One Year to the Day

As cliché as it may be for me to say so, I can't believe a year has already gone by. Certainly, the distance between me and that salmon-colored concrete schoolhouse surrounded by rice paddies seems vaster than ever before, but a year? It hardly seems possible that my ongoings, since leaving my job and my life in Japan, have been plentiful enough to fill 365 full days. The facts--that I took a trip to Vancouver, Canada, watched both my sisters get married, spent two months in Europe, worked a month at UPS and am now nearly a month into a new job--seem negligible. Years are supposed to feel grander, more substantial, than what has passed between this day and the day I stood up in front of a swelteringly hot gym full of 200-some students and their teachers, all of whom had contributed so significantly to my experiences and perceptions of their country, and choked out a goodbye speech in a language I have since all but lost. Referring to what has passed between now and then as a year seems ridiculous. If years can slip away so quick and easily, then what use have I for them?

I wanted to do something special--commemorative--to mark this day. I thought about making Japanese food for dinner, maybe driving up to Kearney Mesa and visiting some of the Japanese retailers in town. Watching a Japanese film was also taken under consideration. But I realize that any of these activities, even if I were to invite my parents to participate, would be imbued with a tinge of loneliness and remorse. It is more than an ocean that divides me from the country that, when I left, was just beginning to feel familiar. Japan and I are separated by a full year of experiences. We have both changed a lot in that year. I feel particularly estranged from the pain that that country has suffered in the aftermath of March's natural disasters, and know that my separation from these events has rendered me more of an outsider--more of a gaijin--than ever before. In this sense, a "year" seems hardly sufficient to describe the span of what has elapsed between me and my life in Japan.