One Day It Returns To House

This morning I signed on the dotted line to formalize my intention to leave Japan at the end of July. I have decided not to recontract for a third year even though things have eased into a kind of cushy continuum here. Japan has become a kind of comfort zone for me, as improbable as that sounds. I have not so much learned the language as learned how to guess the best simple reply to complicated sounding comments or questions. I have not so much learned how to pepare Japanese food as learned how to incorporate aspects of it into my own culinary creations. I have learned how to predict when trucks are going to jump red traffic lights and how to guess which kinds of restaurants feel compelled to include chicken in their seafood dishes. I have learned which classes respond well to my crazy far-out lesson plans and which ones require a more conservative approach lest the kids start breaking windows and escaping the school grounds.

I have been here for a year and a half, serving under two different prime ministers, Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe, and I have seen Japanese society change in this time. I have seen rice paddies become housing complexes. I have heard the preferred genre of background music in shopping malls change from street punk to gangsta rap. I have witnessed the government continue in its constitution-eroding move away from pacifism to militarism, the rising sun getting dimmer in the darkening shadow of the stars and bars. I travelled to the other side of the world, but I still managed to witness the South African government squandering millions of rands (see The Honeytrap in fractalmindscape archives). I experienced one dreadfully cold winter and one relatively balmy one; one sweltering summer and one rediculously sweltering one. I have been both impressed and frustrated by Japanese people, and I have concluded that they are fundamentally just like everyone else. One thing to note though, I have never had anything stolen here in these 18 months, despite often leaving things unlocked and lying around. As my South African readers know, such a thing is unheard of back home; it's technically not possible.

So, eighteen months down, six to go, and its official this time. I could stay here another year and in fact I wouldn't even mind, but there are places to go and things to do, like eating real bread and surfing real waves, lying in a different kind of sunlight and reconnecting with good old friends. Sheesh, I'm sounding like I'm finished though, which I'm not! Six months is not a long time, but it is a fairly substantial amount of time. I'll be busy and I'll be going places and playing host to international travellers, so there's a lot more to write about. This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. It is not the end of the beginning either. Its around about the part before the beginning of the end of the middle.