Who Are YOU?

Kino Omiya Ni Ikimashita

Omiya is a city about an hour from where I live in Tokyo. In Saitama Prefecture, it is home to the John Lennon museum, which I passed yesterday on the way from Tokyo to Omiya. Omiya is the city where I did my initial Kaisha training, and where I returned yesterday for follow-up training.

There are several points I want to make here:

One: I realized that--GASP!--I’ve been here three months already. The other teachers brought it up, and the trainer reminded us that at the sixth month mark, some of us will be offered contract renewals. He planted a seed. I wonder if it will grow.

Two: As I rode the train back from Omiya last night, I thought back to my very first day in Japan.

On my first day here, I had been met at Narita Airport by a Kaisha representative and my hand had been held from the airport through a wild Tokyo Station at rush hour , into a cab, and then to the training house in Omiya where signs everywhere reminded me of things like: “Please Do Not Make Any Loud Noise After Ten P.M.” and, on the front door “Take Your Brolly!” and “Did You Remember Your Passport?” I was in shock then, having been transported from a place that made sense to a place that made zero sense. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t speak--some days I couldn't speak English or Japanese. Some days, I had to think hard to remember my own name. I would look in the mirror and think, who is this woman? I could barely be trusted to remember to take my passport and brolly with me when I left the house.

Yesterday, I popped out of bed and into a suit, put up my hair, and, while I put on makeup and tossed my lesson plan and umbrella into my briefcase, I consulted my cell phone’s online route finder to find the nearest station change and to which line and how much the trip was going to cost me. It was going to be 900 for the train fare and about 1,000 for the taxi. (Don’t worry, The Kaisha reimburses me.)

The trip back to Omiya wouldn’t take me through Tokyo Station at rush hour, thank goodness. Of course, I’ve been in Tokyo Station at rush hour (Shinjuku’s worse), but I remember very clearly, David, one of the trainers, explaining very patiently to us (those of us in my training group)) on the first day, as we disembarked from the airport train, “We’ll be going through Tokyo Station at rush hour. It’s very busy. Please, hold your own.” And then we stepped off the train and next thing I knew I was standing in the middle of the room that someone had convinced every person in Tokyo that they had to be in at that exact moment. The place was moving in a thousand directions at once, and I hadn’t the faintest idea of who or where I was.

So, no, yesterday did not put me in Tokyo Station, but in Ueno Station, changing from the Tobu Line to the Utsunomiya Line, and rushing for the train to Omiya. I say I rushed, but actually, I ran down the platform--loathe to wait the thirteen minutes for the next train should I have missed the one just pulling out. And there is always this fear, as I rush to hop onto an unfamiliar train on an unfamiliar line at an unfamiliar platform, that I’m going to get on the train, consult my map, and find that I’m headed in the completely wrong direction. Laugh, but one of the lessons that Japan Railways has taught me is the Japanese version of “measure twice, cut once.” It’s easier not to make a mistake in the first place than it is to correct one once it’s made--especially when correcting it requires having to speak more than pidgin Japanese, ne?

So, yes, I am able to navigate my home town, enormous as it is. I am able to get from one city to another by rail, able to remember my brolly and (now) gaijin card. I am able to jump into a taxi on my own and ask for a destination and receipt. I am able to navigate not just the wilds of Tokyo Station, but also in the wilds of Tokyo. I am able to hold my own.

Kyo April and Aaron Wa Kyoto Ni Kaerimas’

April called this morning to tell me that she and Aaron were leaving Kyoto. I asked how their trip was, and she said, “There wasn’t enough time.” And I was, like, honto? Because going to Kyoto for two days is like going to San Francisco for two days. What are you really going to be able to see after you’ve gotten to your hotel, checked in, found a place to have dinner, had a shower and a good night’s sleep? What can you really see of a place as beautiful and historical as Kyoto in two days? Not much, I’m sorry to say.

But you can say you’ve been to Kyoto. You can know whether you’d want to come back or not. You can see a part of Japan that isn’t as densely populated as Tokyo, where the natives aren’t as big city busy.

Anyway, they’re back in Tokyo tonight, and I’ll see if they want to do Harajuku and Korean barbecue, and then tomorrow morning, Aaron flies out. After spending two days in Dublin, he’ll return to Albuquerque.

The News?

Of course, since the world revolves around me, I am forced to wonder what news will reach home about me via my beloved world travelers?

I know that in New Mexico, I was a completely different person.

April often comments that she was afraid of me when she first met me because I was so damned loud. Honto, I really was loud. Maybe you remember. Here, loud doesn’t cut it, so I am not loud. I can’t remember the last time I raised my voice.

At home, in America, it’s acceptable to have a continuous air of anger or frustration. (Just think of your response to rush hour traffic and you’ll know what I mean.) It was perfectly acceptable to resort to sarcasm as a response to the wish that you have a good day. I was angry, frustrated, sarcastic. In fact, I raised these qualities to an art form. Here, anger and frustration and sarcasm don’t work. I don’t use anger or frustration, and I only use sarcasm around other Westerners and some of my super-Westernized Japanese coworkers, as they are the only ones who really appreciate it and don’t find it needlessly insulting.

In New Mexico, I bummed around a lot and didn’t have much of a job even when I did have one. Dressing up for work meant the pair of jeans with no holes and dressing down meant--honto!--wearing my pajamas or sweats. Here, I work five or six days a week and, as I only put in about forty-five or fifty hours, I am considered the lazy, spoiled American. I wear a business suit five or six days a week, and in a skirt the other two. I carry a briefcase and look respectable enough most days to rub elbows with stockbrokers and bankers and doctors and lawyers. Some days I catch sight of myself in the mirrors that occur periodically in Ginza Station, and I have to laugh. Who is this person, I wonder?

What would I seem like now to the people who knew me in New Mexico? Here, I am quiet and on time and not angry or frustrated or sarcastic (unless I am around other foreigners). Nani? Oona no hito dare desu ka? Who is that woman? I wonder if this news will reach my friends and if it be scarier to them than the old, loud, pajama-wearing, angry, sarcastic, frustrated me ever was.

I hope not.