Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Winter is Coming, and we shall call it Stage 2.

It’s getting colder now, the light fading sooner, the day evaporating before my very eyes into a darkness that is defined only by the puffs of breath expelled; the fingerprints of winter’s ever tightening grip on this world. What this surely means is that Stage 2 of reverse culture shock is setting in; just as it did around this time of year in Japan, when it was just good old fashioned and regular culture shock.

Winter is the hardest time, though I never realized it for the first 26 years of my life. Coming from Arizona, we were blessed with mild winters and the absence of daylight savings time. No snow, no deep winters of the soul where the cold and dark begin to feel so much like dying. Every day, whether during winter or summer, featured the same explosive sunsets, forever reminding everyone that the sun would always rule these parts and never leave you hanging or empty handed from winter induced misery.

This was not the case in Japan. Winter meant whole days where you would never see the sun. Only dense grey clouds, pregnant with the threat of rain and seasonal affective disorder would manifest in the sky above. You would wake to darkness, go to work and then arrive home again to find it creeping up to your doorstep. You could never outrun it, or the cold, which would get deep beneath your skin, into your very bone marrow and joints. It ran through your ventricles like blood, making your heart into a brittle organ highly susceptible to unrest and loneliness.

You never could get warm during the winters, unless you were content with locking yourself in your boiling hot shower room for at least an hour. With no central heating and no insulation, it was all up to 5 layers of clothing, a kerosene heater that smelled like an airplane hangar and the womblike embrace of a kotatsu to keep you from freezing to death in your apartment. It meant nights spent wrapped in a small mountain of comforters in a cold room with walls you would swear were no thicker than cardboard.

Going to school didn’t help much either as there was no heating in the classrooms or depending upon where you were in the staffroom, there was no guarantee that you would be able to find a reliable pocket of warmth at any point during your day. Nothing fully shows you just how Soviet the winters in Japan are quite like standing in front of a class of kids all wearing tiny shorts and skirts, all shaking and unhappy in a classroom that’s below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, and then there was the fact that I rode a bike to and from school. Just brilliant.

What winter inevitably meant in Japan went beyond the physical discomfort, especially during my first year. It meant that I was finally getting used to the idea that I actually lived in Japan, in that apartment, in that sleepy town. It meant that the heady rush of arrival and the foreignness encountered everywhere was being subsumed by reality. No longer was I as flabbergasted by seeing red bean flavored soda, or by being asked at parties if I’d like to eat raw horse. Squat toilets and indoor shoes, getting stared at all the time by strangers, cars driving on the opposite side of the road, using chopsticks for every meal, all of this that was so exciting and new a few months prior was now becoming the norm. The routine. And with that comes disillusionment. Frustration. Irritation. Homesickness. It meant the swift and brutal onslaught of the second stage of culture shock.

I’m pretty sure that my first winter in Japan was defined by me sitting under my kotatsu, watching “Twin Peaks” while chain smoking, all the while feeling like my head was on fire with the flames of a righteous and unstoppable rage. At least that’s the thing I most distinctly remember. My sheer, unbridled enthusiasm at being in Japan was quickly devoured by the onset of winter and the realization that a change of country did not equal a change in reality. I was learning that Japan and the U.S. were far more alike than anyone wanted to admit. And that, along with seemingly every little thing that happened every day, made me so very angry.

It is much the same now, here, in Texas. We’re moving into winter at a steady—if not wholly reliable—pace. Unlike when I left for Japan, I have found myself in the unique position of returning to a land I had lived in for the majority of my life, only to find it a place I don’t fully understand anymore. Japan was a place that initially seemed so enigmatic, the onset of culture shock and the lack of complete cultural understanding seemed to be a given. Though, I will admit, I didn’t think it would be as bad for me seeing as how I so very desperately wanted to be there. I was inevitably wrong. It hit me just as hard, if not harder, than I could have expected it to.

And now, it is hitting me just as hard here, on the flip side of the world. And that is another thing entirely. Once again, I was fooled into thinking that I was prepared; therefore, it wouldn’t be so bad. I was going to come back and marry the man I love, and move to a new place and everything would be grand. And now I have done those things, I am living that life, and I can’t ever quite get comfortable in it. And that, too, makes me so very angry.

So once again, I spend time indoors in an attempt to stay away from the cold. I have central heating, so that’s a plus. I’m down a kotatsu though, so there’s a definite minus. And once again, I feel consumed by a nearly unfathomable irritation at just about everything.

Maybe the thing here, that didn’t figure into the equation while in Japan is the size my world has become. Going to Japan expanded the world that I knew explosively and irrevocably. Every day was a challenge, even if it was filled with the minutiae of doing nothing more than going to work, coming home, shopping, and merely living. It all had a larger context. I was there, in a world bigger than the 26 years of my Arizona upbringing. No matter how bad a day was, the one following it was ripe with potential and possibility. Anything could happen merely by opening the door to the Japanese sunlight.

But here, my world has shrunk, to the dimensions of Austin, Texas, or even just to the dimensions of this 2 bedroom apartment. I still don’t have a job, or even friends here. I’ve got a husband and a cat. My journal. My thoughts. And the reduced scale this implies is all rather difficult to adjust to.

How does one go from living on the profound playing field of huge and life changing experience to just being in Texas, doing nothing? How does one scale back from a hectic day to day that was full of people, and shared memories, trials, hurt feelings, mended hearts, shining and glorious moments of raw existence where you couldn’t possibly want for anything more because you already had so, so much to cherish? To go from that to days filled with nothing beyond pacing, thinking, trying forever and ever to think of some way to recapture that happiness in such a small scale, is mind blowing and far more complicated then I could have imagined.

I always wonder, is it just me? Is it just me that has returned to something they didn’t quite fully anticipate? What’s it like for Geoff, my neighbor for 2 years and a Japan veteran with 5 years spent in the country? Is the Canada he finds himself in today at all comparable to the one he left all those years ago? Is it business as usual, or has he found himself in a homeland that is remarkably unrecognizable? What about my other friends who returned to parts of the world personally unknown to me? What about the lovely Jess in Australia? Or Erin? Is she running another marathon or booking a flight to another far flung location like she was wont to do? What about the people in other parts of the U.S.? Is this the place they remember? Do they feel sure of their footing in this country? Or are they just all hiding it better than me?

Because while I know that it can’t just be me, here, in this small scale world, it seems like it is. Like there is something only wrong with me and my reaction to this return to “normal” life. But I know, and tell myself, that it is not just me. That this surely has to be reverse culture shock. Bona fide stage 2 shock. The worst stage of all. It’s that same beast of a feeling, in its mirror image. It must be the cold. The early encroaching dark. The winding down of all things. It’s been long enough since returning to the U.S. for the novelty to have worn off and for me to get back into the swing of things; and yet still soon enough after to have opened up a void between my realization of that fact and my readiness to accept it. I still can’t quite accept that things are different, here and now, and that it is something I will need to respond and adjust to.

I am reminded of when I came home to visit last year after being gone for a year and a half. About a month prior I just shut down. I didn’t care about anything beyond getting home for a glorious 3 week vacation full of familiar food and people, a language I understood, a country I knew and recognized as my own. In the midst of all of that oppressive cold and rage, there was a light. Hope. Something to look forward to.

And it worked on the flip side as well. After that 3 week vacation, as hard as it was to make that nearly 18 hour journey back, there was something there, something to return to. I remember sitting in the Osaka airport, thinking “Minna-san! Tadaima!”.

“Everyone! I’m home!”

I was returning to something. I would see all my friends and neighbors. We would have hours to talk and commiserate about what we did while we were apart. We would all come together again, after missing each other for what was, ostensibly, such a short period of time. These people that I was coming back to were all the adopted family I had and needed for the other 11 months of the year.

And that was something to look forward to, truly.

And in that moment, nothing else mattered.

Not all of the things about Japan that caused me so much consternation.

Not all of the staring by strangers.

Or the general xenophobia foreigners are constantly met with.

Not the stresses of working with the Japanese.

Not even the anger I felt at most Japanese institutions over how they destroyed the will of their people, mattered.

All that mattered was getting back to the people I loved dearly in that little island nation. They were, and continue to be, what made that time in Japan worth every second.

And that is part of the hardship now. The root of the struggle towards re-acclimation. Those of us that left Japan are the dispossessed. We have returned to the other side, the side that was waiting for us. So where do we all go now? If we can’t return to those brief and momentous lives, to the people we became so close to—closer even to then people we had known most of our lives—what do we all have to return to? Where do we find that signpost to hope in our vastly shrunken worlds? That is the true question and the true key to coming out the other side, readjusted to our home country and culture. It is what we must all answer to be happy with the choice we made.

Much of that has to do with how much we’re willing to let go. If we’re really ready to believe that that chapter of our lives is over, is a dilemma we must awaken to everyday. Because the truth of the matter is that that time, for all of us equally, can never be recreated. Our Japan—the Japan that we hold special in our hearts—is different for each of us. It is worth cherishing for so many varied reasons. Whether it was the people we held close as our own, or the kids we loved teaching, or the gentle streets and fields of our respective towns, or even just the way a summer night there felt on our skin, it is special for each of us on our own terms. And the fact of the matter is, we can never go back to that. All of those things existed in that unique time and place. Everything aligned in just the right way for all of us. Even if we hopped a plane today, went back to Japan, got a job teaching with a private school, it would never be the same. Not really. That would be a different Japan, not the one that was yours. Not the one that was so special. That time has passed for all of us and that Japan—our Japan—is only the product of our memories. It is not ours to ever return to. Accepting that, truly and definitely accepting all of that as being over is a hurdle we all have to jump and hope to clear with maybe nothing more than a skinned knee. But none of us, I’m sure, will be able to make that jump without sustaining injury.

Because to do that, to look at ourselves dead on in the mirror and say, “It’s over. It’s all done now. And really, I’m okay.”, will surely break all of our hearts. Possibly more then we break them every day just by living side by side with our memories and nostalgia. And who amongst us is ready to face that very particular pain just yet? Who is ready to leave stage 2 behind?

1 comment:

  1. Beautiful writing, excellent vivids and I felt like I was actually experiencing all that you have... or maybe I have gone through similar feelings. Thanks. I enjoyed it immensely.

    ReplyDelete