An American's Dream

My grandmother once described Japan to me as a land so fantastical, so divorced from reality, that it is something more akin to a dreamworld.

While I do not wholly agree with her assessment, my experience moving to Japan has been so surreal that it almost seems like a dream. Of course, in stories where the characters are dreaming, like Alice in Wonderland or the Chronicles of Narnia, (or Inception for a modern reference) there are points where they have to blink a number of times to make sure that the world they fell into is actually real. The first time I blinked, I hardly saw the world at all, I landed at the Tokyo airport in Narita and was, within fifteen minutes, on a plane bound for Beijing. The second time I got caught in my dream for about two weeks, touring all the major cities of Japan.

My new job in Japan is to teach English to high school students in a small city called Tahara. In order to reach Tahara, I took a fourteen hour flight from Washington DC to the Narita airport in Tokyo, the site of my first glimpse. I then flew from Tokyo to Nagoya, the capitol of Aichi prefecture. To the far south, along the pacific coast, is the city of Tahara. For the trip I had a fairly low key goal, do not embarrass myself.

I am dismayed to admit that achieving this goal was an abject failure. Moving anywhere is hard enough, moving to a new country in nothing but suitcases is nearly impossible. Imagine trying to condense your entire life into a suitcase. How many would you need? As it turns out, I needed four. I might have been able to do it in three were there not weight requirements for my bag at the airport.

The second I touched down in Tokyo I had to go through customs and pick up my bags on the opposite side. Hauling the bags through customs and then rechecking them seems like it would have not been much of a problem - if you have long arms and Herculean strength. As it turns out, I had neither and my transporting of the bags was a sweaty, straining ordeal. By the time I arrived in the Toyoko Inn in Nagoya, I was drenched in sweat, so much so that I could not help but drip it onto the counter as I was checking in.

Not exactly the material dreams are made of.

As a result, I now have a clearer vision of just how insane this whole concept really is. I left my friends, family, country and home behind to move to a place where I do not speak the language and I could not even handle moving my own bags. But that was the pinch to let me know that this is not a dream, that I have actually found myself in a Narnian existence. I am now on my third glimpse of Japan and this time I do not intend for it to be just a fleeting glance.