Point of No Return

Now that I have safely made it back to The Other Side I've become one of those who can say, "I miss having all that cash in my wallet, but I have a better quality of life now." That was always the point my friends who had left Japan and gone back home would raise, even though I'd secretly wonder how they could be enjoying life without the generous salary and vacation time Japanese university jobs supply.
That was always the issue for me. Everyone I know who works for a Japanese university cites how great the pay is, how long the vacations are and most of them are headed for the airport as soon as classes have ended for the semester. During the last year I was in Japan it became increasingly apparent to me that spending 45 weeks a year wishing I was someplace else meant that I was not where I should be anymore, even if I had put enough years into it that most people had me pegged as a lifer.
Going home from Japan after a year or two or three is normal. For people who end up being Japan fanatics, because they are studying martial arts, other arts, language or living out the playboy fantasies they could never indulge on their home turf, five to seven years may pass almost without them realizing it. After seven or eight years have gone by, people start to consider you a lifer. What's even scarier is you start to think of yourself that way too. You start to wonder how you could ever go home again, not just for a visit but for good. Who would hire you? How could you survive working a "normal" job? Could you really interact everyday with all those foreigners? And isn't the government all screwed up too?
One of the oddest phenomena I observed in Japan was how brave and bold young men and women embarking on the adventure of living in Japan transformed into cautious and conservative folk ensnared in the web of Japanese conformity. I know because I was one. It happens in tiny increments. With every trip home, the clothes I bought became drabber in color. I'd put on makeup for a trip around the corner to the supermarket because someone I know might see me and makeup is etiquette in Japan. I came to feel it was my duty to buy souvenir gifts for my family in America every time I went back home. I stopped asking "Why ...?". Japan became comfortable and safe and it had taken so damn long to finally understand the way things worked that once I'd gotten that down it seemed such a waste to admit that it didn't really suit me after all. The scariest words I ever heard were from Edward Seidensticker, my University of Colorado sempai and a God of Japanese Literature Studies who translated the entire Tale of Genji, at a lecture he gave in Hawaii in 1992 or thereabouts, when he said something like, "I'm not sure it's been worth it" in reference to his life's work and five decades in Japan.
Japan is so hard at first. The common sense you bring with you doesn't apply to anything anymore. It takes so much work to get things right; the language, the customs, the "common sense". After years of learning the hard way and plain old hard work, you start to get it. And then you start to become able to work the angles in your favor, once some people realize you know how to play by the rules. It helps to have a family of your own. One that will claim you and soothe you. And make you a respectable member of society by placing upon you a yoke of responsibility.
So you settle in, feeling proud of your adaptability and your accomplishment of finally understanding that which logic defies, yet still is. You learn that the answer to "why" questions is "because that's the way it is." You work so hard to make a place for yourself that you're shocked when you realize that you have become the antithesis of the person who got you there in the first place. What happened to that young adventurer who set off to conquer the world and explore its mysteries? What happened to that young woman who went to Japan with a big backpack, some travelers checks, an open ended ticket home and a Lonely Planet guide book, without a job, a place to stay, a plan or a clue? How did she turn into me, someone who "fit" in Japan but found herself homesick after a dozen years and almost too scared to do anything about it? After all, the splendor of longing is considered to be so noble, any Japanese lit grad knows that.
Well, I dug out what vestiges of Adventure Girl remained and despite the doubts-- my own and those of friends and family who thought it was much too late and risky to leave the security of the little world I had ensconced myself in-- packed it up and moved it out. And what do you know! I haven't fallen into poverty and ruin, not yet anyway. I don't miss standing out in a crowd. My feared tendencies to overconsumption only seem to appear when ice cream is involved and that's just because the $2.25 small is about the size of three Japanese servings of ice cream that would cost $3 each. I don't have as much money as I used to, but it doesn't matter because everything else is good.
"Are you happy now?" my sister asked, "You're back. You have the house, the yard, the car, the puppy, a teaching job lined up. You all set?" Yes, I am. For now.