Mushy
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There was a big reception after the first full day of orientation, and I ran into an Olaf classmate—Gretta something. This story is testimony to my smoothness with the ladies. This beautiful blonde walks up to me and says, “I know you…” She looked very vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why I knew her or what her name was. On a side note, the best relationship I’ve ever had with a girl started out this way, ironically. I replied, “good for you.” Anyway, it turned out that she was friends with one some of my closer friends at Olaf. And as my luck with women goes, she was just getting out of the JET program. Every good-looking woman I’m interested in has the habit of leaving the country I’m currently in. For the record, women have gone to the following locations to avoid me: Guatemala, England, Mexico, Australia, Spain, Ireland, Bangladesh, Alaska (it’s practically a country), and now I proudly add to the list, my own home country, the good ol’ US of A. Hey, you may be laughing, but it takes some very strong feelings to leave the country in order to get away from someone, and I am the proud perpetrator of those emotions. I love Japan.

I’ve concluded that Tokyo orientation could have functionally been replaced by a morphine shot or an equivalent tranquilizing drug. By that I mean that no real valuable information was given, but it was mostly to calm the nerves of people that have never taught before, or never traveled to Japan before. As a teacher of some experience, I know that no matter what you learn in a classroom, especially a two-day classroom, there are only two things that can make you a good teacher: strength of character and experience. Of course, there was the formality of the ministries and other parts of the government that support or are involved with JET welcoming the participants. I’d explain the details behind the government support, but it would involve a complex diagram and some SAT level words, so just imagine the complexity. I love Japan.

Throughout orientation, I was in a daze. I slept between 2 and four hours-a-night, on top of dealing with 14-hour Jet lag. I need every short-term memory cell I have, and this health deficiency didn’t help. When I speak to people, I often begin sentences without an end in sight, which fuels my sense of humor. You see, I’ll let you in on a secret about my personality. Most people are funny because they have a creative and intelligent comment to share. I am funny by chance—I wade into a sentence like a kid into a pool and just see where it goes. Most of the time: nothing. But once in a while, someone laughs, so when I say something funny, I don’t know it beforehand, and I don’t know why people are laughing, although a lot of the time they’re laughing at me, not with me. Under the conditions of JET lag, this posed a significant problem for my social skills, and instead of finding witty ways out of my rambling, I just trailed off or just didn’t make any sense. So I felt that I had to explain to people that I was usually an interesting person, but my personality was currently in the repair shop. I came up with all sorts of cheesy lines like that—you know, the ones that aren’t funny enough to make you laugh, but not dumb enough to make you groan, so you just stare at the person blink. Among other things, I popularized a pun for dismissing oneself from a meal: “Well, I’m goona jet.” To pull it off, you have to point at the person you’re addressing with both hands, smile and raise your eyebrows. I won’t end my paragraphs with “I love Japan” anymore. I promise. Even I was getting annoyed with that.

Now comes the mushy part. And as I write that, I know all you guys are thinking, “oh, he meets a hot girl,” and all the girls out there are thinking, “oh, he meets a hot girl,” and my mom is thinking, “oh, he misses me,” but sorry, I’m not that exciting. Maybe I’ll lie about that later. Being at Tokyo orientation was actually very disorienting. I don’t consider myself a naturally social person, and I was trying to give a good impression to some of the English-speaking people I’d be spending the next year or more with in a strange land, so I was pretty drained. When it came to bedtime, I really was looking forward to finally beating JET lag (pun intended) with a solid ten hours of sleep. I was very, very tired and dizzy, but sleep would not come. I just lied awake on my bed, constantly changing positions. I’m one of those people that will keep moving until I’m perfectly comfortable, making even the slightest adjustments, but I couldn’t do it. I felt very strange. Not lonely or sad, but insecure—like I forgot to pack something. I’d left a lot of things behind me, and brought only two suitcases with me to Japan. Meeting so many people without anyone you really know around makes it easy to lose track of who you are. I found myself acting different personalities as the situation required, and that really drained me.

Coming back from the bathroom, I stopped at the window. I could see Tokyo from the 16th floor of the Tokyo Reio Plaza Hotel, a spectacular clutter of buildings, lights and more lights, which is a very alien and imposing sight, but also very beautiful. Since I first saw a certain girl, at a certain time and a certain place, not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her, as every cliche romance novel begins, and I thought of her then. Not for any particular reason, I guess, I just did, like I do every day, and that’s what makes this different from those cliche romance novels. They always have some over-thought-out reason for a guy remembering a girl, like, “the moon reminded him of the way she slipped her shoes on” or “the swirl in the peanut butter made him remember the cute creases in her smile." No, in my life I have remembered her many times, but not for any reason at all that I can tell. I might be walking to my car, folding my laundry, or doing my taxes and I think of her. And that’s all this was. Buildings, lights and her. I went back to bed. And one of my roommates snored. And one of my roommates tossed and turned. And then I slept. I love Japan.