September-ish update

``Well, wuddaya know? We`ve done it. Two months in Japan...``

 

That`s how I began this entry two weeks ago when I intended to have it finished and sent out. In retrospect, it`s better that I didn`t get any further at that point because I think that the next lines would have gone something more like this:

 

``I waaaaaaaaana gooooo hoooooooooommmmmeee noowwwww!!! NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW! This is too hard and I don`t wanna do it! I`m hungry, I`m tired, I`m scared, and sad. I don`t wannnnaaaa. NononononononononononononNO! I want a cheeseburger and french fries and english speakers and food with spices and wide-open, flat, boring country-side and familiar faces and big, loud, obnoxious cars that pour out black exaust and run you off the road and rude people and crappy restaurants with bad service and cheap, crappy, Wal-Mart stuff and guns and freedom and....! I want it nooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww now now now now.``

 

Obviously, it`s a good thing I got too busy to write there for a while at the beginning of the month.

 

Once again, it`s been a roller-coaster of a time. I think at this point, though, I can safely say that it`s leveling out more toward the middle instead of the low-points. We`re finally, I think, finding a routine and things, slowly but surely, are feeling somewhat normal.

 

I think Erin covered most things from September in her entry (sweet road bikes, vacations, etc) so I`ll leave that be. It all seems like such a blur sometimes that I`m not even sure if I could tell you if last week I was on vacation in Kyoto or just getting off the plane (I`m pretty sure it was neither). I can`t believe it`s October! I do remember one time many weeks ago when Erin and I were sorting through all the stuff in our closet leftover from 17 years of ALTs living in our apartment. It was soooooooooo hot out at the time and we found a stash of space heaters and things and just packed them away without thinking about it. In the blink of an eye we have to dust them off and figure out how to use them... My sense of time feels soooo messed up...

 

We definitely had a few rough patches there around the turn of the month. One week, as the cool fall air was thinking about blowing in, we had about seven straight days of rain. And I ride my bike to work as far as 8 or 9 miles on different days. Needless to say, about Wednesday of that week might have been my low point in Japan...

 

The high points, though, are many and piling up faster than we can keep track of them. Erin has a few students signed up for some conversation lessons, which will begin this week. She`s going full swing in TaiChi, tea ceremony, kimono, and will begin cooking classes this week. We had Erin`s birthday party along with a friend of ours' party last Friday and had about 18 people there. Half of them were Japanese friends and half were ALTs. We`re really starting to form a community and, like I said, feel a little bit normal about life in Yanai...

 

I`m studying 25 new Japanese characters a day (I`m up to 450, or nearly 25% of the Japanese writing system!) Contrary to popular belief, I`ve actually found this studying to be hugely rewarding. First of all there`s the obvious benefit of getting around in the culture somewhat easier when you can read a few of the signs. But also, I think I`m learning that Japanese isn`t any more difficult to learn than any other language, it`s just soooo different from English. That`s been a good thing so far, because it`s kept everything interesting. It`s also really interesting to be learning Japanese while trying to teach English. I think that`s shown me that as complicated as Japanese is it can`t be any more difficult than English. I get so many obscure questions about English grammar and spelling everyday that really makes no sense to me whatsoever. English has got to be one of the most inconsistent means for communication ever devised...

 

Other than that, this has been an overall amazing time for some personal growth and self-reflection. My job isn`t exactly what you might call `time consuming` so I get to take about 30 minutes a day in the mornings to just sit and write my thoughts. That`s been very, very, immeasurably helpful for coping with the stresses. I sent out a couple slices of those thoughts in that IN blog, and I`m really grateful to have the time to sit and process through all of that stuff. I think I`d go crazy without it... I'm still sitting with all of that stuff and am so excited to see how it develops. Lately, these ideas of nothing and nothingness have kept popping up in terms of some Buddhist ideas that keep coming my way. I'm not sure how to study "Buddhist ideas" but I do think that, in general terms, one can safely say that Japanese/Buddhist/Zen/Eastern ways of engaging with and thinking about nothingness and being and non-being differ from those ways and ideas in my culture. More on that on some other boring, existential feeling Wednesday morning...

 

Now that things are settling down Erin and I have taken some more time to sit still and think about the direction we want our lives together to take. We`re pretty happy with the possibilities but it all still seems so up in the air. Things are really just starting to hum right along as we get into the swing of things, and we`re just now able to really think about how we can make the most of this next year in Japan for ourselves. From where I`m standing, I`m pretty sure it`s gonna be a good one and we'll see what happens from there. We made a pact about a week ago to stop all discussion about how long we will be in Japan until around December, when we will finally sit down and have a discussion about long term goals for our lives and how we will get there... It's tough to put that on the back-burner but life is like any great story...as tempting as it is to jump ahead you just have to wait and see.

 

I think that`s about all I`ve got to cover for now. Thanks to everyone for the care-packages (Mimi and Papa, Gramma and Papa, Kent and Karen, Jess and John, Daddio, Scott (the bag of Hoosier dirt is hanging on the wall next to me as I write this)). It`s funny that so far they`ve been at perfect intervals so that when we run out of something another package arrives in a few days to stock us up again. That`s been really nice.

 

I`m sorry this has been all over the place but I didn`t really have any time to plan it out so I just sort of typed stuff out as I thought of it this time. Hopefully, the next entry will be a bit more organized.

 

Please, everyone, keep writing responses and let us know what`s going on in your worlds. We`re doing our best to keep in touch!!!

 

Much, much, much love! We miss you and can`t wait to see you again!

 

 

 

Isaac

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