Day 19: Lift-Off?

Today was the big day, the day to embark on our journey to London. Today was the to pierce the shroud of mystery and awe, to climb the holy mountain, to scale the walls of the techno-literati citadel. Today was the day Christmas break would truly begin, in true romantic Dickens-plus-modern-wonder style.

Today was the day…but today was the day we missed our bus.

It was my fault. Not completely, but mostly. It was certainly my fault that I left until this morning a few too many odds and ends to tie up, including failing to finish off my food and so making it into massive BLTs to take along. I tend to do that – leaving too many things until the last minute, I mean, although I do a fair share of massive BLT-making as well. Without fail, the final touches of any project take far longer than foreseen, at least for me, because I am that fatal combination of ambition, perfectionism, and optimism.

What wasn’t entirely my fault was that the Megabus ‘station’ (turning out to be an unmarked point on the side of the road) was waaay farther away than it looked like on Google Maps. We counted on fifteen, maybe thirty minutes to walk there from the uni. It ended up taking closer to an hour, and that was lugging our big bags, mine being an oversized carry-on with a bum wheel that would only degenerate over the duration of the trip – in several inches of snow. It was pretty yes, but the scenery didn’t do much to stop our hearts from sinking when we came to an intersection we figured to be about halfway and were faced with a massive hill.

At long last, and me starting to sweat under my ample clothing (including a newly purchased coat I was happy to find could double as an everyday winter coat and a snowboarding jacket, wasn’t too bulky, and came in my favourite colour), we arrive at the top of the hill only to find that we didn’t know which way to go. We’d expected to be at the bus stop by then, but after asking someone and walking on, actually had to walk fifteen more minutes down the road to a much larger intersection. It was at that intersection that we saw our Megabus pulling away. It had even been a few minutes late. It passed right in front of us.

Our slight worry turned to despair, even more so as we called and woke up a flatmate and got him to check the Megabus schedule online, only to find that there were no more buses that day. We began the long walk back.

Graciously, my fellow adventurer was still in good spirits, an attitude he continued to exhibit throughout the whole experience. I admire that. I have optimism, but the perfectionism can be pretty critical, especially when I know something is very much my fault. On the way back, knowing Bradford’s reputation and a story from our other flatmate that he’d heard what sounded like someone trying to break into the halls a few days previously, we joked about the chance of us getting back to find our rooms already burgled. Fortunately, these jokes did not materialise into a significant plot twist for this blog (sorry guys).

Also fortuitously, we were able to cancel our hostel reservations for that night, and purchase Megabus tickets for the next morning, same time. With nothing else to do, we crashed until that evening when we went out with some of the few students who were still in Bradford (well, I say that because that’s what it felt like, but what’s probably closer to the truth is that there were plenty of international students remaining, who might very well remain over the entire break, most of them being, for whatever reason, Chinese, but they kept to their own spaces so the campus felt deserted). I had a whiskey sour for the first time – nice. I had mulled wine for the first time – delicious. I finished some of the food I’d had nothing to do with.

Stark reality v. challenger’s spirit: one-nil.

Okay, I Missed You

I guess I didn’t truly realize until now how few people around me are actually ‘like’ me. By ‘like’ I mean people who had a least a few of the same experiences growing up as I did – TCK kinda stuff. I’m in the country I grew up in, yes, but nearly all my high school classmates, or any classmates, for that matter, are not here. They’re in America or elsewhere.

My circles, presently, consist of family, work, Hi-B.A., and church. Family is hardly a circle, but I included it because I realized it’s not actually a given. I was away from them last year and I will be next year. So I’m enjoying it now (that’s the proper thing to say). But it’s only my parents, and while I like them a lot, I don’t make myself vulnerable to them. That may sound like a weird way to say it. What I mean is that I talk a lot about what I’m passionate about, and they indulge me by listening, but I don’t share what I struggle with.

Work is teaching English at Gaba. My ‘clients’ range from university students to housewives to businessmen. The conversations are interesting, but it’s not about me, it’s about them – they’re paying to learn. I try to get as much as I can out of the conversations while still meeting their needs, and at the same time, I try to give them as much as possible without overstepping my bounds. It’s a good time, considering I’m getting paid for it. I wouldn’t call them friends. My coworkers are a hugely diverse lot, and quite different from me. Though I enjoy them immensely and share my experiences while listening to theirs, the connections are fairly light at this point. It’s limited to our interactions during mutual work hours, though that may change in the future.

Hi-B.A. is probably the closest company to where I came from (it is at the high school I graduated from, after all). But on the other hand, the students are all younger than me and the staff are all older.

I feel I need to add at this point, at least for my own relief, that I’m not complaining. Each of the circles I’m describing are basically how they should be. I’m not pointing out faults, I’m just explaining a need I realized I have and why it’s not being met at present. I hope you understand.

When I’m at Hi-B.A. I feel I have a purpose to accomplish, that is, the spiritual strengthening of the students who come. Not that that’s up to me, but I try to play a part. Not to say that I don’t merely enjoy their company as well. I do. But it’s a different company than my own friends.

And church is…unsatisfactory. It feels really old to me. Even though it has more young people than most Japanese churches, the young people feel old to me in the sense that they fit in to what has already been established and don’t seem to seek to change it. I’m not so much of a rebel (take that statement with a grain of salt), but I do want to see people being fulfilled in their identity rather than fitting themselves into someone else’s paradigm.

I want to go to a Japanese church because I want to be involved in the ministry instead of remaining within a foreign, Christian bubble (not to say that’s what certain people are doing). My place is in the field. But I don’t think that means sacrificing my worship, fellowship, and learning needs. There’s a medium, no, there’s a third option somewhere. I haven’t found it yet.

I don’t think it would be right for me to leave the church without at least proposing some changes. And that doesn’t sit well with me because I’m hardwired to run away from problems. But I will devote some thought to what I would like to see happen, keeping in mind that it’s not about me, it’s about God.

Those are my circles, and none of them identify with me particularly well.

This isn’t a self-pity party! I promise! You can say “Suck it up” if you want, honest. I say it to myself a lot. But now I’m trying to figure out how to remedy this slight issue. I think I need to for my own sanity, before it gets worse.

Probably the reason I’m think about this now, or that I realized this now, is that Christmas break is coming to a close for most uni students, during which a lot of my friends did come back to Japan. We hung out, and it was really good. But now they’re leaving.

I thought I was satisfied here, with my little self-made prosperous life-after-college-which-is-really-my-year-saving-up-to-go-to-college. But the past strikes again. I miss my friends, I miss people I can relate to.

I don’t like saying that I miss people, so keep this under wraps, okay? It could damage my image if it got out.

The way I see it, there are several things I could do to improve my situation.

• I could spend more time communicating digitally with friends overseas, staying in touch through means like Facebook, Skype, and, oh, that retro thing called e-mail. Skype is the best option, but also the hardest to arrange. I spend too much time on Facebook, but if I switched my activities from perusing (read: stalking) to messaging, it might approach the classification of ‘time well-spent’. Maybe. Digital communication still leaves a lot to be desired; I think I can do better than this.
• I could invest more in the relationships I have, particularly those at Hi-B.A. I’ve been feeling lately like I’m not putting enough of myself into that. I particularly would like to have one or more AGs (Accountability Group – you checked your knee-jerk reactions at the door, remember) in order to get to know some guys better and be mutually strengthened through fellowship. This might be what I’m looking for, and I need to pursue it harder.
• The last thing I can think of is to develop my friendships with my classmates remaining in Japan. I’ve been trying to meet up with one of them for a while, and I’ve seen a few others in the past few months, but for the most part I’ve dropped out of contact with them because I didn’t talk with them much even during the school year. I would like that to change, and since I am an awkward sort of fellow, it might be difficult at first, but I think I will try to initiate something. I need more justification to mock returning students’ feeble attempts at ‘reunions’, at any rate.

That’s my plan of action to deal with this lack of connection that seems to have festered under the radar since last summer. My theme for 2010 is discipline, and I think that maintaining good communications with people who matter to me is a big part of that, both for me and for them.

Or I could just be spouting off of an emotional outpouring brought on by recent events. In any case, I apologize for not taking the time to proofread this entry before posting it.

Comment.

-Brad