I
don't remember this, but apparently a guy I met through English Club
actually met me in Canada a year or so earlier. At that time I was
very involved on campus doing stuff like interpretation for groups of
students on month-long programmes, and I guess he was among one of
those groups. Flash forward, and unbeknownst to me, he's spent the
last several months living near Seattle, attending an ESL finishing
school type deal. He has a month off, so he's swinging through for
old times' sake.
“I
don't think you went to America to eat Japanese food,” I tell him,
“but there's a Japanese restaurant here I think you might find a
little interesting.”
Like
everybody, he likes my new ancient sports car, which will be getting
its own post in due course (it's Japanese; don't worry, this blog
hasn't entirely lost all
focus). I take him to a Japanese-style burger joint. So like, there's
teriyaki burgers, but then there's like burgers with yakisoba on
them, shit like that. He's hand-rolling a cigarette with Turkish
tobacco before we've even paid.
He
wants to take a spin through the downtown area, after which I direct
us through a green, sedate park on the river. All the way I'm
monitoring his fatigue and levels of interest, mentally planning
alternate routes and trying to get the timing right, and yeah now
we're basically on a date. As we walk he remembers snatches of places
he's been, intersections, storefronts. Phaedrus Moments, you might
call them.
I
ask him about his school, whose student body he says is predominantly
Asian. We start to speak, as you do, of the future. His plan is to go
back to Japan when he's done his Seattle thing and finally enter
working life.
For
me it's a little more up in the air, as we know. I've basically been
working at securing Japanese employment for two years with no actual
progress. President has long since departed for Koube, where she is
teaching English. The distance, in the end, has only confirmed that I
really, truly, want to be with this woman. He prods me, so, you think
you'll marry her? Well, nobody knows the future. I mean I'd be lying
if I said I hadn't thought about it.
He's
startled and even a little angry to learn that there are Japanese
people who tell me that, as a foreigner, I will never understand
Japan, or learn to speak Japanese. (I wrote a post about this, but can't find it.)
“But
you already speak Japanese!” he fumes. “You practically are
Japanese!”
When
President jettisoned nearly all her physical belongings in
preparation for Koube, I ended up with some items of clothing. When I
accidentally moved in with her, I didn't really bring much, so I
frequently wound up picking through her laundry for T-shirts and
jeans to wear. (Lockup thinks this is hilarious.) I developed some
favourites, including a pink Sailor Moon T-shirt, a not-pink Sailor
Moon t-shirt, and a black one that simply says 「日本」
(“JAPAN”).
I'm
wearing the 日本
t-shirt
today, and when my friend saw me sitting there, wearing that shirt,
in a Japanese restaurant, drinking a bottle of Oi Ocha, the sight
struck him as so absurdly Japanese he burst out laughing and couldn't
help but snap a photo.
Three
weeks later, I'm strolling past the burger joint when I see my friend
who works there, and stop in to say hi. She's a bit of an interesting
story. She's going to my Canadian university, now, and her long-term
plan is Canada. And of course, if you graduate from a Canadian
university, that's a quick ticket to permanent residency. Her problem
right now is money, because tuition for international students is
exorbitant. I know another guy, a tourism student, whose dream is to
do tourism stuff in Hawaii. It makes a lot of sense, if you know a
bit about Japan and Hawaii. There's a lot of parallels between our
respective dreams, a lot of commiseration – and mutual support –
to be had.
Talking
with the girl from the burger joint, it turns out a Japanese girl who
lived here back in fall 2011 is in town for a visit. She was with a
group all from the same university who were here for a semester each.
Kinda weird how that worked out, but it was nice. I had them, I had
Japanese Club, I had President – we were still just friends back
then – and I was taking six classes (the standard being four), so I
never wanted for companionship, entertainment, or purpose. And all
the while of course, I was prepping for my ryuugaku the following
year, so everything I did, every hour of laying groundwork or
studying Japanese, took on added weight in my own mind.
My
friend told me our guest wanted to see me if she could. I told her it
probably made more sense for her to tell me so rather than wait for a
random encounter, she promised she'd tell her so, I looked forward to
hearing from her, and then completely forgot about it until two days
later, when we actually did meet in a random encounter. She's doing
well. Since I last saw her, she's graduated university and become a
systems engineer at a decent company in central Toukyou. But, she
wonders, will she be able to keep working there when she gets married
and has children?
Lately
it's hard not to feel like everyone I know is both younger and more
successful than me. It's
discouraging. Even most of the people from English Club are
now getting job offers from desirable companies. Anyone my age who is
still in school has moved on to graduate studies and will be
well-positioned indeed once they wrap that up. Meanwhile I've spent
approximately nine decades working on a degree that will be mostly
worthless when I finally complete it, at which point I will have
virtually no marketable skills or experience. Painfully, President is
at this very moment living the life I've always wanted, without me.
I'm not jealous – really. We're a team, we share in our successes.
But I want so badly to be there doing it with her.
But
I have tangible, achievable goals. For the first time in a while, I
can almost see things coming together. And it was invigorating to see
my old friends. You take whatever victories you can seize.
