Daily Life

In Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Augustus McRae tells a disconsolate Lorena, sobbing because she wants to escape from an empty Texas town for California, that “life in San Francisco is still just life.” And life in Japan, even though it’s 7,000 miles away from everything I’ve ever known, is still, when I think about it, just life. I do here what I would do anywhere. Of course there are millions of little differences, from driving on the other side of the road to not finding Dial hand soap in the grocery store, but my life in Asia is still mine, and I don’t change myself, regardless of location.

When I first moved to Winston-Salem from Tennessee in 2002, I would cry when washing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom, because they were routines I had associated with my life in Littleton. When I moved back to Greensboro from Kernersville in 2009, the same thing happened to me; and now that I’ve moved once more, I find myself missing my house on Kensington Road with an ache every time I open the refrigerator or turn on the gas stove (How I miss that stove! Six quick-burning flames and Rachel’s expensive cookware!). Every change I experience makes me miss the one before it, until I get so used to it that it becomes the routine I miss when I go somewhere else. Surely when I leave next summer, I will find myself flailing in whatever other place I end up in, longing for my futon on the floor and the breeze rolling in through open windows . . .

This feeling of “I-could-be-anywhere” first hit me on the trip to Mt. Fuji, listening to M.I.A. sing “Paper Planes” like I was back in North Carolina with Jon and Jonathan on the way to Roxboro, when we listened to that song 10 times in a row. Since then, I feel almost surprised when I step outside and see that I am not just anywhere, but here. Two nights ago, on the drive back from Shibukawa, a town 11 kilometers from my house where I had gone to eat ramen with a group of friends, I was surprised at the sense of familiarity that I felt. Me, my car, my iPod playing my music, the 2-lane road that reminds me of 158-E going to the beach—it all seemed the same, even though it isn’t.

Yesterday was Saturday, my first Saturday alone in my apartment, and I spent it just like I would if I were living on Brown Stone Court, Mayflower Avenue, or Kensington Road: cleaning. Usually I play movies while I clean, so I can have something to listen to; yesterday, I chose Lonesome Dove (hence the reference earlier) out of the five movies I brought with me to Japan, and I got through almost half of the six-hour epic before giving up for the day. (I can’t wait until I have internet in my house and can stream YouTube videos! Or maybe I need to bite the bullet and get a Japanese television and DVD player so I can watch movies here. . . unfortunately Hulu and nbc.com don’t work in Japan.)

I did laundry (referring to my Japanese-English cheat sheet on the wall to remind me of what all the buttons mean), hung up my clothes outside on the balcony to dry (no dryer), and straightened up. I cleaned out all the cabinets and rearranged the kitchen, throwing out my predecessors’ scratched-up Teflon pots and pans and making a list of replaceables. I organized the tiny kitchen the way I want it to be: food, glasses and plates on the shelf, cleaning supplies under the sink, utensils in the drawer. I swept—albeit with a plastic-bristled broom—the kitchen floor, vacuumed the rug covering the hardwood floor in the living room, and cleaned the tatami mat in the bedroom. Everywhere I live, I’m never finished cleaning.

Tomorrow, Monday, starts the real routine. Classes start after summer break, and I will be at work from 8:00-4:30 every day. On September 6^th, I start weekly Japanese classes at the local community center, and I’m also going to start doing yoga once a week either at Brain Yoga or NSM Yoga, the only two yoga studios I’ve found so far. My three girlfriends and I are continuing our weekly dinners as well.

I’m also excited because I bought a couch—a real couch!—that will be delivered on September 9. I stay on the floor almost all the time here, and I am ready to be more than a couple inches off of it. The couch is cozy and comfortable, soft, beige, and three-cushioned, which will go under my window in the living room, where I can prop up and read all night long by the light of the moon if I want to.

I’ve been reading more than usual recently: I finished the last 100 pages of The House of the Spirits (in Spanish, of course!) in a day, and I devoured three Ray Bradbury books in two. Now I’m halfway through A Little Princess, a book I’ve been meaning to read for years, and A Beautiful Mind, even though I never saw the movie. Great Expectations and Kent Haruf’s Plainsong also await me. There is a small library at the international center at City Hall, where I can check out free books for up to three months! I’ve also been watching True Blood like a fiend, and wonder how I’m going to get Season Three after I finish Season Two . . .

It’s been about a month since I’ve been living in Japan, and things are starting to settle down some. In a way, this experience is just like moving to any new city for the first time: trying to meet people (I even got the girl’s number who sold me the couch because she speaks English!), learning my way around the city (so far I know Hwy. 25 and Hwy. 17 in a confusing sprawl of streets with no names), and finding out what there is to do besides go home at 8:30 every night. Even though living here is vaguely reminiscent of living anywhere else, what with the garbage removal and the grocery shopping and the figuring out how to say “Fill ‘er up” in Japanese to the gas station attendant, I have high hopes for this next year. I wonder what I will write at the end of September, at the end of October, at the end of May.

I hope to write more soon.