Time To Start

The first few days here were ridiculously full of busying activities. The last few days, however, I’ve spent a significant amount of time after school just sitting at home doing things, which means weekends are kind of isolating with the exception of an occasional errand or outing with friends of friends. Part of this makes me feel kind of bad, like I should be going out and meeting people and not getting sucked into the apartment/internet world existence.

My mom said she went to see Julie and Julia on Saturday, in which the main character lacks purpose, so she takes up cooking a new Julia Child recipe every day and blogging about it. So...y’know, there’s always that.

But really, there’s no hard and fast answers to international adjustment. The majority of my intuition tells me that this is okay. Let’s face it, this is a big transition and little things take a lot of energy from me. I’ve only been in the city for two weeks, so things are going to be a little slow. Also, when I’m sitting at home it's not like I’m not wasting my time, I’m taking steps to keep in touch with the people I care about and I’m studying Japanese. And let’s face it, learning Japanese is the best step toward building a life in Japan. Networking is also important, but not if I can’t speak to the people I’ve networked with. I’m one chapter away from finishing my first Japanese textbook and that’s got me very excited. At the beginning of the next textbook I’ll get to deal with honorific verb conjugation, which will make a HUGE difference in my ability to communicate on a daily basis, considering everyone in the service industry always uses it. I’ve been told that Japanese people tend to over-explain things, but truth be told I’m not fluent enough in Japanese to truly feel this. Right now, repetition is good (though sometimes over-over-unnecessary explanation makes me nervous because I start wondering whether they really are saying the same thing twice or if something has subtly been added that I'm missing). Also, I don’t foresee this being a problem in the future – if you know me, you understand why. Actually, if you’ve read this blog, you understand why. tl;dr is my middle name.

I’m going to pick up a group hobby eventually, but I want to get my life together first. I plan to go around and drop off presents/introduce myself to my neighbors, maybe Wednesday. I’m kind of hoping to go to a portable shrine parade on Friday, but I’m not sure who from my handful of phone contacts to invite. I haven’t really connected to any of them. There’s always the two other foreign English teachers nearby and another married couple a little further away, but I figure I should focus on non-ex-patriots for a little while, since English speakers are so much easier to get to know. I also have to meet more teachers and students, who’ll be integral to me learning Japanese and getting comfortable, though I can’t really make friends among them since I’m smack dab between the two social groups.

Not to mention, that business can wait, since most of the teachers and students are gone right now. All it will take is a few passes around the school making conversation and admiring some club activities. When my pred was taking me around school the other day, we stopped in on the table tennis club. Half of it was jock kids and the other half was skinny, eyeglass-clad, boys. The teachers seemed very proud to have us there and we made some fun conversation.

The kids are always willing, but the teachers are a little harder to figure out. There’s a certain culture of respecting other people’s privacy and shyness that conflicts with the culture of welcoming others. This is the same in any culture, and for all I know things operate in exactly the same manner as the U.S., but since I’m never really sure of the undertones and mutual understanding in Japanese culture, I always have to wonder about it - which is considerably more stressful than ordinary relationship mitigation.

Day. By. Day.