Prelude to a Japanese New Year's - A year in Fukushima #4

With only a very limited time to write this post I found it decidedly fortuitous that there were no decent CDs in my wife’s car. Thus the drive from the Internet-less peach farm to a screaming child-less apartment would be a quiet one, as there is a law in the universe that makes it impossible for anything good to be on Japanese radio, and I would have the opportunity to think of an intelligent and snarky opening for today’s blither. But just to make sure the universe was behaving I flipped on the stereo and pushed a couple of preset buttons.

Depending on your opinion of jazz, universal law may indeed be holding constant. But I ended up in mental la-la land for most of the drive listening to a drawn-out jam session called, for no reason I could discern, Autumn Leaves. Another universal law seems to be that jazz titles shouldn’t bear any comprehensible connection to the music.

I came to Japan in September of 2001. This is the first New Year’s Eve I will be spending in Fukushima, where I have officially been living for all but two of the past nine New Year’s Eves. I drove up to the peach farm with the wife and kids two days ago, and while on the surface things appear as they always have (see this previous post), this time around the air in Arai feels different somehow.

‘How long are you staying?’ my mother-in-law asked as I dumped more bags of crap onto the front hallway floor. Yamato pushed his box of new train tracks into the living room while my wife immediately began worrying about whether Seiji needed more milk or a clean diaper or some time with his new walker-wagon as he is now spending a lot of time on his feet and my wife doesn’t want him to lose his developmental momentum. I just mumbled my Japanese greetings and lugged everything into the refrigerator tatami room where we would be sleeping for the next six nights.

New Year’s Eve is one of the most important times of the year in Japan, a time for family and good wishes and lots of silly television shows. Earlier this year my mother-in-law got a wide-screen plasma TV (or whatever the term is) so while the shows aren’t any better the sensational factor goes up, which is all Yamato needs. And the new remote is much more space-age, which helps keep Seiji’s mind off the fact that he is on his back with no pants on again, a set of circumstances that has recently been turning him into baby Godzilla. Of course television in Japan isn’t all bad – commercials for the local Shinto shrine inviting everyone to come do their New Year’s praying where ‘decorations and good luck charms have been prepared’ gives a gaijin like me a deeper glimpse into the ever-unraveling enigma that is this country.

Traditional foods abound in Japan, and perhaps at no time are there more varieties than at New Year’s. ‘Toshi-koshi soba’ is an extra long version of the regular soba noodles available anywhere all year, and are meant to signify long life. Of course nobody, not even Japanese people, believe a bowl of inordinately long noodles has the power to extend your life. For this reason, they eat them every year, banking on a sort of cumulative effect. O-sechi is an elaborate meal consisting of a dozen (at least) different kinds of fish, beans and no-gaijin-knows-what-else all painstakingly prepared and served in boxes that stack on top of each other. Back in 2004 I did have the opportunity to sit down to a real home-made O-sechi meal at a friend’s house in Gifu prefecture. His mother, and grandmother too I think, instead of buying New Year’s O-sechi at the supermarket like many people do now, had spent hours and hours making everything, as is the surviving custom in some places just now getting fully fitted with electrical wires.

My first real O-sechi! I dug in, trying everything.

The black bean thing was pretty good.

On Wednesday, once we were settled in at the snow-dusted peach farm, my mother-in-law fired up the mochi machine. Mochi is a form of prepared rice, thick and chewy and sticky and served in a multitude of ways, and is another New Year’s favorite. Together we made Dai-fuku, small round blobs of mochi filled with a sweet bean paste called anko. It stands to reason that it should not be too hard to get a blob of sticky rice to behave, but my Dai-fuku came out looking like the proverbial clay ashtray every kindergartener brings home to mom and dad, regardless of whether they smoke. My mother-in-law had already thrown together another form of mochi, once upon a time shaped and left to sit in long pieces of bamboo split in half. Now it seems a length of plastic gutter from the home center is the new custom. These half-moon rice cakes can be put in soup, smothered in anko or kinako (powdered soy bean, which is a lot better than it sounds), or eaten as is, usually grilled on top of the kerosene heater.

For breakfast on Thursday we would have mochi in all of these forms. Around 11am my wife and mom-in-law were sitting in a quiet powwow, trying to decide how to serve lunch’s mochi.

We ended up having udon.

It is colder up on the peach farm, and snows quite a bit more than down in town, and yesterday it started snowing again. So after lunch, feeling myself turning edgy being confined to the only warm room in the house and with no professional sports on TV, I told Yamato we should go sledding. From his reaction it seemed he was feeling just as cooped-up, and soon we were heading out the door. ‘Do you need to go pee pee?’ my wife asked him (but not me). Of course not, it was time to go sledding. My mother-in-law pulled out a home-made wooden sled from on top of the firewood pile in the back shed. ‘Here, use this.’ Nice gesture, but I brought along a big plastic bag just in case.

Despite the fast there are exactly zero hills on the peach farm big enough to give daddy thirty seconds rest from having to pull the boy around, a good time was had by all. We hadn’t thought to bring a decent pair of gloves for Yamato, and my wife’s wouldn’t quite stay on his hands, so after a few minutes Yamato decided to go without any, and didn’t complain about frozen fingers for the next hour. I think the same dynamic is at work with little kids and sand in their shorts. How can they not care?

Walking back up the driveway to the house Yamato said he wanted to go pee pee outside. He does this sometimes, now that he knows he can. ‘Come on Yamato, let’s just go inside,’ I said as I leaned the sled up against the side of the shed and tucked my unused plastic bag behind it. ‘Daddy, I’m going pee pee now...’

And he was, pants pulled up and leaking into his boots as he stood there looking back at me.

Now it is New Year’s Eve, and we are all more than sated in the mochi department so I have been commissioned to stop by the sushi place to pick up dinner for everyone. (Plus my mother-in-law might be busy making O-sechi though I haven’t seen any black beans anywhere.) Normally my wife can call ahead and place an order and all I have to do is go in, spit out my name (‘Su-mi-su’ being the standard ear-grating version) and they hand me a bag or two. Today, however, we are not the only ones with moms too busy making O-sechi to cook and bellies overloaded with mochi, and I just got an email from my wife saying the sushi shop isn’t taking orders today. ‘It’s really crowded too,’ she added, meaning I better get my butt over there. It’s just as well. This is New Year’s Eve, a time for family, food and good cheer – one form being the ‘nigori’ Japanese sake my mother-in-law has been letting me sample these past two days. There is most likely at least a few bottles of Kirin Lager still out in the shed too. These will go perfectly with an evening of sushi and silly television shows in a room full of train tracks – the only warm room in the house.

Happy New Year everyone!

Best of luck in all your New Year’s endeavors.

Interview with Christopher Carr Of The Inductive - Part V

Fifth and Final Installment. It has been a fantastic pleasure working with Christopher Carr on this, and I look forward to 2011 when I will begin contributing regularly to The Inductive. Thanks for stopping by, and best of luck in all your endeavors in the coming year.

Christopher Carr: As for connecting with a local person, I recommend couch surfing. Other than that, I've heard Akita is a special place. It's the only area of Tohoku I've never been, and I'm planning a big trip up there next summer, so we'll see how that goes. Here is my final question for you: what do you think lies in the future for Japan and your own relationship to it?


Kevin Kato: Couch surfing, of course! How could I forget that one? I’ve actually surfed all over the place, and I’ve hosted some great people here which has actually helped deepen my own appreciation for Japan and Fukushima. Yes, definitely glad you brought that up. I must be getting tired.

Now, you want my take on the future of Japan? I’ll be honest, for as long as I’ve been here I know precious little of the machinations behind this country’s political and economic behavior, I’ll leave that to the pundits and bloggers who know what they are talking about. As far as my place in Japan, I really do feel at home here, bewildering though it can still be at times. On a personal level I’ve met and been befriended by countless wonderful people who would give me the shirt off their back if I needed it. I’ve eaten dinner with many a welcoming family and slept in their homes. I’ve been invited to partake in festivals and weddings. I’ve been forgiven by policemen and treated like royalty by strangers on the street. I wandered into the restricted area at the Hakodate fish market and found myself being given a guest pass and a complimentary sashimi breakfast. And none of it took more than a smile or a friendly word. To anyone who says Japanese people aren’t friendly, I say you aren’t doing your part.

On the other hand, in the grand societal scheme of things I don’t think I will ever feel like I am a full-fledged citizen of Japan. But why would I? In Slovenia or Morocco or Peru it would be the same. I’ve heard foreigners lament over and over about how they will never be treated as “Japanese”. Well guess what, gaijin, you aren’t Japanese. Of course I’d hope and expect to be treated fairly according to the law if such circumstances ever arose, but I certainly have never wished that people would stop seeing me for who I am: an American guy doing his best to find a place and a life for himself in a foreign world.

I don’t mean to imply that I’ve decided to settle here, because I haven’t. I don’t see myself living here for the next fifty years if I’ve got that long. But with a Japanese wife and two boys here, I’ll have ties to this country for the rest of my life, regardless of where we eventually decide to live. Without this family I might one day leave Japan and never make it back. And that, on a personal level, would be a shame.

Assuming the dollar is worth something again someday.


** To view parts I - IV use the links to the right, or check out the interview in its entirety all in one shot here.

Interview with Christopher Carr of The Inductive - Part IV

For previous installments of this interview go to The Inductive or simply keep scrolling down.

Christopher Carr: In terms of traveling Japan, I imagine going by bike is one of the best possible ways. I've always preferred using the cheapest public transportation imaginable mixed with a small amount of hitchhiking. Getting back to your point about avoiding the touristy areas, which specifically would you avoid, and which do you think are must-see? Also, could you paint in broad strokes, how someone with no experiential knowledge of Japan might go about acquiring that knowledge as efficiently (yet enjoyably) as possible.


Kevin Kato: Which touristy areas to avoid? That’s actually a tough one to answer. I mean, by and large I’ve enjoyed what these heavily-touristed places have to offer, it’s just that conundrum of a place losing its aura because of all the people who wish to go see it. It’s just the nature of the beast. If you were out in the backwoods of Oita or Aomori and you stumbled on a Kiyomizudera that no one but the locals knew about…well, I’d certainly consider that an immensely more magical experience than visiting the ‘real’ Kiyomizudera in Kyoto. But Japan doesn’t tend to hide her treasures – I mean the ones that fit into the mainstream tourist’s interests. Okay, so what to avoid? One place that comes to mind is a theme park in Nikko called Edo-mura, which you can imagine is a recreation of an Edo-period village. Well, a very poorly-presented recreation. Really, it was terrible. Not the replicated village so much as the troupes of pseudo-bandoliers parading around like they were in some samurai movie set and hadn’t read the script. But Nikko itself was fantastic, from Toshogu Shrine to Lake Chuzenji to the gorge downriver from Kegon Falls, I can’t remember the name actually. But let’s see, a place to avoid… Maybe not so much to avoid but a place that in my opinion did not live up to my expectations was Amanohashidate. It was nice, but one of the three most beautiful sights in Japan? Great place, no debate; maybe what got to me, and if you’ve been there then maybe you can relate, was everyone up on that lookout spot standing up on that rock bent over and looking between their legs, which is supposed to make that strip of land look like it is rising up into heaven. For the few minutes I was up there waiting my turn, no one seemed to see anything more than I did, which was an upside down strip of land. But then afterward I went down and took a stroll across that strip of pine-covered sand and thought it was remarkable. Sat on the beach, went for a swim, it was great. So again, it was the human-added factor that put a check in the con column for me.

In a nutshell, I don’t think I can say with complete confidence there is any one place that should be strictly avoided. Except maybe Roppongi. Seriously, why come all the way here to go pay some guy named Bob eight hundred yen for a Bud and then hang out listening to Blink 182 and talking to people you might as well have grown up with? Must-see places? I’d say make sure to see Hiroshima or Nagasaki. If I had to pick one it would be Nagasaki, despite that atrocious blue statue. But a visit to either one is like a sledgehammer to the gut. Kyoto is an easy pick but I enjoyed Kamakura, I guess for the subdued, natural setting. Nikko for the same basic reason. And Hiraizumi in Iwate, aside from aesthetic allure, was at one time on par with Kyoto or Nara in terms of national cultural importance. My dark horse here is Akita Prefecture. Astounding in a sublime way, from Shirakami in the north to Chokai-san in the south, great beaches all up and down, Japan’s deepest lake, Tazawa-ko, which I believe is also the world’s second deepest after Baikal, world-class fireworks in summer, my personal favorite festival, the Kanto-matsuri, and perhaps my favorite spot in all of Japan, Sakurajima, along the coast out on Oga Hanto. Rock formations rising up out of the water, a free campground and, when I was there – both times – breath-taking sunsets. Just make sure you visit in the summer – I hear the winters are brutal. The trees along the Akita coast are actually, literally all slanted because the Siberian winds blow in so strong.

As for your last question, I’ve had more than a few people come to me asking what I think they should do and see in Japan – and I always struggle with my answer. It truly depends on what you are interested in, though it seems everyone pares down to the same list of places in the end anyway. Obviously there’s a tremendous wealth of information on the web, not only information but blogs and trip advisor and such from people who have traveled Japan. Take everything with a grain of salt though; Jenny might hate everything about Kamakura because she’s allergic to cedar pollen and her boyfriend ditched her the night before in Enoshima. Another possibility is to find a place on the web where you can correspond with a Japanese person directly; this idea just came to me, I don’t know if such resources exist but just communicating personally with someone who lives in the place you plan to visit would be a trip in itself, so to speak. But the best bet I’d say is to do your research, ask questions, pick a variety of places and go. If you have the time, take a random day trip and see what you find. Without any tourist attractions – or tourists – in your way you might stumble on something priceless. Oh, and by all means get yourself a bicycle! Or stick out your thumb, like you said.

Interview with Christopher Carr of The Inductive - Part III

This is Part III of a five-part interview. For Part I as posted on The Inductive, click here. For Part II, click here. Or scroll down, or click the link on the right.


Christopher Carr: Tell me about your travels since you came here. Japan is not all that popular with tourists these days, although it's leading the world in English teachers who come and live here I think. Most of my friends, if they make it to Asia at all, skip the neon of Tokyo and the temples of Kyoto for more adventurous tours in Laos or Thailand. Can Japan compete? I've heard a lot of seasoned travelers say that touring Japan for the most part is an academic experience, and you'll get much more out of if you speak Japanese and really do your homework before going somewhere, or else you'll have just no idea what it is you're seeing. Would you agree with this assessment? And how would you characterize your travels around the archipelago?

Kevin Kato: It’s funny, when I first got to Japan I was on the street in Tokyo, maybe Shibuya, and my overriding impression was that it looked a lot like certain parts of Manhattan; big buildings, lots of traffic and people and, what was by far the most astonishing thing, if that isn’t too strong a word, was that almost everything was in English. Store signs, restaurant menus, everything on everyone’s t-shirts, it was all in English. Not always correct English, but English. It was disappointing, really. I was expecting to walk into a world that didn’t make any sense to me. That’s how I wanted it to be. Probably the most exotic experience I’ve had here is using the toilet in someone’s old farmhouse – where they still lived – and finding a floor made of loose boards sitting above a big hole in the ground. In Laos or Cambodia or Malaysia or Peru, outside of the major cities and tourist areas this is almost what you can expect. Japan is extremely developed, so I think you’d be hard-pressed to find that permeating primitive, exotic experience though I’ve never been to the Okinawa island chain.

I tell people my first “real” experience as a traveler came after I’d been in Japan a year and a half already and went to Cambodia. My first day there I found myself in the middle of Phnom Penh with no money, not a word of the language in my head, no idea where to go and no sign of anyone who could help me even if they wanted to – which, to be totally honest, they didn’t. I never felt so utterly lost and hopeless in my life – yet I have to say I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I’ve never felt even remotely lost like that in Japan.

As far as travelers skipping Japan, I’d see several reasons for this. One is quite obvious; the place is brutally expensive, both relative to other Asian countries and simply to anyone who comes in not knowing how to get by on the semi-cheap. The second goes along with my first experiences in Japan and Cambodia; I felt much more like I had stepped into a different world when I reached Phnom Penh, and although from what I’ve seen the majority of the backpacking crowd seems to prefer hostels and bars with an English-speaking atmosphere, I sense they’d like to at least feel they are somewhere exotic – or at least pretend. As developed as Japan is, that sensation is not as readily available as it is in much of the rest of Asia, even in the cities, where most backpackers still seem to migrate. On top of this - and I don’t think I’m making any news here either – Japan isn’t, can’t or perhaps won’t make that concerted effort to drive up tourism. The underlying sense is like ‘Yes, we have tons of history here, evidenced by our impressive array of World Heritage sites, come take a look if you like but otherwise we’re busy.’ There may be some of that fear, or at least aversion, to the outside world at play here, but that’s a whole new can of worms.

As for Japan being an academic experience, I may be the wrong guy to ask, I’m not particularly academically-minded when I travel. But really, whether you are looking at a temple in Kyoto or Luang Prabang, you’re likely to get more out of the experience if, as you say, you do your homework. The difference is that in Kyoto, you turn around and you see traffic lights and convenience stores while in Laos you get a woman in sandals and a baby slung over her back lugging a bucket of cans of Coke around. So while Japan has this reknown for its juxtaposition of the old and new, or ancient and modern or whatever, in a sense, while this makes Japan a wildly interesting place, it can also take away from the overall travel experience, i.e. the sense of being in a totally foreign world. Maybe this is a big reason travelers would tend to skip Japan. But I really think it’s the first reason – economics.

As for my travels around the archipelago, I’ve been able to do a lot of touring by bicycle, so I think I’m fortunate to have gotten a fairly extensive close-up look at the Japan beyond the guidebooks or off the beaten path or whatever hackneyed expression you like. And I’ve seen that so much of Japan is neither neon nor elaborate temples. Japan, away from the places people in general have heard of, is a world of serenity, industry – in the sense of devoting oneself to honest, productive work – and simplicity. Anyone who has taken the train from Narita to Tokyo has seen a hundred rice fields, but it wasn’t until I rode through Ogata-mura in Akita that I could begin to comprehend how they could grow enough rice to feed 125 million people every year. Down in Saga, along the coast, there are terraced rice fields built into these huge hillsides; I’d never seen anything like that anywhere else in Japan. I’ve not seen a whole lot of Hokkaido but I know there are some amazing campsites overlooking the Sea of Japan which, like the terraces in Saga, no person or book had ever told me about.

Tourists in Tokyo often go to the Tsukiji Fish Market, which I hear is quite an experience, and one that I have regrettably missed so far. But I’ve ridden through countless tiny fishing villages, and I never tire of them. One could say no one’s work is purer than that of farmers and fishermen. Without turning too esoteric, I’d like to think that I get something from putting myself in their world, something that a visit to Tsukiji or Kinkaku-ji could never afford. I mean, so I imagine at least, since I’ve never actually been to Kinkaku-ji either. It’s true, I even lived in Kansai for a year, went to Kyoto a few times but never the Golden Temple. I actually wrote a travel piece for the Japan Times that revolved around the fact that I didn’t feel an overriding need to go see Kinkaku-ji because I’d been to Shimamaki, a coastal town of 4,000 in Hokkaido (on the day of their annual summer festival which certainly added to the allure of the place) and how could you beat that as far as what it means to be here in Japan?
I mean sure, I’ve visited Kiyomizu-dera, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Meiji Jinja and Ise Jingu, seen Sapporo’s Snow Festival and Osaka’s Tenjin Matsuri, and this is all great stuff. Japan’s culture and history is rich as any other Asian country, or any other in the world. But the places and moments that have stuck with me the most have been the out-of-the-way experiences that traveling Japan’s back roads have brought me. Luckily, this kind of travel doesn’t require an academic approach!

Interview with Christopher Carr of The Inductive - Part II

This is Part II of a five-part interview. For Part I, click here.

Christopher Carr: My experience coming here was kind of the same. I actually never really chose to come to Japan, so that's always a tough question for me to answer when the students ask. From the time I graduated college to the time I had kids I just kind of floated through life. Would you say you had a similar experience? If so, do you believe that there was a kind of force of Fate or Destiny guiding you to Fukushima, or was saying "sure" a conscious decision?

Kevin Kato: Well, I certainly made the decision on my own to come here to Japan. Coming to Fukushima was part of the job offer, something I just accepted without much consideration. “Fukushima, Shimafuka, whatever, I’m going to go live in Japan!” was pretty much my take on the whole deal. Even if I knew I could have requested another location – which I could have – I don’t think I would have because I hadn’t done a whole lot of homework on Fukushima or anywhere else. So at the moment one place would have sounded just as good as the next – as long as it wasn’t Tokyo. ‘Fukushima? Never heard of it, sign me up.’ So in a sense, yeah, I can be a bit of a floater, taking the road that happens to roll out in front of me.

But really, in my years after getting my grad degree – in forensic science...you know, CSI Miami type stuff – I wasn’t floating; I was naively determined to wait until I got exactly the job offer I wanted, which from the outside can seem the same thing. I knew I wanted to work for the FBI as a profiler, and I was ready to accept nothing but the shortest route to that end. Fresh out of grad school I was rejected by the Bureau, so I said okay, I’ll work on the state level for a while first, or I’d go local but only in a place I thought would be cool. I applied for jobs in San Fran, Tampa Bay and Portland, Oregon, passing on jobs in Tulsa and Detroit and such. And I think I pretty much shot myself in the foot being so choosy – I ended up working further and further outside my degree until I found myself an operations manager at a storage and moving company in Colorado. ‘And you have a Master’s in forensics?’ No one could quite get their head around that one, and so a lot of people probably nailed me as a floater, even if that wasn’t the term they had in their head, you know?

By this time I knew one thing about myself: money did not motivate me. ‘You can become a millionaire in this business.’ This is what one of the owners of the moving company said to me once, no joke. But I just wanted out of that entire industry pronto. That was when I found this teaching job in Japan, and my wanderlust exploded to the forefront. And that is why I’ve been in Japan for 9+ years now; what I’ve been doing here has allowed me to travel far and wide and often, and even when I’m home I’m in a different world. Having a family has changed that dynamic, for sure, but since my first son was born 3 years ago we’ve spent...I don’t know, probably close to twelve months outside Japan all told. I do think about moving back to the US, and I think it would be good for the boys as far as their schooling, but in the back of my mind I feel that once we do move to the States, that’s it, we’re going to settle. And now even with another little boy in diapers I don’t think I’m ready to do that. There are still way too many places to see.

Yet getting engaged, and thus suddenly facing the prospect of having a family to feed, did change things. As soon as my brand new fiancée left Osaka, where I was living at the time, to go back home to Fukushima, I started scribbling like mad in any old notebook I could find, striking out on this new dream of becoming a writer. Five, no, almost six years later I am as deep and committed to it as ever. So to answer your question, as far as living, I feel like I’m floating a bit, because I’m in this self-imposed purgatory, and I won’t let myself out until I’ve gotten to a certain point with my writing. But like I was after grad school, I know right now what I am after, and I’m giving it all I’ve got. In this regard, no I am not floating around. It just looks that way!

Interview with Christopher Carr of The Inductive - Part I

Christopher Carr writes on a broad range of subjects on The Inductive and has guest posted on several other blogs, including here (see 'On Teaching a Foreign Language'). Recently he gave me the opportunity to share my thoughts and views as an expat in Japan, something I normally reserve for long bicycle rides when there is no one else listening. Below is the first of five installments, necessary due to my long-winded answers Christopher has promised not to edit too heavily.

It has been a great pleasure working with Kevin Kato for the past several months. Kevin and I have worked together at the same English school in Japan, and we have both done various work for NOK, Fujitsu, and the Japanese government. Kevin has written a guest post for The Inductive comparing and contrasting his trips to Angkor Wat and Yosemite National Park; and he has been kind enough to allow me to post on his blog: Travel. Write. Drink Plenty of Fluids. Kevin is the author of one book, The Tunge Pit, a collection of interconnected short stories which I described before in this blog as a pungent mixture of the American Gothic, ensemble tale, horror nouveau, and pulp suspense genres.
In addition to publishing the Tunge Pit last year, Kevin has recently translated from the Slovenian Damjan Koncnik's Greenland - The End of the World, an account of an adventure to that massive island in the far north.

I was originally planning on reviewing either or both books for this site; but now I believe such reviews might be a superfluous conflict of interest, since Kevin has agreed to write for the Inductive on a regular basis from 2011. Without further ado, I present part I of an interview conducted via email with Kevin Kato over the last month or so, with parts II through V to follow later this week:

Christopher Carr: Please tell me about the changes in your life, outlook, view of Japan, and view of the U.S. since coming here.

Kevin Kato: Wow, you’re going to hit me with all that right off the bat? Can’t we start with something simple like, “Hey are you on Facebook?” Well, for starters, as far as the obvious goes, I came here with three bags of clothes, a bicycle and a camera that used film; now I’ve got a digital camera, two bicycles and three other people in my home – this being my wife and two little boys. I still have three bags of clothes, but now they’re mostly buried under toy trains and picture books.

But regarding my outlook on things, I’d say straight off that I’ve gone from one who lives for today to one who works for tomorrow. This I blame completely on the family I’ve acquired. For the first half of my life here in Japan I put in my classroom time and that was it; everything else was socializing, cycling and sumo on television. Now as a freelance teacher, writer, publisher, husband and father the concept of free time does not exist, unless you count sleeping. When I am not on the floor playing with cars or clay, or at the park with the kids, I am at my computer hoping I turn out to be the one monkey out of the infinite number of monkeys typing away on an infinite number of computers who happens to bang out Shakespeare. I don’t even know when the next sumo tournament is until I happen to catch a glimpse of the broadcast before my boy switches to some show with a dancing chair or a magic peach-headed thing.

Regarding my view on Japan, I think whenever we travel we tend to have this romanticized view of our destination – if we are not scared shitless of course. Our imagination makes either fantasy or nightmare of the horizon, and it rarely turns out to be either of these. Coming to Japan I was on the fantasy side of the coin – I soaked up everything I could about this totally alien environment and – I think at least to a certain degree – I spun it in my mind into the best possible perception. Of course my opinion on some things has not changed since those first days and weeks: I love the atmosphere imbued in traditional Japanese architecture, and sushi and beer is still tough to beat on a summer evening. But other things have lost their magic. I can say with fair authority that not every schoolboy and schoolgirl here is an intellectual prodigy, as seemed to be the ongoing, permeating perception growing up back home. And always sitting on the floor can get old really, really fast.

As far as my perception of home, the U.S., I should note that I came to Japan ten days before 9/11 – thus the world in general was a very different place when I was still in the States versus what it was from almost the moment I got here. Add to this my sudden personal interest in politics and world events beginning on the morning of September 12th and yes, my views have changed appreciably since I arrived in Japan. Perhaps the most telling experience I can relate has been the change in my attitude – that’s not really the right word, though…maybe my inner response is a better term – regarding how I’ve felt when someone asks me where I’m from. In the first few days it was a veritable ego trip. The Japanese, at least the recent generations, love anything relating to the U.S., and when I’d tell someone I’m from America they’d invariably react with something bordering on awe if not mere admiration. It was really kind of silly. Then in those weeks after 9/11, I would answer the same question with a twinge of…oh crap, I need the right word again…Living here so long I’ve begun to lose my English, it’s crazy but it really happens, I swear. I don’t think I used to be this stupid. Anyway, when I told people I was from America they’d have this sudden sadness in their expression, their voice, you know, ‘Oh I’m so sorry what happened’ or whatever. And I mean it was sincere. Turned out I didn’t know anyone personally who died on that day but it was a national tragedy and at least in this part of the world people were mourning with us.
But then G.W. rolled in with his ten-gallon agenda – all right, this has been hashed out a million times, I don’t need to go into it. But as time went on I began feeling embarrassed when I told people, whether in Japan or Malaysia or Chile, that I was from the States. Not because I suddenly thought my country was bad but hey, that fiasco was all the news anyone was getting practically, so for a while, that was the tipping point as far as the world’s view of the U.S.. And it wasn’t entirely unfounded. I would be immensely proud of my son if he stood up to the schoolyard bully to keep another kid from being pounded for his lunch money; I wouldn’t be a proud or a happy dad if he started lying to me about why he was throwing rocks at people. Beyond this, though, I’ve had so many people tell me they loved the U.S. when they visited, or would die for a chance to travel to the States, and this makes me immensely proud.

Also, having done a fair amount of traveling in these nine years, from Asia to South America to Europe and Morocco and Australia, my view of the U.S. has not been shaped merely by whatever my students think and what I can get off the web. To see how so much of the rest of the world lives - and I mean seeing it firsthand, which is worlds apart from watching the same thing on 60 Minutes, or checking out some magazine article on what Brad Pitt and Angelina Voight are doing – actually being in these places, living them, I see how very very lucky we are in the U.S., from our standard of living to our freedoms to just how cheap we get everything. And since the only exposure so many people are getting to the outside world is through TV - where nothing is real, really - so few people can appreciate the extent to which we are blessed. I go home and overhear people complaining about this or that and I want to club them over the head.