Narrator’s Note August 2020: In August of 2005, I moved to Toyama, Japan to teach English. I was 22 years old, had only gone to Mexico once on a senior trip, did not speak Japanese, had no training as a teacher, was terrified of flying, and was living alone. In the interest of sharing my origin story, I felt I had to include writing from the time in my life that planted the seed of living abroad. I am including these Myspace- my god, I know- blogs of my year in Japan. Photos have been added retroactively, as when I was originally writing I had to go to an internet cafe, and I only had disposable cameras. What a time to be alive.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Take me already, it’s fine
Current mood: annoyed
The subject of my unrequited love is graduate school. I really resent having to apply. I actually think I should be able to show up at school, wherever I choose, and say “Hello. I will be attending your school. I am smart and I’ll do the work, and I’ll-
Sidenote- That Journey song, “Strangers in the Night”, is playing here in the internet cafe and I can’t stop laughing thinking about how Kate compared herself to Charlize Theron from the awkward roller skating rink scene in Monster. And before I am assaulted by music buffs, no, that may not be the title of the song, but in my opinion the title of a song can be any line in said song that I happen to know. And if you know the name of the song, you obviously know the lyrics, so you obviously know what I’m talking about, and are just correcting me to be pretentious-ooh, it’s the guitar solo and the guy behind the counter is actually air guitaring right now
make you proud, let’s cut the crap.” However, I am pretty sure that won’t work, so now I am having to look into GRE’s, and LSAT’s, and application fees, and it makes me uncharacteristically lazy and unmotivated. This happens when I resent having to do something. I don’t want to go through the protocol just to spite the protocol, which, is stupid, because you can’t really spite rules and regulations, but you can, however, be a silly prideful person and spite yourself, thinking you’re really spiting “the man”. Listen to me people. This is a rare glimpse into my warped sense of world justice.
Anyway, I am missing school so much. But, unfortunately, even after four years of undergrad I am still amusingly directionless and have no definite idea of what I want to do.
I have some shapeless vision of what I want my life’s work to be, with a few concrete ideals, and goals, and a few important requirements, and a handful of unrelated but colorful adjectives of how I want my life doing said work to be. But the previous sentence isn’t a degree plan that I have ever heard of, so there I am.
me at 22, singing the doomed song of my millennial people
GREAT, NOW THE CAPS LOCK ON THIS GODFORSAKEN INTERNET CAFE COMPUTER WON’T GO OFF…SIGH. NOW I HAVE TO GO RESEARCH SCHOOLS BECAUSE I CAN’T WASTE MY TIME AND MONEY ON MYSPACE WHEN I HAVE TO BECOME A GRAD STUDENT WITHOUT A PLAN
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Confessions… this is offensive
Current mood: dirty
I realized today I haven’t seen the inside of my shower for five full days. Let that sink in. FIVE DAYS. But gimme a break, I can see my breath in my own apartment, it has snowed or rained everyday for two months, and I am always wet even when I’m not planning on it. This whole “we pay you extra because it’s so cold where you live and the heat bill is a killer” thing is actually more legitimately real than I first thought. I come home and crank up the oven burners and the stove, plus the heater, and I’m still cold.
Getting naked for me these days means I only have two layers of clothes on and I’m not huddled under the electric blanket Manager made me promise I would never sleep with so I didn’t accidentally kill myself on her watch.
dear reader, i did, in fact, sleep with the electric blanket anyway
I have settled into a routine where I go to my neighborhood onsen on the weekend, to enjoy a good long three hour soak of cleaning yourself twice before you are clean enough to soak, and I kind of feel like not showering for five days and then taking a three hour bath results in being more clean in the end.
The sweet old ladies in my neighborhood make me feel like a celebrity because they are always pointing at me (in a sweet way?) and trying to chat me up as we scrub ourselves in every nook and cranny on little plastic stools. I have to say, if Total Physical Response methods of language learning are true, I have some very weird Japanese words associated with naked scrub down sessions with strange ladies in the bathhouse, but I digress. Let’s just say, I will never forget the word for mirror in my whole entire life or into the next, and I am also now completely and irrevocably comfortable being naked in a big group of strangers. So, progress?
Oh, and the most bizarre twist is that the grandma lady who runs the noodle shop out of her house across the street from my apartment goes there, too. I really never thought I’d be in a place where I have weekly bathing and chatting sessions with the same person who serves me delicious soba and udon a few times a week.
I’m not a “Hygiene teacher” people. I’m an English teacher, trying to practice Japanese naked with my nice neighbors and soup shop owners, during my once a week scrub.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Debt vs. Pleasure vs. Debt
So, lately I have been anxiously/constantly/obsessively pondering what to do with my end of contract bonus/payback/savings. I can pay off everything save my student loan- which, come on, that’s like fake debt, people can have $200,000 and live footloose and fancy free- AND my larger credit card debt. Those of you who know me understand that I carefully cultivated this one through my senseless adoption of four mangy, snotty, dying kittens from the pound. Although you all also know that, after three weeks of relentless medicine, food, and multiple trips to a very expensive vet, all four survived, so I guess it was worth my indebtedness forever…anyway, off track.
So, at the end of my contract I can go on this one month volunteer program in India, all housing/food/in country travel provided for. You volunteer teaching English in the mornings, and in the afternoon you take Hindi lessons. On the weekends you go out around the local areas, learning about history and culture. At the end of the month there is a three day camel trek, and you visit three different cities. Anyway, less airfare, this will all only cost about $2,000- for everything, plus that includes a year scholarship for one of the children, and a supplies scholarship. I really want to go, but then this thought nags me…”why aren’t you being all responsible and attacking that last shameful pile of credit card debt? What the hell are you thinking flitting off to India?! You get your ass on a plane, go back to America, give all of that money to the credit card company, and while you’re at it, start working three jobs to rid yourself of that scarlet D that is emblazoned across your chest”.
This is no exaggeration darlings. I keep telling myself, hey, you know what, everything but that paid off within a year of college, plus living/traveling around Japan, and a month in India, is a lot better than most people can hope for. But then the guilt…with a capital G…always comes back. Why can’t I just be a mindless, unfettered consumer like everyone else in America? I guess I can thank reading Dave Ramsey for this.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Thank you
Thank you, my friends, for giving me what I needed. I have an abnormally high load of guilt and it is often hard for me to see that it is really, actually, okay to do things I want to do. Here I come, India….and P, I take your challenge to give it my all to learning Hindi in those classes, I can feel it.
And M, I am currently looking into part-time work as a hostess to finance your travels. You won me over, what can I say. So what if I have to become a PG lady of the night? That’s what family is for. To guilt trip you into becoming a talk prostitute* in a foreign country so that they can go to sunny California and live it up. Thank you, cousin, for reminding me of what really, truly matters in this crazy world. I love you.
*Narrator’s note August 2020- I actually was looking at working into a hostess bar during this time. I ended up not taking it, and my friend who was working there ended up getting deported. But that’s her story to tell.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Working Class Heroine- college didn’t save me from it
I would like to pre-empt this (hey, I’m American, we’re good at preemption…ugh) with a disclaimer- Japan is totally great. My apartment rocks, my city rocks, the people I’ve met rock, my Japanese classes are stupid cheap, I am making good money…..
But I am seriously sinking into a major depression. Like, huge. It lasts all week, and then, on the weekend, it begins to lift. I am finally in a good mood Monday night- oh, wait and then it’s back to work again. I just can’t reconcile myself to the stunning monotony and condescending simplicity of it all, plus the nonstop work sometimes from start to finish of my shift. Yet, despite how boring and easy it is, I go home every night exhausted, more so than when I waited tables or tore down houses or did other sorts of manual labor. I think it comes from having no breaks and having to constantly smile, and praise, and just be around children that I am not allowed to discipline in any way for fear of losing customers. My only card to play is saying “No sticker”, which, even if their behavior does merit my withholding of the dangling carrot sticker, I am not actually allowed to do so, as “the parents will be upset”. I just can’t bow down to it.
Everyone keeps saying, with good intentions, “Cortney, it’s a job- you’re not supposed to like it. It’s all work, you do it, and then try to make the most of your time outside of it”. But this is different. I have never abhorred a job this much. In fact, most of my jobs were much harder, and more challenging, and much more enjoyable. I really don’t want anyone to remind me “Quit whining, you’re in Japan” or “Hey, I wish I could do that job, I wouldn’t mind it if I was over there”. I have been giving myself that same advice, and it’s not working. Why is Japan so fucking awesome, and my job sucks so fuckingly? Yes, that is a word. I am hangin’ off the edge here darlings. What is wrong with me?
Great, I have to go back to work. I am freaking out. I vacillate between thinking “7 more months of work will fly by with all the fun traveling/parties/blah blah you’ll be doing.” But when I cry in the mornings when my alarm clock goes off? This is more than just “Deedle-lee-dee, yeah, my job isn’t exactly superb, but I’m fine”. This is spirit crushing. It is making me questions whether I want children…I gotta get back on the tram to go back to work. I took it downtown to the internet cafe just to post this blog and feel like someone will understand I am not just a lazy person, I understand what it means to work hard.
Hi, my name is Cortney, I’ve had jobs since I was 14- but this is just completely different and I don’t know how- or if- I can handle this.
I gotta go teach for six hours straight now. God help me.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Work still sucks, but last night was great
One of my friends is leaving in a week. Going home to Australia. Her going away party was last night, and it was a blast. There were at least 20 people there, and I had a lot of good conversations. It was nice to be around adults! My respect for stay at home parents grows more every day- I only have to deal with the kids 8 hours a day, AND I’m getting paid.
Ironically enough, right after I posted my last blog, I went to work and had a really amazing day. One of those days when you feel like you are changing the world one student at a time, where the children are like the little angel babies in soft focus on a Johnson & Johnson commercial, and no one had bad gas or a snotty nose- and not one object was hurled at my person! Not one! No one pulled my hair, or awkwardly ignored me while I sang songs about letters and sounds, or, worse, tried to poke me in the butt (it’s a thing, and it’s weird). In fact, I felt all sentimental and hormonal…my ovaries were lit up like Christmas trees, of that I am certain.
I’m back to wanting six children again.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Dress you up in my love…
Current mood: nostalgic
Tomorrow is 80’s night at Club Mairo- that’s right, 80’s night in Japan. It is going to be out of control. I have been strength training my neck for weeks to be able to endure the weight of a side ponytail. It’s been hard, but when I’m rockin’ that thing all night without breaking my Roger Rabbit, Robot stride, all the work will be worth it. I will truly be the dancing queen. I am coming into my own over here guys. I am realizing my potential. I am growing and changing in ways I never knew possible. God bless you, sweet, sweet Japan. Lead the way to enlightenment, lit by disco balls and blacklights, and filled with the bittersweet strains of Depeche Mode.
I have two pairs of unmatched socks, and I shall wear them shrugged. I have dime store earrings, and they shall touch my shoulders. I have blue eyeshadow, and I shall wear it next to purple, brave, unafraid, facing the limitless possibilities of this life. 80’s night…or should it be called, “The most holy of nights?”
(clearly this punch drunk bullshit means I’m in a much better mood than those previous blogs)
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Absurdity
So, I’m at Club Mairo’s 80’s night, which came through all the way on the awesome night expectations meter. I had just finished doing a stupid interpretive dance to “Like a Virgin” with a random guy we met that night (we fumbled along with what little Japanese/English we both had respectively), when what song should come on…”Turning Japanese”…The dance floor is packed, my friends and I are the only gaijin there, and we are surrounded by a throng of dancing, drunk Japanese people who know all the words to the song and are scream singing it. It was a defining moment of absurdity in my Japan experience.
Then they played the Buzzcocks, and as I was jumping around and singing “ever fallen in love with someone ever fallen in love…” followed quickly thereafter with “Relax” (something I haven’t done in awhile) and then “Hand in Glove” by the Smiths, I realized that maybe Japan is the best place on earth…or at least the best place on earth to go to an 80’s dance party after a terrible week at work. And that definitely makes up for the corporate English factory grind.
Cross those fingers!
Current mood: anxious
So, after waiting for three weeks, my laptop has been ironclad guaranteed to arrive this Friday. I need you all to pray to/sacrifice whatever you have to to whatever you believe in that this will happen. I will actually be able to check my e-mail more than twice a week! I won’t have a time limit! It will be sweet sweet freedom. So, this means all of you will have to each send me a long e-mail so that when I plug that puppy in on Friday I can break it in right. If you do not send me a long e-mail, that’s fine- I’ll know who really loves me.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
There is no way today could ever suck
Current mood: ecstatic
Ladies and gentlemen, right after I posted the previous blog I left the internet room, took the elevator, and got straight on a tram to go to work. I walked in, and what did I see? A big, battered, slightly bent brown box, wrapped haphazardly with packing tape that said “Japan Post” over and over in happy, red letters. It was my laptop, which I am, at this moment, typing on. I couldn’t believe it! I am soooo happy.
I have been trudging through the snow for the past three months, and biking in the heat for the three months before that, to go downtown to the internet cafe or the free computer room.
I have to sign up every thirty minutes for a public computer where there is actually a list of things you can’t do, which are considered rude, and one of them is, inexplicably “checking your e-mail”, just to e-mail everyone.
even though I lived it, i feel disassociated pity for this cortney person who moved to japan alone and then didn’t even have a computer or internet at home to keep up with people. Bless.
(Which, by the way, makes me more than a little unsympathetic when people offer me excuses on why they haven’t e-mailed me in a while….ahem….passive aggressive moment is over…).
It is BEAUTIFUL. I brought it straight home and just plugged it in and set it up- that’s right, read that sentence again naysayers, I set this up MYSELF. And it has been 10 minutes and it hasn’t blown up yet!
Seeing as how the arrival of my laptop was three days ahead of schedule, you all still have until the aforementioned Friday deadline to send me long e-mails of substance, telling me what’s going on with you, and life, and America. But after that my heart will turn to stone and you will be dead to me. Have a great day, y’all- I’m finally connected!
Friday, February 24, 2006
How to not desecrate a shrine
Current mood: relieved
During one portion of my two to three minute walk home from work I have to go around a corner that is slightly terrifying. There is no sidewalk and I am always certain that this time, this time for sure a car will speed around the corner and I will suddenly feel a thwack from behind right before the tires go thumpity thump over my spine…anyway, there is a shrine located conveniently on this corner. I can walk in the side entrance, take about five steps, and pop out onto the next street. It is is a small deviation, yet I feel it makes a huge improvement in my personal safety.
However, I have to admit, even though it’s open to the public, somehow I always felt like a jerk when I did it- “deedle lee doo, let’s just tromp through the shrine-y doohickey thingy, no big deal, it’s just where people pray and stuff, let’s use their holy sanctuary as a short cut.” Every time I did it I thought, I am culturally insensitive, I am a heartless gaijin, if a religious Japanese person saw me walking through, would they be made I didn’t at least stop to pray? My coworkers assured me my guilt was just weird, people do walk through shrines even if they are not going to pray, but I dunno, it just felt flippant.
So, last night, I prepared myself for the walk of shame, guilt riddled cut through the shrine maneuver. I stepped resolutely in through the side entrance I came upon a drunk guy pissing into the very same fountain where people wash themselves before they pray.
Needless to say, my guilt is gone. Also, gotta say, kind of glad I wasn’t washing my hands there after all.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
You don’t know me just because you used to
Current mood: distressed
The following thoughts have been swirling around in the background of my mind ever since I came to Japan. Being all the way over here, I have the rare opportunity to step back and take in all of my relationships with others in one fell sweep, and come as close as I can to seeing them objectively. I carry with me the ideas of people, clusters of memories, favorite songs, jokes and fights and tears we have shared, their birthdays and what makes them happy, the secrets I keep for them, and those they keep for me.
This is not who any of you are, of course, my perception of you is made up entirely of what I have consciously and subconsciously chosen to decorate the nooks and crannies of my mind with. And, in fact, for most people, even if it was impossibly accurate, it is not who you have always been anyway, and is not who you will be even six months from now. As I sift through the infinite number of connections on myspace, I run into profiles of people that used to know me, that I used to spend quite a bit of time with. Especially those who were a big part of my life back home in Brownwood, when I was growing up, and doing good things, and doing bad things, and just becoming a person in general.
I realized that if the majority of these people were to each write down a description of the type of person I was, they would not only be wildly different from one another, but I would more than likely not recognize that person as myself. I think of all the petty rumors, the sordid tales, even just your run of the mill misunderstandings. It is uncomfortable for me to think of people assuredly judging me, believing they know who I am, what I did, and the kind of person I am. I try, above all else, not to make negative assumptions about people. If someone I knew to be a drug addict in high school is doing great now, I feel proud, and relieved. I don’t tag on a backhanded compliment of “Well, that’s good, remember what a ________ he/she was back in ______?”
I think, as far as people go, I try to be unendingly forgiving. I truly cannot, and will not, allow myself to hold grudges. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, because God knows I need the same in return. I would suggest that all of us take the time to be a little more forgiving, a little more understanding, and a little more sympathetic to the supreme difficulty of striving to become a better human being, of doing things you will never regret, and doing things you will forever be ashamed of. I have been sorting through a lot of the pain that has happened to me in my life, running my fingers through it, thinking about it too much more than likely. What I have realized is that, more than anything else, what hurts me the most is when people who know me can so callously and inaccurately judge me, and then use these judgements as a basis to toss me, and our history, to the side.
It is indescribably painful to me that people who knew me for so long could so readily accept accounts of me that are so obviously contrary to who they know me to be- be it in college with the P.A.’s, in high school with the fallout from the sexual assault, or now, as I realize all the people who were once so important to me are gone forever because they didn’t take the time to ask for the truth. With the joys of longterm relationships, or friendships, and especially if we are blessed enough to have our families for as long as possible, there comes the responsibility to say “Yes, I saw you at your lowest. I saw you do things you are now mortified by. And I love you enough to say that I am glad you made it through, and I am glad to know the better person you have become.” Forget all the “you’ve changed, you’re not the same, I don’t know you” accusations, or the laziness of clinging to an old idea. Life is long and people will change. We have to allow each other that.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Building Bridges
Current mood: grateful
I was playing Jenga with the nuggets on Saturday-using the lure of a turn to trick them into thinking they were playing and not learning an extremely difficult language that their parents have signed them up for which they resist mightily- and, as usual, one of them was sniffing incessantly. The silence would just reach the point where I would think, “Okay, he’s sucked it all up past the point of no return, he definitely swallowed it this time”. And then he would snort violently again and I would curse his weak nasal passages.
I had just wrestled up enough motivation to stand up and get the tissues when a beautiful thing happened. It was his turn, and after dutifully providing the sentence, he prepared himself to take out a block by doing an extra hard core snort accompanied by a firm back of the hand/arm nose wipe, the kind where your nose is flipped all the way to the side thinking “Whoa, hey cheek, what’s up ear”.
As he draws his arm away…I see his creation. A thick, shivering rope of mucus from his nose to his wrist- bear in mind his hand was almost on the table, I cannot emphasize enough how incredible a feat this was. He freezes, as do I, both of us in awe that such a tiny person could have enough mucus to build a suspension bridge between two body parts. Of course then I burst out laughing, and he does to, and the fragile strand is broken, and swings free from his wrist to attach itself to his cheek, chin, neck, and the top of his collar. But for that one second, when everyone in the class was shocked into reverent silence, and he had that look of total amazement on his face, and his booger bridge was sparkling in the sunlight- I realized why I really do like working with children, even in a corporate education factory that I thought was going to be a school.
Y’all know a punchdrunk blog like this means it’s been a good week. And it really, really has.
Focused on the task at hand
Current mood: accomplished
While I was teaching the nuggets today, the following thoughts were bumping around in my brain in no particular order:
oh, right, that baby lesson I said I’d teach….did she notice I was completely taken aback?…the smell of My Little Ponies, how did they make them so delicious….please don’t cry, please don’t cry….that one Full House episode where D.J. is “anorexic” and she passes out and falls off of the stair stepper is absolutely awful…I feel like Uncle Fraggle on Fraggle Rock, writing this postcard on my lunch break…I wish I could watch “The Muppets take Manhattan”….I wonder how many times that kid is going to run through the hall before he takes someone out… I really really need to take a shower…is it worth getting up for? No…why does that six year old have a shirt with the lyrics to Aaliyah’s “If at first you don’t succeed” plastered all over it?…I’m just going to grab this one chip reaaall quick like and no one will notice, I’m sure..hey, there’s my umbrella!…as soon as I hit that door, I’m getting Indian food…God help my students if they talk like the people in this book…maybe I don’t really need a shower…
All in all, it was a productive day. Surprisingly, I also ended up taking a shower, but I think this was more out of boredom than a heartfelt conviction of necessity. Good night dear ones.
Read Part III here
