Freakspace. The Living Hell of Joy and Sorrow.

And then, just when you're not expecting it, some really nice things happen. I wasn't looking forward to today at all. It was one of those over-full, no-way-out-of-it days. A morning full of classes at junior high, then a half hour's walk to the City Education Department to be shipped to a local elementary school. After all of this, I'd managed to be booked by the principal of Shiomidai Chuu for a dinner at his house with him and his wife. A damn full day that was going just like I'd expected it to half way through. It was the normal, meaningless drudgery that I've come to expect from being a pet gaijin. Hell, it even turned out my lesson was to be a display lesson. My underslept brain loved the idea of this. There would even be parents watching, so if I didn't find some way to bring my energy levels up then I could be sure of hearing complaints from the Education Dept. Half way through delivering my lesson to the elementary schoolers though, I see familiar colours walking through the door. It was three 2nd year boys from Shiomidai Chuu, one of whom I'd got to know a little in class. Honestly, I started feeling just better having them there. Leaving them last week sucked, and I was pretty sure I'd never see any of them again. 

I don't know what I was expecting when I came here anymore. Looking back it seems a lot like I wasn't expecting something real at all. I expected Japan to be a dreamland, some sort of waking fantasy. All of my foolish, selfish dreams would come true here. I remarked to a friend in Australia on the phone last night though, that arriving in Tokyo I found it to be the opposite. It was a city, bustling and full of people going their own way. Not a single one of them so much as batting an eyelash at me. At that time I couldn't figure out what was wrong, but it was like walking around my own home city. My life wasn't magically changed by setting foot in Tokyo streets. Fast forward four months. I left Shiomidai Chuu, my second school, today. Maybe the problem with Shiomidai is the contrast I had for it. The only point of comparison I had was Asari. Asari, where I would spend entire days inventing activities for myself because the teachers had little desire to involve me in their classes. Asari where kids would mock me as I tried to help them with their work. Asari, where when I left, I breathed a sigh of relief and swore not to hurry back. Arriving at Shiomidai, I was sucked into a whirlwind of English classes - often four or five per day. The students were reserved and shy to begin with, but some figured out they could find me in the music room after the day's classes. Outside of class I found they had individual personalities. They would flit in and out of the music room while I played piano, stopping to draw on the board, or talk, or listen. I really got used to Shiomidai. I got comfortable, and I made a mistake - I let myself love it. Naturally, it was over soon after it had begun. This is the nature of my work here in Japan, but I feel really sad now. I feel like I lost something. Coming to another country, I find myself searching for stability, things I can count on. In my work though, I will not be able to find anything like that. I've made some good friends in a church in city, and they're very kind to me. When I told them I was sad about leaving my school, they asked me "Mikey, aren't we enough for you?" I told them that of course they were, but I wasn't sad on account of them. I can't figure out a good conclusion to this post. Probably cause I'm still in the middle of chewing it all. The pointlessness of my job. The impermanence of everything, indeed. I don't want to be a pussy about it, you know? I just want to be honest about what I'm feeling. That way, you know too. That way we don't lose touch just cause I'm not nearby anymore.

It's late autumn now, and it's snowing again. I didn't realise it at first, but I looked out my window before I left for work today to see it falling all over the place. Great big flakes, like goose down, like a million feather blankets burst five miles up. They fall ceaseless and silent, most melting as soon as they touch anything. The air temperature would be below five degrees, but it's not frozen yet. This isn't the real, serious cold - It's only late autumn afterall.  Right now, the air and earth are still warm enough to melt a snowflake. As each one falls and melts though, by tiny increments the ground will cool. Decimal point by decimal point, the earth will freeze until there is nothing to stop the snow from banking up to several meters high by roadsides. The very thought is daunting. I'm also taken aback when I'm told that a normal daily maximum in winter is negative ten. I remember Melbourne, where a cold morning would make me slow to wake up, but a frosty one would have me dressed quick as lightning. I wonder what it's like, to feel the air get that cold. Does the light move slower?  Would my breath crystalise mid-air? Could I pee hail?

Mr. Orange, the Japanese teacher, tells me that it's the warm weather that makes the snow flakes this big. I've learned to contain my incredulity when people describe temperatures around here. Five degrees is warm in autumn, but twenty five is a boiling summer. As the air cools further though, the snowflakes will shrink. They'll change from feathery looking things to a fine, fine powder. This is what Hokkaido is famed for across the world. Hokkaido is relatively remote, in that it has no international airport. One must first cross the narrow straight to Honshu before going anywhere else. In spite of this, Hokkaido draws thousands of international visitors each year in the snow season. They come for the powder and they find it in abundance.

I still wonder how I'm going to survive the winter. Five months of freezing darkness sounds like more than I can take. Like standing on the edge of a building looking at the distance of a jump too far. What can I use to get me through the winter?

I feel like I’m getting the hang of things…sometimes, anyway. Even here in Japan, I’ve managed to find some routine and normality. My working arrangement makes this really difficult though. I work six or seven weeks at each school I go to before moving on to the next. I’m sure that financially, this system makes good sense to a cash-strapped town like Otaru. This way, they need hire only one gaijin to hit seven schools in a year as opposed to hiring seven gaijin. That benefit is obvious. For me though, there are a lot of drawbacks to this system. I begin to feel adjusted to one school only to be shipped off to my next. I am able to develop only shallow working relationships with my teachers and students before moving on. But to me, the worst thing is that my whole time in any school seems kind of pointless. I’m not there long enough to change anyone’s perceptions on the usefulness of English. I’m certainly not around long enough to actually teach them anything memorable. It’s more like a gaijin cameo for an otherwise completely Japanese student life. I pop in, briefly terrify them with the fact that people from other countries exist, then disappear to repeat the same tricks at the next school.

The latter is purely my disillusionment talking. It’s hardly a complete picture of my life. Professionally I don’t feel like I’m moving forward, but the weird situations I find myself in and the on-the-fly adjustments I have to make are pushing me to grow as a person. I’ve always needed practice at this sort of thing. I’m super prone to getting myself into routines and putting comfort first, so I can’t imagine any of this being bad for me.

It's roughly three months since I left my home country now. I have a lot on my mind, and nothing is getting clear in an awful hurry. I really liked the days when I felt like I knew everything that was going to happen. I would come home from work, safe in the knowledge that tomorrow would be another day full of classes, fretting about not having studied, seeing my friends, and so on. And there was a hazy picture in my mind of what would come after that – graduation, working, coming to Japan. Having the picture in my mind was great, but I still remember the feeling just before I left. It was like racing towards a wall, high and wide, or the edge of a cliff. I simply couldn't imagine what would come afterwards, try as I might. Even if I had tried to imagine, I still wouldn't have guessed any of the stuff that's happened so far.

Today I don't know the future, still. Do I keep writing about this? If so, it's only because I keep feeling it. Nothing about my future, short or long term, is getting clearer. I don't know whether to keep working here or go home and get my real life happening again. Again, it's the strangest feeling but I feel like I've even forgotten what my real life was like back then. I'm also aware of the fact that even if I could remember it, on my return life will be completely different.

Am I wrong to keep looking back? Is it pointless to keep looking forward? In many ways I think it is...helpless as I am against it. I mean, what can I change about where I am right now? I worked hard for many years to get this job. It was all the “back then” that put me where I am now. And looking forward too much will see me miss the best of what can happen here. I don't want that either, but like I said before...I seem helpless against it. I struggle to keep my mind in the present.