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Q.
Why did I want to travel in the first place?
A.
1. To escape the drear of life in Toronto. My time at York U
was amazing, and helped me develop my feminist/leftist/anti-capitalist
sensitivities, but I was feeling terribly unworldly (and burnt out) after
graduation.
2. I felt I needed to see some other countries/cultures before choosing
a “career”.
3. To have something exciting to write on the “hobbies” and “languages
spoken” sections of my resume.
Q.
Why did I choose Asia?
A.
1. Most Canadians take a ritualistic first trip to Europe at some time
during their late teens/early twenties. I chose Asia partly to avoid
making a travel cliché, but also because there were more (lucrative)
English-teaching positions in Asia than in Europe or other places.
When I left Canada the job market was saturated with recent university
graduates, including Masters and PhD students, who couldn’t find work in
their fields. Considering that all I had was a bachelor’s degree
in Women’s Studies and English Lit, I definitely had to leave the country
for a while to earn money.
2. To be as far from “home” as possible, both in geography and in culture.
3. I was fascinated by the idea of crowded Asian cities, and wanted
to challenge myself to live in a really small space surrounded by many
people. I grew up in an old farmhouse with so many rooms that a number
would be closed off in the (cold, Canadian) winter. My nearest neighbour
was a 15-minute walk away.
4. I wanted to study a widespread language from outside the Indo-European
linguistic group.
Q.
Then why Japan?
A.
1. The money, more than anything. I never admit that to my JTEs,
of course. I had a huge student-loan debt with the Canadian government,
and dreams of going to grad school someday. So as much as I wanted
to not let finances determine my life, it was still a big factor.
Money really does make the world go round. We spend much more time
on matter than spirit but I’m convinced most of us come around to spirit
eventually, once our debts are consolidated, payments made. Only
people with tons of cash can scoff at people who consider finance in their
life decisions. I met scores of people in Toronto who were working
in Canada, not because the maple syrup was so wonderful or the winters
so lovely, but largely to send money home to build a better life for their
families, etc. In the end many ended up staying and eventually becoming
citizens, while others did go back to their home countries hopefully getting
more out of Canada than it got out of them. A lot of people just
don’t understand how difficult it is to live abroad, especially to work
in another culture. We earn good salaries with an excellent support
system on JET and still we sometimes find it tough to live in Japan.
I don’t know how those working in factories and in the sex trade survive.
No mid-year conferences for them.
2. A mild fascination with the bubble economy and all the ways
it was responsible for Japan’s quirkiness, rumours of high-tech mania and
just plain mania of all sorts (sexual antics, etc.) I read “Monkey
Brain Sushi”? a short-story collection by contemporary Japanese writers
to prepare for the JET interview, which included one particularly memorable
story by Amy Yamada about a dominatrix who was asked by a client to cover
his penis in pins. The presence, here, of psychotic violence
(Osaka elementary school stabbing, Hibiya line gas incident, …) I
felt that despite the obvious cultural differences, that we could share
an interesting dialogue on our messed up societies.
Q.
How have my feelings toward Japan changed since my arrival?
A.
People here aren’t as weird as the Can/American media portrays them
to be. Actually I was shocked by how conservative Japan is.
I felt like I entered a time-warp when I first got here, then of course
you see the keitai and you know that it’s a modern place.
My ideas about Japan change every day or so, and I like that. At
first, especially as a writer, I thought I had to come up with this one
formula to fit everything I saw into. Now I know that I certainly
won’t be writing a big thick book on the mores of Japanese society, which
isn’t to say that Japan won’t appear as a background or some sort of factor
in a book I write someday. It’s just that so many Western writers
(moviemakers, etc.) look for certain things in Japan (bushido, ikebana,
shodou, etc.) to somehow define the “spirit of the people”, while most
Japanese people I meet don’t feel immensely influenced by these things.
“Those books” always show a victorious Westerner who may have bumbled around
in the beginning, but ends up inevitably reaching a deep understanding
of the soul of Japan. They never show the truly vulnerable side of
being a foreigner in Japan. The isolation. The resentment we
all feel at times. But most of all they never talk about “life back
there”. Who did you first have sex with (or did you?) in that backwoods
town you’re from before you became a Roppongi lady-killer? How do
you feel about the decline of your family’s health while you’re here (idling
away in Roppongi)? Basically what happens to your sense of yourself
once you move to Japan. The only people who want to read about your
endeavours to master chopstick use are JET Programme applicants looking
for a tip. The kind of writing that separates the self from the narrative
is plain shit writing. Expose yourself a little bit, show some vulnerability.
It’s the only way anyone will ever believe you.
Q.
So what backwoods town am I from?
A.
It’s not even a town. I am from the suburbs of a village!
Lafontaine is a French-Canadian village in Ontario with a population of
about 2000 people. When you’re from a place like that you get used
to reinventions. My first reinvention was at sixteen, when I moved
to Toronto. I was a country hick trying to play big-city woman.
It’s the topic of my first novel. You should be able to read it in
about 10 years. And now this. Although I feel more de-invented
than reinvented in Japan. I’ve been busy peeling off all the things
I thought were absolute (homework in high school, computer email, ketchup
with French Fries, …) and realizing that they were just part of one (loud
but small) culture.
Q.
What do I dislike most about my life in Japan?
A.
1.The disconnectedness I feel with the society around me, and all the
second-guessing, wondering if I’d feel this way anywhere.
2. The lack of openness with my (Japanese) colleagues. That after
three years they only know me in a thin external way and probably won’t
remember me much after I leave. I partly blame myself, but also know
that so-called “cultural difference” has a lot to do with it. I’m
depressed that in this age, culture can still work to keep people apart.
Q.
What do I like most?
A.
1. The order my life has taken here. I think more clearly about
things.
2. The free time to read, write, send emails that I get paid for!
That may never happen again in my lifetime.
3. The sheer number of people I’ve met. Although it’s sometimes
overwhelming, and unfortunate that the meetings are so brief, my life has
been enriched by all the paths I’ve crossed in such a short time.
Q.
Why do I travel so much outside of Japan?
A.
Although living and working in another culture was of interest to me,
I mostly just wanted to see as much of the world as possible. Consequently,
my husband and I have traveled to Thailand (several times), Korea, China,
the Philippines (twice), Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia during our stay
in Japan. We’re planning to see Nepal in March. We visited
home once in our 3-year stay and tacked on a week in NYC so it felt more
like traveling. Travel from Canada is expensive and requires very
long plane rides, whereas from Narita it feels more like a commute to go
to other Asian countries. It’s so easy, yet so many Japanese people
would rather fly to Paris or do a bus tour of Italy and deal with all that
jet lag for a 5-6 day vacation.
Q.
What about life after JET?
A.
There is no life after JET. There’s only slow death in a pseudo-corporate
job that has “marketing” in the title. At least that’s what I fear.
Q.
What do I dream, then?
A.
That I’ll get accepted to a graduate Creative Writing program and find
the steam to finish my first book. That I really will forget all
the bad things about Japan and remember only the good.