the whole truth

I feel like I’ve been manic or something for the past month. How can I tell you about what’s happened to me?

I’ve moved to Japan and I’m settling in. There have been astounding moments. My life is stupendous. I’m not taking care of myself very well. I sometimes feel like I am slipping away from all of the knowledge and self-care that I developed while I was dating Theodore. But I’m also slipping away from the meek, shy individual that that relationship fostered.

I’ve really been true to myself, at least socially, at least so far. And people like me when I am myself – this is something that has slowly been dawning on me for the past few years but this time in Japan has brought it home. To be so instantly accepted into a community of strangers is not the norm in my life. I am usually hanging back, seeing who will notice the girl in the corner. Knowing I am interesting and fun but not willing to put myself out there for people to see unless they make the first… and the second… and sometimes even the third step toward me.

I’m older than a lot of the people here. Not by much… a few years on average. Most of them are straight out of college. And those few years, and the huge sum of my experiences that they embody, make a lot of difference. When spending time with Theodore and his friends, it was easy for me to feel like my time on earth has been insignificant. Ted, who’d lived in Japan for 2 years, done Habitat for Humanity in Costa Rica and Guatemala for a few years, lived in Vancouver, visited over 30 countries, had a shocking story for every occasion. It bothers me that I felt like my life paled in comparison to his. I felt like I had nothing to bring to the table. But now the tables are flipped. People gape wide-eyed as I tell them how I ended up accidently running a hostel in New Zealand. They sit me down and say, “I’ve heard you have the greatest stories… let’s hear one!”

And I’ve always known I was interesting, and fun, and different, and adventurous. And I’ve never wanted what people think of me to matter. But it does matter to me. And I’m glad these people see this Goodness in me. I still wish it didn’t matter. But I suppose it always will. Even when I was denying that it mattered these last few years, I was letting Ted’s idea of who I am shape me into a girl who doubts the validity of her own opinions and experiences. Who hangs back looking for the answers from someone else. But that’s not who I am. Stepping away from that person was how I found success at SUWS and doing the same here in Japan has blessed me in the same way.

The language barrier… I thought it would be more alienating than it really is. It’s just constantly present. If it were constantly alienating I’m not sure I could survive. So I think I just have decided that it is OK that there will constantly be conversations going on around me that I cannot understand. I just re-read a book by Tom Robbins where the main character was a linguist, among many other things. He remarked at one point, while he was surrounded by Native Americans, that usually he would be puzzling his way through the language so he could communicate with them but that he had recently discovered that it was almost better to not be able to discern the meaning of all of the chatter that surrounds us as human beings every day. He intimated that suddenly being able to understand and recognize that 98% of human conversation is banal and masturbatory no matter where you are took a lot of the magic out of being somewhere new. I was annoyed when I read it at first. Like, how could you not want to understand every single language?! But, as I drift through this part of the world not understanding anything, I’ve derived some comfort from the thought that I may very well not be missing much.

That’s not to say that I’m not working hard on my Japanese. People have told me that I’m picking it up surprisingly quickly but I don’t really believe them. I feel like I have a VERY SOLID GRASP on the polite niceties but most everything beyond that is frustrating and slow to come. I can read hiragana but it takes me forever, and then once I sound out a word I have to look it up 98% of the time to sort out the meaning. As someone who has spent my life with my head aswim in the printed word, suddenly being not only exceedingly ineloquent but also illiterate has been a bit boggling. But I’m practicing and practicing, if not formally every day, at least conversationally. I know I could be doing more but I am my own worst enemy and frankly lazier than I’d like to be. I am starting an actual class this week, though, with a textbook and a teacher and everything, and this makes me very, very happy. I am really excited about learning Japanese, finally. Before I came it just seemed daunting but now I am starting to feel like it’s possible for me to come out of this experience at least partially fluent and how can I possibly pass up on that opportunity?

So also, on top of all of this, (and there’s a lot more “all of this” where the above came from!) there is a boy who I’ve been sleeping with. He’s young and beautiful. He has five guitars, four of which he has bought in Japan. His Japanese is excellent and he helps me a lot when it comes to the language and Japan-related things. He played the french horn and trumpet in high school (same as me!) and has played the cello since he was four. He’s smart and witty and I find it easy to be myself around him. He’s in awe of my adventures and thinks I’m (probably more) amazing (than I really am, but I won’t complain!) And he’s messy and young and a little selfish and sort of lazy. (These are all things that Theodore found to be difficult about my own personality…) The sex is solid. Far from mind-blowing but good enough that if we keep at it I am sure it will become so. I’ve been sleeping at his house a little too frequently. He lives in a city that is a 10 minute walk 40 minute train ride 20 minute walk from my house. So when I stay with him and have to work the next day I have to wake up at 5:30 AM if I want to go back to my house before work, 6:30 if not. I have no idea where things are going. I’m completely reluctant to commit as is he which is just fine at this point.

I’m not going to see him for like two weeks… because on Friday I’m leaving for Tokyo and meeting my friend and then traveling with her for a week. I’m reallllly excited about that and a little nervous seeing as my Japanese is shit and she doesn’t speak ANY so it’ll be me doing all of our finagling, direction-seeking, food-ordering, etc. I’m feeling up for the challenge though. On this week’s Japanese Language Platter: Travel Vocabulary!

So there’s a little bit. Oh, there’s a story. I had been practicing my hiragana and katakana for about 2 weeks and I was at Seiko-san’s house eating dinner. She brought out her DS to show me a program where you can write in kanji, hiragana and katakana and it will look up the definition of them. So, excited to show off my new skills, I started writing some hiragana and both she and her daughter started giggling. Everything I was trying to write in was coming up completely differently in the dictionary. I looked at Seiko-san, astounded, and she said, “You haven’t learned the stroke order yet.”

Stroke order, as in, which line do you draw first in your capital “A”? Because if you get the stroke order incorrect,you are actually writing something completely different and blatantly wrong. Apparently calligraphy masters can look at a sheet of writing and determine, without ever having watched it being written, whether the letters were composed in the correct order… these are kanji with up to 20 strokes in them… I was completely dumbfounded. I started showing Seiko-san all the different ways you could write the same letter in english. “And it’s all the same letter!” I said.

“I see. But order is very important in Japan,” she replied.

So now I am working on my stroke order.

<3Clea