Thoughts on My Time in Japan

(The entry in which I try and summarize 5 years of my life in one blog post).

This entry is doomed to be a failure. For one thing, life, even a segment of life, is too complex to be summed up in a few paragraphs.

Secondly print is very cold and inflexible medium. It attempts to set in stone what in reality is a constantly evolving thought process. My views on the past five years differ depending on which mood you catch me in. Tomorrow I might well take a different tact.

All that being said, since I'm leaving Japan on Tuesday, I wanted to at least try and jot down some thoughts on the past five years.

As I've stated on this weblog before, I think I overstayed my time in Japan. But in the beginning it was amazing. The first two years I think were the best years of my life.

Maybe its kind of silly to rank years of ones life in this way, since any unit of time is made up of diverse experiences both pleasant and unpleasant. But when I was leaving College life I remember thinking to myself, “Those four years were the most fun I ever had in my life. When I have to go out in the real world and get a job it can’t possibly be as great as the carefree days in the Calvin dorms.” And then I was pleasantly surprised in Japan to find that life doesn’t end after College graduation.

I spent the whole first year in Japan with my mouth hanging open and my eyes wide. This may be because I previously had done so little traveling in my life, but everything in Japan amazed me. Even simple things like Volleyball games and dinner parties amazed me, mostly because I couldn’t believe I was actually living and working on the other side of the world. Also in the small countryside town of Ajimu I found I had instantly achieved level of popularity and notoriety that I would never have thought possible in my life.

The 2nd year the excitement was a little bit dulled, but I knew what I was doing. I knew were the cool places to hang out were, and I had a good network of friends, so I no longer had the lonely nights at home which had plagued me during my first year.

By the 3rd year things were beginning to get a little bit old, but I managed to keep things interesting by taking on a number of new projects and experiences. Greg and I hitch-hiked across Japan that summer, I presented a workshop on “Teaching Global Issues in the Classroom” at the mid-year conference, I started an English comic book section in the Ajimu library, I helped guide and translate for the Rotary club exchange, and I chaperoned eight Japanese students back to Grand Rapids during the holidays.

And, lest I forget to mention it, I met and started dating Shoko during the 3rd year. Needless to say I’ve been quite happy with the way that relationship has evolved over the past couple years, but even at the time it was a very welcome turn of events after I had botched things so badly with the previous girlfriend.

The last two years in Gifu have not been a nightmare by any means. I made a lot of good friends, had some good times, and got a few good stories out of the experience. But I also felt the shine was gone from the experience. I realized I was getting older, but not sure what I was accomplishing by staying longer in Japan. And for the first time I started to feel homesick more than I felt excited about Japan.

If I had to do it over again, maybe I would have skipped that last year and a half in Gifu. One the other hand, there’s something to be said for riding the experience out to the end. If I had gone home at the end of three years, I think I would have had mixed feelings about returning home. Now I'm certain it’s what I want.

But the question needs to be asked not just how much fun I had, but what I achieved. I mean partying on the beach everyday for the past five years would have been a lot of fun. What have I gained from the experience?

And this is somewhat harder to answer. In retrospect I’m somewhat disappointed in myself for not focusing more on this latter question for the past five years. Like a lot of other JETs, I just thought that if I studied Japanese hard and enjoyed the cross cultural experience, it would just magically open all sorts of doors. Now I'm not so sure. And the jobs available I'm not so interested in. I don’t fancy a future bent over a desk squinting at Kanji characters.

Ultimately I guess the worth of every experience in life has to be measured against the possibilities of the road not taken. For example when I think of all the time these five years that I’ve lost out with family and friends back home it makes me kind of sad.

In the last two years before I left Grand Rapids I felt like I was really getting involved in a lot of the groups and causes I was interested in. During the past five years I haven’t been involved in any activism or political activities, and the past five years have been very politically turbulent.

Professionally I don’t think I’ve achieved anything significant in the past five years, and I know people who have embarked on real carrier paths or completed graduate degrees in the same amount of time.

On the other hand, I know lots of people who have just hopped from one odd job to another, so it all depends who I compare myself too.

In concrete terms, how have I benefited from my time in Japan?
1). I’ve obtained a conversational level of Japanese, and a functional knowledge of simple Kanji. Since I don’t plan on pursuing a career path related to Japanese, it remains to see what, if any value, this will have in my future. But it’s nice just for the self-satisfaction of knowing I did it. I never imagined I would be able to conduct long conversations in a foreign language. I guess after 5 years it would have been pretty pathetic if I couldn’t, but I just figured that my brain wasn’t wired to learn another language. That’s something other people can do, not me.
Likewise with the writing system, which at first appeared completely impenetrable to me. I was very pleased when I started to make sense of it.

2). Hopefully gained some self-confidence by being in front of a classroom so many times. I’m not sure how much of this will transfer to situations when I’m in front of peers, but I hope some of it does.

3). It has been truly said when you travel abroad you learn more about yourself than about the foreign country. I learned how American I am, and how American my world views and outlooks are. I probably didn’t need to stay all 5 years to do this, but with each year the appreciation got a bit deeper.

4). Learned how many of the things I had been taught about Japan were blatantly false. Will never trust sociologists or cultural explorations teacher again.

5). From my interaction with other JETs, I think I learned just as much about England, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia as I did about Japan. I’m tempted to list everything I learned about the sports, culture, history and politics of these countries, but I won’t. I’ll just say looking back on it, it’s amazing what I didn’t know before I came to Japan.

(For what its worth, the exchange goes both ways. Recently a British friend said to me, “I’m really glad I got the chance to meet so many Americans in Japan. It turns out a lot of them are nice people. I guess I should have known that, but we get such a negative view of Americans from our media that it’s hard to break free of the stereotypes).

6). I guess I gained a greater appreciation for the world and my place in it. I say this with caution because it sounds cliché, and I do honestly believe that you don’t have to go travel all the way to Asia to know that it exists. But some things just hit home more after living abroad. Like the fact that worldwide white people are not the majority. And that a large percentage of the world doesn’t use the Roman alphabet.

Maybe there’s more stuff, but I’ll call it quits at 6 things. Most likely none of these things will help me professionally. I like to think that it makes me a richer person personally. Although how it measures up against the unknown value of the mysterious road not taken is hard to say.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
In 1997 the United States Government declassified "Operation Northwoods" a Defense Department document drawn up in 1962. Among other things "Operation Northwoods" included a plan to manufacture a terrorist act in the United States, and then blame it on Castro as a pretext for war.

Link of the Day
As always I'm behind the times, but I've recently discoved youtube.com, and have been wasting a lot of time watching videos online.

I found this debate between Noam Chomsky and William F. Buckley (part 1 and part 2) interesting for a number of reasons. Its a much younger Chomsky than most of us are used to seeing. Its from the days before he was blacklisted from network TV. And it shows a television debate without yelling or name calling. How times have changed.

Although Buckley and Chomsky spend most of their time talking at cross purposes, there is a number of good points in here. Buckley tries to convice Chomsky that intervention in Vietnam isn't imperialism because we are doing it for the good of the Vietnamese people. Chomsky counters that all imperialists throughout history always argued they were invading for the good of the native peoples. Sad how much of this is still applicable.

This video of Ali G interviewing Chomsky is notable just for the two of them together even if its not Ali G's best piece. I do like the bit at the end though when Ali G wants to invent his own language, and Chomsky tries to convince him it'd be a waste of time.

Lastly this recent BBC interview shows Chomsky at his usual brilliance.