Finally, a morning without shrieking cicadas… I found myself in a deep, peaceful sleep, which is typically quite rare for me, only to suddenly awake (at 5 am) to a forcibly shaking bedroom. I sat up quickly and gasped “oh my gosh!”, knowing it was an earthquake but completely startled out of my nice, deep sleep. David, who has amazed me these past two weeks with his ability to think ahead of me and my reactions, quickly grabbed me and repeated “it’s ok, it’s ok…” Of course, it was just an earthquake, a 6.4 earthquake, and only a few small things tipped over or got shuffled about, so really any freaking out was truly unwarranted. I suppose my anticipation of it becoming larger and more intense, the building falling over, the roof collapsing in on us, the ground opening up and swallowing us, just took over any rational thought of “it’s just an earthquake.” And yes, I do come from the Pacific Northwest, and have felt a couple small earthquakes in my lifetime, but Japan is on four fault lines, so it’s not surprising I’ve already experienced a few just in the past year.
I was thankful this morning though, as the wind howled and rain continued to fall after we went back to sleep, that the cicadas were finally silenced. These small beasts seem to take over during this time of the year, and their high-pitched cries are enough to drive me mad, especially in the early morning when I’m trying to sleep. Each time their little shrieking sounds wake me up, I think to myself, “now, why doesn’t someone invent some kind of gun or weapon to shoot down cicadas from the trees? People invent all kinds of useless things and yet no one has come up with this? I would surely buy one…”
Following our earthquake, as I biked to the station to get to school (I can either bike 4 miles, or bike, catch a train and then a bus to school; today I chose the latter). However, the trains were shut down due to the earthquake and a massive crowd of people was hanging around waiting. After a quick call to David, decided to try and make the bus from the train station I would have gone to. So I bike there, only to arrive a minute too late, and as sweat poured and slithered down my face and back and everywhere else really, I gritted my teeth and pedaled onward to school. Amusingly, I ended up basically racing the bus (that I would have been sitting in, with A/C) and arrived at school the same time it would have dropped me off. Unfortunately, work proceeded as normal today, so no…. earthquake day? Sad.
My transportation drama to school actually began yesterday, the first day back to work for David and I. I decided to bike to the train station, only to miss the train. Call David, decide to take a taxi from the station I’m going to, but after arriving I realized my bus had not left yet. At least that saga ended well.
The humidity is still pretty high, although it has been slightly more comfortable than June and July, emphasizing slight. David and I enjoyed the much drier air in Guam; although Guam is humid, it alternates often so it doesn’t seem as humid as Japan (which is basically constant in the summer).
Guam, Guam… where to start… my first time back to the US (technically speaking) in a year. I was incredibly excited to use English again in everyday life before we left, although after a few days of being there, I realized how incompetent I felt using my native language. Of course, I use English often; I talk to David and friends and teachers and many students in English (although half of it ends up being slower, more simple English), but I’ve adjusted to using Japanese in every day life. Sometimes I am incapable of completely getting my point across, but after a year, I have made steady progress and feel more competent using it than before. Although to clarify, I still feel incompetent most of the time, like a toddler speaking Japanese. I smile and laugh when I hear children using their Japanese, thinking it sounds cute, and then realize I probably sound like them, but probably not as cute. 
So I found myself stumbling through words in Guam, not even capable of ordering ice cream. “Uh…. Can I…. uh…. I would like….wait…. uuuummmmm….. can I get….” “ please?” Then proceeded to say please with every answer I gave them to every other question they asked. I felt like one of my students, regurgitating some textbook English to communicate properly. What happened? Why can’t I speak? I speculated to David over the course of our trip. Finally I realized, that before coming to Japan, since I never spent much time in any foreign country, I never really spent much time speaking anything other than English, especially in every day life. I never thought about what I said, since for every day things, it was just automatic. Go to a restaurant or to get a haircut or anything like that… you just say things. In Japan, I have to think about what I’m saying a good majority of the time. My conclusion is that due to having to think so much about how to communicate in every day life, I don’t know HOW I used to do anything in English because I never thought about it. Since I never thought about it, I don’t remember how I used to do it. This realization only leads me to wonder what going back to Seattle will be like… especially since even in Guam, there were so many Japanese tourists and we still heard Japanese around us quite often. Or read it. It was everywhere. Like Japan came to the U.S. or something. Just rowed it’s islands across the Pacific and connected itself by expansive bridges. Or implanted itself smack dab in Alaska (well it would have to fit somewhere). Anyway.
We ate lots of non-Japanese food, did lots of duty-free shopping in American stores (K-mart was frequented often) that actually have things in our sizes, bought stuff for our apartment, and went through about 2 large bags of peanut butter M&Ms. We had to buy another bag of them before we left… and David, using that smart brain of his, bought another huge duffel bag for us to load up with all this stuff we bought to bring back to Japan.
We also went to see Transformers (since it was cheap), laid on the beach or by the pool (when it wasn’t raining which happened a lot – darn you rainy season) and went kayaking. All in all, it was a nice vacation/honeymoon, but we were both happy to come back to Japan.
We came back last Wednesday but I had to go back to Tokyo again on Saturday for the dentist. I felt so nostalgic as I went on errands around that extremely large city, remembering my first days in Japan just over a year ago. Surprising in some ways it has already been a year, and yet in other ways it was long. I find it interesting that though I am often out of my comfort zone, this discomfort has in and of itself become a comfort zone for me. The fact that I feel incompetent and always have to figure things out or constantly learning new things is some kind of new and strange comfort zone that feels like home. David and I talked about those thoughts this week, what it feels like to be back in Japan after vacation, how it felt like coming home. Of course, for David, Japan always is technically home, but for me it seems like it has become a second home… given the transition from my life in Washington to Japan, and almost entirely severing so many of the ties that held me there. David mentioned that with all that has happened here it probably does make it more like home, and it makes sense, because I’ve created ties here, with people, both foreign and Japanese, I got engaged and married here, and so much has happened and continues to happen that has tied me to this place now. Even if one day I am not living in Japan anymore, it will always be a certain, special place to me, just like Washington.
As a child, whenever my family went on road trips to Montana, I remember the sense of home I felt every time we came through those mountains and back through Seattle to Bellingham, it was just home. Now those feelings have slightly changed, and though still there, it’s as if coming back to Japan this past week made me feel the same way I felt as a child driving into Washington and Bellingham again. Staring out the window and seeing all that is familiar and yet unknown, I’d think to myself, I’m home.
