Happy New (School) Year!

Last week, here in Japan, the new school year began. As an Aussie, having grown up with the school year starting in line with the new calendar year, I find an April start a little strange. Having just come out of a horribly depressing Japanese winter however, I find the starting of a new chapter with the new signs of life a lovely idea.

I've only met a few of my classes so far. It's great seeing all the fresh new faces, especially the first grade junior high kids. They are so excited and so open to being entertained. The boys are looking swamped in their new school jackets, jackets bought in a size for them the grow into. In class, the blurting out of "My name is ..." is a thrill and an achievement to get excited about.

For me though, I'm starting this new year with mixed feelings. I know that I have one more year here. Part of me is excited and planning all the things I want to do and see in that time. The other part of me feels a bit like I'm trapped in a Groundhog Day moment.

Let me go back for a moment. My trip to Australia in spring holidays was great. Brisbane was really quiet as I was there over the Easter long weekend, a time when most Brisbanites get out of the city. Most of my time there was spent sorting out some business stuff and catching up with friends. One of my friends even had her baby while I was there, so I got a chance of seeing the new mum and meeting the gorgeous new arrival before flying out. Another friend is pregnant, and has just moved into her new house. Others have bought new properties, have new children, or children have grown up since I saw them last. There's a great sense of momentum in the lives of my friends and family.

Now I've come back to Japan. I'm teaching exactly the same lessons I taught last year and the year before that. Last year, when I was teaching them, I told myself it was the last time. Not in a bad way, but this time last year, we thought that we'd still be in Japan, but I wouldn't be working and would be starting a family. Now, one year later, I'm back doing the same thing, telling myself that my family will begin next year. You know those scenes they have in movies sometimes where someone stands really still and everything around them is rushing by. That's a bit how I feel right now.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to be excited about. There are festivals coming up, seasons that will change, lots of inspiration to soak up and preparations to do before the starting of a family. It's just that today, I'm having a little trouble remembering those things.

Look out Australia! Here I come!

Just checking in. I haven't blogged much here lately. There hasn't been a lot to say. My friends threw me a lovely temakizushi (hand-rolled sushi) party for my birthday. I finished work for the school year and am now on holidays. I've been madly procrastinating getting ready to go away tomorrow. Don't get me wrong - I've been busy, just doing the less important (but way more fun) things in preparation for this trip like making a new travel documents folder and new jewellery to wear. I haven't started packing yet.

It's funny, if you spoke to me a few days ago I would have told you how I couldn't wait to get out of this country. I hated this last winter. I was so cold all the time, I got sick a number of times and everything around me was grey. I got terribly down and had no interest in the things I normally love. The only thing that perked me up was chocolate and donuts and I could not get enough of them.

Now, the days are suddenly warm, the plum blossoms are out, the cherry soon to follow, the sun is shining and I'm in love with Japan again. I'm fully of energy (well as full as energy as I ever get) and have been up until 2am most nights busy making things. I suspect I may actually get homesick while I'm away. Coming from Brisbane, where this isn't a great change in the weather over the year, until living in Japan, I had never realised how dramatically my long-term mood can be affected by the seasons.

But cherry blossoms or not, tomorrow I'm off to Australia, I'll be hopping in with the Easter Bunny. I have a long list of people I can't wait to see and foods that I can't wait to eat. I'm looking forward to being surrounded by English.

See you when I get back!

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.

Change of seasons

Our cosy winter dining area with kotatsu and uchikake

As I mentioned in a post recently, it's Golden week in Japan. Golden week sees people madly rushing around the country, the roads, planes and trains full to the brim with travellers. For that reason, I don't - travel that is.

Wayne went off to Kyoto for the day to watch people try to kill each other, so I took the opportunity to change the apartment from winter to summer. A lot of it was hard work and I must say, I don't know how we'd cope in this apartment without those bags you store things in then vacuum out the air so they take up less space. Not even considering my large collection of clothes.. we have so many futons, extra blankets, extra sheets and pillows which have been well used for all the visitors we've had in the past year.

Anyway, the fun job of the day was changing our little dining alcove. It's my favourite part of the apartment and I try to keep it free of the clutter that seems to invade the rest of our abode. In the picture at the top, you can see what it looked like this morning. The table is called a kotatsu and is just heaven in the cold weather. It is built with a heater underneath and when you sit under the quilt it is so cosy and warm you never want to get up. I bought the uchikake, wedding kimono, before we did the area up for winter so we tried to co-ordinate everything to match it.

In the picture below, you can see what the area looks like now. The tatami mat has red and blue dragonflies embroidered in the corner, so I hung one of my kakejuku scrolls up that features jizo and some blue dragonflies. I had thought of getting another kimono to hang in the area, but now I like the "zen-ness" of the space, it has a cool feel for the summer.

I was so inspired by the new look that I did something I very rarely do - cook! I made salmon cakes with sweet potato, onion, garlic, negi and dill. If I must say myself - they were really yummy! Pity poor Wayne wasn't around to witness his wife cook, but I have saved him some as I think they'll make a lovely decedent breakfast.

Our dining alcove with its fresh summer look

Recycling Day

Today was recylcing day and I hate recycling day! I hate getting up early in the morning, walking up the road with all my "Non-combustable" rubbish and sorting it out under the watchful eyes of complete strangers. OK, it's actually the getting up early part that I hate the most.

Wayne and I realised last night that we had to do the recycling this morning. The day comes around every couple of weeks, but we actually only go every couple of months - when our recycling bin gets full. After our day of putting together furniture, we were too tired to do the sorting, but planned to be good and get up early today. Of course, we slept in and so as usual, it was a mad rush to get there before the 8am finish. I had on my usual grumpy face. Walking home afterwards, we passed a group of bright-eyed elementary school girls looking cute in their yellow hats. They smiled at us and then commented to each other how white I was. Mmm thanks for that.

It's funny how attitudes change though. I used to think that the Japanese way of disposing of rubbish was a little backward. I looked at the way it is done in Brisbane. Everything recyclable gets thrown in the one bin, picked up by the city council and taken away to be sorted. Stress free. I've since come to realise, however, that if something isn't as stress-free, it forces you to really think about it. I'm now much more aware of what I buy and how it's packaged. It forces me to think about if I really want to buy it and makes me take more responsibility for the rubbish I produce.

I still think that Japan has a long way to go in terms of reducing it's packaging, but the country is becoming more aware. Our local supermarket has given us a card on which we get points for each plastic bag we refuse. Once the card is full, we get a discount. It works out to about 5yen a bag. There is a recently a movement of "Mottainai" (もったいない) which roughly translates to "it is so wasteful that things are not made full use of their value". It is being used to equate to the English version of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". I've seen news articles over here about groups trying encourage children to use "furoshiki", which is a square piece of cloth, traditionally used for carrying things. In the schools, these groups are showing kids how to tie the cloth to make different bags and then giving the kids free reign to see what different, creative ways they can come up with. I sometimes carry one with me and use it for a carry bag when shopping.

On this site there are some diagrams on different ways of tying the furoshiki:
http://www.env.go.jp/en/focus/attach/060403-5.html

I found this sweet little video on the furoshiki.