All in all, I must admit there are worse places to spend the night. The International Terminal at the San Francisco airport is quiet, practically empty. The night cleaning crew is here, making the rounds, and a flight to Singapore left around 1:00 am. Since then at least I have managed a couple hours of sleep.
We are camped at an unused gate, sprawled on the floor. Then again, all the gates feel unused right about now - we had our pick of floor to sleep on. I’ve never been in an airport so quiet, so deserted. If it weren’t for the fact that no one has tried to kick us out, I’d think the place was closed for the night!
And then a luggage cart will slink past out the window.
Someone is going somewhere.
Wherever they’re going, it is not Japan. The next flight to Japan is the one we will be on to Osaka at 11:30 tomorrow morning. Or is that today already? The next two flights to Tokyo leave shortly thereafter.
So much for trying to hop an earlier flight. We’re on the earlier flight!
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Great Expectations
Looking forward to leaving tomorrow, I wonder what to expect in Japan. Having lived in Tokyo, I suppose this post seems like cheating. However, even though I will be in the same country, this time is a whole different situation. A new city. A new island. A new husband. A new type of school. Whether or not I expect things to be the same as they were in Tokyo, I know life will be different.
I hope for a one-bedroom apartment with a decent kitchen. I expect a studio with one burner in the corner.
I hope for a perfect job. I expect to be daily challenged and sometimes have bad days.
I hope the grocery store is near the apartment. I expect to trudge there on my bike and ride back with a backpack full of cans and jars.
I hope to travel all over the country, seeing Kobe, Hiroshima, Himeji, Fukuoka. I expect I will be too busy with work, too tired to travel, and too broke to afford many trips.
I used to hope we would live close enough to work that I would be able to walk. Then I spoke with my boss and learned a bike comes with the job. For good reason. Now I just hope the roads between the two places are flat!
I expect to be overwhelmed by the Japanese and the unfamiliarity of the television once again. I expect to stumble over my words, desperately trying to remember the language I have forgotten. I expect to find stress living somewhere slightly familiar to me, but not to David. I expect to be thrown off balance by the differences between Tokyo (pop. 8 million) and Tokushima (pop. 200,000).
What to expect? Usually, I try not to expect anything, so as not to be disappointed. Realistically, of course, I always expect to be happy and for everything to go my way. Or unrealistically. Either way, life goes on, and I enjoy the adventure.
I will not be in expectation much longer.
The adventure begins.
I hope for a one-bedroom apartment with a decent kitchen. I expect a studio with one burner in the corner.
I hope for a perfect job. I expect to be daily challenged and sometimes have bad days.
I hope the grocery store is near the apartment. I expect to trudge there on my bike and ride back with a backpack full of cans and jars.
I hope to travel all over the country, seeing Kobe, Hiroshima, Himeji, Fukuoka. I expect I will be too busy with work, too tired to travel, and too broke to afford many trips.
I used to hope we would live close enough to work that I would be able to walk. Then I spoke with my boss and learned a bike comes with the job. For good reason. Now I just hope the roads between the two places are flat!
I expect to be overwhelmed by the Japanese and the unfamiliarity of the television once again. I expect to stumble over my words, desperately trying to remember the language I have forgotten. I expect to find stress living somewhere slightly familiar to me, but not to David. I expect to be thrown off balance by the differences between Tokyo (pop. 8 million) and Tokushima (pop. 200,000).
What to expect? Usually, I try not to expect anything, so as not to be disappointed. Realistically, of course, I always expect to be happy and for everything to go my way. Or unrealistically. Either way, life goes on, and I enjoy the adventure.
I will not be in expectation much longer.
The adventure begins.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Photos from packing
What we're taking -- our chopsticks, of course!
The mess in the attic I have to clean up. Or take with me to Japan...with that bigger suitcase ; )
Books! All going to the library book sale or to friends.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Throwing Away Memories
It is a relief to discover today is only Tuesday. I was afraid that yesterday was Tuesday, or perhaps Thursday. I guess if I were in an office staring at a computer all day praying for Friday, my attitude would be a little different. However, yesterday I stood, sat, knelt in a pile of my memories. My favorite books, my birthday cards, every letter sent to me by our German foreign exchange student in high school, several books of MadLibs, a present from my best friend, the program I bought when I saw Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, my elephant collection, my sumo newspaper clippings and books.
I sat in the middle of this timeline explosion, and nearly cried. My grandma’s nativity set. Too big to take to Japan, too old and broken to give to the thrift store. No one’s going to buy a nativity set where the wise men are missing hands, and the heads have been glued back on three times. Joseph is missing his staff. Or, is it a shepherd? Or, more likely, both of them. The angel sits skewed on her nail, and a two dimensional Jesus is the only one who hasn’t been chipped, safely painted into his manger. Into the garbage it goes, then.
All of my books. All except the Japanese language books I’ll need and two novels for the plane ride. I expect to obtain an e-reader in the near future, so I am not concerned with letting go of my H.G. Wells and Ursula LeGuin collections. They’re my favorite authors, but the books themselves mean little to me. However, the book Leanna gave me in high school I still have, complete with illustration she drew and has hung on my wall everywhere I have ever lived. The drawing can stay with me. The book is currently hidden under others going to the library in an attempt to make me forget it’s there.
Once I dreamed of having a home from which I travelled the world. I would go all over, see many things, and return to my bed and my pillows. My house would have photos on the walls and souvenirs of the places I visited. My dream home has morphed over the years, sometimes imagined as a large two story Victorian, sometimes a small apartment. Sometimes brick or stone, sometimes stucco or painted a pale yellow. But I had always figured I’d find a home base. It has finally occurred to me, after starting over three times in the U.S., that I don’t operate that way. I don’t go overseas to visit. I go overseas for a year. Or two. And this time, maybe for much longer.
I’m a nomadic, nostalgic packrat. I don’t keep things just to keep them. Each one has a story behind it. The Isabel Bloom statues given to me as a high school graduation present from my history teachers (yes, both of them each gave me one). The “warm fuzzy” given to me by a girl named Jodi when I learned that I would be leaving summer camp early because my grandma died. My college yearbooks; I helped make those. The walking stick with a bell on it, the one I bought on the road trip Kimberly and I made to Glacier National Park, the one which is supposed to keep away the bears. It must have worked, because we never saw a single bear the whole trip, and had to go to an animal sanctuary to find them! And all the rest of those souvenirs I brought back from my travels which would someday adorn my dream house. I can tell you a story about each piece of paper and each photo and each trinket.
Now, though, I have to condense my physical memories into two suitcases, a carry-on, and one green plastic tub of scrapbooks and travel journals, which I will be able to leave in the U.S. for now. It’s time to realize I cannot keep everything. Okay, it’s time to realize I cannot keep most things.
It was a relief to discover today is only Tuesday. I still have most of a week to transfer my physical memories into virtual memories in my head. I still have time to say good-bye. I still have time to buy a bigger suitcase.
I sat in the middle of this timeline explosion, and nearly cried. My grandma’s nativity set. Too big to take to Japan, too old and broken to give to the thrift store. No one’s going to buy a nativity set where the wise men are missing hands, and the heads have been glued back on three times. Joseph is missing his staff. Or, is it a shepherd? Or, more likely, both of them. The angel sits skewed on her nail, and a two dimensional Jesus is the only one who hasn’t been chipped, safely painted into his manger. Into the garbage it goes, then.
All of my books. All except the Japanese language books I’ll need and two novels for the plane ride. I expect to obtain an e-reader in the near future, so I am not concerned with letting go of my H.G. Wells and Ursula LeGuin collections. They’re my favorite authors, but the books themselves mean little to me. However, the book Leanna gave me in high school I still have, complete with illustration she drew and has hung on my wall everywhere I have ever lived. The drawing can stay with me. The book is currently hidden under others going to the library in an attempt to make me forget it’s there.
Once I dreamed of having a home from which I travelled the world. I would go all over, see many things, and return to my bed and my pillows. My house would have photos on the walls and souvenirs of the places I visited. My dream home has morphed over the years, sometimes imagined as a large two story Victorian, sometimes a small apartment. Sometimes brick or stone, sometimes stucco or painted a pale yellow. But I had always figured I’d find a home base. It has finally occurred to me, after starting over three times in the U.S., that I don’t operate that way. I don’t go overseas to visit. I go overseas for a year. Or two. And this time, maybe for much longer.
I’m a nomadic, nostalgic packrat. I don’t keep things just to keep them. Each one has a story behind it. The Isabel Bloom statues given to me as a high school graduation present from my history teachers (yes, both of them each gave me one). The “warm fuzzy” given to me by a girl named Jodi when I learned that I would be leaving summer camp early because my grandma died. My college yearbooks; I helped make those. The walking stick with a bell on it, the one I bought on the road trip Kimberly and I made to Glacier National Park, the one which is supposed to keep away the bears. It must have worked, because we never saw a single bear the whole trip, and had to go to an animal sanctuary to find them! And all the rest of those souvenirs I brought back from my travels which would someday adorn my dream house. I can tell you a story about each piece of paper and each photo and each trinket.
Now, though, I have to condense my physical memories into two suitcases, a carry-on, and one green plastic tub of scrapbooks and travel journals, which I will be able to leave in the U.S. for now. It’s time to realize I cannot keep everything. Okay, it’s time to realize I cannot keep most things.
It was a relief to discover today is only Tuesday. I still have most of a week to transfer my physical memories into virtual memories in my head. I still have time to say good-bye. I still have time to buy a bigger suitcase.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Long Awaited Light Show
I woke from a doze in the middle of North Dakota. The sky was overcast, to the point of being unable to see any stars. I was bummed. All across Minnesota and North Dakota, I’d been watching through the train’s giant windows for a sight of the Aurora Borealis, desperate for a glimpse of the eerie, floating colours I’ve never seen.
Two days earlier, huge sunstorms erupted with the promise of a major light show further south than the beautiful apparition normally appears. Knowing we’d be in North Dakota at the ETA of the sun’s effects, I became tremendously excited. Seeing the northern lights ranks high on my “I hope to see before I die” list.
Yet nothing happened. I kept myself awake on the train, through the city lights in Minnesota and Fargo, trying to keep my eyes open long enough to get out into the countryside where I’d have a shot to see something. I dozed on and off, I looked out the window at cloudy skies, and I despaired.
The train must have jolted, causing me to wake up. Looking out the window, I could see a couple stars. But then a crack appeared in the sky, as if someone took a knife and made a slice in the heavens. Light seeped out of the crack, spreading up in streaks, then flowing a little over the crack toward the ground. The smear of bright cloud in the sky didn’t blow away like a cloud would. It danced: growing, shrinking, jagged, smooth.
I held my breath, waiting for it to act like a normal cloud. It wasn’t green or blue or purple. The grey-white, maybe-if-I-squint-I-can-pretend-it’s-green lightness was not what I was expecting, either from clouds or from the Aurora Borealis. When the streak of light in the sky didn’t blow away, I let myself believe I was in the middle of a dream being fulfilled. The cloud-light danced for another minute, then faded back into the black sky.
I watched a spell longer, still unable to believe it was what I waited for so long; hardly able to grasp my good fortune, waking up at just the right moment, I paused to take a breath. Happy, content, enjoying a nudge from the divine.
Then I sat back in my train seat and fell asleep until the sun rose over the prairie.
Two days earlier, huge sunstorms erupted with the promise of a major light show further south than the beautiful apparition normally appears. Knowing we’d be in North Dakota at the ETA of the sun’s effects, I became tremendously excited. Seeing the northern lights ranks high on my “I hope to see before I die” list.
Yet nothing happened. I kept myself awake on the train, through the city lights in Minnesota and Fargo, trying to keep my eyes open long enough to get out into the countryside where I’d have a shot to see something. I dozed on and off, I looked out the window at cloudy skies, and I despaired.
The train must have jolted, causing me to wake up. Looking out the window, I could see a couple stars. But then a crack appeared in the sky, as if someone took a knife and made a slice in the heavens. Light seeped out of the crack, spreading up in streaks, then flowing a little over the crack toward the ground. The smear of bright cloud in the sky didn’t blow away like a cloud would. It danced: growing, shrinking, jagged, smooth.
I held my breath, waiting for it to act like a normal cloud. It wasn’t green or blue or purple. The grey-white, maybe-if-I-squint-I-can-pretend-it’s-green lightness was not what I was expecting, either from clouds or from the Aurora Borealis. When the streak of light in the sky didn’t blow away, I let myself believe I was in the middle of a dream being fulfilled. The cloud-light danced for another minute, then faded back into the black sky.
I watched a spell longer, still unable to believe it was what I waited for so long; hardly able to grasp my good fortune, waking up at just the right moment, I paused to take a breath. Happy, content, enjoying a nudge from the divine.
Then I sat back in my train seat and fell asleep until the sun rose over the prairie.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Where in the World?
Where in the world is Tokushima, Japan?
From the top of the map, the four main Japanese islands are:
Hokkiado (pink)
Honshu (multi-coloured)
Shikoku (violet)
Kyushu (grey)
On the eastern coast of the violet-coloured Shikoku is the prefecture of Tokushima. A prefecture is similar to a state in the U.S. We'll be living in the city of Tokushima which is the capital of the prefecture of Tokushima.
From Wikipedia.
From the top of the map, the four main Japanese islands are:
Hokkiado (pink)
Honshu (multi-coloured)
Shikoku (violet)
Kyushu (grey)
On the eastern coast of the violet-coloured Shikoku is the prefecture of Tokushima. A prefecture is similar to a state in the U.S. We'll be living in the city of Tokushima which is the capital of the prefecture of Tokushima.
From Wikipedia.
What Getting Married Means to Me, Part 2
Getting married means ... standing in line.
First at the Iowa DOT for a new license, then the passport agency, then for a new social security card.
Tuesday March 6: We arrived at the Federal Building at 12:40 for a 1:00 appointment to order a new passport for me to be able to travel with my new name. If being on time mattered, we would have been in trouble. We stood in the security metal detector line for 30 minutes before finally heading upstairs to face another line in the office. And a security guard who told David he wouldn’t be allowed in, since there was no room in the inn, so to speak. The place was, indeed, packed, but it meant David went downstairs to spend the bulk of his birthday waiting in the tiny canteen area.
I stood in line.
The line was fairly short, so I made it to the window in a short time, whereupon the clerk handed me a form to fill out and then bring back to her. Form duly filled out, I turned around and the line had grown by a factor of six. Other people at my stage of the game had jumped the queue and gone straight to the window. However there were now people in front of the passageway to the window - people waiting for others, and children and family members of people in line. The easiest way to the window was back in line.
Eighteen people later, I stood in front of the window again.
“Here’s your number. Have a seat and wait until it’s called.”
I sat. I waited.
The people ahead of me were being told to come back after 3:30 and pick up their passports. I listened to all kinds of wonderful travel stories, and about mission trips and a high school exchange student and many people who just received citizenship signing up for their U.S. passport for the first time.
Finally, though, it was my turn. I handed the clerk at Window 4 all of my documents and waited while she looked them over. “Did you come here from Iowa? Are you going back? When are you leaving Chicago?”
Those were a little funny, as they had nothing to do with my passport. I explained I was in Chicago just a couple days in order to get a new passport, then I would be on my way to Montana, flying to Japan from there.
She looked at the clock again. “The cutoff for today has passed. The earliest you could pick up your passport is tomorrow at 10:00.”
Not three people ahead of me had been able to pick up their new passports that day; I had just barely missed the deadline.
We were both exhausted by the time we got back to Vivian’s house. At least I remembered to buy an angel food cake, and we managed to sing Happy Birthday to David before he fell asleep.
First at the Iowa DOT for a new license, then the passport agency, then for a new social security card.
Tuesday March 6: We arrived at the Federal Building at 12:40 for a 1:00 appointment to order a new passport for me to be able to travel with my new name. If being on time mattered, we would have been in trouble. We stood in the security metal detector line for 30 minutes before finally heading upstairs to face another line in the office. And a security guard who told David he wouldn’t be allowed in, since there was no room in the inn, so to speak. The place was, indeed, packed, but it meant David went downstairs to spend the bulk of his birthday waiting in the tiny canteen area.
I stood in line.
The line was fairly short, so I made it to the window in a short time, whereupon the clerk handed me a form to fill out and then bring back to her. Form duly filled out, I turned around and the line had grown by a factor of six. Other people at my stage of the game had jumped the queue and gone straight to the window. However there were now people in front of the passageway to the window - people waiting for others, and children and family members of people in line. The easiest way to the window was back in line.
Eighteen people later, I stood in front of the window again.
“Here’s your number. Have a seat and wait until it’s called.”
I sat. I waited.
The people ahead of me were being told to come back after 3:30 and pick up their passports. I listened to all kinds of wonderful travel stories, and about mission trips and a high school exchange student and many people who just received citizenship signing up for their U.S. passport for the first time.
Finally, though, it was my turn. I handed the clerk at Window 4 all of my documents and waited while she looked them over. “Did you come here from Iowa? Are you going back? When are you leaving Chicago?”
Those were a little funny, as they had nothing to do with my passport. I explained I was in Chicago just a couple days in order to get a new passport, then I would be on my way to Montana, flying to Japan from there.
She looked at the clock again. “The cutoff for today has passed. The earliest you could pick up your passport is tomorrow at 10:00.”
Not three people ahead of me had been able to pick up their new passports that day; I had just barely missed the deadline.
We were both exhausted by the time we got back to Vivian’s house. At least I remembered to buy an angel food cake, and we managed to sing Happy Birthday to David before he fell asleep.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
The Work of Being Married
Getting married is more than getting a cool new last name. Now I have to remember all the places I have my name written down and change it in all those places. Not least of all, I have to remember to change it in my own head. It is a bit overwhelming, and I don’t even know where to begin.
No, that’s a lie. I guess I have an idea, because I went to the DMV in order to change the name on my drivers license today. I handed the clerk the requisite marriage certificate and old driver’s license.
Clerk: Have a seat and wait for your name to be called.
Me: Okay.
Clerk: Heather Green.
(Pause)
Me: Oh! Right!
Oops.
And that’s why we walked into the building in the first place. I can’t wait until we’re out and about and I begin ignoring people simply because I forget my own name.
No, that’s a lie. I guess I have an idea, because I went to the DMV in order to change the name on my drivers license today. I handed the clerk the requisite marriage certificate and old driver’s license.
Clerk: Have a seat and wait for your name to be called.
Me: Okay.
Clerk: Heather Green.
(Pause)
Me: Oh! Right!
Oops.
And that’s why we walked into the building in the first place. I can’t wait until we’re out and about and I begin ignoring people simply because I forget my own name.
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