"I'm often asked, what do I do for a living? And I answer — I do what I want." Cee Lo
I went for an epic run last Sunday. The sun was out, I was feeling ambitious, and with my reappointment deadline having coincided with a sudden interest in my own future, I needed some time on the open road to think about where I am, what I’m doing and what I want. I parked my bike at Koma station and headed west, running alongside the train tracks and the mountains, stopping for temple-side breathers, mountain views, statues and scarecrows.
Just the backdrop I needed to contemplate life, love and other important things.
Without much deliberation, I'm renewing my contract for a second year. I love Japan, and not for the reasons I expected when I left Winnipeg 4 months ago. I anticipated sushi feasts and outrageous wardrobes. Wild nights in Tokyo, chaos and smoking hot Japanese hipsters.
And while I've found all of these things, they are not what keeps me here. I’m staying because I love Hidaka and the life I'm building here.
On the surface, Hidaka doesn’t have much. A cross between inaka (country) and suburbia, it's mostly houses and supermarkets separated by sidewalks and manicured trees. But I’ve grown to love my life here because of the little things that make me smile — forest bike rides to work; coffee conversations I pretend to understand; the pleasantly slow pace of life.
And the people I'm still getting to know — whose quirks and individuality I'm still uncovering beneath the language barriers. How I would miss my 3rd year girls who don't do their Thursday English homework because they know I eat lunch with them that day and am easily tricked into doing it for them; the joy I get from the 1st year boy who sits front and center and enthusiastically answers every question wrong — and I've only barely scratched the surface with my tofu salesman. He works out of the back of his van in my parking lot and blows a kazoo when he opens at 6 o'clock. What told him that was his calling, I will never know.
Some days I don't feel like facing the blank stares. Some days, I don't really want the only person I have a meaningful conversation with to be myself. And pretty much every day, I don't want to put on a Japanese accent so people will understand me. But there are too many things I would miss if I left in August, and that is what makes me sure that I am where I want to be, doing what I want to do be doing.
These are my thoughts on life. I will save love and other important things for another time.
