Beginning

I published this post on 28 October 2019 at 12:30am and then archived it shortly after because I hated it. I no longer hate this post, but it's probably not my best writing. I have edited it a bit though because why not. This post (as the title suggests) was supposed to be the beginning in a series reflecting on my time in Japan. Then COVID happened and I kind of... forgot. But I want to do more writing so why not bring some of these bodies out from the graveyard. 

Imagine being born. Kicking, screaming. Totally unexpected. You wanted this, but then it happens and then it’s just terrifying. You want to be back in the warm comforts of home. Welcome, to moving to a different country by yourself.

It’s been 2 months now since I moved back from Japan. I am healing from my experience. I am coming to reflect and appreciate the time I spent in Japan. No-one ever tells you how difficult moving countries is. But it was hard. So. Fucking. Hard. Here is what it was like in the beginning, over a year on as a homebody who pushed herself to try something different.

Why move to Japan? Before moving, I would describe myself as someone who was very much a home body, and would get homesick every time I travelled despite loving travel.  I guess, part of me was sick of New Zealand, and part of me was living a dream I had held onto since I was a young teen learning Japanese in high school. I wanted to live somewhere else, to have that experience of OE, but not just go to Europe, because despite having stronger ties to Europe, I wanted to prove something about doing stuff on hard mode. But despite my determination, it didn’t change the initial jolt of culture-shock and realisation of 'this is it, you are very far away from anyone you care about for the next year' that I faced upon moving to Japan. You can be brave, want something with your whole being, but reality and the emotions that come with it still happen. 

Tokyo, 'cool Japan'

Everything leading up to actually living in Japan was so exciting. Finding out I got into the JET Programme, packing my life up into two suitcases, landing in Tokyo and being back in the bustle, efficiency, the difference of Japan. I idealised moving to Japan, hard. I thought I would live a life out of a Tokyo style blog lookbook, hanging out in tiny osshare cafes and reading tiny novels in Japanese. I'd be fluent in Japanese within six months, and heck, maybe I would never come back from Japan!

But Maibara isn't included in the Tokyo style blog lookbooks. Tokyo is not the countryside town I found myself several days later where I took one look at the carpark of a town and just felt terrified. So terrified that the emotions I felt turned into the physical sensation of the floor feeling like it was about to give way under me. I remember the first night and constantly being woken up by the bullet train whizzing past every 20 minutes until 11:23pm. My apartment was so big and hot and empty and the view was cold and dark with the creepy vending machine. This was not the Japan I thought I loved, the Japan that makes me excited with its vibrancy and uniqueness; but it was Japan. 

I was scared, homesick. I called my family and cried so often. I spent a lot of evenings at a kind friend’s house around the corner just crying and calling my parents and then getting blind drunk to wake up the next day and lie on my couch and watch the dragonflies buzzing out the window. This was the Japan outside of the 'cool Japan' I loved. It was the true reality of being in a foreign country with different norms, new people, complex rules. The reality of Japan. The reality of me living in Japan.

Concrete oasis ft. creepy vending machine.

I remember going to many different places in those first few weeks. Kyoto, Omihachiman. The manhole in Omihachiman. That fucking manhole. It’s so aesthetic. So 'cool Japan'. But it reminds me so much of that pain. How people perceived me coming here. How I perceived me coming here. I was just looking at things and think 'oh god why am I not connecting? Why doesn’t this make me feel happy?' I’d walk past that manhole so many times and just remember that feeling. The dissonance between what I thought I would feel in Japan to what I actually felt.

That fucking manhole.

In my idolisation of Japan, I had never thought deeply about what it would be like to live in the real countryside of Japan. The only part of the countryside I ever saw before moving to Japan was the rice fields of Nara - a part of the tourist golden route situated so close to the big city of Osaka that it barely felt isolated. And so I had completely different expectations of what Maibara was going to be. I thought it would be more suburban; I knew that it would take me an hour to get to Kyoto, but that seemed fine. But then you do it - you experience the reality - you have to think about last train times, you have to sit down on your butt for a whole hour, it’s different. Living life, doing things you need to do in life, need a lot more energy than you generally think.

Although my distress eased, I never fully shook it. Maibara, my concrete oasis, and what I wanted for myself in my life did not suit the Japan I found myself in. Japan's reality and what I wanted my reality to be did not mesh. In realising that early on, I made the right decision to only be in Japan for a year. It spurred me to travel frequently, to appreciate my time in Japan. 

I am so glad for my experience in Japan, but the memories of the beginning will always be with me. But I got through it, and I grew so much from my time in Japan. Learning to adapt, how to exist in a new place that never felt entirely comfortable. To take a plunge. But also learning to know when something doesn't suit me and it's time to move on.