2005年06月13日
Tadaima!
"Tadaima!" is what the Japanese say when they return home, either from a long trip, or from a long day at the office. I felt like saying "I'm home" after both of my trans-Pacific flights in the last two weeks. It's interesting, having a foot in each of two very different worlds, and not being entirely at home in either.
I arrived in Boston Wednesday evening, and after a short detour to purchase a medium cup of coffee - which ended up about three times the size I was expecting! - I went straight to the evening LEM service. LEM, for the curious, is the Lutheran-Episcopal Ministry at MIT, and the first church I've ever attended where I felt like I was a full member in every sense that matters.
This was the first of many homecomings for me during my trip to Boston. LEM was the place where I finally came back to the church, after a long period of straying in the darkness, and despite a nearly year-long absence, joining the service felt like curling up in a favorite overstuffed armchair: comforting and familiar and safe, after a hectic and confusing journey.
Then Mike took me to his apartment where I spent the night. Even though it was his home, not mine, it definitely felt like a homecoming, especially if you believe the saying that home is where the heart is. . .
My parents arrived Thursday, and set up temporary headquarters in the BestWestern near Andrew, which would become my "home" for the duration of their visit. It was good to see my family, and even though there were a few angry shouting matches, it was a good visit.
Friday, I graduated.
You can barely tell that it is me in that photo, but Mike assures me it is. There is not much to say about it. . . I suppose I would have had more emotion about the whole thing had I managed to finish my AUP in time to walk at Commencement in 2004, but having been in the real world for the last eight months, it felt like a giant farce for me to be there.
Saturday, while my parents and sister visited with one of her high school friends in Harvard, I went to the ET alum barbecue, saw my old home, and finally felt some measure of closure after all of the pain I've felt since last summer. I buried the hatchet with SMD, and enjoyed dinner with my pledge siblings later that week. I'm done grieving over ET, and can look back on my time there with happiness now.
I saw my parents off to Ohio on Monday morning, and spent the rest of the week catching up with various friends, having a long and fruitful discussion with my pastor, and hanging out with Mike.
After a much too short visit, in which I did not have nearly as much time as I would have liked for either friends or my beloved, I departed for Japan, which is also my home, more so than Boston is, as my work, my house, my church community, and much much more is here and not there. I had been seriously considering staying in Japan past the end of my current contract, either looking for other technical work, or taking one of the many teaching positions available to English speakers. After all, I have created a life for myself here and was quite content with it until my trip to Boston reminded me of all the things I missed about home.
I'm not sure what my conclusions about all this thinking about home has done for me. I've always known that I will always live with the strange sense of feeling at home yet simultaneously being homesick: it is the unavoidable consequence of life as the child of a perpetual wanderer, being caught up in the wake of my father's restlessness. This is a feeling that I am used to, but it is squeezing my heart harder than usual this week.
Posted by kikoubun at 18:33 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
2005年05月31日
One more for the jaded file
At some point during my college experience, which I can't really pinpoint precisely, I completely lost any sense of awe I had at traveling by airplane. Crisscrossing the continent at least twice a year cured me of any sense that flying was something special, only done on very special occassions.
The first time I remember flying internationally was in 2000, when we went to Asia for my cousin's wedding. I remember a huge sense of awe at the idea of flying to another hemisphere, compounded by my parents' anxiety over the trip.
The first time I flew overseas alone was in 2003 when I went to Osaka. I was so very very excited and nervous and jittery about going through customs and immigration by myself, dealing with getting a visa, navigating a foreign airport.
Somewhere along the line, flying to, quite literally, the opposite side of the world lost its power to awe me. It's just another modern convenience, and while I still will occasionally pause to look out over the wings and marvel at the ingenuity that went into designing a modern jet aircraft, or the delicious beauty of how simple things like air and fire combine to lift several hundred tons of steel and flesh miles into the sky, the ends to this means are commonplace. I can leave Tokyo and be in Boston by the end of the day, and I've stopped marvelling at this.
The more time I spend with my computers and robots, the less I am able to be wowed by modern technology. Even legitimately impressive projects, like G's new humanoid bot downstairs, elicit that same feeling of "Yeah, I knew it had to happen someday." Perhaps I am assimilating into the local culture: while walking back to the subway from dance Sunday afternoon, I stopped and viewed a turtle in a pond in the Gosho for over an hour, but yesterday barely gave the new robots a cursory glance before returning to my data analysis.
Posted by kikoubun at 16:10 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
2005年05月28日
Falafel, Dancing, Graduating
Before I write another word, I'd like a moment of silence for Falafel King, the best restaurant in all of Nara-ken. Tonight I heard from the owner, Takashi, who has become quite a good friend of mine, that he is closing shop.
Continue reading "Falafel, Dancing, Graduating"
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2005年05月13日
There is no God except God
. . .and his representative on earth is George W. Bush.
The Boy pointed out to me recently that in Waynesville, North Carolina, Democratic voters are not welcome in the house of God. I mean, sure, Jesus said to render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's, but I'm quite confident that nowhere in Scripture is it written that "Even against conscience and good sense, thou must follow worldly authority."
For every issue on which Kerry's position did not line up with conservative Christianity (abortion, for certain, gay marriage, though that is arguable, and I don't feel like getting into a rant on Federalism) there are at least equal numbers I can come up with that Bush has gotten wrong. Very, gravely wrong. The death penalty, to start with. No one who truly values either the quality or the sanctity of human life can justify the death penalty, either in concept or in its abysmally broken practice in the US. Republican attitude towards the poor is another one, as is the senseless slaughter in Iraq. I could go on about Bush's failings in office, but I won't, because other bloggers have done it better than I could.
What I can't wrap my head around is why, given all the evidence that the Republican machine is, at best, amoral, and at worst, deliberately evil, do good, honest people continue to insist that the Republican party is the party of values and morals? Or that in order to be a good Christian, one must vote for willfully refusing to protect innocent civilians in a country we invaded, "religious" FDA officials who anally rape their wives, politicians who are surrounded by the stench of cheating, even if nothing can be proven, the party that wants to eliminate judicial review, and God only knows what else.
Don't get me wrong. The Dems (and the Greens and the Damn Pinko Bastards (TM) and all the rest) have gotten plenty of things wrong as well. I'm never going to find a political party I agree with 100%, and I suspect that most thinking people are in the same boat as me. Voting is, by necessity, a choosing of the lesser of many evils (and thank God that the world to come will not be governed by majority vote!) and to say that someone can no longer be considered a Christian because they came to a different conclusion than you is the worst kind of hubris I've seen in a long time.
Posted by kikoubun at 18:07 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
2005年05月01日
Dance, books, pictures of knitting
Wow, it's been ages since I have updated this blog. I'm not sure where to start. There's work stuff, and social stuff, and Church stuff, and book log stuff. And in my head stuff, but I daresay that's not interesting to anyone but me, so I will refrain.
The big thing, the really big thing, is that I am forcing myself to get over a lot of my phobias. I've joined the stage crew for a performance of Medea, despite my desperate fear that anyone cool enough to be involved in theater of any sort is too cool for me. I'm not going to let fear rule my life anymore, so I've joined this studio/exhibition space in Kyoto. I'm taking bellydance and classical Indian dance, being on the crew for Medea, and having a fun time doing all the things I've always been afraid of. I'm terribly uncoordinated, and the worst in my dance class, but . . .gambarimashou! I hope I'll get better with more practice. Perhaps one day I'll be confident enough that I'd be willing to dance outside of class. It's exciting and scary at the same time, so wish me luck!
Continue reading "Dance, books, pictures of knitting"
Posted by kikoubun at 18:35 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
2005年02月25日
Master Knitting course
Still waiting for the Knitting Guild to send me my Level 1 pack. (Sounds almost like I'm playing in a very bad RP, don't it?) In the meanwhile, I've found a bunch of bloggers also working on the master knitting program. If my dear Aunt Mary had had a knitting blog during WWII, I doubt she would have sent off nearly as many socks :)
Continue reading "Master Knitting course"
Posted by kikoubun at 17:59 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
2005年02月17日
Rooster
I finally opened the box of Red Rose tea I brought from the US. It
took me so long because red rose tea is kinda crappy, and I had good
tea to drink instead. Well, still do, but my teapot is buried under
mounds and mounds of clean but drip-drying dishes, and I didn't feel
like fetching it out, and Red Rose comes in bags.
Anyway, I rip open the plastic, pull out a teabag, and a little
ceramic rooster falls out. Rooster! This is a good sign, as the new
year is the Year of the Rooster according to the chinese zodiac. Now I
have rooster kitsch for my kitchen just like every other household in
Japan.
Anyway, if you guys are going to send me birthday presents (shameless
fishing, I know, I outta be ashamed) go to the store and buy a box of
Red Rose tea. It's a buck fifty. Make southern iced tea (so much sugar
and lemon you can't taste the tea) or milk tea (so much sugar and milk
you can't taste the tea) or just toss the bags - that's about all
they're good for. But save the ceramic creature inside and SEND IT TO
ME!
I know, it's a stupid thing to get excited about, but see, back when I
was a wee ickle thing my parents drank lots of Red Rose tea and always
gave me the ceramic figurines. I had a ginormously huge collection of
gray-brown animals in my room in the old house in Michigan. They got
lost somehow when we moved to the new house (in Michigan, which I
haven't lived in now for over fifteen years). Anyway, I love the
things, as ugly and tacky as they are.
Posted by kikoubun at 20:26 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
2005年02月16日
Goodbye is hard to say
Back at work, after going home for a long lunch. Said good-bye to the boy. He needs to be on a train out of Takanohara in about an hour and a half in order to make his flight.
I feel like I'm a terrible girlfriend for not seeing him off at the airport, but I can't afford to take another whole day off work. I also feel terrible for having dissolved into a soggy drippy mess more times than I can count in the last two days, if for no other reason than that it unfairly guilt trips the Boy for heading back home.
In LJ land I belong to a couple of long-distance relationship communities, and a while back someone posed the question: Which would you rather have? Short frequent visits (say, a weekend every other week), medium length medium frequency visits (a week every month or two), or long infrequent visits (a month or more, every year).
At the time, I said I'd rather have long visits, but now, after experiencing two short visits over the New Year's holidays and this long visit, I think I prefer short and sweet. When you only have four or five days with your beloved, you can't really afford the luxury of spending two or three of them impersonating an open faucet.
Amidst all this wallowing in self-pity, I do realize I am one enormously lucky girl. He flew all the way around the world for me, which I still have a hard time fully believing. He crossed the globe. To see me. He's coming back after PyCon for an even longer visit. It doesn't quite make sense, but there it is.
Tonight I take the shinkansen to Tokyo, because I don't want to sleep alone in the bed I've shared with him for the last month. Hooray for JR passes and friends who are willing to offer crash space on zero notice.
Posted by kikoubun at 13:06 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
2005年02月15日
Hello
Welcome to my new journal, now that I've finally had time to set it up. I've named it Kikoubun, the japanese word for travel diary. Though I am quite literally and geographically far from anywhere I would call home right now, I see life as a journey, and myself as a simple wanderer, even when I am "home," so the name seems appropriate somehow.Posted by kikoubun at 07:15 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)