March 11, 5 Years Later

I've been toying around with what to say here for months and still have no idea. I know it's been five years since the quake and tsunami, since my mother spent her birthday without confirmation of life from me and since my husband (then boyfriend-almost-fiance) risked his life driving into Sendai to get me.

And it's a long story, and I already told it a thousand times. The next time I tell it, it will be in book form. If you don't know it, here's the Star-Telegram article on the subject.

Five years, eh? And my daughter has been alive for half of that.

My life is a lot different. Less income, but more on top of my student loans (sort of), and honestly a lot more emotionally healthy. I make art sometimes now, and not always in writing. When I splurge, I spend 2000yen at the 100 yen store or buy myself a cup of coffee in Sendai. Or go to the crazy sale at Book Off on the 29th.

So I guess my message on this fateful day is to live life to its fullest and try not to be afraid. To any timid folks, scared of being in Japan during a massive quake or tsunami, I can say just a couple of things.

First, the likelihood of any of that happening is small and these specific catastrophes cannot be accurately predicted, so freaking out ahead of time is a waste of time and energy. If you're visiting Japan for any length of time, you will probably feel some small quakes. Big ones are scarier, but not that scary in the moment in my experience. If you're going to experience an earthquake and live through it, this is where you're going to do that.

Second, follow the leader. If something were to happen, do what the locals do and most of the time, you'll be fine. Or at least just as wrong as the locals. If someone who has lived here their whole life does it a little wrong, you probably will be forgiven for doing the same thing.

That's really all I have to say about that. I might try to Vlog (ooh, something new) tomorrow from Sendai if it feels appropriate. We're going for other reasons, but if we can shoot a little video for youtube, too, well...what the heck.

So go live life, people!

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!

January in Japan, in a Nutshell

So this is January in Japan. As we come to the end of the month, I'm greeted with a fuck-ton of anxiety concerning cleaning the crap out of my already cluttered home before my gracious in-laws see the mess I've made of the fancy condo they helped us acquire. I'd bar the doors and make excuses to keep them out, as is my custom (though my limited language ability prevents this being more and agreeing with my mother-in-law when she suggests I might be too busy) but this won't work this time. They'll be coming alright, early next month, to set up a massive doll display that I will get to later.

Much later.

In the mean time, let's talk about January.

First, we jump to December 31st, when  my husband turned on the "Music-Battle" New Year's program only for me to discover that the pretty, costumed, male pop-stars were unrecognizable and somehow no longer even attractive. The most I want to do is teach them proper pronunciation, and maybe algebra. I don't want to touch them. I don't even want to watch them sing. I spent more time tearing apart their costumes in my mind for creative purposes than anything else.

And that's one of those "You know you've been in Japan too long..." things. You know you've been here too long when the hot young pop stars hold no appeal or interest, and when the pop stars you were interested are not on the pop programs anymore.

And I wept a little inside. Did I get old somehow? I mean I kinda saw it coming when my friends last year, all in their mid-twenties, asked me who my favorite member of Arashi (a popular male group) was and all I could say is "The one that looks like Hyde. The one my friend likes. Jun...something?"

What redeemed me was seeing Gackt on a different New Year's program the next day at my in-laws' house. See? The ones I like still exist! They's just more reclusive because they already made their money and are probably secretly gay and afraid the archaic political climate of their home country would shun their love life. Or maybe not. Like I know anything about pop-stars.

Enough about pop-stars.


Early January in Japan also entails a trip to the nearest shrine (here's the Wiki.) to pay respect to the Shinto spirits so that you might have good fortune in the coming year.
Unless you're me.
Or, like me, you were born in one of the years deemed unlucky by the powers that be. There's a whole chart of birth years up for you to see as you approach the active part of the shrine. Standing in a  huge line with a butt-load of Japanese people, you have plenty of time to look over it. Then you creep forward until you can perform the shrine ritual of throwing a coin, clapping, and pulling the rope to ring a giant bell while somewhere in there making a wish. Yeah, I still don't really have the pattern down, which is why I watch other people go first. Always. 7 years now and still.

If you happen to know the pattern, I congratulate you, but don't bother to explain it to me. My brain doesn't care enough to remember it. I've tried.

Here's the whole wiki on Japanese New Year with more info that I know about what goes on.
Another thing happening at the same time is New Year's Cards, which are like Christmas cards but usually involve the eastern zodiac animal for the coming year and messages of hope and love.

Every card comes with a code in a weird sort of reluctant lottery. Around mid-month, you can find the codes and check them against your cards. If you win, you go to the post office and collect your winnings. It seems that the best prizes are electronics or gift certificates of some outrageous value. I mean, outrageous to me. For a lucky number found on a card you didn't even buy?
Second place means matching 4 of the 6 numbers and has some other goods listed as prizes. The third round is matching 2 numbers, and entitles the winner to something google translates as "a lottery sheet" though I have no idea what that could mean,

But I am going to find out because, lucky us, we have one matching card! For the round 3 position, but still...lottery sheet!? Yay?!


Another thing that happens mid-month is the New Year's Decoration Bonfire! Also known as Dontosai, which sounds like "Don't--oh--sigh" is you're not used to Japanese. Here's more info.

You might be picturing burning Christmas trees and giant piles of horrible-smelling melting plastic, but I assure you that isn't the case. The New Year's Decorations for Japanese people are made from a lot of wood and wood-like substances that burn easily enough. Also, all old Shinto charms from the previous year (made from wood and/or cloth and paper) get thrown on the fire. Most households put all their decorations and charms into a paper bag and bring them to the fire.

There's also this whole thing about this being the "naked" festival, which is insane because 1) I've never seen naked people there and 2) that's not really the point of the thing, especially for the average resident. If you're in the right kind of company, you might be enlisted to do the "naked" run to the shrine in which you will wear a loin cloth and (as I've seen) a full-torso ace-bandage. then you'll run with a bunch of people wearing the same thing in the almost-freezing temperatures and run a lap around the shrine, it seems. Again, you can read up on it here.

I've never really wanted to watch a bunch of kids and office workers nearly freezing their bits off, so I usually don't really pay attention to this bit. Also, we're usually not there early enough to watch it, what with my husband being a Japanese funeral director and all.

More on that later, too.

In the meantime, here is my family at the bonfire. It is believed that no one warmed around the New Year's fire can become sick within the year. We proved this wrong 2 years ago when Julia and I pretty much immediately got the flu.
Anyway, fire!!

Julia and Tomo in 2014

Julia and (happier) Tomo in 2016. 

Rest In Peace, Starman

The news hit about an hour before I saw it, while I was teaching English at my home to the son of a friend. My husband came home early, overlapping with the departure of the kid, and I turned on the computer.
And then some small part of my world fell apart.

Perhaps it's childish to still have this reaction to death, especially the death of someone I never knew nor met, but I face and voice I was familiar enough with as a child to consider a strange fictitious friend.
I am seriously surprised that my aunt's VHS copy of The Labyrinth didn't warp and fall into pieces at any point in our childhood for how many times it was viewed in the summers we spent at her house.
But it was burned into our memories.

The dent, nay gaping hole, left by David Bowie's departure is evident to fans, even distant fans, even people who haven't listened to him in years and years. I cannot imagine what his family is going through and my thoughts and prayers are with them.

This is the second major pop-culture icon from my childhood to leave this world in the last few years, reminding my that time is passing and everyone dies of something.

Where Robin Williams taught was how to be a father, a dad, a parent, a man and how to stay remotely sane in the insane world, David Bowie taught that masculine and feminine roles are not definite or un-bendable, nay unbreakable. He lead us freaks and geeks to something better, even if only in our own heads. That's who he was to me. He was proof that my dad had the potential to be cool and that being yourself is significantly more important than pretending to be whatever might look better to others.

I have spent the last day or so looking through many of the articles written as biographies of the recently deceased icon, and I am struck not only by how many very different and evolving styles he pulled into being but also by the failures. He was in a large number of bands that never had great hits or any at all. That didn't make him a failure. That made him try harder. He wrote thousands of songs. Some were big hits and some were flops. Did the flops stop him? No. The man kept going. He didn't succeed by doing only the same thing over and over but by incorporating his evolution as an artist in his work. And he was successful.
A man who spend the last 18 months of his life fighting cancer while creating his own farewell album and music videos for his fans is nothing if not determined as all hell.

And I needed that reminder. I spent half of last year considering forfeiting my artistic pursuits, the only job I've really wanted since I was seven-years-old, because I was only getting negative feedback. How privileged am I that my brain has never had to wrap its head around more than six months of trying something with no fruitful gains.

So I am back to it. I'll do my best to submit a little work here and there this month and next month. In March, I will edit my first novel. Fully. From start to finish, I will turn the thing into one working copy and stop worrying about the little crap. Will people get it? Will they know what I mean? Is this too weird? Too brutal? Why isn't this just one genre like fantasy or scifi? What is this urban fantasy thing? Why would anyone want to read this messed up story from the brain of a crazy lady?

Because the public life of David Bowie proves that being your own weird extra-ordinary self is significant and important.

His work affects me in a similar way to reading my first Neil Gaiman books a few years ago, when I had finished my first NaNoWriMo novel and thought it was too weird for anyone to want or like or read or publish. Suddenly I was made aware that the weirdness of my novel was not a detriment-- that weirdness can be fantastic, successful and marketable even, provided it is done well.

So now I am off to perform my weirdness to the best of my ability, in whatever way I can between now and my own end, whenever that may be.



Epilogue:
(To a blog post? Can you have one of those?)
(I don't care! I'm doing it!)

One of the most significant positive factors I've found in those recent biographies is family. The man seems to have been a great father and a great partner.
The thing that makes this suck so much less than Robin Williams death (not that my opinion of either means a damned thing) is that we know he had a chance to say goodbye. He had 18 months of fighting this thing and still made his final album. It is said that he perished quietly, surrounded by family, at peace. For someone who brought so much joy and comfort to us freaks out here in the world, he deserved nothing less.

I am so happy that he had a chance to be happy.

Suprizing Win for the Day

This morning I woke up late, which isn't surprising at all when you consider I didn't get to bed until 3 and the toddler person kept making demands every few hours so no real rem-sleep it seems, excluding a really awful dream in which a high-school acquaintance turned out to be a child rapist. Unlikely in real life, but really off-putting.

So I wake up at 10 when I should have been up at 9 to skype my mom. Then I realize I have 2 messages from my mom, asking to meet even earlier, which apparently didn't get sent to me until half an hour after the suggested meeting time. I get up and turn on my computer to realize she left the Starbucks 10 minutes previous.

Well crap.

This isn't the first time it has happened, and playing time-zone bingo is hectic pretty often, but this avoidable screw up always leads me into a dark place where nothing in my mind wants to accept that I am a person and not a waste of space. So I feel like utter crap for a few minutes, but today was a good day for my brain chemistry apparently because part of me rebounded pretty quickly, reminding me or projects I could totally finish and feel better and hey, isn't there some more Star Trek: Voyager on Netflix? And we could fold all the laundry, wash another load, and get stuff done before Julia wakes up, which means she won't have a chance to, say, impale herself on my sewing needle or unfold a half-an-hour's work in the blink of an eye.

Yeah, we could do stuff.

And I did. I don't know why I got plural like that but it makes me a little nervous sometimes, like maybe my brain will one day go through with this "us" idea and create alternative personalities to share the body and utterly confuse everything in my life.

But I digress. The point was that I managed to take the detour from Depression-land and wind up in Sock-Monkey Village, which sounds like a place that should exist to me.  I then got us up and ready to go to the post office, send off a few long-awaited boxes and all the New Year's Cards that I personally had to write.

That's a Japanese custom, by the way. Christmas isn't such a thing because most people are Shinto/Buddhist and don't really do the Jesus thing so much, so instead of Christmas cards, people send out New Year's Cards, usually celebrating the animal of the zodiac for the coming year (2016 is the year of the Monkey!) while also containing a personal message about what the person/the family did during the year and/or best wishes toward whoever is meant to receive it. Kind like a family newsletter thing, only you need a pic to go with it and everyone does it. Also, you have to have a physical address for everyone. Somehow emailing just never caught on for this, but the cards you send are literally the size of postcards, so it's not too tricky.

 I consider it my job in this household to make sure the cards get made and ready to send, which is great except I don't even know the addresses for my husband's contacts nor how to write them in Japanese. Kinda lame.

One day, I will have the kanji power!

Until then, though, I have to just try every year to get a good picture of Julia being adorable near the next year's emblem. This year, I had a sock-monkey hat ready to go, so at least that worked out well.

Relevant pics will appear on twitter. :)

New Year, New Outlook

Howdy and sorry for the extremely long lag times in posts. It's what happens when life gets the better of you. Also when you spend three and a half months pondering your life goals, questioning the only remaining childhood dream you have kept into your thirties.

Last year I tried something really hard. I pushed myself to submit my writing to contests, magazines, whatever I could find. If I could submitted as pieces as the number of the month, I was alright.
After 6 months of this, 20 rejections and one (unpaid) publication, I was engulfed in self-doubt and started to reconsider my ambition. I took a break for GISHWHES and didn't go back to the submission madness in 2015. I did write a 55,000 word manuscript for NaNoWriMo, which I always try very hard at, and it helped me refocus.

Maybe my writing needs some help and focus and polish, and maybe I can focus on those things in 2016 instead of churning out submissions.

That said, early on the morning of December 23rd, while I was half-conscious next to my toddler and husband, my phone alerted me to an email declaring that I had actually won one of the contests I had submitted to back in May. I thought, "Hey, that's cool. I bet I tied for third or something and won $5."
As it turns out, my piece (one of 4 submitted to this contest) won first prize and a lot more than $5.
Read it here.

My brother got engaged to my best friend from college in July, so after GISHWHES I threw myself into making my bridesmaid's dress and all the flowers (origami, man!) and getting things organized. We were super fortunate in that the GoFundMe my (at that time soon-to-be) sister-in-law set up actually raised just enough money for me to fly in for the December wedding.

So I started trying to prepare myself to leave my little toddler all alone with her super affectionate and awesome Japanese grandparents (husband spent the whole time working) as well as getting any last minute things finished.

In the 7.5 years I have been living in Japan and returning home periodically, I have never been so torn about leaving nor so eager to return, and not because I don't love my husband or enjoy living here. Having kids changes you, or at least it did me. Now when we're separated, part of me is missing and not like my husband, who was fully functional when I met him. Nope.

I had to leave behind someone I had been talking to since before she had ears behind for one week, and there were challenges. In Texas, I resented being near small children because it was kind of like an emotional donkey-kick to the uterus. Maybe that's why some people hate kids. Surely some people legitimately hate the little crap-factories, but some probably secretly love them but there's pain in the love and more than they want to deal with.

Meanwhile, I had lots of great encounters with amazing people I missed terribly. I got to reconnect with a former roommate by staying up all night in a Minecraft and goat-simulator marathon. That was awesome. I had many fantastic meals with friends I had not seen since my own wedding.

And then there's the wedding, which was awesome and amazing and wonderful. Easily this was probably the most joyous wedding I have ever witnessed.

In the few weeks since I returned, I've dealt with Christmas decorating and un-decorating, followed by Japanese new-year's decorating, which is almost at an end, too. Then all of the other amazing things!

I also read most of Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson. I thoroughly recommend this author and book to anyone who is suffering from depression among other issues and wants to do something other than hate themselves/life for it. Be furiously happy.

Also, do GISHWHES.

Those I believe are a few of the keys to happiness.

So I have decided to drop some of the precise polished pretension in this blog and let it be a blog about me and my life and the weird things I see in the weird little country I have decided to live in and am lucky enough to still be a part of.

So that's what it's going to be. Also, updated more regularly.

Yay 2016!

Happy New Year!