Wednesday, October 22--Musings on Adventure

For the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about the single folks in Jim’s office who have come overseas, especially those on their first tour. It must be intimidating to leave all that is familiar, and go to a new country, where you don’t know a soul, don’t speak the language, and don’t have a clue where to find anything. Nevertheless, it’s a remarkable opportunity for people in their early twenties to explore the world before they have a family to worry about. I admire their independent spirits, their sense of adventure, and their willingness to confront the unknown singlehandedly. I remember those days, even though I personally didn’t get past the dreaming of adventure stage when I was in my twenties. Only $4000 stood between me and a two-week vacation on a Montana ranch. I was a single phone call away from signing up for a one-year contract as a catch-monitoring biologist onboard Alaskan deep sea fishing boats. I ended up postponing my adventures till later.

The biggest benefit to waiting to embark on my adventures is that now I have someone to share them with. Not that I wouldn’t have had fun on my own—each experience is what you make it. And I could have shared what I did with family and friends back home. But I find that half the fun now is being able to talk to Jim each day about what we’ve seen and done. Sometimes when we’ve gone out somewhere new on the weekend, we see different things in the same places and compare notes. Other times we both saw the same thing, but have different ideas about what exactly it was or what it meant. Then there are the things we see when we are out on our own, that we talk about in the evenings. For example, on my way back from teaching today, I saw a hearse. Those of you who are thinking, “My, what stimulating dinner table conversation a hearse would make,” have obviously never seen a Japanese hearse. We are talking a shrine on four wheels. They make the shrines from Sunday’s mikoshi parade look like an 8-year-old assembled them from popsicle sticks and mom’s leftover craft supplies.

I imagine that if I had been able to travel overseas for a job when I was still single, I would have made friends in the new location. I could have gone sightseeing and exploring with those new friends, and we could have compared our individual adventures around the water cooler at work. I could have called home to try to describe everything in my new country to my family. But I think I would have ended up feeling lonely. Having Jim to share everything with each night makes me want to experience more of all Japan has to offer and makes me less homesick.