Today was the last day I will see the students at Toban High School, probably for the rest of my life. The atmosphere resembles that of when I arrived almost exactly one year ago – the rice fields are emerald, the heat is cloying, the house is smelly and the drivers are still bad. I’ve spent the last month in a flurry of activity and will spend the next ten days before leaving for Bali in an even greater rush. After one year I have an array of feelings, but the one that’s most different from when I arrived is that I am tired. I think a combination of the pace of life in Japan and yet being so static here in Kakogawa has drained my sense of adventure and excitement. As hard as it is to do so, it’s time to move on.

Both Japanese people and my friends in other countries often comment that “you love Japan”. At this point it’s not possible for me to either refute or comply with this assessment, and perhaps it never will be. Let me just impart the polar opposites of my experience, what I love and what I hate about Japan. Like a giant iceberg that spans the seas, only arising at one home and another, this is only the tip, and the majority of how I feel lies somewhere beneath the surface. If global warming continues as planned, they’ll be visible soon enough. The following diatribe is intended to be both serious and not, as this represents my experience, so please do not be offended. Let me start with what I hate.

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You ever have one of those periods in your life when it seems like everything is just going smoothly, you enjoy your lifestyle and are content with your level of consumption, you have meaningful things and people nearby, you have plans and dreams, maybe you’ve even found love?  How about having all that whisked from under your feet like the proverbial rug, sending you into a tailspin as distorted and dramatic as a cartoon character stepping on banana peel?  Faster than you can type “WTF”, the switch in emotional polarity is so powerful it almost makes a sound, like a massive “WHOMP!”, silencing a noisy room and sucking the air from your lungs.  Your reaction is so undefinable and inconcise; like dishes being dropped in a restaurant, we all wonder who did it but don’t rush to assign the obvious blame, and instead feel somewhat embarrassed that our mealtime reverie was interrupted.

Sometimes life just sucks like that.

Maybe we could even see it coming, see that dark oil slick on the road ready to help you lay that bike down hard, and we choose to disregard it, deny it’s existence for the chance to bask in sunny bliss just a little bit longer.  Maybe of all the valid and invalid emotions you feel at these times, from anger and sadness to anxiety and regret, the most overreaching one is a feeling of naiveté or inadequacy about your self-imposed inability to foresee this consequence.  I mean, if things are going so well, of course there’s going to be a repercussion.  Things change, people change, things are too good to be true, and shouldn’t you know by now that karma works both ways?  You were never perfect (who’d want to be?), but now some of those screw-ups are coming around to bite you in the ass.  It’s inevitable and it’s only ourselves we should truly blame for forgetting that fruit can be bitter, dogs can bite, roses can prick.  For those who’ve forgotten there’ll be a whole section of Hallmark Cards at the local pharmacy to sum up our emotions into convenient limericks and pithy adages to remind us that we’re not alone in our loneliness.

This one goes out to Jaime who said I shouldn’t write a depressed emo blog.