Well, like self-fulfilled prophecy…. the stuffy/runny/nastified nose began. It was weird. As suddenly as my sore throat appeared Friday morning, it disappeared Saturday leaving behind lungs full of nastiness I won’t even go into, and a schizophrenic nose that can’t decide if it is stuffy, or runny, or both… but is basically frustrating me to pieces. I took the weekend off for the the most part. I slept most of Saturday… like I went to bed at 9 Friday night and didn’t wake up till about 4 pm Saturday. ( And only then because I couldn’t breathe.)

In the whole ordeal, I have really been blessed. I usually would feel SO MUCH worse right now. But perhaps the concentrated amount of vitamins, vitamin C, allergy medicine, and a few puffs of an asthma inhaler… have not only prevented me from cutting my own head off, but have helped me manage still going to school. (These are the only assortment of pills I have, since going to the pharmacy and trying to decipher Japanese medicines is probably more fatal that translating Japanese food products… and I have not been successful with THAT yet.)

The only part that REALLY sucks out of this whole ordeal, is that being sick makes Aris feel lonely in the USA, where a friend is only a phone call away. Try to get someone in Japan to risk catching your germs in order to watch a movie with you, or give you a back rub. (I don’t think I could get anyone in Japan to give me a back rub when I was healthy, on a GOOD day!) It isn’t going to happen. Oh well. The positive part of this, is that I think I am getting better. AND today is November first!!!

No, those two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. But they both make me happy.

I am SO excited that I get to go home next month!!! I really am. I can’t wait to walk into Walmart and purchase medicines that I will bring back with me to Japan… and knowing my luck, I won’t get sick again until they all expire… oh well.

Later…

I went to dinner with my supervisor last night. She is an older lady who is probably the funniest Japanese person I know… and she doesn’t speak but 4 words of English. The first time I met her, she said “Awaji-mama” and pointed to herself. SO great. She brought along one of her older Japanese friends who showed me pictures of her visit to Germany , where she visited her grandson and daughter (who had married a German.) There was a younger girl at dinner too… at least in her 20’s but seemed maybe 25 or 26. We got along well since her boyfriend is in Italy… ironically where Jared is right now. She also plans to go there to visit him in December. Another coincidence. After a stomach full of okonomiyaki, we went to karaoke. I had done this only once before in Japan, and it was a room full of people, so I didn’t know what to expect out of a group of four. But it was great!! Even if I did prove to myself why I am NOT a professional singer. (AGAIN)

I woke up this morning with the sorest throat I have EVER had! The rest of me feels fine, not even a stuffy nose or anything. But I am bummed, because it sucks to have to teach where bringing water into the classroom is not ok. Oh well.

October is almost over. Soon I will be able to say, “I am going home next month.” And I am ready.

Making mistakes is ok…

So, I have been thinking through the events of my life the past few weeks…

After my revelation almost two weeks ago, life has seemed better. I still count down the days till I come home, but it isn’t all I think about. I have kept myself busy going to dinners with teachers and fellow JETs. I have barely had time to wash dishes, but I have found time to work out every day. Life is becoming normal… which is kinda scary. I have gotten used to being around so many Japanese people, not understanding anything… which is actually starting to change, I know what to mostly expect day after day. The occasional surprise, even if minor, still happen daily. I am getting used to being surprised, which makes surprises not be surprises really… just normal.

I have a confession.

The past few days have been full of self pity. Actually, the past few weeks have been full of self pity. I have been really struggling with my extreme and sometimes surprising desire to go home. It is the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing that enters my mind before I drift off to sleep. I have been counting down the days till I return home since before I left… kind of to keep my spirits up, to remind myself that these feelings of loneliness are temporary and that I WILL be coming home. But within the past few weeks it has become my focus. I no longer walk to school thinking about how lucky I am to be living in Japan, I am thinking ” I can’t wait to go home so I can go_____.”

I know I am in Japan for a reason… and I am desperately trying to remember that. I know God is with me, and that if He is the one who sent me, I should be looking to see where He is working, not checking my calendar every few hours to make sure another day has not passed without me knowing.

So last night I took a real walk. I have been walking since the first of October almost every day, but yesterday I took a real walk. I focused on my surroundings and not on myself. I felt like I had forgotten I lived in  Japan, which is crazy I know, but if you stay indoors a lot, it can happen. And then I came home and read the devotionals from the past three days. (Yeah I have been a bum and hadn’t done them) And here is what I read:

   Grace For the Moment- October 7

‘As we get older, our vision should improve. Not our vision of earth, but our vision of heaven. Those who have spent their life looking for heaven gain a skip in their step as the city comes into view. After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice. In the handwriting of his old age the great artist wrote: “Draw, Antonio, draw, and do not waste time.” Well-founded urgency, Michelangelo. Time slips. Days pass. Years fade. And life ends. And what we came to do must be done while there is time.’ – Max Lucado

WOW!!! What a convicting passage for me! I don’t know what I figured I was letting myself do, by getting into a mental state of biding time. It’s like wasting water by letting the shower run, even though you are already clean. Sometimes it feels good to take an extra moment… but in the long run it’s just wasteful. I have been thinking “If I can just make it till Christmas, then I can come back and make an impact.” No… I can look forward to Christmas, but I have this time right now to do what I came to do.

As if that passage wasn’t convicting enough, here is today’s:

      Grace for the Moment- October 13

‘Jesus says the options are clear. On one side there is a voice of safety. You can build a fire in the hearth , stay inside, and stay warm and dry for what you don’t try, right? You can’t fall if you don’t take a stand, right? You can’t lose your balance if you never climb, right? So don’t try it. Take the safe route. OR, you can hear the voice of adventure- God’s adventure. Instead of building a fire in your hearth, build a fire in your heart. Follow God’s impulses. Adopt the child. Move overseas. Teach the class. Change careers. Run for office. Make a difference. Sure it isn’t safe,  but what is?’

Another WOW. This passage made me look at what I have ALREADY done! I must have forgotten the risks I took, the insecurity I faced, the loneliness I KNEW would come… to follow where God wanted me. I forget what I do sometimes… and since it is myself… I always tend to belittle it, even if it is a really good thing. The hardest part is OVER! Now I am here, doing what I do. Waiting on God to call me to my next adventure, while not forgetting that I am here now for a reason. And it isn’t my time to waste.

I am looking forward to coming home… but now, I don’t feel upset that that time isn’t now.

Crazy Days….

It’s raining now… a beautiful cloudy day.

Freshly sent chai is waiting for me at home… as is a workout that I will create as I go.

My shapes are changing… I am not who I used to be.

They call me Alice in Wonderland…. I think I might agree.

Well, here it is… Wednesday. 11:15 pm Japan Standard time… Which means most of you are going to sleep LAST NIGHT, relatively speaking, here in a few hours. Confused??

Many times in the past week I have posted Mental Xanga posts. Mental Xanga posts are like normal xanga posts, except they are in my head and therefore cannot  be appreciated for the awesomeness that they are , by you, the reader.

In any case, you should know about 2 events that have occurred in my live since my last post.

The first is that I did yardwork Saturday! Hopefully most of you remember that I live in an apartment in JAPAN, and houses of entire families rarely have yards to sit cross-legged in… let alone an apartment in japan having a yard. But I did. Well technically I did balcony work…  which is a lot like yard work, except you are in an area the size of a roach motel and about 30 feet off the ground. My goal for last Friday (my day off to appreciate the Autumn Equinox) was to basically destroy the large bamboo screen that had been decaying for years on my balcony. To understand why this is a difficult task, one must first realize that garbage in Japan is a frequent pain in my rear-end. Certain sizes, certain things, on certain days, may only be disposed of… and if you have an item that doesn’t fit into the category… like my bamboo screen… tough patootie. But I wasn’t about to let this eyesore- and quite frankly, DISGUSTING piece of rotting nastiness infested with bugs… on my balcony. I contemplated breaking it down little by little and putting small amounts of it out with my normal garbage… Shawshank Redemption style… but after 2 months, I had finally had it. So I went to the Home Stock store and bought  gardening clippers and gloves. Now the fun part…

This bamboo screen is about 8 feet tall. (remember I am only about 5) and spans about 8 feet wide. I am surprised that this enormous object even fit on the balcony. the pieces of bamboo are all different sizes, but most are about as think as a woman’s finger with some of the larger ones being as thick as a thumb. There is a hemp-like rope that  weaves in and out of each piece of bamboo and there is a rope across the span of the screen about every foot up it. so, even though it is pretty decayed, I can ‘t just rip it apart. I have to separate EACH piece of bamboo and then cut it. So, I start out working in my balcony the size of a roach motel… destroying this piece of nastiness, and avoiding the bugs… which I was surprised weren’t as many as I thought there would be. FOUR hours later, drenched in sweat… the fruits of my labor includes 3 large garbage bags full of the bamboo screen, rope and miscellaneous bugs. But even then, I couldn’t throw these bags away until Monday morning (though I snuck out and threw them away Sunday night…) it was SO nice to have a view free of that bamboo screen.

The second story might seem anticlimactic… I went shopping by myself in a town 20 minutes away. I also had my first fast food since my arrival in Tokyo. McDonalds… was a welcome visit from home! I basically had a date with myself… and I liked it!! So much so, that I am going to do it again this weekend… so that I can buy a new T.V. because YES… mine is BROKEN. And NO I don’t even want to think about how on Earth I am going to get rid of the broken one just yet. I just got rid of the bamboo screen….

On other news… sumo is over. I am sad.

And I have my flight reserved to come home!! Very happy.

That is all for now… until next time…

I can’t believe it has already been a week since my last post. CRAZY. I swear the time is flying, and I am HAPPY about that!!! 80-something days until I grace the North American Continent of the AMAZING  US of A. You people (yes YOU PEOPLE) in Colorado just keep soaking up the fact that you can go buy coffee or chai….mmmm chai….. from a Starbucks. Yes I probably could too… but that would mean a bus ride to a place where I would take a ferry to my final destination of a Starbucks, where the employees probably wouldn’t understand that I need a chai as large as Titanic with 2 shots of vanilla and whip cream. Maybe if I compared it to Godzilla…. hmmm. (The cost of travel, the actual cup of chai and the giant cup holder (which the Japanese people probably imported from America, since that is the only place where you can by a 50 gallon single serving of anything) would set me back my entire paycheck for the month. But really… I am in serious withdrawals from conveniences of the motherland…. like 2 ply toilet paper that feels SOFT, and grocery stores where I could ACTUALLY know what it is I was buying… because, let’s face it… I don’t speak or read Japanese so my next option is to study the pictures on products and hope I choose the better tasting. However… be it known… pictures on foods in Japan, DON’T MEAN ANYTHING!!! There will be a nice picture of something, a flower, a smiling little girl holding her bunny, a beaver gnawing some wood… all of these are on opaque packages (that would take Superman’s x-ray vision to see through) on the aisle that seems to be fruits and vegetables. This is when I leave that row, and head toward the produce department… where everything is clearly marked APPLE, BANANA, FISH, OCTOPUS. No it isn’t REALLY labeled. But God did a pretty good job of distinguishing natural foods with their own characteristics so that stupid people (or people in foreign countries unable to tell if a beaver gnawing wood is gonna be something that tastes good) don’t die of starvation.

This is not meant to say that I am not STILL loving it here. I am. I mean, where else can you get the day off because the national holiday is Aged Day. (Or in other words, a day to celebrate OLD PEOPLE.) So great!!! This also happens to fall within the same week (which, looking at my calendar only happens every 7 years IF leap year doesn’t happen) as the Autumn Equinox… which I also get the day off for. So, two three day weekends with a three day work week… I may never be this utterly rested again.

Well, it is now 4 pm Japan Standard time. Which means it is 1 am for all you Coloradans… I am going to go home now and watch SUMO. More on that topic…. Later.

Hard to believe, it’s Tuesday. Yesterday it was Monday and tomorrow is Wednesday.

I know, right? Pointing out the obvious. No, I am not insane, it is just crazy how time has been cut and sized and categorized into measurements of… what?? Life? How many years I’ve lived? How much more time until my next birthday? Not like I need a calendar to tell me that I can’t do the flexible things I used to do when I was 6. I mean seriously.

But how does one describe a day, that was not out of the ordinary. The sun came up, it went down, the breeze blew, the shadows grew and I functioned the way a human does. I went about my tasks that were to be accomplished, and actually finished them all… yes that was an feat a bit out of the ordinary… but a day, nonetheless, like every other day. Something about the day, gave me a renewed sense of self. Perhaps the completion of my goals… maybe. But the significance of the goals was minimal… clean my apartment, write that letter, do the dishes, make the dinner… and the list goes on.

Perhaps, it was that I found enjoyment in those things that I did. Not that I had tried to, it kind of just happened. I enjoyed making fried shrimp for the first time in my life and french fries to boot! I enjoyed the clean feeling of the my apartment, and the joy I got in taking pictures to send home. I enjoyed walking to the bank and the grocery store and being able to get everything on my lst, and some. I enjoyed it. Perhaps, it is not the actual events in which characterize a day, but the satisfaction one finds in doing those events. Not that I have found a secret to doing this, because I still hate washing dishes, doing laundry and hiking up my mountain with 4 bags full of HEAVY groceries. Yet there is satisfaction, in that I don’t have to do those things again for a while. And the state of being “done” which never actually occurs permanently… is experienced for a moment. a moment in an ordinary day… that’s all it took to make yesterday, extraordinary.

Wow…

In that word, I express many things:

I express how different it is to be a teacher instead of the student, and how all of you should ask for forgiveness for all the mean things you ever thought about a teacher. (Believe me, I already have.) It is hard to be a teacher in general, but if one desires to be an EXCEPTIONAL teacher, one must first surrender all hopes of sanity, sleep, and pride. (I have also learned there is a fine line between being the cool teacher, and being the teacher that makes you hate coming to class even more because they are SO dorky.)

I express how a typhoon larger than Katrina swept over the southern part of Japan and while the day of the arrival kept getting pushed back, it FINALLY chose to come its closest to Awaji last night at 10 pm, making sleep impossible due to the wind howling and things banging ect ect… not to mention typhoon #14 was my first experience with an ocean formed natural disaster.

I express how, even though school was canceled this morning for students due to ‘insanely strong winds that will rip your hair out’ (at least that is what I THINK the Japanese newsperson said) that just because school is canceled for students (for ANY reason, typhoon, tidal wave, earthquake, the rapture…) Teachers are STILL EXPECTED TO COME* (*footnote: unless, and I quote ” It is absolutely impossible for you to get to school”) . Can SOMEONE please explain how this makes sense?? Yes students must walk or ride their bikes to school which could prove dangerous, and most teachers drive to school (I am the one and ONLY exception to that rule, but I live pretty close to the school) BUT, it is mathematically more probable (due to surface area of a vehicle) that something would prevent the teacher from not making it to school.

I express how the school then decided it was ok for students to come back to school and we spent the afternoon doing a lot of standing and then picking weeds…. For like an hour.

I express how I was told today about an after work party that costs 5,000 yen and will be held Saturday after being at school all day long…. in the sun… on a SATURDAY. I mean ARE YOU SERIOUS?

I express how surprised I was when I felt a personal victory when a girl named Aya, who I thought hated me due to her frown/growl that she had on her face as I taught my first class last Friday, smiled at me and came over to pick weeds with me and answered me when I asked her a question.

And finally I express how even though so many things don’t make sense, how much I dread eating Japanese food (for fear of throwing up whatever raw thing it may be…), and as much as I am looking forward to coming back to Colorado for vacation in December… that I really love it here.

WOW.

So, I finally feel like I can write the events from the past couple of days. I have done a lot of walking the past two days, and even though I am tired… I am very content.

Sunday was my first time at church in Kobe since I got to Japan. It was an international church, which was really cool because the congregation was over 50% foreigners. The praise and worship was amazing, and a total surprise in that they played songs I KNEW! I was thrilled! It felt like I had gone a month without taking a shower (gross thought) and then I was finally able to be refreshed. After church (which started at 4 pm and went until 6 pm) a group of JETs and other English teachers, about seven of us, went to a “mexican” food place, where I had my first soy bean “burger” ever. Not actually that bad. And after that I made the long journey home. It was really great having a group of people that I can actually relate to on all levels. And for the first time, I felt ‘at home’.

Traveling off the island has been one of the most stressful things ever. There are a few buses and a ferry that can take people over to the mainland of Japan. While these buses and ferry run late at night (the ferry runs 24 hours) the local bus stops at 9 pm. So Sunday night when I arrived at Higashiura bus station, I had to walk 20 minutes to get to my apartment. (NOT fun after walking around/being on my feet since 1 pm that afternoon.) But the story gets even better. Yesterday after school I made my way to Iwaya to meet Mike (the Iwaya JET). We were going to Kobe so I could get my re-entry permit (more on that and details of the day later). Long story short, got back to Iwaya after 9 BARELY and had to take a cab from Iwaya to Higashiura bus station. the fare for the local bus is about 400 yen (about $4). My cab ride cost me 2,230 yen (about $22) RIP OFF!!! And I still had to make the 20 minute walk to my apartment… after another long day of walking around Kobe. I knew they were expensive. But it was pretty ridiculous. So I learned my lesson and my new curfew to be back on the island is 8:30 pm at the latest. because the last bus runs at 9.

I was sad that yesterday had to end so poorly with having to take a taxi, because the rest of the afternoon was actually pretty fantastic. I left straight from school (12:00) to get to Iwaya to meet Mike. We got into Kobe around 3:00 and headed for the Immigration Bureau, where I paid 6,000 yen ($60) so that I can get back into the country without having to re-apply for a visa. It’s really the stupidest thing EVER… but there are two options for re-entry permits, a 3,000 yen one that only lets you back in once OR the 6,000 yen permit that will let me leave and enter the country as many times as I want to for the length of my visa, which is 3 years if I wanted to stay here that long. So I only have to leave the country 2 times in order for me to save money after that, and I will definitely be leaving more than that. Anyway, it was a pretty painless process that took about 15 minutes. (America could take lessons on efficiency from Japan in the government offices.) After that Mike and I went and got our keitais (cell phones) and we happened to find the ONLY English speaking salesperson in an AU store in Kobe.  Not that we were looking for an English speaker, we actually just happened to find one and he had what we wanted there. We found bedding stuff for Mike and had dinner at a cool restaurant where you decide what you want from a vending maching and pay there and then out pops a ticket that you give to the ‘server’ who then brings out your meal. Not a word of Japanese is necessary and the food was pretty cheap! By then it was about 8pm so we got a couple of donuts from Mr. Donut and got on the Tako Ferry. (Tako means octopus in Japanese, and this ferry has a bunch of cartoon octopi painted on it.) The Akashi Bridge was a Purple color when we got on the boat and then suddenly it changed to rainbow. It was so great!! And very beautiful. Of course you know how the story ends once we got back to Iwaya… but the rest of the day had been pretty great. And I definitely got my exercise. I am SO tired today, it took me a lot longer to get ready for school than it normally does. I was almost late.

But all is well… School starts Thursday, I teach two classes on Friday, and then a weekend that I am very much looking forward to. The only other thing on my to do list is buy an airplane ticket home for Christmas… which I will do the week of September 23rd.

This afternoon will be great. I am actually looking forward to being home. I just have cleaning to do… but the sky has gotten dark, so it looks like rain. Perfect weather to do some writing or reading…

That’s all for now… kampaii