I've avoided writing the obligatory pre-experience blog entry for a long time because I didn't know what to say and still don't.
Almost a year after coming back from Japan last summer, after a nine-month application and interview process, after waiting excruciatingly long periods of time to find out if I got an interview, if I got in, and where I was placed, after two weeks of constant errand-running, preparing, and packing, after saying see-you-later to all my friends and family, I'm finally leaving in just over 15 hours to go to Japan for a full year. I will carve out a life as an English teacher (more like teacher's assistant) at one middle school and one elementary school in my suburban community in Gunma Prefecture. I'll have many things I've never had before: a salary, a smartphone, my own apartment. As I sit alone in my hotel room near LAX, it feels weird and surreal. Like tomorrow mama will come pick me up and I'll just stay here in CA like always. It doesn't feel like, as of tomorrow, my life will become totally different from what I've known. One chapter in my life will finally come to a close, and another will abruptly begin. The comfort zone ends here.
While I was doing my student-teaching this winter and spring, I fantasized about living in Japan as an escape from the daily terrors that besieged me in the classroom. Just wail 'til you're in Japan, I said. Life will be simple and carefree and you'll walk to the forest and meditate and revel in the stillness. I used Japan as a way to romanticize the future and tolerate the present. But now, Japan feels anything but simple. I cringe at the future complications that await: dealing in yen, driving on the left, managing finances, navigating language barriers, traveling in snow. But I know that all these inconveniences will be meager in comparison to the wealth of positive life experience I will gain. Maybe it won't be meditation-in-the-forest, but it will be constantly exciting and enriching.
In the grand scheme of life, a year is nothing. But as the JET alumni endlessly reiterate, it's a year that will change you and the way you think about things for the rest of your life. I'm inspired by the advice given to us by an alum sitting at our dinner table: "Whatever you think it's going to be, it's not. Forget about what you think you know and come in with an open mind, and you will learn so much. So much."
