April 01, 2013

"It's Never Too Late"

"It's never too late." I think this is something most of us hear a lot, especially as we get older. I've certainly been hearing it since I turned 27, usually in a slightly pitying tone. As in: "I'm 27 years old." "Oh, honey. It's never too late!"

So that's reassuring.

Joking aside, I tend to agree with the sentiment. My grandparents came to the US as adults and remade their lives there; my father and mother both drastically changed careers in their 20s and then waited until it really was almost too late before having their first and only child. I've shuffled around the "what I want to be when I grow up" spectrum a few times even as an adult, and now I'm about to go to grad school. I definitely believe it's never too late.

But that's not really what I want to talk about today. Today, I want to add something to the phrase: "It's never too late... for things to get really stupid."

So, okay, it's today. I've been in Japan for nearly three years now. I speak pretty fine Japanese except for my keigo (formal Japanese) being weak -- but pay attention, because that gets relevant in a minute. I know my way around the place. I gave directions to a tourist this morning. I've been at my school through three yearly staff changes and I pretty much know the drill on that, too, so when I showed up to a sea of new faces today I wasn't especially nonplussed. I introduced myself to three of my new coworkers, tried to help one with her email, chatted bilingually for a bit. I know how this works. I'm cool like that.

I know I have to give a self-introduction at the staff meeting later, but why should that intimidate me? I've done my self-introduction roughly a million times now. Except then we actually get to the staff meeting*, and everyone introduces themselves...

And for whatever reason, I could not tell you why now -- my current medicine gives me the brain fog, everyone was speaking keigo, I suddenly transplanted personalities with myself from a decade ago** -- I completely freeze up. It's never too late... to look like an idiot! I eventually manage to stammer something out that's the rough equivalent of: "Uh, hi, my name is Vera, I'm Vera, hello, you can call me Vera, um..." and so on. I don't think I repeated myself less than three times on any given sentence.

Then I think I swallowed a bug on the way home.

On the bright side, I thought, it's not too late for my day to improve. My cat both agrees and disagrees: in her opinion, it's never too late to destroy all of my possessions. I write this in the middle of having a serious dispute with her about how much that's improving my life.

How was your day, folks?

*Where I am, in extremely typical ALT fashion, to do the self-intro and then quickly leave because why should an English assistant be at the English meeting? But I digress.
**Two of these are true.

March 28, 2013

A Year +++? She lives!

Well, readers and Future JETs, A Year(?) in Japan has turned into, quite definitively and without question marks, three years in Japan, and against all odds I am actually still here. I'm sorry it's been so long! Come and give me a hug.

Since my last entry, a lot has happened. I wrecked my back, got better again, lived through a fire and a small bout of resulting homelessness, got better again, made and lost some friends, inherited a cat, lost 50 pounds, and came out of the closet to the small handful of people I hadn't already come out to. In retrospect, I really should have written some of this down before now. While it was happening, my friends exhorted me time and again to return to blogging -- especially during the homeless chapter. "Homeless in Japan?" they cried. "You'll be a hipster icon!"

I mean, that's the dream, right?

Unfortunately, and this is a really bad habit of mine if I ever want to do anything legitimate with writing, I have a really hard time writing about Real Things when they're Really Happening. I have a terribly bad habit of being glib. My father says I should write about my mother; my best friend says I should write about the pitfalls of my job (and I'm afraid in my case they have been many, although as the JET Program constantly tells us, Every Situation is Different). In my situation, I look at reality and rebel. Then I watch like fifty hours of Battlestar Galactica in a row and make stupid jokes to my friends about trying to pass the scars on my body and my heart both off as the products of a bar fight.

But things have settled down a little bit, and while I'm sure writing that down is only asking for trouble, I feel it is time to return to the fold.

So what else has happened? Well, my time in Japan is officially winding to a close. In July, I'll be coming back to the States to pursue my Master's degree -- not in translation like I thought but in Special Education, and the explanation for that will definitely be the subject of an upcoming entry. In my free time, I'm studying ASL and working on some new writing projects and when things actually warm up (this winter has lasted F O R E V E R, you guys), I'm determined to finally learn how to ride a bike. No, I really can't. Yes, I know how weird that is. Shh.

It's almost two years since my last entry and it's amazing, when I look back over it, how much has changed and how much has stayed the same. I'll tell you this, friends: there's no doubt that I'm older now. But so are you, aren't you? I hope you don't mind if I fill in the gaps while we keep moving forward. It will be fun! Like flashbacks.

More navel-gazing next time. For now, a picture to round things out:

My cat, Nezumi, which means "Mouse." I can't take credit for the name, but boy do my kids love it.

Goodbye, but not for long (again)!