Reflections on being home
I guess this comes under the heading of “better late than never.” You may perhaps recall that when I first returned to Japan, I said I would post some reflections on my trip home. That was almost a month ago now.
I'll divide this into two sections, reflections on the homestay, and then reflections on just being home in general.
Homestay
Now that I’ve returned to Japan and had a chance to meet up with the students again, it is interesting to see which aspects of the homestay trip are getting highlighted. I like to think we were really able to provide a wide range of experiences for the students: spending a day at an American High school, going to a typical American Church service, volunteering at a homeless shelter, going skiing, visiting Lake Michigan, seeing a professional Hockey game, Grand Rapids Museum etc, etc, etc. Yet the only thing the students talk about is going shopping. In fact Mike, the other JET in Ajimu (Ryan’s replacement) after talking to the students, thought that shopping was the only thing we did.
This is particularly surprising to me since Japan has shopping malls to rival anything we went to in Grand Rapids. Granted the actual town of Ajimu is just a small rural community, but Fukuoka (only 2 hours away by train) contains a huge 5 story shopping mall, each floor of which is probably equal to one Woodland Mall.
But I suppose given the fact that the majority of the students I brought with me were 15 year old girls, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that going to the mall would be the highlight of the trip. And the malls in Grand Rapids were filled with different stores and different types of people than the malls in Japan.
And at some point the students must have mentioned other things we did, because one of the teachers at Ajimu High School praised me quite highly for the variety of experiences we had arranged for the students. Of course in Japan flattery is common, so you always have to take compliments with a grain of salt, but I was pleased with how highly he seemed to think of the homestay.
Not that I can take any of the credit for it. My mother actually did most of the work, thinking up activities and making the necessary phone calls to arrange stuff. Over on this end the Ajimu Board of education coordinated everything here, and also thought up of some ideas for the homestay. All I really did was act as a middleman between the Board of Education and my mother. And of course chaperoned. But the students were so well behaved that it really wasn't much work.
Another interesting thing I've noticed the students talk about frequently is how good looking everyone in America is. We had a bit of a post trip party where they showed their pictures to the rest of my Wednesday night English class, and it was interesting to hear what they said, particularly when they were talking in Japanese to each other and presumably under the impression I couldn't understand what they were talking about. They talked at length about how beautiful my mother was, and how cute my younger cousins were. At one point the subject of my former girlfriend came up (whom I had mentioned in passing once during the homestay) and I overheard one student say to the other, “Do you think she is beautiful?” and the reply was, “She must be. There aren’t any people in America who aren’t beautiful.”
All this is made more interesting by the fact that I received several comments from people in America about how good looking my students were, and how beautiful Japanese people appeared to be.
Now that we’re all back in Japan and school has started again, I'm trying to find the line between hurting the feelings of these students by ignoring them completely, and embarrassing them by paying too much attention to them. I made the mistake of warmly greeting one of the students in the hallway last week, and as I was leaving I heard her friends tease her about what good friends the two of us have become. The same day I think I hurt a student's feelings slightly by not acknowledging him when he came into the teacher's room. It's a delicate line, and like many things in life, requires more finesse than I have.

Part 2: being home in general
And what can I say about the mixed emotions of being back home? Sometimes when I would meet good friends again, I felt like it had been a mistake to leave in the first place when I have such valuable friendships back in Grand Rapids. Other times I thought about all I had learned and all the experiences I had since I left, and I was increased in my conviction to continue living abroad in some form or another even after my current job finishes in August.
Sometimes it felt like I had never left Grand Rapids, and that relationships had picked back up right where I had left them. Other times I had the weird feeling of returning to a familiar place, and yet feeling like I didn't belong anymore. Sometimes I felt things hadn't changed at all in Grand Rapids, and I was relieved by that. Sometimes I was frustrated for the same reason (what a boring place where nothing ever changes). At other times it seemed that too much had changed since I left, and I was frustrated by that I no longer knew my city.
All in all, I was somewhat relieved to return to Japan where at least I feel like I know where things stand (even if it is for just another 6 months now).
But I don’t want to harp on this too much, because one thing I realized when I was home is that my experience is not unique. Very few people I know from High school are still in the same place. Most of my friends in Grand Rapids now are friends from Calvin, and not native to the area. So they probably went through all these same emotions many years before I did. Granted perhaps I'm a bit more sentimental about things than the average person, but still.
So I suspect I don’t need to elaborate on these feelings too much, because most people have experienced the same thing about leaving home and coming back again at one point or another.
But it was damn good to see a lot of you again. I really wish time had allowed for me to meet more people.
Living in Japan the past few years has obviously been a choice I made. And with any choice, there is always something lost, and the thing I have regretted the most is loss of proximity to friends and family. The experiences I have had in Japan have I think made my choice worthwhile, but I really wish I could have both.
But as I said already in an e-mail to some of you: I should be home again in August. No promises, but probably. My job will end this August. I don’t know what I'm going to do next, but I have enjoyed my time in Japan for the last 3 years, and would like to stay abroad in some form or another. I imagine it's more than likely that first it will involve a trip home first to sort everything out before I depart again.