Of Rice and Zen

You'd like to lie to your male readership and assure them that they'll understand the appeal of marriage once they've done it. You'd like to tell them it's man's natural state. You'd like to tell they won't freak out more than a little. You'd like to not mention that no sooner are you married than you find hidden caches of wild oats you never knew you had.

This being Japan, you're not sure of much. In this case you're not sure exactly when the "big day" is. Unlike England where you sign the register in the church, here you sign round after round of forms at home then take them to the town hall. After a few months of saving money most Japanese couples have a "ceremony" at a wedding complex that includes a fake church chapel and a reception hall in the same centre.

You are planning to have a "ceremony" in Heian Jingu in September. It's a world famous shrine that appeared in Lost in Translation, and as such is very cool. But as that has no significance beyond ritual, you're really not sure if it counts as the big day, or simply a big day. You guess that the moment you handed the most recent batch of forms to a bored looking bureaucrat manning a window in a gloomy building BEHIND Omihachiman town hall might have been the most decisive moment you could point to. It was magic and everything you had been dreaming about since you were a 12 year old girl.

The sakura is in full bloom across Shiga and Kyoto so Mod and Harry decide to have a barbecue in the environs of Hikkone Castle. You arrive at 2pm and the sun is shining brightly. It is the best day of the year so far. There is a large group of people with a good spread of Japanese and foreign. You're so well diversified you could be a Gap ad. You breath in the fresh air and spread your arms to catch the bright beams, reminding yourself that soon June will come, bringing the humidity with it. The gruelling pressure cooker summer will last for months on months without respite. Now, only in this brief window of spring is life truly comfortable. The cherry blossom doesn't last long.

A few of the boys kick around Mod's Australian football and within minutes you have hit two cars and two children. The nearest Japanese girl to you, Linton's girlfriend Yuka, receives an earful from an angry yakuza type who has been sitting in that car all day, seemingly waiting for this moment. The boys run away like naughty children and leave her to take the flack. It's a shameful, DG start to the day. You play a hybrid of cricket and baseball and the locals get involved. You get big smiles from nearby groups of Japanese students. You have to remind yourself that not only is your girlfriend here today, but she's also not your girlfriend anymore. You're not a big fan of restraint.




You start the barbecue and talk to friends, Japanese and Western, who you haven't caught up with in a while. You hear that American actor turned English teacher in Japan, Todd, got as far as Hikkone station with a girl in tow. In what appears to have been a great shame, or perhaps a lucky escape for everyone she had a bout of the crazies at the station, burst into tears and went home again. You hear that Nabil's ad business in Osaka is still doing well and his marriage to model girlfriend Holly is on the cards. He's another one that always comes up smelling of roses.

You hear that Trinidadian Harry's visa's coming to an end and he has to go home in a matter of days. Like Mod, he's the closest thing you have to a brother and you can't imagine not having him here. You hope he'll hurry back. Mod, meanwhile, will stay in Japan and tend their fledgling student-teacher matchmaking company and move to Osaka with his girlfriend. Shiga is becoming a ghost town and you frequently think about the more dynamic and exciting turns your life could've taken. You're not a big fan of inertia and routine.

You hear that Shigenori was kind enough to act as Harry's guarantor. He's been called up by the Leopalace apartment chain because Harry's neighbours are complaining. It seems Harry and Mod drink, listen to music and watch movies until the wee hours every night. Not being able to sleep is not a crime. Having a beer and watching 300 is not exactly deviant behaviour if you do it in an English home. Leopalace apartments, on the other hand, are giant rabbit warrens with paper walls that are therefore unfit for human habitation.

It's impossible to do anything in Leopalace apartments without your neighbours hearing. Your Japanese neighbours are defensive and on the lookout for signs that gaijin are less considerate than Japanese. With every bang on the wall, the situation escalates. You appreciate Shigenori helping out your friends. He also helped them translate for their business webpage. You wonder what Shigenori gets out of hanging out with you all, aside from embarrassment and headaches. You're really grateful to him for looking out for your boys.

Technorati Tags: aeon, ALT, baka gaijin, chain school, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, Gacha gacha, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, Japan, Japanese, JET, Kansai, Kyoto, memoirs of a gaijin, monkeybridge, nihon, Nova, nova closure, Nova teachers, Nova teachers not paid, photoblog, photographs, photos, podcast, sahashi, sahashi nozomu, shiga, teach english, teach in japan, teacher, teaching, teaching English, temple, Yamashina, zen

You walk into the Hyatt lobby and find the entire space covered in whittled wood panelling. It's like the guy who made the tables in Thai Elephant restaurants went a bit overboard and covered every wall and ceiling in his handiwork. Lighting has been embedded behind all of the panelling. You walk up a spiral staircase to the entrance of the restaurant and are greeted with celing high racks of wine. Good wine is in short supply in Japan, so this second floor wine cellar equates to a vulgar display of power. Look upon my works, ye mighty and despair.

For some reason the hotel's attempts to impress are making you a little nervous. You know you're planning to propose to S over dinner, but you can't decide at what point in the meal. Should you wait til the coffee and risk anticipation exhaustion and up the potential for bottling out?

You order the most expensive champagne on the menu and glance outside at the man-made bamboo grove. It's uplit and sways gently in the breeze. It reminds you of Samurai Champloo. You realise again you are not even close to mature enough for the big M. Then you remind yourself once more that you never will be.



Across the street you can see Kyoto Museum. You instantly, involuntarily recall the time you were new in Japan and walked this far alone and lost. You asked a woman on a street corner where the nearest subway station was and she gently teased you about how completely lost you were. It suddenly occurs to you that it was only two years ago. Two short years. To a reader of your blog, whose life hasn't been turned upside in the last two years, it may seem very strange that you are committing to this girl. To this country.

Tell yourself again there are challenges whatever path you choose. These are the challenges you are choosing. You reach into your bag and take out a journal. The cover doubles as a storage file in which you have collected receipts and ticket stubs from dates and holidays with S. You ask her to open and read it. Inside is a month by month view of the coming year and pencilled in to every one of them are fun, romantic and interesting things for the two of you to do together. In Japan. In England. Birthdays. National holidays. Christmas. A thousand date ideas with more to be filled in as she goes. And above all stickers. Lots of bright, shiny stickers.

You've seen how much a pink bunny can affect the Nova bottom line. You've seen how Japanese girls react to your recent vector illustrations. You've heard the weekly chorus of coos when a new Starbucks cup design is unleashed. Japanese girls appreciate good design and the cuter the better. The book is covered in the kind of cute and colourful stickers that Japanese girls plaster over everything from Purikura to school bags to keitai to laptops. The eye-candy has the desired affect and sends S into paroxysms of excitement about the coming year.



You ask her to read today's entry. It says you're gonna propose to her. She gasps and puts the book down. On the table in front of her is a gacha gacha egg. These plastic eggs are "won" from little vending machines and usually contain a Dragonball/Mario/Naruto "keitai strap" or key ring. In this girlier version is a pearl ring fashioned from plastic for young girls, with a leaflet describing the other cheap plastic rings in the series should little Mariko feel the urge to collect the whole set. They start training them young here.

S pops open the egg and unfastens the drawstring on the little pink bag within. Inside she finds a diamond ring.

Technorati Tags: aeon, ALT, baka gaijin, chain school, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, Gacha gacha, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, Japan, Japanese, JET, Kansai, Kyoto, memoirs of a gaijin, monkeybridge, nihon, Nova, nova closure, Nova teachers, Nova teachers not paid, photoblog, photographs, photos, podcast, sahashi, sahashi nozomu, shiga, teach english, teach in japan, teacher, teaching, teaching English, temple, Yamashina, zen

You're holding the pen for your new Wacom graphics tablet staring at Illustrator on your Macbook when you suddenly freeze like a cop movie grass who has just been sniped from the adjacent building. The pen drops from your hand when you realise what today is. You've been spending too much time at home studying design and Japanese and you realise that you haven't been meeting up with friends and discussing what an important day this is.

You don't know how to put this but... today is kind of a big deal. People know it. It's very important. It has many leather bound books and its apartment smells of rich mahogany.

Being Japanese white day it's usually just the day when you return the chocolate that was given to you by the ladies in your life on Valentine's Day. This year it's a little different. You've been talking about marriage for a while and tonight is the night you had pegged for the proposal. Take the missus to Kyoto restaurant. Order some champagne. Pretend nothing's amiss. Pop the question in a completely original and brilliant way. Take a mental photograph of a moment in your life you only ever want to do once.



That's a pretty large thing. It is bulky. It has girth. That deserves a starbux meeting surely? A chat. A final reflection. A toast. For some reason you didn't share this decision with anyone. You've switched to hermit mode sometime in the last week or so.

Perhaps throwing yourself into work has helped, because you've spoken about tonight to almost no-one. You suspect she knows what you're thinking but you haven't confirmed it. You've been kidding yourself that you can take this in your stride. That this is just a small part of life's rich tapestry, etc. But it's really not.

This is a commitment to living in Japan. A commitment to becoming fluent in the language. Holding down a real job. Paying into the doomed pension system. Bilingual kids. Little League. Dealing with institutional racism that most people around you won't recognise as racism. What starts as a simple relationship between you and a girl quickly turns into a sizing up a society and trying to find your role in it. You aren't just committing to a girl. You're committing to changing your life beyond all recognition forever.

The problem is not with the decision. The decision is clearly the right one. The problem is with the scale of the decision. You've been insistently acting as a child and keeping your life free of all responsibility. To be accountable to no-one forever sounded pretty damn fun. This is as much as you've ever committed to anything and it makes your pulse race and your chest beat like a taiko drum on festival day.

You decide to have a shower, put on your suit and concentrate on not fucking up one thing at a time. We'll start with tonight.