On the third of July, as the Boeing 777 I was sitting on
rotated off the tarmac at Heathrow airport, I suddenly remembered something one
of my friends had said to me. Sitting in a pub in Aberdeen two months previously, I had been telling him about how I had been accepted to work as an Assistant Language Teacher on the JET Programme, and that I would shortly be moving to the south of Japan to teach English to school students. He said “that’s brave”. We then got very drunk, and I forgot
all about that conversation. Having remembered that discussion just as the
plane was taking off, I had an eleven hour, one way flight to Narita AP to
contemplate what I was doing, where I was going and why it was “brave”. As one
of my new JET colleagues pointed out, I had committed myself to living and
working in a country that I had never visited before, whose language I couldn't
speak, whose culture I had only really experienced through stereotypes and
various popular arts, and to doing a job that we had very little information about
and in which I had little or no practical experience. I suppose that is pretty
“brave”, if not outright stupid.
So, I guess that alone is reason enough for the existence of
this blog. Basically everything here is new and profoundly interesting for one
reason or another. I am surrounded by things that fascinate, amuse, startle,
confound, infuriate and upset me - often in equal measure – on a daily basis. Both for posterity and the sake of others, I feel like I have a responsibility to record them. But, I think it's important to bear in mind that Japan, the Japanese language, and Japanese culture and
traditions are famously impenetrable to foreigners (particularly those from the
West), and I don’t want this blog to be read as an attempt to deconstruct and
explain what life in Japan is really
like. Partly, that’s because such an exercise would be largely self-defeating; even
if I did truly succeed in "understanding" and integrating myself into Japanese
society then I would no longer have a reason (and likely, the motivation) to
write about what it’s like. It is also partly to do with the fact that not all
of the major changes in my life that have prompted me to write this blog are to
do with my now living in Japan. For example, this is the first time I have
lived outside of the UK for any extended period of time, and I would probably
be writing about my experiences regardless of which new country I was in. Moreover,
I have newly begun a job where I will be working as a high school teacher, an
experience that I’m sure will - in and of itself - provide more than enough
material to write about.
So really, I’m going to try and simply keep a record of my
life whilst I am in Japan, the contents of which may or may not be uniquely or
explicitly Japanese in nature. I’m a very keen amateur photographer (or at
least, a very keen terrible photographer), so I will try to balance out the
massive blocks of prose with as many photographs as possible. In an effort to
keep some semblance of structure and frequency, I’m also going to try and post
a series of recurring, themed pieces (most likely on mad things my students say
and weird things I've found). I’m learning Japanese at the moment, and although I’m
a long, hard struggle away from being anywhere near conversationally
proficient, I will eventually try to duplicate as much of this blog as possible
in Japanese, in case it might also be of some interest to Japanese nationals.
One thing that - at least
for the moment – I’m not particularly interested in discussing are my reasons
for leaving the UK (or for being in Japan). If I do start with that personal
motivation stuff I’m likely to descend into my usual pseudo-intellectual, ranty nonsense, and I’d rather not go there (as much as I’m
sure that most people would rather not read it). Furthermore, at the moment I’m
trying really hard to avoid the negative aspects of culture shock
(homesickness), and one way of doing that (though slightly callous) is to simply
not think about home too much. So enough of that crap.
I will say this though: the months leading up to my departure
were very weird, particularly after I received the final confirmation from the
JET Programme that I would indeed be moving to Japan. I don’t want to write too
much about the application, interview and selection process for the JET Programme
in the UK as loads of people have already written about it in far greater
detail than I have (or can). Instead, I think it will suffice to say that the application
process to be a NASA astronaut can’t be too much longer or more complicated than that of the JET Programme. When it became apparent that I was definitely going to Japan, I felt really strange. Not as nervous as I thought I would be, and maybe not as excited as I
hoped I would be. Rather, I felt very detached and distant. Various commitments
(such as my job and my friends) all of a sudden seemed rather meaningless and
took a back seat to otherwise meaningless activities (such as buying stationary
and underwear, and cancelling my Graze account). Unusual and unique experiences
such as travelling to London to learn Japanese and attending cocktail parties
at Japanese embassies started to feel far more real and tangible than the
utterly mundane and expected events of day-to-day life. It's also worth noting that even right up to the date of my departure, I had received really very little information about my placement. In retrospect, now knowing what to look for, I think that I might have been experiencing some kind of premature
culture shock. Which is pretty cool, in a mad kind of way.
Now, I’m going to try and keep my posts relatively short, which
is something that I’m generally pretty bad at. So for the moment, I’ll end here
having explained what the purpose of this blog is, and how I intend to write
it. In the next few posts, I'll write about my initial experiences in Japan and my new hometown, Kagoshima city. Then we'll get to the good stuff, like talking vending machines and active volcanoes. Until then.
So, my name is Roddy Macfarlane. I’m 23 years old, I come
from Scotland and I live in Kagoshima in Japan. Pleased to meet you x
ロッヂマクフーレンとうもうします。にじゅうさんさいです。ソコットランドからきました。にほんでかごしまいすんでいろ。どぞうよろしくおねがいしますｘ
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| Next stop, Japan... |
