Disclaimer: This is in no way my last entry; I still have many posts to write. But August 15th marks two years since I stepped off the plane into the blazing heat of Osaka and began my journey. I felt I needed to mark the occasion. So don’t worry 皆さん, Okashi will continue, hopefully for many years, but here is something I have been working on for this momentous occasion.
Saying さようなら to Japan was a
long process. There were goodbyes at my
schools, goodbyes with friends, and goodbyes to places that had come to mean a
lot to me in my time there. But it was my
goodbye to Osaka that was the hardest and also the best.
Okasan came to help me move. I had been sending stuff home over the past
few months, but it was amazing the amount of things I had collected in just under
two years. Like amazing. I needed her help. I was super busy with all the trips I wanted
to squeeze into my last few months, making sure to say goodbye to everyone, and
the massive amounts of paperwork required to leave the country, so I left the
travel plans up to her. She sent me the
address of our hotel in Osaka, but I honestly didn’t look at it until we were
on the train, pulling away from Kinokawa Eki.
As I stared at the location on Google Maps through teary eyes, I
couldn’t help but laugh. Somehow she had
picked a place that was in the same area as the hotel I stayed at when I first
arrived.
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| So.Much.Stuff! |
We caught a taxi from 難波駅 because
we just had so much luggage. As we
twisted and turned through the Osaka streets, things became more and more
familiar. I hadn’t been back to this
part of town since I finished with training.
We drove past the laundry I had used with friends not even a week into
my journey. It was August then and none
of us were ready for the heat and humidity.
We were going through several changes of clothes a day just to stay
dry. Next to it was the izakaiya where I
had my first kakigori. I didn’t know
what it was then. Wouldn’t know for
quite a while, actually. I just know it
was the best thing ever that night. We
were dripping sweat and the laundry was even hotter than outside.
Okasan and I made it to the hotel and got checked
in. The weather was warm, it was almost
May, but still nothing compared to the stifling, humid mess my first week. We had dinner plans with Sunny in the northern part of town. As we headed out for the evening, we moved down the familiar route I had taken
from my hotel to training every day for a week.
We passed the grocery where I had died a little realizing how expensive fruit was in Japan. And that what I considered bacon didn’t
really exist here. I had spent an hour
walking up and down aisles, amazed and concerned by all the new products that I
couldn’t identify or read the labels for.
I had worried how I would afford to eat more than just ramen and
water. Or how I would ever figure out
exactly what everything was.
We kept walking, past the izakaiya where I had my first
drink of sake. I had been so confused
when they served it in a box! This is
where I learned about seating fees and that you pay for the little snacks they
bring to your table. Past the building
that my company had been in before moving to 梅田. I would have turned on this street to go to
the municipal building I spent my first week in the basement of for training. Memories with every step.
Passing over the river, we left the tiny area that had
been my home and first introduction to Japan.
I had been so scared that first week; unable to navigate streets,
subways, or buses. I had survived in an
area of only a few square blocks, branching out just far enough to reach a mall
and Osaka-jo. At the time, those few
blocks had seemed like a whole world and that if I ventured further, I would
lose myself. I couldn’t imagine taking
off to Namba every night like some of my new coworkers. It was too far! I would never make it back! But as Okasan and I hopped on the subway and
headed north, I realized how much smaller Osaka seemed now. And how familiar. When had I stopped being scared of taking a
new train?
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| Ahhhhhh! This is the point where I almost turned around to go back home. |
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| I was almost to the hotel. Just a few more steps. |
After a fabulous tempura dinner with Okasan and Sunny, I
was eager to get back to 谷町四丁目 and relive those
first few days a little more. I wanted
to show Sunny the steps up from the subway that nearly broke me just hours
after stepping off the plane – where a kind Japanese woman had offered to help
a tired, overweight, sweaty, disgusting gaijin carry her super heavy suitcase
even though the case probably weighed as much as her. I wanted to share a drink with my new friends
at my first watering hole, celebrating the woman I had become in such a short
time. I wanted to soak it all in –
relive the amazement, fear, and confusion that came with the start of this
crazy journey. Sunny and Brook hadn’t
known me then – we wouldn’t meet for another year or so – so it was fun to tell
them about the me who had gawked, cried, cursed, and began to settle into
Japanese life right on these very streets.
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| The APA Hotel. My first home in Japan |
As I spent the next couple days in that Osaka
neighborhood, walking past important places from my past – the place where I
first met Otose, where I had my first taste of natto, my first Japanese
McDonalds, my first experience with being caught without a 傘
during the rainy season and being soaked to the skin – and realizing the
metamorphosis I had made, made leaving Japan much easier. It was still hard to say goodbye to my
friends and the city that had felt so much like home. There was a lot I hadn’t accomplished. But as I walked past the APA Hotel, I
realized just how much I had. I still
couldn’t read many of the labels in the supermarket, but I knew what most
things were and how to cook with them.
My Japanese skills hadn’t improved as much as I would have hoped, but I
had learned to communicate in a more universal language of humanity. My linguistic challenges helped broaden my
empathy for those who struggle with speaking and reading (regardless of their
native language). I learned to live with
nature, rather than fight against it and try and bend it to my will. I found a deep appreciation of another
culture, but did not lose myself in the process. Instead I gained a better understanding of
myself and my own culture through the Japanese lens.
My time in Japan changed me, enhancing who I was rather
than remaking me altogether. Much the
same way the Japanese cherry-pick ideas from other cultures and create
something uniquely Japanese, I took many things from my experiences in Japan
and used them to create a new me. Coming
back to the very beginning, walking the streets of that tiny, scary world of my
arrival, it was clear how far this journey had taken me – well more than a
thousand miles from the woman who stepped onto that plane in Bismarck two years
ago.
