One More Year

There are a couple of times a year that I find myself reflecting upon my life and its direction more than at other times. It’s probably similar for most people, the beginning of the year and before my birthday. As my birthday is in the beginning of March I find myself looking inward a lot in the first two months of the year. This year is no exception.

For Wayne and I, we know we only have one more year left in Japan before we head back to Australia. It hadn’t always been planned that way, there were times we thought we’d stay here until we’d put children through kindergarten to give them a good bilingual start, others when we thought we’d be going back to Aussie shores this March to start a family. There have even been brief moments when the stress that living in another country can add to a marriage that I’ve feared we’d be returning to Australia at different times.

With time rushing by as it seems to do, I start to look at why we came here in the first place and what I want to achieve before I leave.

Coming to Japan was not a long thought out decision, but rather an impulse that felt so right. I had lived in Japan for three years and was back in Australia as an ex-gaijin trying to find my feet once again. I found that the gaijin part of me never went away. Japan had seated itself in my heart and was there to stay. It was in my fourth year back in Australia that as desperate to grow roots in the country as I was, the universe seemed to be telling me that wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

It was a bad year. Only months after moving in with a friend, a new man in her life wanted them to live together so I needed to find a new home. Wayne and I spent weeks going from one rental inspection to another until we found the perfect place. It was an early 1920s Queensland Colonial with polished wood floors, pressed ceilings and a huge second bedroom with perfect light for my studio. It is the type of place I have always wanted. Our request to sign a long lease was denied and instead, we signed the standard 6 month lease with assurances that we could renew it at the end of that time.

In the space of a handful of months, both before and after the move, bad luck seemed to visit our door. Between the two of us, we suffered through the deaths of four people close to us. My new job went sour and I and other staff found ourselves having to seek legal advice to be paid the wages we were due. In the next few months I found myself changing jobs a number of times, something I’d never done before. I came very close to buying a small art gallery with a coffee shop, but that deal also fell through.

I was then finally in a job that I loved, an English school with a real international selection of students. My boss was a true inspiration in her passion for teaching and life. My fellow teachers, all so intelligent, well traveled and funny, quickly became dear friends. My classes were great and often I had classes filled with people from all different cultures. Students changed and then I had a class with all Japanese women. I loved the class but a homesickness for Japan set in. I had the feeling I could be doing the same job in Japan.

The final blow came suddenly. Right after getting engaged, I had just lost two people very special to me and was still in the midst of grief. We got a letter to say that the owner of the house wanted to move family in there and so would not be renewing our contract in a month’s time.

Something snapped that night. I felt that every attempt I’d made that year to put down roots had failed. I felt that the universe was telling me that Australia was not the place I was supposed to be at that time. Wayne and I made the very difficult decision that I would come to Japan for a year. On my own. We would hold off wedding plans until I came back, I just needed to get away, to come back to Japan, to photograph, to finish the book I was writing.

The next morning I awoke at 4am. I had a large order for my sideline business to get out that day before I left for work. I touched Wayne’s shoulder and began to cry. I couldn’t imagine not waking up next to him every morning. In my studio I managed to work while tears ran down my face. Suddenly, a light bulb went off. He was looking for a change, looking for a break from his business. Why couldn’t he come with me? We didn’t have a mortgage yet, no children. What was tying us down? At five, as the sun was just beginning to give a golden glow to the bedroom, I touched his bare shoulder once more, this time to wake him.

“Why don’t we sell everything we own and just go, go to Japan together?” I asked.

As the sleep in his eyes wore off, I could almost see the thoughts turning over in his head. After fifteen minutes he agreed. “Yep, let’s do it!”

And that’s exactly what we did.

The decision to move back has been a much harder and drawn out one. For months last year we were on a rollercoaster of uncertainty. I’m sure I drove my workmate nuts, everyday telling them, “We’ve decided to stay” and the next, “We’ve decided to go.” While the resolve changed everyday, how I felt about it changed by the hour. It was a relief when we came to a final conclusion, regardless of what it was.

So for now, we have one more year, and a bit, left in Japan. It’s hard not to get lost in the teaching and with making extra money to put towards a house and a family. It’s hard not to get caught up on the fact that I should be, at this later stage in life, concentrating on being in my best shape to have a child. Somedays, it’s hard not to get frustrated with cold teacher’s rooms and crappy school lunches that I now know I’ll have to put up with for another year. But for the next year, I’m going to try my hardest to do what I came here for in the first place. To write, to photograph, to soak up and to journal the creative inspirations this place has to offer.

Just one more year.