On Families and Rotary

Surrogate

I think I've been really lucky with my host families to far.  Honestly.  They have been wonderful to me.  They helped me understand the new world I've thrown myself into.  Host families really make the RYE experience what it is.

Sure, they are outings with the other Rotarians as groups to go out and do cultural things, but those are once every few months.  I don’t have exchangers close to me, so I’m separated from them until the next conference or trip.  It’s not as bad as it sounds, I’m happy in a way about it.  It allows me to be fully immersed.

In between those times with Rotary, I am left to live my life.  I’m living my life quite similarly to how I did back home.  I go to school, I play with my families, I study, and I do extra things in my days.  It’s not an exact replica of my life back home, but it’s just the right amount to make me feel that I’m okay when I’m sad.

My host families, they help and care for me as if I were their own child, and I’m grateful for that.  I’m treated like an alien enough in my daily life that coming home is a relief.  I can talk freely with them without fear of ridicule, they would rather correct me than laugh at me.  They make sure I am happy, even in the little things.  It’s exasperating sometimes because I’m honestly not a picky person.  Really, I don’t mind kids either, growing up in my life you don’t mind kids.

I’m happy that I've been accepted as me, not just as an exchange student, but my families see me as an intelligent person.  Kids and teachers at school haven’t quite grasped that.  It’s not me being mean in saying so, but think about this; what do you think about the ESL kid that is at your own child’s school or your school?  Can they demonstrate their wit, their smarts, and their moral to you in a way that you can understand yet?

It’s like that.  They don’t view me as stupid, but I’m not smart either.  I do not mean to brag, but I am smart.  But I’m smart enough to keep my mouth shut because it’s not something I want to fight with the school about, not something I want to start a fight with teachers about.  I would rather let them keep on believing while the ones who talk to me start to understand that is a bit more to the strange girl with glasses in class.

My host families are a place where there is no stress, no pressure to perform.  I appreciate them and their attempts to comfort me, it really does help.  They take me to English themed restaurants, they buy me U.S. foods on occasion too, and truthfully it helps.  I’m not sad, but I have an ache for home that is taking a while to go away, maybe it won’t.  It’s just enough to remind me that I miss them without making it crippling to me in my daily life.  There’s always a little reminder that I am here and they are there.  It’s not bad, I’m okay, honest.  It just, it wears me thin sometimes.

My families have taken me to some of the coolest places here in my mind.  I've been to the Kyushu National Museum, the Science Museum in the area here, I have been to the mudflats, the best hot springs in the area, a flower convention, many a festival, many a shopping trip, a Pokemon center, and many other places.  I appreciate it because it shows me things I could have never found out on my own.

There are also moments of random sweetness or gestures I didn't expect from them that throw me through a loop that they really do care, that they mind if I’m happy, sad, or tired.

My host sister made me a bento that was Santa themed for school close to Christmas.  I opened it and was shocked to see something I’ve only seen in pictures.  I received a Totoro and Cat Bus plush for Valentine’s Day.  I adore them.  I’ve been given small amounts of money while we go out to a new area so I can buy things for my Rotary Blazer.  I have been given pin upon pin for my blazer, it’s always a safe gift that never fails to make me smile.  It’s like their goal is to make me smile.

They joke, they prod, they laugh, and they try their best in every way to make me laugh, smile, and make some noise with them.  I’ve had one Rotarian who I’ve had a past of goofing off with come up to me one night at a banquet.  He and I had a bit of a poke war for a few minutes before I started to jab him in the side to make him flinch and he returned the favor.  That same Rotarian and I have run around on our outings as a Club just goofing off.  I have a Rotarian, the club leader this year, who always finds me and makes sure I’m okay and we joke and laugh.  It’s nice, that they care.  That I, the strange girl with little understanding, has been taken in by all these older women, men, and their families.

It’s strange and wonderful all the same.

If I ever have a problem that I think I really do need help on, I can come to them.  I can rely on them.  That’s big to me.

So yes, I miss my family back in the U.S., but I’m in love with my family here.  That’s my biggest problem.  It will hurt to leave them, it will hurt because no one back home will really have an understanding what these people mean to me.  I don’t blame them, it’s really a thing only other exchange students can understand.  Bonds forged under the adrenalin and pressure of living daily life in a foreign environment changes the depth of those bonds over a very short amount time.  It’s like welding two pieces of metal together.

Returning home is me putting strain on that section of metal that is used to meld the two pieces (read two worlds) together.

I’m not giving up on my world here, but I have to leave it behind for a little bit to be able to come back.  For me to be able to see my family here, my extended mess of a family that I really do love.

As much as I want to go home, to be back with my family, I don’t.  I didn't expect to be drawn in as hard as I have, to be as charmed as I am with my life here, and to be as loved as I have been so far.  It just takes me back to think that when I first landed here I didn't think I would end up with this mentality.

My host sister and I talked about this the other day actually.  She described it to me that I have a very Japanese soul in that sense.  She has seen foreigners that couldn’t make it work, who couldn’t deal with the differences, and she has seen people who have made it their living being away from home like this.  I like her explanation.  A piece of me I didn’t know I had woke up here in Japan and really likes the style of life.

My family here has shown me a lot of Japan, but they have shown me the side that not many others can see if they just travel here.  It’s daily life.

You cannot walk up to an exchanger and ask such an open ended question.  “How was so-and-so-country?”

I could sit and tell stories for weeks on end, and still I feel that it wouldn’t do it any justice.

I live here.  I truly live here.  I have family here (I label them as my family because I’ve never been one to be picky over blood),  I have friends here, I have a life here that is fairly stable, and I am living.  I am not just existing, I am living my life.

So ask me that question and I’ll just smile and say, “It was good, really good.”  Because no matter what else I say, I won’t be able to explain to them what it really meant to me.  I can’t explain to them what I am learning and have learned.  I can’t explain to them how it changed my view of the world and humanity itself.  I just can’t because there aren’t strong enough words in the English Language to describe how I feel.

I will miss my families.  I will miss the random cuddles from the kids.  I will miss the smiles and easy laughs as I make a quick joke that actually makes sense.  I will miss looking out my window and seeing the neighborhood come alive in the mornings.  I will miss the feeling that even though I am so disconnected I am tethered.  I will honestly miss this crazy life, this life that seems to want to pull the rug out from under me, and this crazy life that seems to be happy enough to keep me pushing the boundaries of what I am comfortable with.

This is a big off topic, but it just popped into my mind.

“Make practice like war, and war will be like practice.”

This has been practice for my life, my life as a college student and beyond.  Practice for becoming an ‘adult’ in the eyes of the world.  This has been the hardest experience in my life but the harder the experience is, the more you grow from it.  Life back home will be easier than ever if I let it be that way.

The world back home isn’t as scary as I once pictured it.

Sure there are many things I need to learn, but I think I can make it work.

Back on topic!

I really appreciate my families because I feel that this exchange would have been… well I can’t even imagine it without these people.  RYE is a chance of a lifetime, but it’s these people, people who take you in without really knowing who you are, that make it the magic that it is.

So thank you.  I feel that I can never thank you enough.  Thank you for putting up with me needing more sleep than an average person because some days I am just too overwhelmed with language information and have to sleep off the headache.  I thank you for putting up with my need for a decent schedule in the morning and that I am sometimes disgruntled when it’s broken.  I thank you for allowing me my ‘me time’ so I can cope with whatever it was that may have happened that day.  Thank you for letting me show you what the world looks like through my eyes.  Thank you for explaining how your world works because although very little truly surprises me, I am still lost some days.  Thank you for letting me rough house with your kids.  Thank you for trusting me enough to watch after them on occasion as well.  Thank you for treating me as a functioning human who can take care of her own basic needs without any help. 

Thank you for being guides, guardians, and surrogates to me while I figure out my place in the madness.  I can never thank you enough.

 See You Soon
また近いうちに
Mata chikaiuchiniou

On Feelings of Magic

Magic

Everything in Japan seems to be alive in its own way.  There is something about Japan that breathes life into old legends and myths.  They live on even after the modern world has begun to replace the old ways.

Some areas of Japan cling to the old faiths and make them a daily part of their lives.  My house is such a place. 

There are deities on selves high in the kitchen; one is to the God of Fire and one to the God of Money.  Both are there to help protect the house from all back spirits and welcome in the good ones.  There are Buddhist alters next to a Shinto one in the main living room.  Every day these are prayed to and new offerings are given to them.  To watch over the old and protect the young.

One of the most interesting religions I have ever come across is Japanese Shinto.  It is fascinating to me in a way that is hard to word correctly.  Everything in Shinto is given a spirit; a spirit that you could unthinkingly anger with simple actions.  The God of the River would be very angry with you if you were to block its path, and the spirit of the animal you are eating would be insulted if you weren’t to thank if before you were to eat it.

It’s things like that, that thankfulness for everything, that I think shaped the Japanese into the people they are today.  There are plenty of papers written by far smarter people on how Shinto and how the growing of rice shaped the Japanese people has the culture formed.  I really like the house I am currently in because of the mixture of religions in it.  I like studying religion, but Japanese Shinto, it’s purely magic in a sense.

I understand the stories of how demons would roam the nights, how a god could pin a giant carp to the bottom of the ocean, and how all the stories seem to have a life of their own.  Japanese folklore is colorful in every sense of the word.

I studied cultural anthropology in high school as just a fun class, something that I could spend an hour a day relaxing with.  It explained to me how many religions are a way for people to explain the unknown to themselves.  Why does the sky light up and create those ground shattering noises, when does the earth move at seemingly random times, how do the mountains fog in a way they seem like they are on fire.

Early in the morning I can watch wisps of fog rising from the mountains.  It was and is, one of my favorite things to see here.  I love the strangeness of the weather that surrounds me.  The mountains have my imagination.  Sometimes the clouds hang low and cover the tops, sometimes the rain clouds swallow them whole, and sometimes I can see them clearly in the afternoon light. 

I am in the middle of a bowl of mountains filled with rivers, forests, and nature in strange places.  There is an uneasy balance between them that sometimes shifts to favor one more than the other.  It creates beautiful weather patterns and things that I have only seen in pictures.

Rains storms here, tsunamis really, are powerful.  I can understand where the belief that the gods caused it.  It’s something else to see the awesome force of nature at work.  The thunder above that backlights the mountains, the puddles so deep on the road that they swallow them whole, and the feeling you get when you can feel the boom of thunder go through you.  Just plain rain storms have an added edge to them, I can’t really place why, but I like to watch them when I can.

Festivals too, have a magic to them.  I love Japanese festivals and going to shrine to see the sights.  I feel like the air there is charged with something, maybe the human spirit.  Japanese traditional festival music sounds a lot like heartbeats to my ears.  The thrumming of the drums and the high pitches of the flutes.  There’s something in that music, maybe history, which gives it the edge of what I would call magic.

Maybe it’s just my fascination with the history and beauty that this area has, maybe I’m just imagining things, but it’s something that pulls me back to Japan.  I waited three years to feel it again and I can say it hasn't let me down once.  It had drawn me to the mountains, the temples and shrines, to the common sights I saw every day.  Now that I'm back, I'm looking for those sights again, those feelings, that ambiance of sorts.  To the people I am surrounded by, it is their culture, their world, and their history.  To me, as an outsider looking in, I see the beauty, the mystery, and just flat out wonder of the world I live in.

It is as alien to me as I am to it.

I like how uncomfortable it makes me on occasion.

Magic lives in Japan.  I think this time away from home has taught me that even back home, there is a kind of magic.  Maybe magic is the wrong word but it’s the one that I feel suites in best in my vocabulary.

Japan, you take my breath away, you know.

See You Soon
また近いうちに

Mata chikaiuchini