Almost Famous

This evening held the first really depressing moment I've had in Japan. I think the ecstacy that is the first stage of culture shock is starting to wear off. I had plans to go to a little get-together, but it was cancelled, and for the second time in a week I found myself facing another evening alone with minimal notice and a tub full of potato salad made for the occasion. [Now it sounds kind of hilarious, but the thought of trying to give away a tub full of potato salad in Japan, even broken down into smaller containers, is really quite daunting. In a society where favors are avoided because being indebted to someone is a burden, no one was going to be happy if I tried to foist my potato salad off onto them. To have it happen twice in a week was completely deflating. Aside from having lost an evening engagement and possibly stimulating conversation, I'd gained the problem of finding even more devious ways to deaccession more potato salad].

So I headed for the beach. On my bike, to try to work off some of the disappointment and to drink in more of Tsushima's beauty on the way. A small crab that skittered across the sidewalk cheered me a little. Muida was deserted save for one Japanese man toting a large camera, his wife patiently waiting in their car that was still running. He didn't linger long, and then the beach was mine. I sat and looked at the rock in the surf with a gnarled evergreen tree scraping for purchase on top, the piece of scenery that makes the beach 'the third-most famous in Japan.' It looked so lonely.

Dispirited and thinking that I couldn't bear to eat alone when I'd been looking forward to a little adult commaderie all week (playing with children all day is lovely but I need something deeper occasionaly), I decided to go out to a little yaki-tori place where the owners were friendly and the conversation lively. Unfortunately, I got the wrong hole-in-the-wall-- there are two yaki-tori places side-by-side that look very similar-- and what I assume was a husband-and-wife team barely glanced at me, keeping their gaze fixed either on the food they were preparing or on the television set. I ate as quickly as possible and got the heck out of dodge.

Earlier, I'd heard that there was going to be a bingo night at a shrine before the festival tomorrow-- which I will miss due to scuba-diving plans -- and decided that I would even take the companionship of barely-understandable obaachans over going home after my sad meal. Heading over to the shrine, I was surprised to see lots of lanterns and a ton of kids. It turned out that there was a pre-festival festival going on, with a few food booths (fewer than last year, a few people lamented to me, because there is a larger festival going on at a shrine in Izuhara this weekend), mochi-making, and an assortment of performances from students at the local schools in addition to bingo.

Almost everywhere I looked, there were small children waving at me, calling, "Kimberly-sensei! Kimberly-sensei!" My loneliness dissipated instantly. Parents came over to say hello, dragged by their children or themselves dragging their shy kids over. I ran into my favorite school nurse who spent almost an entire day chatting with me a few weeks ago when I had very little to do, and I watched her daughter play the flute in the school band concert. I was cheered even more to see a girl playing the tuba in their small ensemble, recalling my own high school tuba days, and nearly laughed hysterically when the band got up and played YMCA marching-band style with choreographed movements. I also met the woman who runs the ESL school in Hitakatsu and will probably be volunteering there sometimes on free Saturdays.

After the band was done and dancing-- traditional and non-- began, I was dragged over to try my hand at mochi-making. Gathered around a raised bowl with a large wooden hammer-like instrument, I pounded cooked rice with two men into mochi, or rice-dough. The three of us took turns with our hammers, pounding in a synchronized effort-- 1, 2, 3! (I was #3). It didn't take that long to finish-- maybe 5 minutes-- and then they whisked off the pounded dough and whisked back a container with three balls of it covered in light brown kinako, or soybean flour. Delicious. Of course, the whole town saw me pounding mochi, and I'm sure to hear about it for days if not weeks. It was fun and worth it, though.

I've found that my status as Resident Gaijin (foreigner) grants certain priviledges that are like being famous but fall short in some areas. At big events like the festival, people will come up to me or children will wave hello. The more adventurous ones will even say, "Hello!" Sometimes in the grocery store the same thing happens and, in general, everyone is very friendly. There is a darker side, though. For instance, when I was at the grocery store last week a woman looked into my small shopping basket, saw the ridiculously-priced fresh plums and dates, and asked me if I knew how expensive they were in a tone that suggested that either I was foolish to be buying such things or getting paid way too much to afford such extravagance. I tried to explain that I'd never had a fresh date before, and Japanese plums looked very different from American ones and I wanted to taste the difference. She didn't look convinced. I doubt that Drew Barrymore ever has that problem.

It may surprise my family to know that they, too, are becoming quasi-famous. Using family pictures to round out my self-introduction in the classroom, I'm always amused at what the students say. According to the kids, my father is very handsome and rugged--probably because the particular picture I'm using of him is atop Mt. Chase and he's looking as one does after conquering a mountain. My aunt and uncle's house is ~enormous~ and looks both very American/New England-y and also like an apartment building. My mother definetely looks like a teacher. In general, the kids think that my cat Min is cuter than Max, but Max has a cooler name. (The boys particularly like Max. I think the letter "x" has some inherent coolness to them. In Max's defence, she is sleeping in the particular picture I'm showing off, so her gorgeous head is turned away... but Min got a chorus of "KAWAIIIIIII~~~~," or "CUUUUTE" at one of my schools... the kids were so loud that it disrupted the classes nearby and other teachers later asked me what on earth I had done to get such a response).

... nearly every person I talk to for more than 30 seconds asks me how I'm adjusting to Tsushima. I always tell them, "slowly, slowly." It's not so much Tsushima as adjusting to how people see me, I think. I can drive fairly comfortably and buy food and generally figure out maps; I can survive. But I'm still surprised whenever a kid comes up to me on the street and says, "Kimberly-sensei!" ... I don't feel like a teacher yet. I still just feel like a foreigner who is out of place and looks it, and I'm not sure that is ever going to go away. I'm clearly so much more out of place here in the country than I was in Kyoto; even though I always slightly resented being thought a tourist, I was hardly ever singled out.

... that being said, I'm still having fun, enjoy working with the kids, and in my own way am adjusting to the possibility of never really adjusting. It's not exactly what I thought it would be like, but precious little is, and it's much more of an adventure this way.

And, really, at this point in my life, I want adventures. If I can't make an adventure out of it, I don't want to write about it, and if I can't write about at least one thing in the course of the week, then life has gotten too boring.