Day 20

So apparently some people here don't go to college. The girl I met yesterday (Hanako) and the girl I tutored today (Maya) both didn't go to college. They're 22 and 24 and they've just been working since they were 19. Blows my mind. This was outside of my frameset of Japan. All of my previous experience with Japanese young people has been with college students (and ones who can afford to study abroad at that.) In America there's a sort of negative stereotype perpetuated about people who don't go to college or people who have lower-level jobs (such as a waiter or a convenience-store attendant.) What makes it worse is that it becomes correlated with race, intelligence level, income level, and ultimately SES/social "level." Here, I feel that that disparity does not exist, or at least not as strongly. If you have a job, you are lucky to have a job at all. Everyone is a good person. Everyone is hard-working. Every job is respectable, and nobody feels shame or looked-down-upon because of the job they were able to get. This may be different in the competitive post-college business world, where a college diploma asserts pressure to find a good high-paying job, but no matter where I go, I've never heard or experienced disdain for so-called "lower" professions or lower education levels. There's no classism. Even though this is a first-world country, there's still a sense of get-by-how-you-can, subside-and-be-strong. There's also still a sense of "women are for family, men are for money." It's aggravating but futile to waste thought on.

---

As is the case with all experiences in life, I'm figuring out what my entrenched expectations were, expectations I didn't even know I had, and sorting them out from how my life differs from them. Mainly, I thought I would be all creative and artsy because I'd have all this free time and no school stress, but instead, the boredom induces me into a rut. I've been sleeping too much to the point where I feel tired throughout the day. (How the heck does THAT work, biologists.) I've been not wanting to leave the house or my little neighborhood at all because of the rain. But I have been creative to an extent. I made a little "stop and smell the roses" clothesline banner for my room. (It's super cute. :D) I made little flags for the other corner of my room. I rearranged the furniture in my room and hung up my scarves in a creative way. I made paper letters and fireworks for the living room. (Thankfully our house has so much paper and art supplies!) I organized the bookshelves(Okay, that's not really creativity but whatever.) But I still feel blah. Like there's not enough to life. It also induces stress on me. Aah I'm not living life to the fullest this experience is so short and finite what if I don't do enough here my days are being wasted aah!So the new challenge is, how to stop that? Does it have to do with filling my days with excursions and activities, or just introducing a new way of thinking that doesn't put so much pressure on me being busy in order to legitimize my experience?

---

I haven't been missing people per se, not in the way that hurts, not in a homesick way, but I have been missing the presence of hanging around people I'm comfortable with. That's not to say I'm not comfortable with the other interns, because I surely am, but I mean, hanging out with my good friends from home who I'm close with and always have a good time with. And all this stuff just happened on Facebook like everyone graduating and the JSA end-of-the-year events and CDL/CKI stuff so I get a little bit missing-ish. I'm definitely a social person, as much as I try to deny my extroversion, and I need to be surrounded by people and do interesting and fun things with them in order to be fulfilled. And 3 months and two people just isn't enough substance to complete that for me. (I don't think I'll get close to the people at church just because of the language barrier. But maybe if I do social things with them outside of church, our bond will grow.)

I like listening to music, and I wonder which songs I will end up associating with this experience. Which songs will bring me back. It's impossible to know while you're immersed in the experience. I'll only know in hindsight. But every discrete experience in my life has its associated songs and smells.


P.S. "Posted at 11:11 AM": fck yeah.