An Authentic JET Moment (Stand Still)

(or maybe Anti Homesickness)

Or inverse homesickness? Whatever it'd be called, I'm starting to feel the first vestiges of it on this Sunday, after a ridiculous four days in The Life this weekend in Sapporo. The Hokkaido ALT/JET midyear conference brought all of the foreign English teachers from Hokkaido together for a two-day conference. The sessions were pretty cool and informative, and a rather excellent keynote address/workshop from the previous prefectural advisor left me keenly aware of just how comfortable I have become here and convinced me that I can't worry quite so much about how people are getting on at home.

But the real lasting impact of the conference for me was the opportunity to see the dozens of fantastic people I'd met at Tokyo and Sapporo orientations but hadn't seen since August. With the exception of my other Toronto kids stationed at the far-flung corners of this country, I can't comment on how JETs are in the rest of Japan, but I can say that the Hokkaido JETs truly are phenomenal human beings. It seems that every time we all get back together, I meet more of them who are fantastic, and I discover that the ones who I already thought were alright are, in fact, cooler than I had previously thought. Eventually I wind up with more people I want to hang out with than there are hours in the day or seats in a restaurant. I want to be everywhere at once, and I want to be having deep, riveting conversations with each one of them concurrently.

Then I wind up on days like this: Sundays waiting in train stations for buses back to my small town, and I find myself missing these excellent people like you'd miss a lover—like you'd miss an appendage of your own body. If you know me, then you know my energy: you know my genkiness and my enthusiasm and my foolish optimism. I think that spark makes me love too quickly and too deeply, and it burns like a fire just as much for my friends as it does for my lovers. And, on Sundays like this at the dying ends of weekends spent Living The Life, that fire scorches and chars. The vivid memories of all those people and all those interactions flare up, and I feel their distance like a yawning gulf. In their absence, I'm already trying to plan more weekends with them in the back of my mind, and it already feels like there isn't enough time.

And, for an instant, I wonder if my predecessor might not have been on to something by deciding to not hang out with as many other JETs, electing instead to keep to himself. What I once thought madness seems to be some backwards solution to the separation anxiety I feel biting at the edges of my mind.

I can already see the outcome of all this—the true consequence of taking on an experience like this and truly loving it:

When I eventually return home to Canada, I will just be trading one kind of homesickness for another. It’ll be Anti Homesickness. Or maybe Inverse Homesickness. It’ll be me moving home only to start missing the away.

As I happily reunite with all and everyone that I yearn for and care about in Canada, I will begin dealing with the pangs for all I left behind in Japan. While I sit and smile with Saff and Em and their cats, or I argue happily with Amy Thede, I'll be caught by how I'm not sitting and eating and chatting with Asano Sensei, my Japanese mom, or how I'm not happily ragging on Heather and Becky for being unable to cope with the Hokkaido winter. I will get my wish and will be sitting on the deck of the SS Yanzar, or on the dock of the Campbell or Faulkner cottages, looking out at one of those keenly unique Ontario lakes, and I'll be struck by the absence of volcanic mountains and the lack of near-holy onsen water.

In the absence of Canada and all of it's people, this place has become my home, and these people have become my family and my friends. The distractions and excitement of them have been the only things to save me from homesickness while I've been here. But when I eventually return to Canada, will the familiar people and places be enough to distract me from all I have to leave behind in Japan...

Of course, just as I type this all out, I’m listening to Hey Rosetta!’s Great Canadian Songquest contribution: Old Crow Black Night Stand Still, and it’s got the sentiment perfectly:

And this will be the moment that breaks my heart

When the time creeps in and we grow apart.

Can’t we just stand still…

Can’t we just stand still…

But this isn’t all maudlin and sad. Missing these people this much is an indication of how phenomenal a weekend I just had with them, and the memories of it have got me on a high tonight. There’s a blizzard raging outside my window here in Furubira, but there’s a fire roaring in my apartment. And it’s not the pleasant glow of heat coming out of the kerosene range I’ve got; it’s burning in my mind and my body and my heart. In the hope that a part of it can just stand still, here are some photos for the Marks, and Lindsay, and Nicholas and Kevin, and Emily Covington and Johnny Walker, and Heather and Becky and Ros, and Brian and Ross and Glenn and Bry and Callie and Luce and John and Nikki and Laura and…and…and every other one of those people who I never knew four months ago and who I’ll now never be able to forget.