Friday, July 24--Goodbye Granddad, I Love You

Today we said a final farewell to my grandfather. Having served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army during WWII, he was eligible to have his ashes inurned in the Columbarium at Arlington National Cemetery. When we were kids, Granddad never talked about the army, or the time he spent in Africa during the war. When we got older and he showed us the pictures he had kept from that time, although he could name all of the soldiers whose faces looked out at us from the faded black and whites, he had very few stories to share. I’m not sure if he thought we wouldn’t be interested, or if he just chose not to recall the details of that period of his life.

The stories my grandfather did tell were anecdotes from Arlington National Cemetery. That place was alternately his pride and joy and his greatest burden. You see, he worked for twelve years as the Facilities Manager at ANC, which meant any time someone needed preparations for an upcoming event or a solution for a middle-of-the-night crisis, Granddad got the call. His responsibilities were varied, from maintaining roads, to fixing electrical glitches, to supervising movie crews, to planning new construction (including the Columbarium in which his ashes now rest). Once during a torrential summer rainstorm, Granddad had to go relight the eternal flame at the Kennedy gravesite—the call to report its outage had come all the way from Japan! (Granddad figured a Japanese tourist noticed it and called home to tell friends and relatives, “You’ll never believe what I just saw.…”)

In my heart, I believe it was his service to the cemetery and not his service to our country during the war that prompted Granddad’s wishes to be buried in Arlington. He could have still received military honors had he chosen to be buried in the family cemetery on the Eastern Shore. But for twelve years, Arlington was his family, demanding his time, his energy, his attention and his affection, just like a child. Looking through the pillars of the Columbarium, across the endless rows of pristine white headstones while the bugler played Taps, the riflemen fired their 21-gun salute, and the chaplain presented the folded flag to Granddad’s wife, I felt Arlington open its arms to welcome my grandfather and return all the love he had invested there. Granddad has gone home.

Thursday, July 23--Have you driven a Ford lately?

If I hadn’t been so tired when we arrived yesterday, I would have refused to even take the keys from the rental car agent. What the heck were they thinking, giving a pull-me-over red Ford Mustang to a sleep-deprived, lead-footed, been-gone-for-a-year driver who isn’t even sure which side of the car to get in? Never mind the fact that I have no proof of insurance to show police should the need arise, since my only coverage is provided by the credit card I used for the rental. Might as well just put a big sign on the roof asking the cops to pull me over.

After having dinner with Jenny and Mike, I drove VERY carefully behind Jim’s rental car as we negotiated our way from the Chinese restaurant, through the shopping center parking lot, towards the highway that would lead us to Mom’s house. I may have been tired, but I knew I wasn’t breaking any traffic laws at that point. So when the whoop of a siren made me look back to see flashing blue lights in the rear-view mirror, I thought my moo goo gai pan was going to make a return appearance right there. “You have got to be kidding me. What in the name of Pete could I have possibly done wrong in this parking lot!? Jim, wait…don’t leave me!!!”

Thankfully, the cop drove around me, and pulled in behind Jim’s car, with a second cruiser close behind. “Well, sheesh, what did Jim do?” Turns out, neither of us were their intended targets. They went on around both of us and screeched to a stop outside a jewelry store a little farther up in the shopping center. That was too close for comfort, and there was no way I could handle the pressure of driving that Mustang for three weeks. Before lunch today, we found the Hertz closest to Mom’s house, and exchanged the attention-grabbing muscle car for a less conspicuous Honda Accord.

Wednesday, July 22--Homeward Bound

Just nine days shy of the one-year anniversary of our arrival in Japan, we are headed back to the States for three weeks. My grandfather’s inurnment at Arlington National Cemetery and a class Jim must attend are the over-riding reasons for our trip, but I admit I have other priorities. Seeing our moms; catching up with friends; bass fishing in our favorite pond (and slurping down a strawberry slushie when we’re done); shopping for American-size clothes; and chowing down at Chick-Fil-A and Cracker Barrel. Other things I am looking forward to are reading roadside billboards, walking into an unfamiliar restaurant and being confident that I am not ordering a dish that contains unidentifiable fish parts (a real hazard here when you can’t read Japanese), and chatting with the cashiers when I go shopping. While I haven’t felt really homesick since we’ve been here, there are lots of little things I took for granted in the States that I miss and will be glad to experience again.

Things I am not looking forward to…the fourteen hour plane ride and learning again how to drive on the right-hand side of the road.

Monday, July 13--Parallel Universe

It dawned on me today that I haven’t seen anyone I know in almost two months. No, I haven’t become a hermit—I see my students each week, my friends on the weekends, and sleep next to Jim every night that he's in town.

When we first arrived in Japan, I saw someone from home everywhere I looked. Obviously it wasn’t really someone from home, but hairstyles, clothing, gaits, and mannerisms all combined to play tricks on my mind. I saw the twins of former students, college roommates, coworkers, and family members, including my grandfather who had passed away nearly twenty years ago. I assume this phenomenon was some kind of coping mechanism to make the culture shock less jarring. Apparently, the shock has subsided, and my sub-conscious has decided I can handle unadulterated reality now.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the twins reappear after our upcoming trip to the States.

Saturday, July 4--It's Just Not the Same

No smells of hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling on the grill. No rousing patriotic songs blaring from the radio. No squealing bottle rockets being lit by the teenagers down the block. No bunting flapping in the breeze from the neighbor’s porch. The Fourth of July outside of the United States just ain’t the same. I wouldn’t say I actively celebrate the holiday, but I definitely felt the loss of all the traditional goings-on in this, my first Independence Day out of America. The base, to its credit, did try to recreate that hometown atmosphere, with a 5K run, games for the kids, BBQ ribs, and a first-rate fireworks show. Driving off the base, dodging the crowds of Japanese who had come to see the fireworks, ended the illusion of being at home. And it was completely surreal to go to bed in silence, with no random bursts of firecrackers in the street to jolt me back from the edge of sleep.

Thursday, July 2--Wait, something's missing

As I was driving to a lesson this afternoon, I saw a young Japanese woman walking down the street and immediately I thought something was completely out of whack. As I continued down the road, glancing at her retreating form in my rearview mirror, my mind was trying to piece together the facts to determine what’s wrong with this picture. She was a couple inches taller than the average Japanese woman, but not tall enough to be considered unusual. So what was it?

A couple kilometers further up the road, after passing several “normal” Japanese pedestrians, it clicked. That woman wasn’t carrying anything. Nothing. Not a purse, or a messenger bag, or a backpack, or a kid. No groceries, no coffee in a can, no flowers. No appointment book, no iPod, no cell phone (gasp!). She didn’t have a dog leash in her hand or an umbrella on her arm. This woman was completely “naked.” It dawned on me that in eleven months of living here, I have not seen a single person—man, woman, or child, young or old—who was not carrying something. How very, very strange.

Thursday, July 2--Singing the praises of JMSDF

I know I talk a lot about JMSDF, but it’s really hard not to. Working there has been such an incredible experience, probably one of the things that will always stick out in my mind once we eventually leave Japan.

Today, the three students I had from the SAPO class amazed me yet again. The topic for today’s conversation lesson was music. After we talked about their favorite artists, favorite songs, and musical experiences, I wanted them to hear one of my favorite songs. It’s by the country artist Bucky Covington, and I explained that the reason I liked it and wanted to share it with them was because it could have been written about my own childhood. Titled “A Different World,” the song brings back lots of good memories and creates a vivid image of the life of an American child about thirty years ago.

To make it more of an educational activity, I printed off the lyrics after replacing several of the song’s nouns with blanks. I wanted the students to listen and try to fill in the blanks, a challenging task anyway, but made even more difficult by Bucky’s strong country accent. After listening once, the guys had managed to fill in about half of the blanks, so we talked about the rest of the missing words and what the song meant. Then I played it again so they could read along with the completed lyrics, and darned if all three of them didn’t sing the entire song out loud.

Getting my third graders, who were supposed to be young and uninhibited, to sing a song they knew was like pulling teeth, yet here were three twenty-something Japanese sailors, whom I would expect to be reserved and self-conscious, singing a song they’d never heard before, in a language that is not their own. Their participation far exceeded my expectations—I was so thrilled I could have hugged them.

Have I mentioned it will be difficult to go back to teaching elementary school in the U.S.?