Disclaimer: this post is full of observations and experiences that I did not anticipate to be as profoundly emotionally distraughtful as they turned out to be when I first came to my summer job at a university in Japan. The emotions that were involved with relocating to a rural area in a different country and separating my life physically from my spouse proved to be astonishingly difficult for me; I almost feel as if I’m reading about someone else’s experience when I read this post. Consider yourself forewarned that this might be full of “over-shares”, or personal information that you may or may not want have wanted to ever know about me. I don’t mind if you read it, but I want you to be informed that the content is heavy. I ultimately decided that writing about this transition would be relevant for me for reflection, useful to anyone else who might be in a similar situation, and good for comparison later on during my time in Japan. There was definitely some personal growth that happened during the week that this post was written about, but it wasn’t without a lot of struggle, I tell you what.
July 6th: We went shopping for gifts and Micah’s shoes, bought our tickets for the train, rode the shinkansen (bullet train) to Urasa Station (we were two of five people that got off the train). Micah was in train nerd heaven before, during, and after our train ride. By the way, one of my colleagues drove from Tokyo to IUJ and it took her about 4-5 hours. We arrived from Tokyo to Urasa on the Shinkansen in a little over an hour. Amazing.
We were picked up by some of the full-time staff at IUJ and shuttled to the grocery store so that we could cook food for ourselves that night (surprise!) All of the items in the store were in Japanese and the store didn’t take credit cards (and we had limited cash from the ATM fiasco the night before). We arrived at IUJ. Micah and I were taken to my spacious and fully-accommodated dorm and then I was shown my office. I was given a faculty orientation packet and all of the keys to the spaces on campus that I would need. Such precise levels of organization! I even had a sign on my office door! I got invited to a casual social gathering that evening and I intended on making an appearance, despite feeling overwhelmed. But the overwhelmedness caught up with me when I went back to the dorm… and thus commenced the anxiety attack that lasted for the next two days. Boy howdy.
All these feelings came up and out: I felt extremely isolated, extremely out of place, and very guilty that Micah would have to leave in a few days and that I had opted to live apart from him for this length of time, for this personal and professional experience. I felt scared. I felt selfish. I was confused because everyone said that I would love it here, but I knew nothing about the surrounding area, the faculty, the students, the campus, and so it was hard to contextualize anything about it as positive. I could only see the experience as abandoning my husband and I felt terrible about it.
I felt so conflicted because I had actively sought out this experience to teach English abroad for years and now and I had anticipated it with such enthusiasm (fueled by my own expectations and also the build up that everyone had given me about Japan). I was here in Japan and all I could think of was how awful I was for leaving my spouse for a new life that I knew nothing about and I felt bad that I would put him through so much hardship and make him accountable for all of our shared responsibility back home. I did not anticipate that I would be affected so much by I all of this, but I was and it was profound. Unlike my usual MO of dealing with stressful situations, I couldn’t shake the feeing, and I couldn’t snap out of it. It scared me. Micah made dinner in the new apartment and I tried to unpack and not cry. I had zero appetite at dinner. I couldn’t eat anything. I tried to convince him that since I couldn’t deal, that I should just pack up my stuff and leave with him on the train the next day. I should forget about this silly living/working in Japan business. He wasn’t having it. He reminded me that vacation time was over and work time was just beginning. (This was also the first day of “ladies holiday” as we call it in yoga, so that probably wasn’t helping.) He set up a screen saver slide show on my laptop that toggled my pictures in my iPhoto library, to remind me of home and make my new space more homey. All I could do was cry at every photo of family / friends / pets and think of how far away from them I was and why the heck did I leave such a great life and so many people who love and support me? I felt so bad that I wasn’t hungry because he made us a delicious noodle dish with tofu and vegetables. All I could do was eat a few bites of noodle, pass out and go to sleep; it was the only thing that felt right about that evening.
July 7th: I woke up all sad and uncomfortable from sharing a twin bed. I had slept for almost 12 hours, but I didn’t want to get out of bed and face reality. I mentally willed myself to get out of bed and stand up and the first thing I did was cry. Micah made me breakfast and I put myself in the shower and went to the first work meeting. I met my nice coworkers. Micah went on a run while I was gone and he was bursting with excitement and photos at all of the cool sights that he saw along the way. I (not surprisingly at this point) got all teary eyed and waited for him to rinse of the humidity lather before we went on a faculty group shopping trip to buy things at the grocery store, drug store, and 100 yen store.
Grocery shopping is already somewhat of an overwhelming task for me back home, even when I can read all of the words in English, even when I know the store layout, even when I have a list (big or small), even when I’ve eaten on a normal schedule, and even when I’m not in an emotionally distraught space. I couldn’t read anything at any of the stores; everything was in Japanese (not surprising). The grocery didn’t have everything that I wanted. I had to have my new friend/coworker, who is a Japanese national, translate practically everything. I was happy to have made a new friend in her and I felt bad to be asking her so many questions, but she didn’t seem to mind too much.
Through the entire evening, I was still anxious that Micah was leaving the next day and completely overwhelmed by the newness of everything. Micah made dinner again and I could hardly eat more than a bite or two. I cried, and cried, and cried. Anytime that we weren’t in the company of other people, I did one of two things: a.) breathed heavily from anxiety that he was leaving, b.) stared off into distracted space, wondering what the hell was wrong with me and how I was going to cope with all this for 8 weeks plus traveling later or c.) cried my face off because Micah was leaving. Embarrassing, but true. Man. I am still so very surprised by my own level of anxiety and sadness around Micah’s departure. I anticipated that it would be difficult, but no where near this difficult, nor did I think that I would have such a strong, uncontrollable, visceral response to this whole experience.
July 8th: Micah’s plane was scheduled to leave Tokyo at 3:30 p.m. this day. I said goodbye to him in the dorm apartment because I had a meeting that started before he had to depart on the IUJ bus to get to the train station. As I’m getting ready for work, I learned that my mother was going in for unexpected emergency surgery to remove her ruptured appendix. I sent an email to my step-dad, wishing her well through her surgery. More crying (surprising, I know), I love yous, and goodbyes were exchanged and finally I closed the door and walked to my meeting. God that was an awful morning.
I’m glad that I had new things to learn in a work meeting and try to comprehend the extremely organized curriculum to take my mind off of things. Doing this gave me the sense of normalcy that I had been craving and I couldn’t negotiate when Micah was in the apartment. I learned more about my new teaching job and was pleased to learn that everything in this program is extremely well-organized and pedagogically legit. I watched the clock and at the time when I knew that Micah was on the train, I felt less sad. When I found out later that he was boarding the plane, I felt even better. Somehow having him here and knowing that I was about to leave him and do something else without him made everything so difficult. Now that I knew he was safely on his way, I could relax a little bit and regain some of my normal mental functioning. Midway through the meeting, I witnessed my first big giant thunderstorm here in the valley, which was awesomely loud and later during a break I ran back to my dorm to unplug my laptop, for fear that the electrical storm would destroy the power supply to my one and only communication medium for back home.
I finally figured out my IUJ email account credentials and got on wireless. I checked my email and learned that my mother was out of surgery and doing well. WHEW. I started to feel relieved and less anxious for the first time in two days. I went back to the apartment and finally had the appetite to eat a substantial meal. I went on a bike ride around the local area and took pictures.
I began to realize that I’m staying in a beautiful place and just how fortunate I really am to be here. Some coworkers invited me to play tennis, so I joined them after my bike ride. I ate dinner in the university cafeteria for the first time. Slept well.
July 9th: I got a chance to Skype with my mother in the hospital and it was great to hear her voice and see her. Micah make it home safely, after driving several miles home and talking with lots of family on the way home. Through more meetings, I continued to learn more about and love my new job and my new coworkers. After a week of meetings, IUJ took the faculty out to a local Japanese restaurant and we had an all-faculty dinner. It was a great way to get to know the people that I’ll be working with for the next eight weeks better. I declined an invitation to “the Paramount”, a local dive izakaya and night club, but I did go and play billiards in one of the student dormitories with some of the instructors and also meet some of the students. Slept well.
July 10th: my first Sunday and non-work day alone in the dorm. I did a full yoga practice with the patio doors open. The heat and humidity provided an opportunity for deep, cleansing asana and it felt great and very grounding. I made some breakfast: white bread toast (more griping about the bread offerings in this country later) with whipped peanut butter and jam, yogurt, and half a peach. I followed my instinct to CLEAN ALL THE THINGS on Sunday and cleaned my bathroom, kitchen sink, desk and table, and vacuumed and scrubbed the floors… in 25 minutes (hooray for small spaces!) I did laundry at the coin-op machines in my dorm. Hung up some of the laundry to dry outside on my balcony (Japanese-style). I got hungry and made home-made sushi. I started to enjoy and relish my alone time. I spoke with my girlfriends in Oregon on Skype who were celebrating a bachelorette party that weekend.
I Skype chatted with Micah and learned that he came down with intestinal issues and a fever… probably more bad seafood on the airplane. I felt helpless and awful that I couldn’t be with him when he was sick. I learned that my mom was still recovering in the hospital, as anticipated. I went into my office for an hour to read through all of the materials and note any questions that I had for our meeting the next day. The office was sweltering hot and I didn’t have the Japanese language skills to ask the “energy center” to please turn on the AC (I forgot to look in the back of my faculty packet… all of the keywords and phrases to do that are in there, whoops). I left my office, came home, and went for a bike ride to Urasa to “the Cupid” grocery store. I bought enough breakfast items for the week (because the cafeteria on campus only serves lunch and dinner) and a few more meal items. Some Japanese people giggled at me when I tried to ask if a product was salt or sugar. I met an IUJ student from Malaysia and her family outside the store who asked me if I was a visiting instructor. The bike ride back to IUJ was only 2.5 miles or so, but it was a sweaty, uphill bike ride home. I relished the fact that I had no other choice other than to exercise to get my groceries (because the university bus doesn’t run on Sundays). I uploaded the photos from the trip thus far, wrote a blog post, and went to bed. Slept well.
So that was the first half of my first week at IUJ. It was difficult and challenging, but ultimately I am really loving it here and really enjoying the place more and more. I can’t wait to share more experiences about this place.
I also feel that it’s essential to mention that Micah in no way guilted me, manipulated me, or intentionally made me feel bad about leaving. All of my guilty feelings were self-inflicted and if anything, he did everything he could to remind me of why I was doing this, how great of an experience it would be, and how supportive he was of my being here. I have truly arrived as a human being to have him as a spouse, which of course makes it even more difficult to be away from him. When he returns, it is my hope that we have a lot of fun together traveling in Japan.
