Archive for I am feeling…
September 19, 2007 at 4:26 am · Filed under I am feeling...
I feel ready to go back to Canada. I will miss Japan greatly but I know that to continue on with things, with growing – I need to be back in Canada. I was a little caught up in matters of the heart. Still feeling waves of “what did I do?” “what should I have done?” and total confusion of emotions. But in the end…there is always a message in the end whether it is actually there or I make it up and the message of this seems to be that happiness is in moment by moment chances, not expectations fulfilled.
What I feel confused about – the desire to speak my emotions, to throw everything on the table and let all involved have a look, to be what I consider “open”. A generalization of the Japanese is that many things go unspoken. There are good things and bad things about this. People may bottle emotion, evade responsibility, not be able to share opinion. On the other hand, there is a certain gracefulness to silence; a lack of words puts more meaning into the events that do occur.
Right now I feel some sense of unsettledness because there are words I want to hear whether they are the words I want to hear or not. I also want to speak but amusingly to apologize for possibly speaking too much before. The thing is…there is probably not much good that can come from words other than being able to feed my ego. I might be just looking to hear that I am a beautiful person and will be insanely missed. I want to speak so that I can be assured that, to the best of my ability, I was honest and considerate. But maybe it is not entirely considerate as I am speaking to unload my own heart and I can’t know the consequences of my words on someone else’s. So for now I am trying to forget about writing an email to conclude with a last few apologies and thank you and goodbye. Trying to have faith in…something…without knowing what it is. Just that things are okay, I am okay, people are okay.
And with that, I’ve been in the process of leaving Japan quickly, without stopping to sigh over things I am leaving behind too much. I am going to believe that if I really truly miss it, I will have a chance again in the future.
September 14, 2007 at 12:04 am · Filed under I am feeling..., Work
明日は本当に最後だ．lawsonsで納豆をみて、箱に09.18.07が書いてある．この日にカナダへかえる．その後生活はどうか考えてる．日本人や日本料理や日本語がなくてさみしい．「さよなら」言いたくないよ．そのまま出て、それからいつかもう一回戻ってもいいと思う．でも明日仕事で何と言えばいい？どの表現をすればいい？
August 18, 2007 at 10:58 pm · Filed under Games, I am feeling..., Spend spend spend!
We needed games to play on our trip so before heading to shibu onsen I hit the store that has everything you need to be cool and impress your friends and found this groovy novelty jenga. “Gum avalanche” it is called and the blocks mimic packs of Lotte brand gum – Black Black, Cool Mint, and Green Gum.
Now that I have you here, I can go off about mundane things. Like my 薬 (kusuri) (medicine) buying experience tonight. On the way home from the trip, this was last Monday, I was sitting on the train, did two stretches and then something in my upper back snapped. The next morning I couldn’t lift myself from bed. Had to steamroll my body over the edge and stand up using the bed to support me. That was a hard day at work. It was getting gradually better over the week and then on Friday morning, I couldn’t get out of bed again. The pain woke me up this morning as well but for most of the day it has been okay…possibly because I have not spent too much time at a computer.
Anyway – oh…sorry…actually I didn’t intend to write six sentences on my pain. I’m going to be horrible when I’m 80. Like, posting form shots of my hunch back so you can feel how crooked I have become on your solids display.
I went to the drug counter and explained my problem and the woman recommended some medicine. I was suspicious though. It was not medicine from behind the counter and the packages surrounding it were labeled with many As and Bs and Cs and Es. Was she trying to sell me vitamins? 1750円 vitamins? Yes.
I told her I wanted something stronger. In my head I was thinking that I wanted knock-me-out medicine that I could take tonight and wake up twelve hours later with a drool stain on my pillow from which I could forecast what they will serve in the cafeteria on Monday. She recommended that I go to the hospital but I wasn’t going to buy that cause I could see shelves of possible relief behind that counter. I told her that I would like to try medicine now and if I still felt pain in a few days, I would go to the hospital. There was some more discussion and hesitancy to go for things behind the counter but then she finally realized I wanted something strong and now and she asked me if my stomach was good. Yes, it is. The hesitancy to sell stronger medicine, even when stocked, is interesting.
I walked out with a pack of Ringl. Just took one of the little turquoise capsules and thinking about how unsatisfying vitamins would be right now. Which is funny because it is not even about effectiveness – it is satisfaction. Like I need a box with warnings and an ingredient list with many words I don’t know. It is unknown territory, mystical, and I feel more satisfied because to make my pain go away, it must take magic.
August 3, 2007 at 4:29 pm · Filed under I am feeling...
To start off – I am sort of in a foul mood at the moment. That’s a warning. You might choose to move on. I woke up this morning with a knot in my neck. It aches and it sends pains into my shoulder, arm, down my back, and into my head. I tried aspirin but nothing, still in pain. I want to give up, go home – do nothing.
On top of that, it is really quiet at work. I have not had (and imagine I will not) any work related interactions today. It makes me feel – why am I here? Would there be a difference in me here and me not here? Of course the truth is I am here because I have a lot to do in the next 3 weeks. I should really go do it.
But how to rid myself of this foul mood? Or this pain? Would it help if I could complain to a real person not just a text editor. Maybe…they could give me a massage. A computer can’t do that. Not even the ones in the massage chairs in the basement. They just poke and squeeze and it would be quite uncomfortable given the intensity of this knot.
Hmm…I just did a little bit of work. Maybe writing helps. Maybe I don’t even need to post this and I can keep my site 99% happy. But that wouldn’t be logging would it.
So while we are logging – I am also feeling lonely. I almost erased that because I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want the response “oh yes, living in a foreign country…” because this is your general run-of-the-mill alone that I have felt in various cities with varying quantities of people around me so that physically, I am actually not that alone.
The fact that I am still thinking about deleting all this and replacing it with something about buying muji socks tonight to make myself feel better points to a main root of this troublesome emotion. All too often I accept it. There are relationships and interactions that I would like to have with people but if it is someone I don’t know well, the effort I put towards making those interactions happen is inversely proportional to the amount I want them to happen. Because I am scared and think I will be a burden on those people. And even though I can remember – “but they are people too and they want attention too”, the decision making part of me replies “but possibly not from you”.
I’m still skirting around my emotions, the above is a generalization of more specific thoughts and feelings. I am skirting around something that I can communicate about to only like, 3 people in this world – love. I want to say more but I just became pinned under a large boulder so I’m gonna stop now and chisel some actionscript into this rock while I wait for a rescue team. Hurrah!
July 13, 2007 at 11:37 am · Filed under Experiences, I am feeling..., Japan
This morning I experienced a bit of the stereotypical “avoidance of speaking up” that people talk about when talking about Japan. Notice that I am skirting around actually saying “Japan is like this and today was an example”. I’ve had many experiences that go against the stereotype and I don’t want to give people such a one dimensional impression.
But – this was interesting. I took the bus to work, the same one I usually take and usually 4-8 other people who work in my building take it too. Every day the bus stops in front of our building regardless of whether someone presses the button to request the stop. My building is one of those kinds stops. Today the bus driver must have been new. We drove up to the building and then slowly past the building and then…turn…and then someone pressed the button but the driver kept going because the stop requested (according to the automatic announcement) was the one after our building. I almost said something but then stopped – wait, how do I say that in Japanese? All I know is “tomare” (stop!!) and the tone of that would have been a little spazzy.
We kept on going and no one else said anything. Knowing that the next stop was a little ways away and the way back was uphill I felt it would be kind of ridiculous to all keep quiet and politely get off at the next stop. I walked to the front and asked the driver “sumimasen ga…taitei…NTT tsushin kenkyu-jo…minna koko ni…” (excuse me but…usually….NTT research lab…everyone there…) and he understood right away, stopped the bus and let us off. While I was talking another man had followed me to the front, followed by two other women. So I saved everybody’s morning.
No just kidding but really…why didn’t anyone say anything? I didn’t because of a language issue but also maybe because my first feeling was “eh…I’ll just walk…saying something is so much effort”. Did other people feel that? Or were they struggling, wanting to say something but just not being able to speak up?
I guess this story is important to me on another level. I’ve been a little frustrated lately with how much (and when and where and to whom) I hold myself back in my expression. I know many of you would respond to that by saying “you don’t hold yourself back!” But I do…when I do put myself out there, I find the easy ways to do that but not necessarily the most effective ways for living as fully and creatively as I could. Also, a lot of my expression has been facilitated by other people. My good friends – they are some amazing, outgoing, vibrant people. They influence me, make me feel comfortable coming out of my shell.
But I have not made many close relationships to crazy people here (you know, good way crazy) and I think that I have to move beyond relying on the crazy people to say the things I want to say. I need to find that in myself.
I thought about this the whole way to work and then with the bus incident I was all proud that I had a strong voice. But now I am here. And it is quiet (actually I am sort of hiding right now) and I feel hesitant to interrupt anyone and I think that I should just do my work and save my social interaction for the prescribed lunch hour.
Why am I shutting up?
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