Everytime someone asks me what I think about Japan, I have to find some different way to describe it. There is no one way to summarize my experiences here; there never will be, of course. Just a lot of frustration with being unable to truly explain myself. When you ask me this question, and I give you a truncated response, realize that it's only half a truth (or perhaps not at all), and the true range of my opinion on the subject is hidden somewhere so deeply that even I can't access it yet.
So. As my final days draw to a close, my friends and I have started to wonder what reverse culture shock will be like. No one could have explained to us what culture shock would mean before we arrived, and it's undoubtedly different for everyone, but it doesn't stop me from wondering. What will I miss about Japan? What will home feel like? While I like to imagine that there will be nothing but a misty-eyed sentimental outpouring of love upon my return, it's also quite likely that home won't feel just right, at least not at first. How banal. How expected. Despite my constant search for the universal chord (the writer's dream), the fact is that I like to arrive at it from unexpected angles. And yet there I will be, thinking "how wonderful it is to view home from a new perspective after these travels," and "how I appreciate my experiences abroad so that I can come home with a better sense of who I am and where I fit into the world," just like every other sap. Oh well. The world is too small to be truly unique. Unless you're Bjork.
In any case, what is certain is that I will miss my girly girls. Today at lunch we were sitting around, cracking up about Bobby falling asleep in class and the thrills of yeasty cheese and imitating our least favorite profs, and it felt like things weren't so bad after all. Like I'd reached a tolerable plateau, and maybe if I could just get over the hump of these first 5 months, I would acclimate to the 日本の生活 after all. But I'll never know, because I only have the privilege of this way of thinking while holding my homebound ticket in my hands, and knowing that this is not the case.
I find that our professors are an interesting resource when it comes to living in Japan. Because on the one hand, these are 外人 who have bitten the bullet and decided to actually LIVE in Japan, but on the other hand, such professors are not necessarily *normal* people. They are often people who are inwardly motivated, introspective, solitude-loving bookworms who are not looking for the same kinds of relationships with other people that I am (like all the generalizations there?).
The head of the Japanese Langauge Program spoke to our class about his experiences learning Japanese, and he readily admitted that he felt Japan was a racist country where an outsider can never feel truly comfortable, that Japanese people often go through life without close friends, that ICU's dream of being "borderless" is bullshit, and that the only way that he has been able to survive is because he "doesn't mind the racism and doesn't need a lot of friends." 面白いね？ Even a highly respected professor, who is completely immersed in the system through his own choosing, considers such statements factual.
Japan is an odd place. I made this statement in the very beginning, and five months later I still stand by it. It may be true that the more you travel the world, the more you realize that everywhere is the same, and even my own current sense of comfort and complacency leads me to believe that humans are adaptable enough to thrive in even the most starkly contrasting cultures, but -- Japan is a place unto itself. Negativity, cynism and pessimism aside, I think you'll have to agree (or else I'm going to beat you up!).
