Imma Lick That Again Imma Split That Again
For the by few minutes I've been sitting frozen with my fingers on my keyboard trying to think of a fashion to offset a postal service where I'm basically going to say that I hated my fourth dimension living in Nihon. Whoops, spoiler, I guess at present you guys don't need to bother reading more (which might exist a good thing, since this post islong).
Though before I offset I also want to say that while my time living in Nippon was hard, I call back it'due south a wonderful country to visit! If y'all're wondering where to start, you can read my ane week Nippon itinerary here.
My family moved to Nihon for a yr when I was half dozen and I LOVED it. Because the country'southward obsession with all things beautiful – information technology's a place where banking company cards are covered in Moomin cartoons and grown women try to look like little girls – of course Japan would exist a dream world for a six-year-former girl.
When I concluded up moving to Japan again at 22, I quickly barbarous in love all over. Not only was I excited to live and work in Japan, I had received maybe the coolest placement on the JET Program: I was living on Tanegashima, a tiny island south of Kyushu, the southernmost of Nihon's chief islands.
Tanegashima is home to the virtually beautiful beaches I have ever seen, and as near of the islanders take no interest in swimming, the only people I would ever see on them were the few surfers who had moved downwardly to Tanegashima to chase what they told me were the all-time waves in the country.
Also, at that place is a space station on the island, meaning that every few months I got to come across a rocket launch!
But the best part? I was educational activity at three high schools, and 1 of them wasn't on Tanegashima. For a few days each month I would take a ferry to the neighboring island of Yakushima, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is home to Princess Monoke and a seven,000-year-old cedar tree.
There my school would put me up in a cozy mount lodge and give me some extra coin for the inconvenience. Because, you know, spending a few days a month at a monkey-inhabited mount paradise was SUPER inconvenient.
Paradise.
Simply the other teachers I was working with didn't agree. When I asked them if they enjoyed life on Tanegashima, they all responded past telling me how many years of "isle duty" they had left. High schoolhouse teachers in the prefecture had to modify schools every few years, and at least once in their careers they would accept to spend 3-v years on one of Kagoshima's islands.
It was a shame, because Tanegashima deserved to be loved.
Of class that's not to say life at that place was easy. Beingness the only blonde woman on the island and about a foot taller than nigh locals, I didn't exactly fit in. People seemed to be constantly watching me (or I was constantly paranoid) and information technology became normal for me to meet someone for the first fourth dimension and have them tell me that they had recently seen me in the supermarket. And and then they would proceed to list everything that had been in my shopping handbasket, often commenting on my eating habits.
Tanegashima is likewise incredibly conservative compared to the rest of Nippon. Very few of the teachers I worked with gave their students any room for creative thinking, always stressing the importance of social harmony above all else. Information technology was great for those who fit in, but the students who didn't really struggled.
When gay comedians came on television, people would express mirth and say that obviously it was all an act, and a Japanese friend on Yakushima told me that she had once asked her doctor for birth control and, very begrudgingly, he prescribed her one week's worth of the pill (instead, abortions are very mutual).
When it came fourth dimension to renew my contract in Feb I decided to stay, partly considering the task paid well and the cost of living in Nippon (or at least on Tanegashima) was quite low, but by and large because I felt like I needed more time to discover my feet in Japan.
And so the seismic sea wave hit.
Tanegashima was far s enough that we had several hours alarm, and in the finish the wave had lost its force past the time information technology arrived. In southern Japan, the tsunami wasn't a big bargain at all.
Except information technology was a huge deal.
This was when I finally felt the full brunt of beingness an outsider in Nippon. No one wanted to talk about the tsunami with me, and whenever I brought it upward they would once again enquire me to tell everyone in America that I was fine and the nuclear issues were not as large of a deal equally Western media was making them out to be. I did admire how instead of falling into hysterics and making the disaster all almost them, my colleagues simply worked harder.
This wasn't my commencement feel with a natural disaster in Japan.
My family unit had been living outside of Kobe during the Smashing Hanshin earthquake in 1995. I have vague memories of some of our neighbors stumbling out of their homes covered in blood and my begetter going to help dig out bodies, merely about of my memories of the earthquake were actually actually pleasant. Anybody kept giving me candy and my teacher called to tell me that all of my classmates had survived, and in the shelter people kept piling my family unit'south mats with extra blankets and snacks. Fun times!
Simply this time I could. Not. Stop. Crying. I kept having dreams about earthquakes, probably mixing childhood memories with fantasy, and a once beautiful bulldoze along the bounding main to one of my schools became hell.
I know, I'one thousand such a baby.
Thinking nearly the tsunami somehow made me experience even more lone on the tiny isle, and instead of feeling closer to the other people there I felt shut out.
My 2nd year in Japan was better. I could communicate more easily in Japanese and made some existent friends, especially a new English teacher who was my age and as well a dancer. Miyuki's female parent is from the Philippines, so she e'er managed to express mirth at Japanese life on Tanegashima, and at the end of the year we performed a abdomen dance routine at a local festival that I'grand sure scandalized half the island.
When people now ask me how I liked life in Japan, or if I would recommend teaching English language in Nihon, I'm never certain what to say. Thankfully I didn't quite come across it at the time, merely after moving to Thailand I realized how depressed and only not myself I had been for a lot of my time in Japan. But I also have friends who taught in Japan and absolutely loved it!
I think part of the problem was living on Tanegashima and working with teachers who didn't desire to be there. I too tried too difficult to fit in and human activity Japanese, which always left me frustrated when I failed.
The foreigners I knew who well-nigh loved Japan either had studied Japanese for years and could communicate fluently – they usually came with the intent of staying in Nihon forever – or they barely spoke any Japanese and were happy staying the fascinating foreigner, ignoring the locals' pained expressions when they broke ane of Japan'due south countless rules of social etiquette.
I wish I had done the latter. I ended up agreement much more Japanese than I could speak, but many Japanese refuse to believe that foreigners can learn their language (fifty-fifty their English textbooks placed a huge emphasis on the uniqueness of Japanese civilisation), so people always seemed comfortable talking about me in front of me, assuming I couldn't understand them (even when I would respond to what they were proverb).
Information technology made for a lot of awkward situations, and continued confirmations that everyone thought I was basically a dissimilar species. It would have been much meliorate if I hadn't understood them.
Is anyone nonetheless reading this? Probably simply my female parent (thanks, Mamma, hope you have fun in Boston this weekend!).
I guess I could have summed up this unabridged post simply by saying "my feelings about Japan are complicated." In that location's so much I do dear about Japanese people, the cute islands, language and intricate culture, and I ever am super excited to meet Japanese people on my travels, but I also have so many negative emotions surrounding my time there and after teaching Japanese students I worry that many Japanese (at least in bourgeois areas) are too weighed down past the pressures of maintaining social harmony to have a real chance at finding happiness.
On the vivid side, my ii years in Nihon gave me the ways to travel for the past two and a half years. I left Japan with a lot of savings, and because my time earning that money was hard, I've focused on only spending that money on things that will truly make me happy. If I hadn't gone to Japan I would not exist where I am today, living a life that I honey immensely.
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Source: https://www.heartmybackpack.com/blog/life-teaching-living-japan/
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