Surprisingly Good, Thanks.

That's my answer today for the question, "How are you?"

Good because everyone's happy and healthy for the most part. My house is still not clean. The dolls are still not here as I have been granted a week long reprieve due to my husband forgetting to tell his parents about his days off. I should still be cleaning my butt off, but today I'm a little sluggish, feeling like my soul's been gut-punched in some sort of forgivable joke. I'm not bitter or angry, but there's still a deep sense of loss.

This is because one of my long-term private students broke up with last night.

When I say long term, i mean it. She was the first private student I had, one who told me shortly after meeting me in my first year in this prefecture that she would enjoy taking private lessons from me. This woman visited me in the hospital when I was on bed rest and brought me enough food to let me feel full for the first time in months. She was there for me during one of the hardest times in my life.

But our last lesson was awful. Julia was rambunctious and refused to be settled, so what could have been an hour of quietly talking turned into a fool's errand of trying to find the one place in the world that would calm the 2 year old. In the end it didn't matter, and she even ended the class early, urging me to go home and get Julia to bed.

One point of interest is that I did get Julia right to bed, which did nothing as she ran around the living room for the next 3 hours or so.

I want to say that there is nothing I could have done and to some degree that is true. A kid going nuts is a kid going nuts. But I could have roused us both earlier and got her to run around a bunch in the morning so that she might have been worn out enough to sleep during the class...but that isn't surefire either. She might have been just as bad. She might have been worse.

In the end, my student had personal problems to deal with in the last few weeks as well and when I messaged her, she was fairly quick to email me back with an explanation and a thank you.

I am trying not to read between the lines and feel like crap about myself. I could hardly blame her for quitting, and if read in the wrong, embittered light of a spurned teacher-friend, her words could seem to have the following message: 

"You are a failure. A failure as a teacher, as I haven't learned enough to want to continue. A failure as a mother, as you can't take adequate care of your child. Just an all around Class A loser. Good job, loser. Minus $120 to monthly bank account for the rest of time."

The magnificent thing is that my mind is trying very hard not to go down that path. I have always taken losing students harder than I should, though in recent years, it has become easier. I used to feel like every lost student was a monumental failure not only in my earning potential but also in who I am as a person. I'm a writer who doesn't edit, and a teacher without students.

Instead, right now I have a pang of weird grief, like it's the end of an era, but I'm not depressed. I'm not bitter. Just a little off. Off enough to write a whole blog-post about it, but not enough to cry or hide. Heck, I even ate lunch.

The ex-student invited us out to lunch next month and I messaged her back to say yes, and tell her that we would love to. I also apologized a bit and said that I understood.

I think the thing that really gets me is that I didn't see it coming, not really. I expected her to want to pick up lessons after a while and I didn't expect her to comment on how I am raising my daughter. Again, she didn't say anything directly mean, but that's not the Japanese way. This culture is all about the dance of indirect communication. "You can't wear that shirt in here." must be said as "I didn't know we could wear shirts like that in here...." and "That is impossible." in a business sense must only be "Difficult...."
Those ellipses are there for a reason. It's another part of the dance. Lots of suggestions, few direct statements. And most of the time I stay away from people because I am so bad at this dance. I am bad at it in English, where I understand the words and somehow miss the important bits. In Japanese, I am awful.

But I let my guard down with her, and really told her about my life and what was going on and who I am. At the end of the day, I'm still not sure what any of it meant.

But it doesn't really matter.

Because it's over.

Alright, enough of that crap. On with the world.

2016's First February Adventure: Curry on Setsubun and Tomo Saves the Day

Setsubun was the other day, and it was a bit of a whopper for me.

I lucked out by being invited to lunch with a few members of the Association of Foreign Wives of Japanese, which is an awesome group to be a part of, especially when you feel alone and weird, which I do a lot.

There we had some lovely curry and between bouts of toddler-filled distraction, I talked. A lot. Like non-stop. After lunch was shopping and looking out the observation tower and even a lovely coffee and tea break while Julia ran around a kids-play-area.

I got on the train, came home and immediately, the smart part of my mind which had been a no-show earlier sprang to life, detailing each and every stupid thing I said and how little I listened and how awful it must have been, or ludicrous, or weird for all those other ladies to listen to my yammering.

I slept on it though and this morning realized two things. First, I forgot that I am an introvert and the running around and talking thing takes a lot more out of me than I realize. Second, I spent a lot of the time chasing Julia around in circles or begging her to stay seated or distracted long enough to pretend I'm an adult for just a minute. So I probably didn't make quite as much of an ass of myself as I could have.
Though now I wonder what that looked like. too. Maybe I seemed inattentive or lazy or crazy or who knows.

The point is I got out of my house and was social with new people and enjoyed it. That is not common.
A great point was that I have something in common with these ladies and that most of them have been in this country twice as long as I have or longer.

Since I was feeling old and dumb last month for not recognizing the musicians on the New Year's TV Specials, it was especially nice to see that I'm not the oldest foreign woman in Japan, and that staying longer doesn't mean I am doing anything wrong.

I'm actually doing okay. I'm on my own journey, and I am loking it overall, so yay!


After coming home and realizing it was Setsubun, the bean-throwing day, I raced through the grocery store looking for peanuts (in shell, to throw at the demon and cleanse the house) and soy beans (the only bean they use in other parts of Japan for the throwing or the eating. Here, we eat the same number as our age for good luck) but found all the Setsubun stuff had been taken away, as everyone else had apparently already got their bits in a timely fashion.
So I raced to the bean and dry snack aisle, where I still didn't find what I was looking for so I spent about $10 on other random beans and hoped for the best.

When Tomo came home a few hours later, he brought with him a new oni mask, a pack of peanuts and two packs of dried soybeans, Soon after, he dressed as the oni and I threw peanuts at him in each room of the house. Julia is not quite ready for this ritual, which was made obvious by her desire to pick up and eat the peanuts in their shells as well as her displeasure at hitting her father with peanuts.

Or maybe she's just too Americanized right now.

Now it's almost 4AM and I am about to get some rest. With my in-laws comign to set up the dolls next week, I took it upon myself to get all of the old recycling out, which meant scrubbing the labels off of bottles of alcohol that were brought to my 30th birthday over a year ago. Needless to say, there was a lot to get done, but done it is.

As am I.

Sweet dreams, Universe!