Japan as Narnia (or You Can't Go Home Again)

He tells us that he’s going to apply for JET again, and we all smile politely, and we tell him that’s exciting, and I wonder if everyone else is reeling inside, as I am. 

It strikes me as a painfully desperate measure, wrought out of being lost in his current life here in Canada and thinking that returning to Japan would be his answer.

It will never work.


Even if he makes it through the JET screening process at 38, with no visible JET-relevant specialization to the years since his last, decade-distant stint on The Programme, the Japan he finds will not be the Japan he is seeking.

People sometimes ask me if I’d consider returning to Japan; going back on JET.

Initially, I had considered it.
It was a distant possibility, but I thought about it. However, I’ve since come to realize that, though I could return to Japan, I could never do it on JET.

To do so would be to openly invite disappointment. I would go to Japan expecting to find the same excellent friends and adventures that I had during my first time on The Programme. But I would find that those friends and those adventures had all moved on; that the Japan I found was not the one I left behind. The small age difference that made me mildly interesting to the straight-out-of-Uni-21-22-23-year-olds who typically come on The Programme would now have grown to a point where those years of difference served to alienate me. 

For, you see, Japan has grown mythic like Narnia in the eyes of those of us who once lived there. Squat shacks in the inaka have come to resemble Cair Paravel in the nostalgic, vaseline-lens vision of our minds' eyes. Even our most homocidal of students are remembered as mischevous-but-largely-kind Mr. Tumnuses. You can see it as a twinkle in the eyes of my compatriots—the Narnian wonder—as I announce my triumphant return to Japan this past Christmas.

You can hear their own longing to return to that magic life that eclipsed all others. However, Japan truly is Narnia, and—just as with Narnia—time passes swifter there. Years that have seemed to languish on this side of the Pacific will have flown like arrows there.

The children with whom you had used to play have grown. They are taller, ganglier, with concealing fringes and thick black glasses. If they look at you at all, they do so only with fleeting glances. Gone is the atomic energy of their childish excitement that powered you through so many years: all of it drained down by the awkwardness of adolescence. You are now a rockstar to none; just one more strange, gaijin curiosity to all. 

You were once given a ticket to Japan. It was signed, sealed, and delivered by the JET Programme. It was a glorious thing that came with lodging, and pay, and compatriots. It was thick with the promise of exploration. However, that ticket was a one-way fare, and it has expired long years ago. 

 Just as with Narnia, you cannot hope to return to Japan along the same vector you used the last time you travelled there. The space in the back of the wardrobe that was once a snowy forest is now naught but a wooden wall, and it smells of moth balls and dead furs.