[I'm posting things I've been writing from my internet-less home. This one's from 7/31. Looks like the Japanese didn't transfer...but I don't have time to fix it now. Later I will.]

The moments I feel the most paralyzed are the moments when the weight of everything I might be missing out on suddenly presses down on me. When the world seems full of nothing but people I would love that I’ll never meet, or have passed on the street without a second glance; of songs that would fill me with the same satisfaction as MISERY or Budapest that I’ll never hear; of books that would give me chills like The Fourth Treasure that I’ll never read, movies that would make me cry that I’ll never see...there are so many out there. Sometimes their existence is too frustrating to bear. And then I don’t want to meet anyone, read anything, watch anything, listen to anything. Because what if I get it wrong? What if I’m making small talk with the person on my right when the person on my left is a real soulmate? At least by shutting myself in, I take chance out of the picture. Which, somehow, is less frustrating.

The moments I feel most content are the moments when I suddenly believe in destiny. Not a top-down sort of destiny where everything I do is determined by some outside power, but a Heraclitis-like character-driven destiny. When I believe that if someone is meant to be important to me, it will happen. If I’m meant to hear a certain song, read a certain book, and so on, it will fall into my path. A sort of “there’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be” feeling. When I believe that if I do what feels right, do what I’m in the mood for, do my best to be kind and friendly and to find things to do that I feel passionate about, then it’s impossible for me to miss out. At those moments, I’m overwhelmed with a feeling of being in the right place. I can’t describe that feeling in words. It would hit me sometimes walking past Tarble, when the trees rustled a bit in the wind and I began to hear chatter from Parrish Beach and the bell tower rang out with two of its notes missing, and everything just felt so right, like I couldn’t be anywhere else, like I couldn’t express how lucky I was to be walking on that path at that moment. On the first Seattle trip, sitting by the fountain at the entrance to the sculpture park, watching all sorts of people taking pictures and chatting, gazing at the Olympic mountains across the water, I felt as content as I ever could. Driving from Muraoka to Kasumi surrounded by soft green mountains that look like giant stones covered in thick, plush moss, through valleys with bright green rice paddies and sloping roofs that shimmer in the sun like water, the same feeling flooded through me. I’m completely terrified, surrounded by people who don’t speak English, expected suddenly to survive as an adult in a rural Japanese town when I’ve never even proven I can do it in America...but when I just look at the hills, at the sky, at the glimpses of water, I can renew my conviction that I’m supposed to be here.
To say that love is not objective is perhaps the most obvious thing in the world; but it’s a damn good thing that it isn’t. If love were objective, I think I would be stuck in that paralyzed state, unable to let myself love anything for fear it wasn’t legitimate, that I would love something else more if only I could find it. But fortunately, love is a connection, as much dependent on the lover as the loved. I think it’s important for me to give myself permission to feel unlimited love for what I have in my life. I used to tell Liz that the universe is more like a puzzle than a list; you can tell whether two puzzle pieces fit together without needing to check anything else, but you can’t tell what’s at the top of a list unless you know the whole list. If something fits, it fits. I suppose where the faith comes in is in believing that you will somehow stumble upon all the pieces that fit in the course of a lifetime. Whether or not that’s true doesn’t matter. In fact, I’m sure it’s not true. But there’s nothing to be done about it in either case, so one might as well believe it. What that belief does for me is give me permission to skip a given party, to relax by myself if I want to, to listen to the same CD hundreds of times in a row rather than listening to Pandora. I’ll have time later, when I’m in the mood, to meet new people and explore new things.

During the Tokyo orientation, I jumped back and forth between these two moods; for a while I’d feel nothing but excitement, throw myself into all the small talk, feel high on the potential surrounding me. Then, suddenly, I’d stop being able to do it. I had about a day, from sometime Monday afternoon through Tuesday afternoon, when I just couldn’t make any more small talk, couldn’t find the energy to smile at people and ask where they were going and where in Japan it was and where they came from and when they graduated college and where they went and what their major was...what was the point? I would never see them again. They didn’t know me. They never would. I’d sit next to people in awkward silence while everyone around me chatted away. I wanted to be in my hotel room, talking to people on IM who already know me so I don’t have to construct myself with every word and every expression. No one else seemed to have any trouble. I, alone of these two thousand people, somehow lacked the ability I’d had just that morning to connect with other people. And then, of course, it came back. That’s how the past few days have been, a silent roller coaster, swerving from unbearable happiness to intense loneliness to nervous apprehension and back.

Well, what did I expect? Every single person experiences the same thing at some point, at many points, of their life. This is, in fact, what I expected. Yet I still find it interesting to observe the swings of my emotions.

But enough of this babble – let’s have some details, shall we? Right now I am sitting on one of two couches in my living room. In my house. Of course it doesn’t feel like my house; it feels like someone else’s house I’m staying in for a while. I wonder when I’ll first start to feel ownership of it. It’s the oddest thing when my supervisor steps out of the genkan and says “Ojamashimasu.” Aren’t I the one intruding? Just now, between the last sentence and this one, I had to take a break from writing because someone came to look at the upstairs air conditioner, which is not working. ëÂïœÇ»Çü!ñ{ìñÇ…èˆÇµèãÇ¢ÇÃÇÀÅBOf course, he didn’t seem to speak any English, and started talking to me about what might be wrong with it in Japanese. Too bad I’ve forgotten all the vocab from the unit on air conditioner repair. Then he said “ãAǡǃǴNjÇ∑”, or possibly “ïœÇ¶ÇƒÇ´Ç‹Ç∑”, or some homonym thereof, and abruptly left. Does that mean he’s coming back? Who knows. Oh well, it’ll be winter soon enough...hopefully the heaters work.
Meanwhile, back to the house. The living room has, as I said, two quite lovely couches, a TV that gets about five channels (if I’m paying for that, I’d rather not...I don’t expect I’ll watch very much TV), two small tables, and some shelves with videos on them. The labels were written in English so my supervisor, Mizuta-san, couldn’t tell what they were; he thought they might be videos to use for teaching English, so he left them for me. Turns out, they’re mostly episodes of Survivor and South Park. Heh. Next to the living room is quite a lovely kitchen, small, with a stove, sink, fridge, and a lot of cabinets. For lunch today, I cooked udon for myself! It was more exciting than it sounds. And very delicious. For dinner I’m going to be ambitious and make sesame beancurd and rice. We’ll see how that goes...

The other room downstairs, which I hope to use at least partially as an art studio, my predecessor Zachary used, apparently, to give extra English lessons to little kids in his spare time. (Yeep.) Which seems somewhat inconsistent with the picture Mizuta-san paints of him: he told me today that Zachary always arrived half an hour late at his schools and refused to do things that the teachers asked him to do that weren’t specifically spelled out in the contract. Well, who knows. In any case, there’s a white board in there, and a bunch of tables, which might actually be sort of useful if I’m doing art. Well, maybe not the white board, but I love white boards, so it’s all good. Finally, there’s a bathroom, which is actually three rooms: one with the toilet (western style, yay), one with a sink, and one with the bath. Today I used a Japanese-style bath! Well...I didn’t have a lot of time, so I guess I sort of used half of a Japanese bath: I did the part where I sit on the little stool and pour water on myself to wash off, but I didn’t actually take a real bath. Still, I highly approve. This set-up will be especially nice, I must say, for shaving one’s legs. Later tonight if I have time I’ll take a real bath. äyǵǛDžǵǃÇÈÇÀÅB

The second floor...well, right now it’s like my house used to be when all we had was one air conditioner in the living room: as you go up the stairs, you’re suddenly hit by a thick wall of heat. If you can get through that, you’ll find two large closets (or small rooms, I guess), one on each side. Making two sharp lefts and going down a short hallway, you come to the two bedrooms: on the right, the western-style one, with a bed, a dresser, and two closets, and on the left, a Japanese-style room with tatami mats and a big closet with a bunch of futons in it. From that room you can get to a tiny little balcony with a bunch of places to hang laundry.

So that’s the house. The “yard” and “patio” that Zachary mentioned don’t entirely merit those words; it seems the yard consists of a bunch of stones in front of the house, and the patio of a small concrete slab next to the door. But that’s fine. (By the way, a few minutes ago my supervisor returned with a different air conditioner repair person, and as I write this he’s been darting in and out of the house, apologizing each time.) There’s also a place to park my car once I get it, which is nice.

Speaking of “once I get it”....it seems I can’t do anything at all without a hanko. And I can’t get a hanko for about a week. Without it I can’t rent a car, open a bank account, get a cell phone, or get internet. So if you’re reading this, I must have a hanko by now. I seem to have decided to have my hanko say ÉåÉxÉbÉJ, which is my first name in katakana. I suppose I’m giving up the opportunity to use the kanji çï for my last name...but my supervisor suggested ÉåÉxÉbÉJ and I found the idea of signing things using only my first name appealing, so I agreed to it. Besides, honestly, it’s not an incredibly aesthetically exciting kanji, is it? Of course, katakana are never aesthetically exciting either...but how else would I write my first name? So overall, I’m happy with that decision. Oh, and it will be vertically written, not horizontally, which is even cooler. ^_^

So yesterday, after I arrived here and got shown around the house, Mizuta-san took me grocery shopping, since he couldn’t think of a single restaurant in Kasumi that served vegetarian food. He seemed surprised by everything I suggested buying, especially scallions and edamame. I got tofu, sesame sauce, and rice (which I accidentally called Ç≤î— instead of ïƒ...whoops), which is what I hope to eat tonight, and udon noodles and some udon flavoring, which I used for lunch today.

(Update: they can’t fix the air conditioning today, but they’ll come back sometime next week and fix it then, apparently. ÇøÇÂÇ¡Ç∆ç¢Ç¡ÇΩÇ»ÅBÅBÅB)

I also got inari, which is what I ended up having for supper, since I was exhausted and lazy. Mizuta-san told me he would come at 8:10 the next morning and show me around the area. So as I was sitting on this very couch, eating my inari and thinking about what to do for the rest of the evening, I remembered something: I have no alarm clock. Ack! That decided what I had to do for the rest of the evening: sleep, so that I’d wake up by seven! I kept telling myself it wouldn’t be a problem because I have a good internal clock, and because I always wake up early in strange places...but it was pretty stressful. I went upstairs to try to sleep, and discovered the cooler was broken, and it was a zillion degrees, so finally I decided to come down and sleep on the couch. But after an hour or so I hadn’t fallen asleep, and in fact I was getting cold, so I went back upstairs and drifted in and out of light sleep until about 6:30 in the morning. I think mainly I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid of oversleeping.

But of course I didn’t oversleep, since I barely slept at all. So I was ready when Mizuta-san got here, and the first thing he did was take me to the Board of Education in Muraoka (another of the three towns that became Kami-cho, about half an hour away), where I met some guy who I guess was the boss there and chatted with him a bit, and then Mizuta-san went over my contract with me and gave me my schedule for August and a calendar that says which school I go to which weeks for the fall and winter terms, and also talked about things like how much is taken out of my salary for the Japanese pension plan, and what sort of car I want, and what internet plan I want, and what I want my hanko to be, and how to put out trash (which is very complicated!), and things like that. I requested the most expensive sort of car – a normal-sized car with four-wheel drive for when it snows – and the most expensive (fastest) internet, but the cheapest cell phone plan, and no home phone, because I don’t expect to need it. The car will be Åè30,000 and the internet will be about Åè4500 per month. Added to my rent (Åè30,000) and the various things that come out of my salary (which seemed to total about Åè37,000), that leaves about Åè199,500 that I’ll be making. Oh, and the cell phone should be about Åè2500 a month, so make that Åè197,000. Minus whatever gets taken out for water and electricity and gas – I don’t know how much that will be. So that’s about how much I’ll have for food and gas for the car and train tickets and stuff like that. And then, when I leave, most of the money I paid for pension and insurance stuff I get back, so that should be about 35,000 x 12 = Åè420,000. So that’s nice.

Of course, all of this explaining took place in Japanese, and all the schedules and information sheets he gave me were in Japanese...what on earth would they have done if I didn’t speak any Japanese? I wouldn’t have understood a single thing that’s been said to me the past two days.

After that, he drove me around and showed me things: both the junior high schools, which are my base schools, and the six elementary schools, each of which he said I might go to like two or three times in a year. Also three doctors offices/hospitals, the post office (conveniently located about two doors down from me), a few convenience and grocery stores, one of which isn’t too long a walk, the town offices, and so on. All the while attempting to chat with me in Japanese...

Tomorrow, a woman who’s name I haven’t quite caught yet (Mie? Something like that?) is coming at 9:30 to take me around and introduce me to more people. Thankfully, I have received an alarm clock. Yay! Right now it’s 4:28 and I’m starting to feel a wave of being overwhelmed by everything I should be doing. I should read everything I just received at Tokyo orientation. I should start preparing my é©å»è–âÓ. I should unpack. I should study kanji. I should do elliptic curve problems. I should go walk around town and get to know it a bit (scary!). Everyone who goes by outside makes me feel more isolated because they don’t know me, I’m nothing to them, a stranger who doesn’t even speak their language and certainly doesn’t belong in their town. ñ{ìñÇ…Ç®é◊ñÇǵǃǢNjÇ∑ÇÀÅBBut I have to get used to that feeling and to getting over it. Pretty soon I’ll meet more people, meet the students, and of course they won’t all love me, but maybe some of them will like me, and no matter what I’ll become a small part of their lives. Right now, I just have to pick a few manageable things to get done tonight, and do them. First I’ll see about making that beancurd, because I’m getting hungry. Then I’ll get myself entirely unpacked, and do some laundry. That’ll be it for today.

There’s so much more I could write, little anecdotes from Tokyo orientation like the soda machine where the larger size was cheaper, or how one of my roommates was named Randi Aho (if you don’t know why that’s noteworthy, look up ÉAÉz (aho) on JDIC)...but I’ll do that later. For now, some lyrics...

At starry, at starry, at starry parties, where amongst the rich and the famous,
I’m stuck for words, or worse, I blather with the best of them.
I see their eyes glaze, and they look, they look for the [something]
Something in the drift of my conversation bothers them.
So who am I? Come on ask me, I dare you.
So who am I? Come on question me if you care to.
And why not try to interrogate this apparition?
I melt away, to get lost in this quaint condition.