Nuanced

sympathy: /ˈsɪmpəθi/ (noun) feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune
Origin: (via Latin from Greek) sumpatheia, from sun- 'with' + pathos 'feeling'

empathy: /ˈɛmpəθi/ (noun) the ability to understand and share the feelings of another
Origin: (from Greek) empatheia, from em- 'in' + pathos 'feeling'


One thing I've always prided myself in was my empathy. It's the reason why I can be such a cry-baby when I watch movies or read books sometimes. I can't help it. I put myself in the character's shoes and all of a sudden I can't see past what it must be like for them: the frustration, the despair, the heartache, the grief. I imagine all the thoughts that must be running through their heads. I don't just imagine them though, I think them. I think about what it would be like if I heard the words they were hearing. It's worse when it's not just a fiction though; when it's a living, breathing person; when that person is my friend. My heart breaks with each torn inch of theirs.

That was what ultimately deterred me from going into psychology. I didn't think I had the emotional strength to withstand the battering of my patients' emotional baggage. But on the other hand, it's one of my strengths. I'm able to listen to others and see through their motivations and rationalizations. I'd rather be thin-skinned than thick. On that path lies apathy which is:

apathy: /ˈæpəθi/ (noun) absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement; lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting.
Origin: (from Greek) apathīa from a- 'without' + pathos 'feeling'

Spring Break and the PI

No, PI does NOT stand for Private Investigator. PI stands for the Philippine Islands, i.e. the archipelago southwest of Japan, the archipelago that I currently inhabit. It is also my ancestral home, my birthplace, my homeland. It is the place of my dreams, not memories, because I was too young to form any that remain. It's an odd thing...to see photos of yourself in a place and have no recollection of it or having ever been there. You have to take others' word. You take it on hearsay.

Pin suggested that Katy, Stacey, Brian, he and I go somewhere for spring break. One of the possibilities being the PI. I think that I've either been underestimating or just not realizing how much of an effect going to the PI might have on me. Honestly, it wasn't until Pin mentioned it last night that I remembered that it WOULD be my first time back...and I might not be ready to do that with a group of friends. I think I've been so focused on how my mom and family would react, that I didn't bother to think about how I would.

I think I would feel, and even though I know that he and the rest of them would tell me that I don't have to feel thus, responsible for everyone. Not just responsible because I can understand what people say when they're not speaking in English, but responsible for making sure everyone has a good time, because it IS my country. I don't know if I'm ready for that, especially never having been there since I left. I'd feel as much a stranger as they would, but I'd feel obligated not to be.

Tense

The mood in the school, seemingly normal and status quo, tightens perceptibly as I speak to the the san-nensei. While the rest of the students seem to be relaxing as they hit the home stretch of their first and second years at Ihara, the third years (and their teachers) are dissolving into a ball of nerves and tension over their fates and futures. The talks with their homeroom teachers become more frequent as they take and prepare for one university's exam after the next.

This being my third year, I've seen and experienced it to some degree with the students that have graduated before, but this year, this is my babies' year. My favored 35HR, whom I will always still think of as 15HR. I know that as a teacher, you're not supposed to have favorites, but this class, this is the one that I felt I grew up with. They were the first Japanese students I met and taught.

I still remember how nervous I was as I headed up to the mountains of Yamanashi-ken for our English Summer Camp. I'd been in Japan less than a month and my mind was still adjusting to the NEWNESS of it all, and trying to grasp that I was A TEACHER. I didn't feel like I was. I certainly didn't think of myself as one. But my students made me feel at ease and I immediately welcomed them into my life, my heart.

It feels a bit odd to not be leaving the school with them. I feel that I've learned and struggled in my time at Ihara right along with them. Watching them grow up, grow older, GROW has been one of the most defining things in my experience at Ihara. It is with great sadness that I will watch them leave, but also with great pride and belief in them and their bright futures.

My one consolation for staying behind is that, as graduates, I can more freely hang out with them out of the strict confines of high school. I hope that some of them at least remember me; I know I will never forget them.

The Value of No Planning

I think I'm starting to feel old, as my crazy acts get spaced farther and farther apart. I remember in my first year heading off to Tokyo, clubbing all night and doing it again the next one, simply on a whim. That same year, Albert and I took a midnight walk across the bridge to Fuji, two towns away. Last night (and a girl from Australia) reminded me of how fun it is to be impetuous.

For the last week and a half, my former Australian exchange student, Jessica, has been staying at my house. She was the exchange student in my first year and she and I got along and managed to keep in touch since then. She arrived with her friend Kay last Monday, and though Kay went back last Saturday, Jessica's still here as my temporary roommate until the end of the month. Despite being 7 years younger than me, we get along well and it's fun having another person in the house. Back to last night...

I had come home from work amazed that it was Thursday yet again, and wanted to spend a quiet evening indoors due to the rainy weather outside. I was planning on making soup for dinner, watching a movie and catching up on the sleep that I seem to be constantly missing these days. Things didn't go according to plans, to say the least.

First, though I had laid out my ingredients for the soup I was going to make, I kept getting distracted by entering into conversations with Jessica about people at Ihara, friends and friendships, and differences between Japan and Western countries. Eventually, I got to the point where I didn't want to make the soup after all and was contemplating busting out one of the instant Korean ramen packs that I had purchased at Kaldi over the weekend.

Jess brings up sakura-ebi (the tiny cherry blossom-colored shrimp that my little town is famous for) and how she wanted to eat it. I mention wanting unagi (grilled eel) because of passing by the unagi restaurant the other day and seeing the bentos (boxed lunches) that the teachers had ordered yesterday from the place.

We decide to see if we can get them to deliver to the house, since they have both sakura-ebi and unagi, but since I didn't have their number or didn't remember their name, we embark on an online search for the restaurant. Somehow, we manage to find it and miraculously, they have a website. We spend some time looking at the menu and trying to make out the items listed. Finally, we call the place, but they don't deliver at that time. However, they ARE open for another 40 minutes. I suggest the possibility of taking a cab and we run with it. I call a cab, change in a whirlwind 5 minutes and we're out the door and on our way.

We were the only two people in the place, but we paid no attention and enjoyed the deeply satisfying meal. We left the place realizing how close it was to Shin-Kambara station and that we could've saved ourselves the cab-ride and just trained it, but such is hindsight. We begin walking back to the eki, feeling full and accomplished, but I spy the sign for 696 Cowboys and point it out to Jessica.

I had told her about it a little: it's the only bar in Kambara, cowboy-themed (yes, I did say that: COWBOY-themed), and owned by a friend of a friend who loves Elvis. She wanted to check it out, so we head in. She falls in love with it and we decide to get a couple drinks. The drinks multiplied and before I know it, Yan (the owner, who is a professional caricaturist) has done caricatures of the both of us, and managed to get me up on stage to sing "Born to be Wild" and "Country Roads" with him, the waiter (who plays drums apparently) and some other customer on bass.


We headed home on last train. Jessica's decided that she's going to make it her regular haunt while she's in town and I'm definitely planning on coming back again. Sometimes, spontaneity pays off.

Clueless?

So a few weeks before I left for Seattle, I met two Japanese girls through a friend who had gone to the zoo with them earlier in the day. We ended up hanging out and shopping around downtown Shizuoka. They seemed like nice, friendly girls even though they were a few years younger than me.

Over the course of getting to know one another, I revealed my passion for cooking and my desire to go to culinary arts school in France. They were rather excited by this, being recent college graduates with little experience cooking for themselves. They asked me to teach them to cook sometime, which I readily agreed to, assuming that it would happen in the vague, distant future that 'sometime' seemed to imply. I was wrong. Apparently, 'sometime' means 'as soon as possible.'

Since I've been back, I've gotten 3 messages via Facebook and my keitai asking when we're going to do it. I'm normally one of the more...energetic people that you'll meet, especially in regards to food and cooking, but the girl that's been messaging me is a bit too...enthusiastic even for me.

I told Travis that it's a bit like your little sister wanting to tag onto everything you do because she thinks it's cool. He said he'd never had a little sister so he couldn't relate to the analogy, so I tried another. "She's that nerdy kid that you reached out to once because you wanted to give them a chance, and then became your constant hanger-on."

Am I wrong for feeling claustrophobic when I get these messages?

The L Bomb

Sooooo...I dropped it the other weekend.

If you don't have any idea what that means, I'll give you a hint. It refers to a particular boy from Seattle/Wenatchee, currently residing in Gunma. Get it now?

It had nearly slipped out a few times when we were saying goodbye online and on Skype while I was in Seattle. Nearly, but I managed to catch myself since that's not really something you say for the first time when you're on the other side of the largest ocean in the world, unless of course, you permanently live on opposite shores. Luckily, we don't and he's in Japan, albeit 6 hours away.

My flight came in on the afternoon of the 6th. We met up in Tokyo station and trained it back to my house together. I was going to start school the next day, luckily just opening ceremony scheduled, but he had about an extra week so he decided to spend it with me, even though I'd be working during the day.

Actually it worked out quite well because, while it began with a joke about him being my 'house-husband', after he went out for some errands and we made dinner together, he decided that he rather preferred it. Which was good because when I tried to do the same thing at the end of summer vacation, I concluded that I wasn't cut out for the housewife lifestyle. Seriously though, it wouldn't be such a bad situation: he, being a writer, could write and run errands during the day while I, as a chef, would work and 'bring home the bacon'.

I guess it was those thoughts of the future, as well as his sending me flowers in Seattle for our anniversary AND flowers to my family for the holidays, that prompted me to say those very scary, very fragile three words.

For the first few days, it had been on my mind but like I said, they are scary words to utter, and I wasn't sure if I was ready to say them. I came close a few times, but always shied away. Finally, one night we were in my goro-goro room, since the kerosene heater was there, and I missed sleeping in a futon after three weeks of being in my Seattle bed. We had hung out for most of the day, played a game of shogi (Japanese chess), and I was lying on top of him when he asked (as we routinely do of one another), "Why do you put up with me?" I hesitated for a minute, looked into his eyes and replied, "Because I love you."

I've never been more scared of anyone's reaction. My boyfriends have always said it to me first and that takes off an unbelievable amount of pressure. Of course, I guess I didn't really need to worry about it because he reacted in typical fashion: treated it like a joke and poked my nose. Not that I was really expecting him to say it back either. I just felt like, my feelings were what they were, *disirregardless* of his feelings, and I wanted him to know how I felt.

Decisions

Today, I had the first of my ichi-nensei classes for the week. We were continuing the New Year's Resolution/Occupations chapter we began last class. I decided to combine the resolutions with a time capsule by having them reflect on important events of 2008 in the world and their lives, 3 resolutions about different things and lastly what they want to be doing when they're 20, 30 and 70 years old. They'd put them in envelopes and address them to themselves. Then, in either 6 months or a year, I'd give them back to them, depending on if I re-contracted or not.

It was an idea that I adapted from an activity that my JET Program coordinator had us do during our Seattle pre-departure orientation. She had us write down our goals and reasons for going to Japan, address it to ourselves and then promise to not open it until February (about 6 months later and halfway through our contract). She did this because she had been on JET and she knew that that time is one of the most difficult, primarily because of the cold weather and secondly because you're at one of the lowest points of the culture shock cycle. She wanted us to wait to open it until then so that we'd be reminded of why we came to Japan and to check our progress in accomplishing the goals we'd made.

Needless to say, it made quite an impression on me. So I modified it for my kids. It had an unintended consequence on me however. As I said, I was undecided as to whether to stay for a fourth year or not, and would either return the letters to my students before I left in July/August, or a year from now. This morning when we were explaining the activity to the students, I felt like I needed to give them a concrete timeframe for when I'd return it, and right then and there, I told them I'd give it back to them a year from now.

Right after I said it, I thought, Shit, I said it out loud. But then I thought, well, wasn't it just two days ago when I was walking back from the train station that I felt happy and content with everything in my life? I know that I could take it back, after all they probably won't remember it a year from now, much less in a month. Maybe it's naíve that I would hold myself to such a flimsy deadline, but maybe a promise to my students is more binding than one given to anyone else.

Settling

So it's been over a week since I've been back, and I think I finally FEEL back.

Seattle was fun though slightly disappointing because of being snowed in for 2 out of the 3 weeks I was home. The weather has not been kind to me in the last month. But the pictures of a white Christmas were nice, and I did catch up on a lot of movies and American TV. Plus, I got to spend a lot of time with my neice Kyla, which is all too precious of a commodity these days. My dad seemed all right and about the same, though my mom seemed to imply otherwise in some comments, along with the ever-present desire that I come back to Seattle.

The thing is, it's not going to happen. While I liked seeing my friends and family, being back there only made me realize how much I want to be in Japan. Partly because I love having a place of my own, partly because I love living abroad, and most importantly because I LOVE living in Japan.

While I was home, I met up with Ryan, an ALT from Gunma that I met briefly in Tokyo for a friend's birthday celebration consisting of a night of clubbing and post-dancing Italian food, and my boy Branden. I guess because both of them are of Japanese descent, their ties to Japan are much stronger than mine, yet I find it odd that I'm the one that's stayed and is staying here for longer. Neither of them has much desire to travel or live in other places. I on the other hand, continue to want to go anywhere, everywhere. Hmm, that's proving a rarer quality in people that I'd previously thought.