Autumn in Osaka

Osaka Castle

After an amazing 6 weeks at home, I was ready to start my second year in Japan at a new job and in a new city. Last year my job determined the city, and I was happy to land where I did, but this year I choose the city and then set about finding a job. Thanks to my ridiculous good luck and the golden goose that is Zamami Island, my plan worked out way better than I could have imagined. I only saw Osaka for a weekend before moving here, but I instantly liked it and knew I wanted to live here.

Amongst my well traveled friends, the word is that Tokyo is to New York as Osaka is to Philadelphia. Tokyo is known for its status as the biggest city in the world, seas of black suits and briefcases, crowded trains, and infinite expanse of concrete and neon. Osaka's fame lies in its people and food. It is the home town of nearly every comedian in Japan, and epicenter of the famous Osaka-ben, a local dialect that resonates as warm and goofy to match the spirit of its residents. Osaka's scale is much more manageable as well, having 2.5 million people as opposed to Tokyo's 27 million. I adore Tokyo and know it better than I do New York, but I have been missing that sense of ownership, for lack of a better word, that I felt with Philadelphia. After 5 years in Philly, I knew the short cuts, the traffic light sequenced streets, the secret parking spaces, the best bagel shop, the cheapest happy hours, even a little of the local art and music scenes. In Tokyo, the vastness is just too much to ever get a grip on. I knew some neighborhoods well, but could never really get my bearings on the city as a whole. I think it could easily take 10 years for me to feel any real sense of familiarity with Tokyo.

I don't know if I am going to spend that kind of time in Japan, so I decided to say farewell to Tokyo and make a new start in a city that had called out to me since I arrived, and here I am. I have only lived in Osaka for two months as I write this, but already I have a rapidly expanding circle of friends, a pretty good grip on the layout of the city, a few bars and restaurants that greet me by name, and the beginnings of an Osaka-ben dialect.

I found a great place to live smack in the middle of the city, about a 5 minute walk from Dotonbori steet, the center of the action for food and nightlife in Osaka. Check out my new neighborhood!

Dotonburi Street

Dotonbuti Canal

Dotonburi's famous landmark, the running man

From my house, its about a 20 minute walk to Osaka Castle Park, where I like to go running and is apparently the best place in Osaka for Hanami (Picnic parties under the cherry blossoms). I love having a local castle to jog around, and after my run, I sit on the walls of the moat and watch the koi swim around while I stretch.

Autumn views of Osaka from the observation deck of the Castle

Osaka Castle Park facing East

Looking South over the gold fish finial


A 360 degree view from the base of Osaka Castle

The best part of Osaka is of course the people I explore it with. On my second trip to Zamami island I met 3 friends from Osaka, and now I am lucky enough to see them all the time. I think the personality of Osakans as a whole is a much better match to mine, and I feel like I fit in better in this city (as much as you can describe me as fitting in anywhere in Japan).

Halloween with my girl Midori

Me, Kumiko and Midori on Dotonburi Bridge

An amazing Thanksgiving dinner at Helen and Hiro's house!

I walk to work everyday over two rivers and through a rose garden. It's a 40 minute walk at a good clip, so it's great exercise and I use the time to listen to Japanese lessons on my Ipod. Also, the walk is that much more enjoyable because I'm on my way to a job I absolutely adore, but that's a story for my next post.

My route to work: over the river...

and through the rose garden

To work I go!

Next: the greatest job ever...

The Ducklings Take Manhattan

Sometime last winter, I was teaching a semi-private class consisting of three girls in their early 20s. The class is very beginner, so conversations usually consisted of them filling in the blank, practicing a few times, and then trying to say the sentence without reading it off the board. One particular Wednesday evening, the sentence was this:

I really want to visit _________.

All three girls filled in the blank with New York (pronounced New Yol-ku) with a surprising amount of enthusiasm (read squealing, bouncing and clapping). Whenever I find a topic that interests my students this much, I stick to it since my job is to keep them talking. So, I asked some follow-up questions:
"Have you ever been to New York?"
"No. I want to go to New York!"
"Have you ever been to America?"
"No, I want! でもう,あの。。。(but, um...)
(frantic typing in dictionary)
"I am Scary! Not good English. Scary."

This made perfect sense to me, so after class when we went out for a few drinks, I told them (in Japanese) that they should come to the States while I'm home on vacation. I volunteered to pick them up at the airport, show them around for a few days and translate to the best of my ability. The girls took me up on the offer and about 8 months later, I watched them bounce single file out of the terminal gate at JFK.

I only had three and a half days to show them America. This was a lot of pressure since it was a life long dream to come here, and I was on tour guide and translating duty. I gave it a lot of thought and in the end we ended up basically splitting the trip into thirds between Manhattan, Philadelphia and Ocean City, NJ (my Dad's). I can honestly say, I don't think I could have given them a better taste of the US in three days without the use of a private jet. The saw some ideal, some normal, some scary, some inexplicable. All in all, a fairly accurate sub-section of the American experience.

Along with my friend Masako in tow for translation assistance, we all piled into the car and started their first full day in the States. Day one was spent on my Dad's beach, or as some call it, Corson's inlet, in Ocean City. The stars really aligned for me and we had a "perfect 10" beach day. Perfect weather, clear water, great breeze, good sailing and DOLPHINS! We piled 7 people in total onto two catamarans, went about a mile off the coast, and had all jumped in for a swim when I caught a splash out of the corner of my eye in the distance. I pointed it out to my Dad and we watched for a few seconds before realizing it was a pod of dolphins. We jumped back on the boats and headed in their direction. Within minutes both boats were surrounded by 15-20 dolphins within a few feet of the boat. They looked at us, we looked at them, and after a few minutes they dove and went on about their day. I've lived at the beach all my life and that is the best dolphin encounter I've ever had. I felt so lucky that it happened while I was proudly showing off my home town to my students.

Masako playing in the surf

For dinner we unabashedly made the most stereotypical American Barbecue we could imagine. Hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, coleslaw and potato chips served on American Flag place mats. We really drove the point home.

Yuri's Big Bite

That night we took them to the Ocean City boardwalk for a little of that 1950's "apple pie" America that still exists in small pockets like this one. We rode the Ferris wheel, bumper cars, looked out at the dark ocean from the music pier and of course had some Kohr Brothers ice cream. The girls did some souvenir shopping and all three of them fell asleep in the car on the way home.




The next morning, Dad and I were sitting at the breakfast table discussing the plan for the morning. The girls wanted to take a ride on the Harley, and my Dad thought it would be fun to teach them how to shoot the bb gun just to round out the American rites and rituals. I suggested he take Miku first, and then realized he couldn't tell them apart from his expression. I wasn't surprised, even in Japan these three are impossible to tell apart. They are all the same height and build, have all dyed their hair the same red/brown color, have the same basic hair cut, wear their make-up the same way, and sound identical. My Dad and Cheryl had been doing fine telling the girls apart based on what they were wearing, but needed a refresher course on names and which color they were wearing now that it was a new day. I had no sooner finished the thought when I heard Dad mutter "oh hell..." under his breath. I turned to see that the girls were awake and had lined up behind me, wearing identical dresses bought at the boardwalk the evening before. To illustrate that Japanese conformity knows no geographical limits, Masako unknowingly arrived a few minutes later in her own very similar orange dress. Dad promptly gave up on addressing them individually, and they became "the ducklings."
I dare you not to come up with the same association when you see three girls, a fraction of my height, dressed identically in yellow and orange, following Masako and me in single file and nodding in unison when we spoke.

My Ducklings: Saki, Miku and Yuri

That morning we fed the ducklings some eggs, toast and scrapple and then spent a few hours taking pictures while they posed with Dad's car collection, shot at bottles and cans with the bb gun and took turns going for rides on the back of a Harley.









We did the standard Philadelphia tour that afternoon, City Hall, Independence Mall, the Bell, cheesesteaks, etc. Then my friends who had recently moved back to the States after two years in Japan joined us at the Piazza for a Mexican Dinner. Next was the grand finale: New York City.
We stayed in a hotel right on Times Square. From there the super rapid Manhattan tour included Rockefeller Center, The Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Soho, The East Village, and a boat tour around the island.

Masako wasn't able to come along to New York, so I was on my own to translate. The boat tour proved to be a mental decathlon, keeping up with the tour guide's speech over the speakers, pointing things out and getting the point across in Japanese before the next point of interest came up. I did pretty well, although my descriptions were less than complete. For example, when we reached the part of the Hudson River where Captain Sullenburger performed that miracle emergency landing, I listened to the tour guide's description and then (in Japanese) said this:

"Ummm, here, on this river, at this place, there was a plane. Remember? A few months ago there was a plane. The plane had a problem. Big problem. How do you say, how do you say...Emergency!! Plane went down. Here on the river. Captain Sullenburger. Do you know that name? On the television? Plane was emergency. Plane down on this river here, rescue from that pier over there. Everybody ok. totally ok. Remember that?"

Towards the end of that fine speech, Yuri came to my rescue and put the clues together. She explained it perfectly in Japanese as I nodded enthusiastically and made mental notes (Oh, is that how you say that..) and then before I could take a breath, we were onto the next thing that needed translating. You can imagine the headache I had when we finally stepped off the boat after circling the entire island of Manhattan, Ellis island and the Statue of Liberty.
The Ellis island speech went like this:

Umm, In Japan, everybody is from Japan, but in America everybody came here from, you know, far away. So, in the beginning, people came here, that island first. They had to go. That island is the entrance. America's entrance. Some people changed their names. Doctors, and papers and very crowded. Very important island for America. Ellis island.

I dragged them around New York at a break neck pace for another 8 hours, let them sleep, and then woke them up at 7 for breakfast in Central Park before their flight. We grabbed coffee and bagels from a street vendor, took a carriage ride to a good picnic place, watched the commuters hustle to work and reflected on the past three days. I bought some soft pretzels, wrapped them up for the plane ride, and then put my three crying duckings in a cab for JFK.

About 18 hours later I got an email in English.

Gail! We returned to Tokyo now! We love New York and Philadelphia and the Ocean City. We love John and Cheryl. We love You! Thank you! Thank you to Masako. Also, we eated soft pretzel. We love soft pretzel. Thank you Thank you Thank you- Miku, Yuri, Saki

Home, and a new understanding of the word "nostalgia".

Nostalgia, noun: A Greek compound consisting of nostros (returning home) and algos (pain), so basically, "pain from going home". Yep, I have come to fully understand this particular word.
Nostalgia and me, we're down like four flat tires.

If I were a betting girl, I'd own even less than what fits in two giant suitcases (which is what I've got now). I had been anticipating my trip home for, well, for 13 months. I had bouts of home sickness on and off during my first year away, and although there were more than plenty of distractions, the people and places that make me the Gail that I am were never far from my thoughts. I daydreamed about my 2 months at home more and more often as the year came to a close and I thought I had a pretty good idea of how it would all go down. Wrong.

First I got double bounced on the trampoline of reverse culture shock. When I left Tokyo early on an overcast Monday morning, I had not yet lined up a job for my return two months later, but had a place to stay in the city and had made my peace with spending the next year back in the fray with my group of friends and within reasonable distance to my Japanese home town, Katsutadai. I would be less than an hour away for visiting old students, and of course Japanese Mom and Dad, who owned the local dive where I found the majority of drinks, meals, and language study as a newbie in Japan. It was under these conditions that I said goodbye, and though I still cried, it was really a bit dramatic considering the goodbye was followed by, "See you in 2 months."

Mom and Dad were at JFK just where they left me a year ago, and on that first night home, I didn't experience any of the anxiety or panic that my fellow ex-pats warned me about. I fell asleep watching the Daily Show in the company of family and my beloved Jon Stewart, with a belly full of an American restaurant sized portion of mussels in Belgian beer broth, on a pillow that smelled like home, under a ceiling fan that rattled a familiar rhythm, in the house I grew up in, in a town that knew me at 7 and 17, in a country where people spoke my language and were not shocked by my shoe size.

I awoke suddenly at 4:00am from that relentless "may not graduate from college" dream. Chances are you know it in some form. In my head, it's a week before finals start and I'm due to graduate, granted I pass the exams. I'm in my dorm room frantically looking through stack of unorganized papers and notebooks trying to find the class schedule I was issued at the beginning of the term. I've just snapped out of some semester-long party haze and have come to the realization that I haven't gone to class since the first week. I take breaks from verbally abusing myself "What the hell is wrong with me?" "How did I let this slide so long!?" to switch to good cop and reassure myself that I have excellent memorization skills and can cram for a week enough to pass the finals, IF ONLY I could remember where the class meets, when, and which text book I need to borrow.

I sit up in my old room and look around as the last 6 years since I graduated march back into position. Right, done with college, career started, changed, moved to Japan, home on vacation, everything's ok, exhale. Still, I'm wide awake and can't think of anything else to do, so as the birds start gossiping about the first 5 minutes of their day, I tiptoe into the office to check my email. And just like that, before I can even get my bearings in my new hemisphere, I find I'm going back to college, only this time, I'll be the teacher who doesn't know where the class meets or which book we're using.

I wasn't going back to Tokyo, not returning to my circle of friends, not moving in with my Japanese boyfriend, in fact, we were effectively breaking up since the language and culture barriers didn't leave room for adding a distance factor to the obstacle course. I was moving to Osaka, teaching college! I had to find a place to live! I needed a professor-esque wardrobe! This was all too much to take in before my first cup of coffee that I didn't really need, because according to my body clock, it was three in the afternoon. I accidentally-on-purpose let out an audible "oh my God" that I hoped my parents would hear and come in to help the world spin a little slower. My Mom appeared in the doorway less than 10 seconds later. Gotta love that bond.

6 weeks earlier I had not yet packed the first box of my adorable first Japanese apartment and was obsessively hitting the refresh button and glaring accusingly at gmail, looking for some kind of response from the interview at my dream job I had been to just a few days earlier.

How about now?
No.
Now?
No.
Into the kitchen to make a sandwich, waiting for the bread to toast, REFRESH! Now?
Damn.

This went on at decaying intervals for days, then weeks, until finally after 5 weeks of silence from the college and only a week away from my flight home, I'm sitting in my usual spot at my local dive when the guy I've been seeing for a few months, Mineo, asks me,
"So, still thinking maybe to move to Osaka or maybe now staying in Tokyo?"
"I don't think I got that job in Osaka. I'm unemployed."I say as I stick my lower lip out and stir my drink.
"So, maybe not Osaka then?"
"I don't know what to do. Hopefully I'll find something online while I'm home. I can't afford to live in Japan while I look for a job"
"I'm thinking you stay in my home." Neo says carefully.  "I have too many rooms and I don't use. I wanna live with you."
"No you don't. I'm bossy. I'll take over." I say with a smirk.
"That is ideal life for me."
"OK, you can't smoke inside anymore, you have to go on the balcony," I say, purely as a test.
"This is not a problem to me."Neo shoots back.
"Can I decorate? It's such a boy apartment."
"How decorate, like girlish style?"
"You know, I was a designer in the states, I'm not going to go all Hello Kitty on your place"
"Our place." He corrects, and then "Why did you say Hello Kitty?"
"I'll think about it" And so I start thinking.

2 hours and 5 drinks later

"Ok, I'm in."I say out of nowhere.
"Amen?"
"No, "I'm in" I say without slurring. I'll do it, I'll move in. If you're sure that's what you want. Are you happy?"
"I am apex of happiness" putting his fingertips together and making an inverted V with his arms.

That conversation and the look on his face while he added a visual aid to punctuate "apex of happiness" was one of the things whipping around the room when my Mom interrupted the cyclone with "Can't sleep kiddo?"
She was stood behind me, tucking my hair behind my ears as I sat at the computer. She mimicked my "oh my God!" when I told her I got the job. She flopped down into the identical leather desk chair next to mine in her oversized button down pajamas. My hobbit sized Mom kicked her feet back and forth a few inches above the floor as she read the screen.

Dear Gail Sensei,
I'm sorry not to email you soon. I completed the schedule from October. Please see the attached file and tell me if I have need to adjust your schedule.

I thought it was a little unceremonious considering all my obsessive refreshing. Not exactly the email equivalent of thick parchment embossed with "Congratulations, you been accepted to Hogwarts school of..."

I minimized the email to show Mom the spreadsheet schedule behind it. "It's your schedule! It's your COLLEGE TEACHING schedule! Print it, I want a copy." I can only assume this college-teaching schedule will go into the vast storage area that contains quite conceivably every doodle, Mother's Day card, turkey hand tracing, and paper plate mask I have churned out since I could hold a writing utensil. This kind of reverence explains the confidence and ego that make me both unstoppable and impossible to live with. It also explains why my Mom has a public storage unit despite having a guest room, a craft room, an office, a garage, a shed and a BARN.

"Print what?" Now my Dad is leaning in the door way, wondering what the high pitched chatter could be about at this time of the morning. He gives me his trademark smothering bear hug upon hearing the news, and then takes his big shoulders with him downstairs to make some coffee, leaving my Mom and I to stare at each other while we soak in this new reality. "Did you tell Mineo yet?" she wants to know.

That's the thing about women. We're programmed to give a damn what the men in our lives think, even before we've had time to form our own opinions. Even amongst my very rational, driven, brilliant and career-minded friends, at the onset of big news, promotions, licensing exams, awards and honors, one of us will always bring the womens' circle right back to weaving baskets and gathering berries by asking "Well, what does Josh think?" And the worst part is, we were all wondering the same thing. I doubt very much men have this problem.

"I don't want to tell him over email, and we don't do well on the phone. It's all we can do to set a meeting place and have both of us understand the train station and the time."

Mom, having never met Mineo is already on his side. "Well, don't tell him yet. You just left, and he thinks you're coming back to Tokyo. This is too much bad news too soon." I agree because I can't think of a better plan, and follow the smell of coffee downstairs where my parents and I reconvene the 'can you believe it' conversation in the living room without a TV only used for occasions like these. "How many sugars, professor?" my Dad proudly mocks from the kitchen.

It a funny thing about receiving really good news at dawn. You just don't know how to celebrate. Still half asleep and not yet believing it, there's no one to call without waking them. If it were 6pm instead of 6am it would be so easy. Get dressed, we're going out for dinner and drinks, call your friends, have them meet us at the bar after dinner. Done. Celebration begun.

Instead, we check the weather to see what kind of a beach day it's going to be. We jokingly discuss sewing corduroy arm patches onto anything in my suitcases with long sleeves. We wander off topic and then at the first pause in conversation, either Mom or Dad will look at me and exclaim, "Dream job!"

Oddly enough it's just after noon and I'm sitting on the beach watching my Dad rig the sailboat with a can of beer in my hand when the anxiety hits. Not about anything specific, just a general omnidirectional uncomfortable buzz that radiates out from my rib cage. It's unsettling given my surroundings. My closest friends, Cat and Jude, have arrived and are talking with my parents. Sun on my face, breeze on my neck, beer in my hand and I'm home. I try to pinpoint the problem. Too many variables. Could be the jet lag, time difference, reverse culture shock, vertigo from an instantaneous new job and city, a cup too many of Dad's infamously strong coffee? What the hell do I have to be upset about? The world just brought me breakfast in bed, and on the first day of a two month vacation, no less.

Looking back, the uneasiness I felt that first day back in the States was more than likely, my least favorite of all the literary devices, foreshadowing.

To be continued...

Goodbye Katsutadai (a documentation of daily life)

I was born and raised in New Jersey, but I grew up in Japan.

That makes me the lucky girl who now has two home towns. Katsutadai is just a typical suburb of Tokyo, in a prefecture called Chiba (which even Lonely Planet says has nothing going for it) but to me, it was the most exciting and exasperating place on earth, and then it became home.

I've already documented the major events that happened here: harrowing entries into cafes, visits from friends and family, and the endless exploration of that brightness to the East: Tokyo, but it's the daily routine where I made the most progress. I learned to navigate on the world's biggest subway system, to grocery shop without being able to read, to be alone without the constant companionship of my peeps, and to ask for help in another language when I hit a wall. The day to day grind is where I did my growing, so Katsutadai, this is my tribute to you, my Japanese home town, where I grew up.

The main drag in Katsutadai

The recycle shop

This rather ugly shop was the site of a major victory early in my year. It was my first week in Japan and I managed to find the recycle shop in a neighborhood of streets with no names, select about 8 pieces that would bring my apartment to fully furnished status, and arrange delivery and payment in Japanese using my phrasebook and what little language I had memorized in the few months before arriving. I bounced home with the stupidest grin on my face. It was the first time I thought, "I can do this." and believed it. There were lots more victories, large and small over the next year, but they say you never forget your first, and it's true.
Also, the recycle shop was my favorite place to hunt for wacky things that hold no explanation like the amazing platform traditional mens' sandals I found, shown below:

really should have bought those :(

Rice paddies

Japan makes a big deal of the seasons and of time passing, much more so than in the States, and my theory is that it has to do with rice paddies. I walked past one or another almost everyday, and the constant changes are a daily subtle reminder of time, seasons and renewal. It starts in early spring with big square ponds of shallow water, separated by raised dirt pathways. Then one day you see the rice seed being planted at even increments in rows, and for weeks you can still see the bootprints of the farmers under the water. The smallest of sprouts appear a week or two later, and throughout the late spring and early summer you are surrounded by geometrically decorated reflection pools, dotted with white cranes. The smallest sprouts become taller and thicker until sometime in July, you can't see the water anymore, and then you have the greenest of green fields, stretching out as far as you can see and rippling in the breeze like a sea anemone. The harvest comes in mid October and everyone talks about the "new rice", its quality, price, taste and how there was a harvest just like this one 7 years ago and for some reason that's lucky.

The dead of winter is made infinitely more dismal in Japan by the brown, dead, depression illustrated that is a rice paddy in January. It's such a relief to see the paddies being filled with water again, and makes you reflect on what you were up to last year when the whole cycle started.

My walking and studying park

Earthquake Park

Katsutadai was also the home base for work at MIL. I feel fortunate to have landed with a good school so easily. I was flying blind from the US, and have heard some horror stories from other teachers around Japan since then. I really liked working there, and I think they liked me. I ended up staying a little past my one year contract, and on the anniversary of my start date, the receptionist at Katsutadai told me that I had been a great employee: never late, paperwork always on time, good attitude. That was nice to hear, so I went to a sayonara party that night, drank too much and slept through my first class the very next day. That'll teach 'em to jinx me with compliments. I brought them a dozen donuts on my last day, I hope we're square ;)

Some of the staff at Katsu

Ayari, Kotone, Me, Ryo, Tacuma and Miku(not pictured but drawn on the board)

My high school class playing LIFE on my last day

My easiest adult class: Tomie, Miki, Toshi and Mitsuru

Then there are my Japanese parents, Mama and Papa to me and lots of others. They own a great little dive bar called Daruma with broken furniture, terrible lighting, great food, cheap drinks and an amazing cast of characters. They drove me home in the rain, made me eat new and disgusting things and then laughed at my expression, taught me a lot of Japanese and listed patiently while I butchered it, and insisted on meeting any boys that I went out on more than 2 dates with. If a drunk guy approached me at the bar, Papa would calmly stand next to me sharpening his knife and explain how he and my father were very close. Daruma was a gem, and Osaka won't be home until I find something comparable.

My Japanese Dad and Me

So Goodbye, Katsutadai. I promise to come visit yearly, as is the tradition, and in case you too long for the days of newness we shared together, I promise to do at least one of the following things while I'm there, so that you will recognize me with my new short haircut:
Walk into a cafe's glass door and then gracefully try to pry it open with my fingers;
Order a soysauce (shoyu) on the rocks instead of shochu;
Take the wrong bicycle directly in front of the police station;
Attempt to buy a plastic bento;
Ask politely for an English vagina at 7-11;
Try to pay bills at the combini that have already been paid;
Drop my cell phone in the koi pond;
and lots of other tricks you haven't even seen yet. Love, Gail