The Return

I wrote this on Tuesday July 13th, but timing is complicated in the blogosphere—particularly when it's rocking back and forth between Eastern Standard and Japan Mystery Time. It's mostly about going home...or maybe it's about staying here.

On the bus from Haneda to Narita on my long way home to Canada, I sit behind a group of what must be high school students from the States. Their chaperone is asking them in a southern drawl about what they intend to eat when they get back home—their Welcome Return after all of this Japanese fare.

I think about my planned trip to Golden Star up at Yonge and Steeles with my former MHS colleagues when I get back to Toronto. I think of piping up, uninvited, to contribute “CHEESEBURGER!” and “MILKSHAKE!” to the conversation.

However, they move on to talking about how they'll be relieved not to have to eat with chopsticks anymore, and I recall how I’ve been telling the Japanese that I’m going to start calling them “Hashi” in English as chopstick is such a hideous word for such a graceful implement: one that makes food taste so much better by forcing you to savour it. I think about how I’d very much like to go on using Hashi to eat with long after I leave this place.

And it’s just one more piece of a growing realization: that it’s a damn good thing I recontracted for another year of JET because I’m certainly not ready to go home yet—not permanently, at least. I’m not ready to give up being surrounded by the constant hushed puzzle of Japanese conversation for the loud clarity of English. I’m not ready to give up the joy and wonder of my students, who I’m already starting to miss.

In the end, I wind up moving to the back of the bus, away from the unabashed, booming Americans and into a cloud of whispered Japanese.