Post Placement....

So, now it's almost a month since I said goodbye to my beloved "206 Amenity Tsukuda" (My apartment) my work colleagues, and some good friends. The last 3 weeks have given me plenty of time to think over my experiences here, and face new challenges as they have come up.

Saying goodbye to work was surprisingly difficult, and at times tearful. The most difficult goodbyes were the ones that involved saying goodbye to people you had watched grow (in the case of the nursery) or decline (in the case of the intensive care home). A paticular tug on the heartstrings was the small children at the nursery innocently saying "Bye bye David-sensei" expecting that they'd seem me the next week, when in reality they probably won't ever see me again. Ignorance is bliss I suppose. I found it impossible to keep myself from blubbing in front of everyone at that point, despite the blow to my masculinity. Another sad point in the last week was the death of a resident at Nishio Roken, and also the sad onset of Alzheimers in one of my favourite residents which meant she no longer recognised me, or anyone else for that matter.

Despite this sad news, I look back with mainly good memories of work, and I tend not to feel too sad now... The most important thing is, not that I have left, but that I came in the first place. Although I have a role to play in these people's lives no longer, I can temper this sadness by knowing that the work I did really did make a difference. Whether I'll be remembered in the long term is not important.

Since leaving 206 I've been staying in a variety of places, other peoples houses, net cafe's, hotels, trains, people's floors etc etc. I've combined several homestay's with trips here and there. I am finding myself once again totally dependent on the kindness of strangers, which is a humbling experience after 6 months independence.

One of the weirdest things about homestaying was being reintroduced to the family unit, something I thought I would find difficult, but in actual fact it was quite easy to reintegrate into a family atmosphere. It was a good feeling, to know that there would be someone there for me to cook breakfast in the morning or to help me with any troubles I had (sometimes very enthusiastically!) Of course, I have had the fantastic support of my family the whole time I have been in Japan, of which I am very grateful for. But it's easy to forget what it's like to have the personal day t0 day interaction with other people, having to moderate your behaviour etc. At first I thought I would dislike having my freedom slightly curtailed, but in reality I have felt a sense of satisfaction from cooperating with my host and contributing to the positive atmosphere that these homes emit. Whether I would continue to feel like this in the long term is a question I would be unable to answer.

These homestays have helped me gain a really interesting insight into Japanese family life, and contrary to my initial beliefs, I have seen quite a different picture with every family I have stayed with. I stayed with three families, one was a retired couple, another was a very traditional rural Japanese family, with four generations living in the same house, the final one was a kind of weird combination of the first to types of family. A universal trait of all 3 families was very strong family links. In Japan it is considered normal for a child to live with their parents until they get married, (which probably explains the surprisingly low marriage age in Japan) even if the "child" is in their 30's. While at home this is chronically embarrasing, in Japan it arouses mild curiosity as to why the person in question is not married. This seems to be less common in major urban populations however.

It does however provide a very interesting explanation for some unusual Japanese insitutions, such as "Love Hotels" . My only visit to a love hotel came by accident when I got the last train into a major city at 1 am in the morning, exhausted and with nowhere to sleep (I had not intended to end up in that city). I asked many people on the street about the locations of any hotels or net cafes, and I was told that my best chances were with a Love Hotel, as all the regular hotels would be fully booked and very expensive. "Love Hotels" As the name suggests, are hotels that exist purely for sex. They are completely indiscreet on the outside, easy to spot with enormous amounts of neon and garish pink plastic yet completely discreet on the inside, no interaction with staff, everything is done through computer panels . You can't reserve a room. you show up in the heat of the moment and chose either "rest" (a few hours) or "stay" (24 hours) To most foreign observers, this probably sounds extremely shady. But in reality, love hotels are simply fufilling a need in society. When you have a girlfriend, but you live at home with your parents, and bedridden grandparents, do you really want to be sneaking around trying to express your emotions physically to your partner? It's not restricted to young couples either, older married couples whose homes (which are often tiny) are crammed full of grandchildren, scarcely have the privacy to perfom marital duties, and will commonly take a few hours every now and again to visit a love hotel. Many Japanese are flabbergasted when I tell them that Love Hotels are a very Japanese phenomenon and we don't really have them in the UK (sure, we have shady motels instead!!!!)

Anyway getting back to Japanese family units, (that was way off track wasn't it?) Strong family interaction was common in all families, but varied in strength from family to family. Most interesting was the strongly traditional family. Their home was very old, but had been extended many times throughout it's hundred year history. In this family was the Great-grandparents aged in their 80's, living in one section of the house, the "grandparents" aged in their 50's who were the main breadwinners, despite the house techinically belonging to their parents!, the three "children" all in their late 20's, one of whom who was married and had a son of his own (aged 4) but who still lived in another section of the house. With each passing generation, another part of the house had been added to accomodate them, (but only after they were married) I am even now, not sure what I think of this system.

It appears to be the ideal care system for a family, the old and the young living in harmony and caring for each other, in short, the needs of the individual are sacrificed for the benefit of the greater group (the family). This seems like a really great idea, but I couldn't help but feel that some of the younger members of the family, felt like they HAD to stay with their family, and get married and have children, continuing to contribute to the system. As a very independently minded person, I internally found this a bit upsetting as many of the younger people would never go out and do things that they might otherwise do.

It is another of those issues where I think I feel differently because of my upbringing, and despite it feeling slightly "wrong" to me, it's not my place to pass judgement on other nation's cultures. Society here just works, I get the feeling that trying to "correct" these "injustices" might just have entirely the wrong effect. It's probably to do with the fact that human beings are selfish creatures at heart anyway. In the UK many of us are brought up to be independent without even realising it, but independent people are more likely to do "independent" things like start entrepreneurial business, travel, or alternatively beat the crap out of other people. Group minded people are less likely to do un-groupy things, and such creates something of a "harmony". Collective harmony is not always individual harmony.

As well as homestaying, I took a final opportunity while the whether remained cold in early March, to go skiing. Once again at the generosity of Dr Takahama. It was my first time skiing on actual snow (I have only ever done dry skiing in the UK) and I'm not sure whether I took more out of the mountain than the mountain took out of me, especially after some particularly spectacular accidents coming down the slope, including one very amusing one, when I found myself sliding backwards down a slope towards a very high cliff edge, a worried Dr T just waving and yelling "Fall down!!! JUST FALL DOWN FACE FORWARD!!!", falling down face forward causes the skiis to detach from your feet, thus stopping my perilous slide towards oblivion. But the adrenaline rush was absolutely incredible, and by the end the day I had improved.

Another thing I have done most recently was a great trip to the northern most island of Japan, Hokkaido. Hokkaido is famous for having fantastic food, warm people, and a bloody freezing climate. Instead of taking the expensive option of flying, we decided to head North only using regional JR lines. The advantage of this is we travelled over 1500km (over 7 days) for about £50, another advantage was that we stopped at many cities along the way, and we were really able to appreciate the gradual shift in architecture, climate, and people as we went northwards. The disadvantage was that we spent about three days of the seven just sat on trains (when I add up all the train journeys) In this time I was able to observe some very interesting Japanese train ettiquette.

Japanese Trains 101:

1. All Japanese people will either read or sleep or play with their phones on trains, they rarely just sit there.
2. The Japanese that sleep, have some kind of intrinsic ability to wake up approximately 30 seconds before their intended desitnation
3. Every train on regional lines looks exactly the same, they even have the same adverts in the same places on the train.
4. The conductor always looks incredibly cheerful, even though his job must be one of the most mind numbingly boring jobs on the planet.
5. Getting on late night trains is like walking into a pub that is full of locals. You get the feeling that you are "not supposed to be there" Especially as they are filled with the same business men, who have been taking the same late night train, with the same people on the same day for over 20 years, and are shocked that you have entered their world.
6. The trains run to the second, they are never late. (except during typhoons, check the september archives for that story)
7. The "women only carriage" (a carriage that only women are allowed to use, to decrease incidents of groping) always attracts an unhealthy concentration of slightly frightening men near the doors on either side.
8. You may have the luxury of using a squat toilet. These things are difficult enough to use when standing still. How any human being is able to "aim" succesfully while aboard a swaying and shaking moving train is completely beyond me.

So with that amusing note, I think I'll end it here, I'll be sure to post up a few pictures tomorrow, and hopefully I will get time to make a video (probably the last one for a while). Right now I need to concentrate on the fine details of my parents visit in a short two weeks, and after that, it's on to Thailand to what will be one hell of an adventure.

Take care! :)