2002-08-14 - 11:39 a.m.
note: i wrote 2 entries today, so click on previous to read it.
I'll be leaving Japan tomorrow, and I don't want to leave you all hanging, so here is my attempt at a final entry.
A Japanese phrase that I found annoying at first but have since come to appreciate is "otsukaresama deshita." Depending on context, it can mean anything from "thanks for what you've done" to "great work today," to "wow, that was really difficult, I really appreciate all the effort you put into that." "Otsukaresama deshita" is commonly said by a worker leaving the office at the end of the day to her co-workers, who all reply with a chorus of "otsukaresama deshita!" It's also what the salesperson says to me after I try on clothes at The Gap; it's what the bike parking lot attendents said to me when I returned from a day of work to pick up my bike from the station; it's a polite thing to say to taxi drivers when you reach your destination. Most of the time this phrase seems unecessary, but there are times when it's really nice to hear someone thank you for your effort. When I think about returning to America after my year in Japan, it seems to me that the most appropriate welcome back would be a line of Japanese people waiting for me at the gate who bow and say "otsukaresama deshita" when I get off the plane.
As I prepare to return the land of Flinstones-era cell phones and shoes-inside-the-house, it's bewildering to think back on where I was just a year ago. Not since I was a baby have I undergone such a rapid period of growth -- speaking my first words, making sense of social customs, pushing buttons I can't read just to see what they will do. The experience of being illiterate, of being categorized as a foreigner, of being thrown into new situations without even language to navigate my way -- experiencing all of these on a daily basis -- has been exhausting, but I'm sure ultimately beneficial. I now know that I naievely underestimated how hard it would be to live in Japan, but halfway through my time here I also had no sense of how easy my last few months would feel, having finally gotten the hang of things. I can attribute my happiness in the last few months to two things: learning a bit of Japanese and chilling out. There came a point where my daily bungles and misunderstandings were so predictable that they weren't worth getting worked up over.
I no longer feel like I'm living on a foreign planet, but I suspect once I'm back in America, Japan will seem a lot like Mars.
"I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."
-- Jhumpa Lahiri
from "The Third and Final Continent" in _Interpreter_of_Maladies_
