft pressure to me. It’s really relaxing and no one there speaks English so it’s a really good chance for me to forcibly speak my shit Japanese. I love it.

Relationships in Japan are really interesting. There aren’t a lot of young people in my town – most people leave as soon as they’re finished with high school, much like most rural places in the States. I have a few younger “friends” and that’s in quotes not because there’s any negative feelings involved but because there’s just not much depth in the relationships. I see them at work, every once in awhile we’ll arrange to do something outside of work but it’s always surrounding some sort of event. There’s no hanging out for the sake of it. Of course, not being fluent isn’t super helpful in this regard but Alex is mistaken by Japanese people on the phone for a Japanese speaker and the depth in his relationships with Japanese people isn’t much greater.

That being said, I’m beginning to treasure the student-teacher relationships I’ve built here. With both my Japanese teacher and my calligraphy teacher I feel a connection that’s lacking in any other aspect of my life. And it’s different from any of the student-teacher relations I was a part of throughout school. There is, in a way, a much greater wall between me and my teachers here, because they are masters and I am so incredibly lowly, and because in Japan there is always such an awareness surrounding your “place” in society. You use completely different language depending upon who you are talking to and what their position in society is compared to you. Of course, we have this in America, as well, but it’s not nearly as rigid. While you might not say, “Thanks, dude,” to a superior in America, there also is not a hierarchy built into every single sentence that you speak. For example, to a close friend who is my age or younger, if I wanted to tell them “Thank you!” a simple “Domo,” will do. If I want to say that to a friend who is a little older, or someone who I’m not close with but is younger than me, “Arigatou,” is required. Thanking your boss? Better throw out the “Domo arigatou gozaimasu.” President of the company/principal at a school? “Domo arigatou gozaitashimasu!” And there are more beyond that, for the president/God, what-have-you, but I haven’t learned them and probably won’t.

What this hierarchal speech and general way of living provides in the realm of the student-teacher relationship is not merely a stiff, unbreakable wall of bow-to-me-for-I-am-all-that-is-powerful, however. Rather, it allows me, the student, to enter a state of total humbleness. In order to be taught anything in Japan, I’ve had to let all of my defenses down and realize that, as a foreigner to this country and as a student of this teacher, everything I do will hold somewhere within it the element of a mistake. Now, I like to do things well. Have never really been a happy loser or the type of person who likes to do things that I’m bad at. But the vulnerability that I’ve allowed myself to feel in these relationships has been infinitely rewarding. My own vulnerability lends to my teacher seeing me as I truly am. Not as I want them to see me. And that feeling of being recognized as the very creature that I am, nothing more, is one of the intensely emotional connections I’ve felt as a human being with another person.

I write a kanji character, stark black ink surprising me with its richness on unblemished paper, about 20 times, on 20 sheets of paper, and bring them all to my teacher to see. He throws out 18 of them. He keeps one. On the other, he writes over what I’ve written with his own brush, in orange. I go back to writing until I’m satisfied and ready to show him my progress. He doesn’t tell me that I have done well when I haven’t. And when he does tell me I’ve done well, I glow. A little.

It’s one of the things I love about Japan.