the day i didn't leave

Well, this is a strange and rather embarrassing story. Where to begin?


I am not a graceful person. I can appear graceful in certain still-life environments – photographs, words on the screen – but in real life, I am about as graceless as they come. There is always some food spilling off my plate and I’m always breaking something that doesn’t belong to me. I want to be a puma, but I am an elephant.

I had every intention of leaving Japan gracefully. I said goodbyes to my friends, my students, to the place I lived and to the person who gives my heart the hiccups. I even took 30 photos and did 30 little write-ups, so that I could remember my last few days in Japan. And, because I really felt strongly about the work I was doing on my project, I posted my last goodbye as it was, as I wrote it, in the morning, on the bus, on the way to the airport.

Man, is it a good thing I finished that project on that bus. Because, well, after that, in my signature clunky, clumsy, grace-vacuum style, everything sort of fell in on itself.

I didn’t leave Japan yesterday, like I was supposed to. Oops. The details are boring. I can give you an idea of it, but the whole story, well, it’s just so boring to tell a story outright, you know? I’ll use third person, just because I’m sick of so many I, I, I’s.

Of course there are many tears. Many, many tears. These are not unjustified, as the American elephant in question is sitting alone in a dark room that smells like cigarettes, with four immigration officers, and the officers are wearing dark blue and light blue uniforms, and they are angry. Probably it is the tears that makes them angry, maybe they aren’t used to being questioned. There is ten yen on the table and one of the officers asks the crying girl if it’s hers, and the big, fat, mean immigration officer yells at the smaller officer and says NO, IT’S NOT. (she wasn’t going to claim the 10 yen anyway, please). The mean fat one says he is going to take her to the police and he shows her his handcuffs. This does not help with the crying, also, she is hoping the crying will somehow get her on the plane she needs to catch. Well, anyway, it didn’t.

This is a horrendous scene. She has the feeling most people in Asia don’t show these kinds of emotions when they are so pissed off. Actually she knows people don’t show this kind of emotion, but whatever, she just wants to go home and she is smoking mad. At some point there is a very nice man with a very strange story about how in September he was drugged and robbed in Manila, how the robbers said they were immigration officers but they weren’t, and how they put a gun to his back and said they would kill him if he didn’t pay. “So actually your situation is not so bad,” he tells her, and she is a rational crying elephant, she can understand this. Yes, it’s not so bad, but actually, it is bad.

Many, many hours spent back in the city at the immigration office, a cheeseburger set because the last thing she wants is to eat Japanese food at that moment, some much needed love, hours and hours of sleep and then some house cleaning to calm the nerves and back on the bus and back to immigration. Streams of official documents that she must sign and fingerprint, and, wow, she thinks, I really know how to make an exit. Detained and deported – on paper, at least – and then an accepted appeal and 15 days to leave the country. There will be no further consequences, but the whole thing just isn’t a good feeling.

Of course, in the end, the only feelings left are of utter gratitude to all the people who helped her get through this goopy situation. The travel agent; the boss; the one who made her a grilled cheese sandwich; and especially the strange man with the gun to his back; she is in awe of the kindness given and accepted all around her.

So, yes, there is no grace in my life, but there are a lot of people who don’t seem to care much about that, and for this, I am endlessly thankful. This wasn’t the way I wanted to leave Japan, certainly, but I’m definitely packing it away in my backpack of adventures in Asia. I wish this could be my last goodbye – to that oafish girl who is always making mistakes – but, honestly, if I were to say sayonara to her, my life would be so boring.

goodbye 30 of 30

Of course, my last goodbye is to you, Love.


There was never any other option.


This goodbye is only for you, but it’s not really a goodbye, is it? More of a, see you soon; a, so long; a, good luck with the spiders and the horrible middle school students. It’s not a goodbye, but even so, this not-goodbye weighs me down, sits dripping and heavy in my chest. Soaked sand, something like that.

This goodbye is only for you from me, and I would be a fool to let anyone else in on it. I am clumsy an careless at times; I know I need to watch my step more and I didn’t mean to leave the orange juice glass where the ants could go in. I am graceless and I am lazy, but I am no fool. I am for you, and what’s here with us will stay here.

I’m all feelings right now with no structure, and this can only lead to that sad, sappy sort of writing that generally turns my stomach. This time we’ve had here in this tiny nutty country, in this lovely, ash-caked, sumi-yasui city, this time has not been sad. Sappy, well, you know I have my moments, but certainly sadness has not come into play.

It is wrong, then, to end with sadness. A kind of disrespect to that time and that place. So, because I am not myself right now, because that heavy heart-sack-sand is threatening to reveal the loss I’m feeling, let me let my notebook take over. The thin crinkled brown one I keep in my bag, let it speak my goodbyes for me, memories recorded, lines on recycled paper that are so much better at this than I am.

Businessmen in businessman-white collard shirts, picking up park trash with pointed metal sticks.

Old women with painted faces and mis-matched prints waiting for buses holding frail arm-fuls of flowers.
(they look scared)

Early morning sunlight strong enough to sting your skin pink.

Suffocating humidity.

Soft, whipped potato clouds resting on the top of the volcano.

A dirty beach. Tires, driftwood, plastic bags, trash. Why is it not dirty during swimming season? Is the water showing its loneliness? – heaving debris up from the bay like some great, lost child? Or is it just that no one comes to clean it during the off season?
That’s probably it.

The fish market doesn’t smell of fish yet, this early in the morning. But it does smell of the anticipation of fish.

A row of thin houses by the train tracks. Here it smells like China, like food and exposed plumbing. Laundry hangs outside, and I wonder if people really wear that underwear.

No one talks to me. But I am afraid they will.

Giant birds. They look edible.

Giant insects. Also look edible. You first. No, I’ll try.

This canned coffee is bottomless.

Mio cried last week because she colored the PINK balloon orange. I know this feeling of failure.

Kids with mochi faces and no teeth who can’t pronounce Thursday.

Adults who can’t pronounce Thursday.

People in uniforms, just for the sake of uniforms? I wonder.

Cold noodles dipped in sour sauce with something fried on the side.

I am the only one in line who shows any sign of impatience. But I know you feel it too.

Floral prints.

Rabbits everywhere. I prefer the owls.

Is that the bus? Concentrate. Don’t miss it. Look hard.

People in pajamas sitting on the ground, waiting for the pachinko parlor to open. Smoking cigarettes and looking lucky or not.

Scooters with day-glo flags, ridden by the old and the weak.

How I have to wonder, where are all the people still outraged about the bomb?

The biggest tire I’ve ever seen.

A chipped-paint love hotel shaped like a castle. Only 3500 yen to be a 90 minute queen.

A river that once overflowed. Now it is dry and low.

Concrete factories that make sacred things for graveyards, and the signs that advertise for this.

Narrow, twisted roads.

The smelly man didn’t pay to take the bus.
(neither will I)

Schools that look like prisons.

Where are the prisons?

Car dealerships with English names and petite Japanese models.

Akebono, outside, inside, where the bulk is.

Goo means good.

Old men who wear American navy ship names stitched onto their baseball caps.

Big gold-spray-painted buddas for sale.

Layered, lacquered rooftops layered on with meaning.

That ice-breath feeling of a hot outdoor bath on a hot day.

This is other people’s garbage.

How “earth” and “ass” sound the same when spoken in a Japanese accent.

Falling asleep with my legs left under the kotatsu and waking up with red skin and a sore throat. The feeling of winter.

New rice ready.

Ancient bamboo forests and space-age shopping malls. Toilets like rocket ships. I am an alien. So are they.

Hills like hedgehogs. New growth.

Fires burning in tea fields.

And I haven't even left yet.

i caught you

Meg Ryan.

Another celeb cashing in on the Japanese love affair with Hollywood stars.

But come on, Meg Ryan, Nescafe? I hope they paid you good.

goodbye 29 of 30

Goodbye to the sea and to the life I built beside it.


I grew up in the mountains. In a green valley that burns red and yellow and orange all autumn long, surrounded by smooth, seamless hills that sleep white and sparkling through the long winter. I am in love with these mountains, and I miss these mountains when I am gone for too long. But sometimes you have to leave a place to really be able to see it.

I’ve always wanted to live near the ocean. My grandmas are from a fishing town and I was always able to visit the sea, but could never really stay. The mountains are my home but the sea is an adventure I’ve always wanted to have.

So I did it. I moved to a place near the sea, though actually it’s actually more of a bay, and I wouldn’t call it tropical, but more like sweltering, and no it’s never been a paradise, but there’s always been this big, black volcano, that sometimes burns red at sunset, and even today, on my last day, I am in awe of that.

It’s been fun. I’ve eaten what I wanted to eat and seen what I wanted to see, and I’ve eaten what I never knew I’d want to eat, and I’ve seen what I never knew I wanted to see. The beach is cool now and filled with morning people, with old women walking dogs and their husbands walking beside them, but backwards, which has always been something that’s fascinated me in Asia. People walk backwards, slowly, and usually in the early morning, for exercise, for something, and I say, why not? I tried it once but I lack their grace, and I tripped over my own big feet.

I’m not ready to go home. And I’m ready to go home.

goodbye 28 of 30

Today I had to say goodbye to Kagoshima.


Today was the first day the sadness broke through the barrier of all the lunches and classes and parties and walks to the video store and cleaning, through the barrier of busy.

Today I woke up. I rode the bus for an hour and wrote for most of the ride. Got to Kagoshima and went to my old apartment. Threw all the cleaning supplies away, as these are usually the last things left in an empty apartment. Took the toilet paper with me. Waited for the gomi guys to come to take away my big wooden dresser. They are late and I am agitated and I ask them to take away another small bookcase for my troubles. How could they say no? We use a fire extinguisher to prop open the door, but I don’t know the word for fire extinguisher in Japanese. Ride my bicycle to the bank and thankfully there is a nice woman with a well of patience who walks me through the forms and signatures. Close one account and keep the other, and then back on the bike and to a friend’s English school to drop off a forgotten key. Good thing I remembered. I just remembered I never told Mr. Nosse about the toothbrush in the sink. Shit. Ride back to the apartment and find Mr. Nosse and we do a quick apartment check. All he really looks at is the tatami and me, and he says, “I am sad.” And I am also sad, Mr. Nosse is my landlord and my student and my friend, and last week I just found out he’s been recovering from cancer. But we talk about the deposit and he tells me to come back soon and we shake hands and hug and that’s it, the apartment is finished. Go downstairs and teach one class, helping a student with a presentation she will give in Paris in two weeks. Say goodbye to my student, to the school, to my boss, who thinks that Japanese women paint their faces too much, who I will miss most of all. Back on the bike and I’m teary-eyed and the sky is so blue and bright so I take this photo and I’m teary-eyed and ride fast to the video store, return the movie, riding fast again because I’m late for lunch and teary-eyed, stop by the supermarket for hot pot dinner items and I’m breathing deep and teary-eyed and I park my bike in the pachinko lot and go to meet my friend. We walk to the Owl place for lunch since it’s my favorite and lucky, the lunch special is mushroom rice and tenpura, I like that lunch. We laugh and eat and gossip and after lunch it’s time to say goodbye. She tells me to have a happy life and I laugh and tell her it’s too dramatic. We laugh and she tells me what you’d say in Japanese in this situation and we both decide that instead of goodbye, we’ll keep it to a “so long,” a “またね.” I ride away and buy some meat on the way back to the old apartment, and as I’m bringing my key to the office I run into the mother of one of my 6-year-old students and we say some goodbyes and her belly is huge so I ask when she is due and she says, “いつでもいい、”the baby could come anytime. Return the key, abandon my bicycle, grab my bags and wait for the bus. I am teary-eyed and lonely but it’s only 3:47 and there’s plenty more to do today.

goodbye 27 of 30

Goodbye to fun snapshots with good friends who would otherwise never have been.


Life is too busy with life to take much time for writing and taking photos. All the goodbyes are piling up but it’s the end now, and I’ve got two more days, and I mountain of treasures to bury in two suitcases.

I can’t say enough goodbyes to my friends. I can’t get enough last snapshots together, I can’t believe two years has gone by, more than two years, gone and the only thing I never got to do was ride my bicycle all the way around Sakurajima. That and a million other things, but of course this is true for everyone.

One thing I absolutely was able to do during my time in Japan was to make friends with people who I never would have had the chance to get to know in the U.S. At home, my friends are mostly, more or less, like me. My age, my sense of humor, my style, my history. In Japan, most of my friends are very different from me. My friends in Japan have babies and husbands and wives and motorcycles and they run their own businesses. They win kimono fashion shows and go on group tours to foreign countries, where they wear bright yellow hats for safety and eat miso soup. Some of my friends are grown-ups with families; they have grown-up lives that I can only think about vaguely, with nagging feelings of curiosity and terror. Some of my friends are adults who still share sleeping rooms with their mother and father, and though I know it’s normal for them, this just gives me the creeps.

I’ve really enjoyed getting to know so many different kids of people. I think I’ve learned that it’s actually not so different, being me and being a grown-up me. Or rather, should I say, I think I’m learning that I’ve been growing up. That I grew up. That I’m a grown-up. And that it’s not nearly as awful as I had thought it would be.

goodbye 26 of 30

Goodbye to the me that is for you.


I genuinely love the job I’ve had here in Kagoshima, and because of that, every day it was my genuine self who went into the classroom. Every day it was a pleasure for me to talk with my students, to hear about their lives and their culture and to share some of myself with them. I built many relationships with people – from children to salarymen – that I sincerely hope will make it over the Pacific Ocean and through customs.

That being said, there is a certain amount of performance involved when you are an English conversation teacher. As with any job, it’s just not appropriate to bring your worries and personal problems to work with you. The thing with English teaching, is that all day long you are asking people, “how are you?” and they, in turn, are asking you, “how are you?” Which then, of course, raises the eternal question, do I tell the truth or tell the not-truth?

It was always important for me to convey a positive image of foreigners to my student. I think many foreign people who visit or live in Asia often take advantage of certain aspects of the culture. There are so many differences between American and Japanese culture, and it was always my aim to encourage myself and my students to look around or through or over those differences.

People come to English conversation class for many different reasons, and improving their spoken English is just one of them. Some people are lonely, and just want someone to talk to. Many Japanese people I’ve met have told me that they can express deep feelings much easier in English, because they feel like English is more open and accepting of their ideas. Sometimes people are just looking to be entertained; in Japan, English is as much a hobby as it is a full-on language.

People come for many reasons, with many different aims and intentions, and as their teacher, I wanted to be flexible enough to meet these various expectations. One minute I’d be having a discussion about the war in Iraq and fifty minutes later I might be talking about how to cook Thanksgiving dinner and a few minutes after that maybe I’d be playing an animal guessing game and the next hour the topic would be drugs and love and prostitution.

So, there was always that me who could bounce between topics and themes, who could give opinions without offending, who could ask questions without prying. She was charming and polite and didn’t tell anyone when her throat hurt or she felt homesick. I think she is a better me, in many ways. Like the real me but just more put-together, more interesting, less anxious. I like her and I’d like to keep her with me, but the truth is, she can be unbelievably exhausting.

Tonight was the official goodbye party for my students and me. The better me was there with me, of course, and she drank a bit too much. She laughed and she smiled for photographs and hugged each person goodbye and I could feel the deep sadness even though she did her best not to show it. She and I are so sad these days, but nobody really knows about that, because it’s just easier to tuck it away.

I’m not going to leave that better-than-me me in Japan. She’s already stuffed in my suitcase between the gifts from my students and the funny English t-shirts I’ve collected during the past two years. I’ll let her out soon enough, but for now, we’re both in desperate need of some quiet time, some sleep, an American cup of coffee and a visit to mom and dad.

goodbye 25 of 30

Goodbye to our home.


The furniture has gone to good homes and the gomi has gone back to the universe. I scrubbed down through layers of grease in the kitchen where we made dumplings and stir fried things and that time I made applesauce and used the salt instead of the sugar. The floors have been cleaned of dust and I dug down deep in the drains. I just remembered I dropped a toothbrush down the sink, I'll have to tell someone about that.

Goodbye to this apartment, which I've loved so much. There is no view and the water pressure is laughable; it's hot in summer and cold in winter; there are sometimes cockroaches, and do you remember that time we saw two of them together, and I said they were big as cats, and you said it's rare to see a duo like that.

The days are too busy right now for me to think in straight lines. It's all just happening, and my natural inclination is to make lists, and cross things off of lists, and today I crossed the apartment off of the list. Gomi gone. Floors clean. Shower scrubbed. Tatami swept.

Goodbye to our apartment, which was always full of sinfully good food and lazy Sundays spent on the sofa and warm winter cups of coffee, full of Japanese textbooks and towels thrown on bar stools, full of stories of the day and so much love.

goodbye 24 of 30

Goodbye to all those questions I could never answer.


I am always asked, "why did you go/come to Japan?" I am asked this by old Japanese women in elevators, by strangers on the Internet, and by my family.

I am exhausted right now. My hands are swollen and chapped from scrubbing and they smell like bleach and maybe vaguely of mildew. I have a lot more work to do and a goal to finish by noon.

So I'm going to answer this question as truthfully as I can.

I don't know why I came to Japan. I have no reason and I don't think I need a reason. I just felt like it. The food seemed more interesting than food in the U.S. and I like the look of smoky rice fields early in the morning. I had been living in China with no good reason, and China was exceptionally dirty, so I figured, yeah, sure, Japan. I just want to try lots of things before my body begins to break down. I figured, why not?

So, that's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a decision, like which socks and how many spoonfuls of sugar. An adventure, a chance to see another place from the inside and my own place from the outside.

Sometimes here, sometimes there. Most times, somewhere in the middle. A somewhat-American living in a somewhat-Americanized country, eating cold, creamy sashimi and hot, gooey mochi cakes. Enjoying those precious few days of sun during rainy season and thinking how badass it is to go swimming in the great big stomach of a volcano.

It's been a lot of fun. But the mold beckons.

seasonal weirdness

I read an article once about how Pepsi always releases seasonal specialties that they think will sell in Asia.

Last night, in the convenience store near my house, I found this season's.

ugh.

But I want to try it.

goodbye 23 of 30

Goodbye to good friends and laughs over baked goods.


Of course I will miss the food in Japan. All the strange, alien-shaped vegetables and textures of the sea. And of course I will miss my job, and my students, because every day they taught me something. I will miss my little Japanese apartment with the sliding doors and tatami room. Of course I will miss impeccable shopping mall toilets and all the dirty comics. I will miss the tea and the service and the cherry blossoms, and of course I will miss Sakurajima.

Who I will really miss, are my friends.

It's never been easy for me to make real friends in Japan. I have many, many acquaintances, people I am friendly with or people who want to practice English, people who are looking for something from me or maybe people who I am looking to get something from; this is life, after all. But finding real friends has proved to be difficult.

After these two years, I can honestly say that I think that, for me anyway, it was often cultural differences that kept many of my acquaintance-ships from turning into real friendships. There are many aspects of Japanese culture that I have a difficult time relating to - the role of work and duty; women's roles; the Japanese education system; the peer pressure - there are just so many ways in which my thoughts and experiences vastly differ from those of the people around me.

Idealists would say that this shouldn't hinder relationships, but I know it does. And this isn't a negative, it isn't positive. It's just been a reality for me.

The true friends I've found in Japan don't share the same opinions or experiences of me; I would never expect that from anyone. It would be so boring. Instead, the friendships I've formed are with people who are willing and eager to share whatever's going on in their world with me. They aren't afraid of me and they challenge me. We can eat good food and laugh and they tell me when what I'm doing goes against the Japanese style and I tell them openly when I don't care if what I'm doing isn't Japanese style.

And we can sit on the grass, on a man-made island, in the shadow of a blackened volcano, eating spicy wiener supermarket sandwiches under an almost-rainy sky, and just talk about nothing and enjoy the day. And I will miss that so much.

goodbye 22 of 30

Goodbye to ridiculous feats of strength and balance conducted aboard a small, red, foldable bicycle.


Ugh. Yes, so, goodbye to my bicycle. I have put so many kilometers on this little red bicycle, I can't even estimate. It has taken me to the beach, the supermarket, the hospital, Toys 'R Us, around a volcano. The first time I moved to a new apartment, I carried giant loads of things on my bicycle. I've ridden it out to clubs and home from clubs, so blind-drunk I hit a utility pole and fell off; woke up the next morning bruised and flat tired. I got in a fight with an old man who tried to charge me 200 yen for air and I remember feeling really proud when I could finally speak enough Japanese to go on my own for a tune up.

Once I got hit by a guy on a motor scooter pulling out of a pachinko parking garage. I called him a f--king a--hole and I think he understood, because Japanese people watch a lot of Hollywood movies.

Once I hit an old lady riding a bicycle. I felt like a f--king a--hole but she was very graceful about the whole thing.

I bought this bike because it folds. I thought that was cool, to own a bike that could fold in half. It can be made small enough to fit in a bag that you can easily carry on a train.

I have never, not even one time, not even just to try it, folded this bicycle. And now it's rusty, and I suspect it's too late.

Over the past two years, I've become a pro at commuting by bike. I can carry anything on a bicycle. Today, I was taking bags of clothes to the thrift store to try and sell them back. I have to ride a little slower than normal, but if I balance just right, I can turn my little red bike into quite the workhorse.

I don't know if I'm sad to leave my bicycle or not. We'll see. It's been fun, it's been hellish. Fun to get some fresh air and avoid the gas pump, but truly grueling on humid summer days and during rainy season.

I'm all for using your body to get done whatever you can get done, but seriously, come on. I miss my car like mint without chocolate.