So What Do You Say You Do Here?

The Midwest & Japan, The Mid-Aughts

I was tragically uncool in my younger years because of a self-imposed Tom Brady-esque sleep schedule. I loved sleep. I loved going to bed at a reasonable hour. I loved waking up when my body had enough sleep. I loved traveling, and I hated changing time zones.

A few months after graduation, I found myself in a harsh new time zone, my conscience knocking between awake and sleep. Is it day or night? Which day or night is it?

How did I end up in this new time zone? Because I like to do things, wherever they are. I'm portable.

A few months ago, I was a grumpy college grad with few job prospects. 

I had followed what the adults had told me to do. I went to a college I could afford and not the best one I was accepted into. 

I stayed away from the ayce ice cream in the Commons and late night pizza, so I didn't gain the Freshman 15. 

I didn't join a Sorority.

I was told it didn't matter what I got a degree in because the only thing that mattered was that I had a degree. I took that one too seriously. I started as a music major, switched to undeclared, and then graduated with three useless degrees after +200 course credits. 

I was summa cum laude. (One B+ in a Poly Sci class is still a burr in my saddle).

No one bothered to pull me aside to tell me nepotism, the right last name, or having "a network" would take a student farther than almost any academic achievement or compilation of degrees. I was too much of an introvert to observe these things in the wild. 

Instead, I learned this the hard way when I started looking for jobs. Unsurprising to everyone except me, no one was recruiting philosophers, art historians, creative writers, or archaeologists, and everyone was seeking new hires with internship experience in marketing or finance. 

I wasn't too concerned. I was able to retain my student campus job through the summer, and I would figure something out. I was low maintenance, so it didn't cost me much to survive ($600/mo. in 2004 dollars, which included rent, utilities, and car insurance). 

The college house lease ended in June, and my roommates and I were packing up and moving out, doing our best to preserve the balance of our security deposit. 

I was sitting on my bedroom’s gray industrial strength fire retardant carpet wrapping tchotchkes in newspaper when my future revealed itself.

Back then, trips to Madison were common and picking up a free copy of The Onion, a satirical Midwestern newspaper, was de rigueur. I had a stack of them that I was using to wrap my thrift store treasures, which would be shuttled to my parents' basement until I had a better plan than "Graduate. Work. Not Live with Parents." sorted out. 

I may or may not be proud of this, but my future was determined by an ad in "America's finest news source." I had unfolded a fresh newspaper page when a "Teach in Japan" ad snatched my attention. That's all it said, "Teach in Japan," with a website address. It looked sufficiently sketchy, and considering the source, it probably was. I've had worse ideas, though. *shrugs*

I cut out the ad and shoved it in my pocket. I didn't have a computer and neither did my roommates, so this would have to wait. 

Later that day I made my way across campus to the basement computer lab. I searched for my future. The website looked legitimate by 2004 standards. Someone had used spell check, and all the links worked. There were no viewer counts. It didn't have a black background with slime colored font. It wasn't obviously designed by a webmaster living in their mom's basement. 

It did, however, explain the Japanese visa requirements to become an English Instructor and where I should send my resume. I've had worse ideas. *shrugs*

I popped in my thumb drive and uploaded my resume, full of degrees and zero experience. I wrote a cover letter about how I'm good at English (see degrees) and confirmed I would LOVE teaching all ages and abilities. If they had any questions, I would be happy to discuss...

I could tell you about the interview process, but it was unremarkable. They asked questions and I answered them. I must not have come off as a weirdo and only quirky, as they called a few days later with a job offer and instructions to await further instructions from the San Francisco office. 

San Francisco would be arranging my visa. It would come in anywhere between three and nine months. There would be a short window in which to actually get myself into Japan once the visa was issued. This was my warning to not plan anything too far out like concerts or weddings or other travel. It also meant I would be working a smattering of temp jobs to limp me into regular, full time employment as an English Instructor. 

I during this three-to-nine-month hiatus, I was a back-up receptionist for a wastewater treatment plant, ran a cheese packaging machine in a factory, scanned paper bills of lading and entered them into a software system, and processed DVD club membership sign-ups (10 DVDs for $1!). 

It was a brutal February day when FedEx delivered my passport complete with Japanese visa. I called San Francisco to let them know they were successful. They told me they were going to book me a flight for the next week and a work packet would be overnighted. (It was still the early 2000s and email could not accommodate an attachment that contained a packet's worth of material). 

I felt a little like an assassin, waiting for my next assignment in the mail, followed by a series of separately mailed boarding passes. It would take me four flights to get from The Midwest to Narita International Airport. Some San Franciscan booked me on the scenic route. Asshole. Four flights was not assassin-like. 

According to the packet, someone would collect me in Narita and take me to my new apartment. I would have the weekend to adjust, and on Monday morning, I would report for training. 

This is where you find me now. A suburb of a suburb of Tokyo. It's probably Saturday. I lost track of the day somewhere in my 36th hour of travel across 14 or so time zones. 

My guide met me as promised at Narita, blurry eyed and bad breathed (me) sometime around 1 a.m. Because it was 1 a.m., the trains had stopped running for the night. We took a combination of night buses, taxis, and alleys to my new apartment. 

I can't remember much about my guide other than he was British-Japanese, raised in London. He said he learned Japanese from his mother, but couldn't read kanji. When we got lost on our way to my apartment, we had to wait for someone to cross our path (at 2? 3? a.m.) in which to ask directions because, like me, he couldn't read signs. 

As an aside, when someone tells you to fly into Narita to get to Tokyo, tell that individual to fuck off. They are not your friend. Narita is about three hours by (the cheapest) commuter train to Tokyo if you live anywhere outside of the city center. It is not close. It is not close-ish. It is not nearby. It is not even what I'd call adjacent. It is another three fucking hours after four very long flights. 

But I didn't even get that three-hour non-luxury train. It took me +five hours of fumbling in the dark with my suitcase on that bus-taxi-alley trip. 

All the while, my brain kept trying to force an automatic reset. My recollection of the trip from Narita to my apartment is neon signs interspersed with my guide jabbing me to get out of the said bus/taxi. A casual observer might have seen a conspicuously foreign girl struggling with consciousness and tipping onto a Japanese guy who may have been her boyfriend/pimp/roofier/kind stranger. 

The guide finally found my apartment after some double-backs and loop de loops. 

Hold on, was that a fucking Denny's sign? Am I hallucinating?

I sleep-drunk stumbled across the threshold with my suitcase. One of my new roommates appeared and pointed to my room. She waived in the direction of the bathroom and retreated behind sliding doors. 

I looked at the guide. He had nothing more for me. He wished me a good year and left. I never saw him again. 

I took five steps to the bedroom and switched on the light. Scanning into the room, realized I didn't know how to sleep in Japan. There was a pile of bedding in the closet and no bed frame. I used my best judgment to unfold and unroll the bedding and piled it on the floor. It was more nest-like than what I was going for, but I didn't care. My brain was shoving my body into sleep. 

In my last act of brain defiance, I weaved into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I had no idea if the water here was potable. I had never heard it wasn't, so I went for it. Dysentery is a tomorrow problem.

I pin balled in and out of sleep the next day. 

My new roommate knocked on my door sometime in the evening to make sure I was ok. She was right to be concerned; I was out for 17-ish hours.

She offered to take me to a 100 yen store after I got cleaned up. (Ouch, but message received.) I didn't know what a 100 yen store was, but yes, I wanted to go. After she waited an uncomfortably long time for me to figure out the talking toilet and what I will affectionately call a bathing system, I was ready to be led to the store. 

I walked out the front door and laughed at the Denny's sign across the street.