11 March 2011

It has been a while I want to write about March. March 11, 2011 more specifically. Two main reasons finally brought me here to my white table with view to the spring flowers wanting to bloom: tonight (or this morning, we can't ever say when it happens during sleeping time and is not so strong) one of the almost daily earthquakes shook my bed; also, yesterday I had realized how much I underestimate Japanese people despite of my intense love and admiration for them.

I came to Japan at a very delicate moment: just after the triple disaster of 2011. It was a very hard decision at that moment to choose between coming exactly on April, later or simply giving up. But we all came, all the scholarship students selected by the Consulate of Japan in São Paulo.

Part of the city I visited one year after the disaster. This used to be
a rest house. I was told basically everyone there died
as they were too aged and couldn't run from the tsunami

 For me, besides the professional and personal circunstances pushing me to come instead of staying in Brasil, there was a feeling of duty and gratitude which kept saying "Japan needs you now much more than Brasil needs. Help the country that helped you". I know that, actually, for the Japanese Ministry of Education, I'm no more than a number and that this feeling I've just described may sound naive. Also, probably objectively I didn't not help the country. With my linguistic difficulties and all the shocks I had suffered with, I was afraid of going to one of those volunteer works and ending up disturbing more than helping. I was also afraid of seeing things I wasn't prepared to see back then, more exactly, a war scenery.


But on the top of all those things: I was more interested in talking to people, people who were feeling abandoned and as a burden for Japan (as I sometimes think Okinawans feel). People affected by such huge problems. I wanted to know how they felt, I wanted to be a shoulder.

One year after my arrival, I was finally able to visit one of the affected areas: Minamisoma, a city also frightened by the horror of nuclear disaster. I can't describe how abandoned and opressed one can feel there. The kids are not allowed to stay outside, half of their friends moved out to the South of Japan (in order to avoid exposition to radiation) more than half of the population moved out. Stores are closed, many ghost towns surrounding it. And people who need to talk and have fun with whom is available to be their companion! It was an amazing experience! One of the moments I most felt there is hope and solution for everything, because all in all, human beings need of the same basic things everywhere in the world!

Flowers prepared by Minamisoma's children in the Happy Flower Project.
On the back, with pannels with messages and drawings made during the activity,
mostly "let's keep fighting"

Not only there I had this feeling of "reward". One of the commentaries I have most listened so far when talking to Japanese people even out of Fukushima is "wow, you are very brave to come! Everyone was leaving at that moment (2011)". And then I noticed a certain "it's good not to feel abandoned". Yes, even Tokyo was much different in 2011, I can say for sure. Everything was cancelled, postponed, had an exception because of the earthquake. The places were not so crowded as they have been again since last year and we basically didn't see foreigners around. The country was somehow abandoned and we felt that our life was around the earthquake (the past one or any other new that could strike the country). In my opinion, the brave here is not myself, but Japanese people! They keep striving, findind alternative ways to face the disaster, the lack of support, and the disregard of Japanese government.



Middle March is the time to rethink my arrival and evaluate how much Japan changed my life. My inspiration (a bit tacky or even repeatedly listened on the media, but...) is here.

My eternal challenge in Japan: the language!

First spring flowers at Yoyogi Kouen

On the way to work (NHK International Service in Portuguese) yesterday, I saw the first flowers of this spring at Yoyogi Park. I am not sure if they were "ume" (plum) or "sakura" (cherry) flowers, as I'm not able to distinguish some species of them. But I remember someone told me the ume blooms first so it must be it.

The coming of a new spring , of this explosion of life, made me remember that I'll soon be reaching my second year of Japan and, coincidently, my 27th spring. I think it's pretty "sage" to measure life  according to the number of springs. Living in a country where each season shows its best, it's possible to notice how life changes in the begining of spring. It seems we take a new breath and start a new journey. I guess it's not for other reason that everything starts in April in Japan, when the sakura make their show!

When I think of the anniversary of my arrival and about  getting closer to the 30's, I get those mixed feelings, specially the love/hate relationship with Japan. In the end there is not objective answer for anything and I vote for a positive sum/balance. But one thing still makes me concerned and: I'm not able to comunicate with the majority of people who surround me; I'm not able to do many things by myself because I can't read or write. I don't speak Japanese.

I'm not going to say I did my best. I didn't. I know of other people who started with me and now are at least trying to present their seminar in Japanese. I got fed up with the methodology on the way, I was bored having to go there everyday and later 3 times a week (including saturdays) for 3h with no show of progress in the things I was supposed to be learning, and, I shall be honest with myself: I never wanted to learn Japanese for the language itself! I love the thing about the kanji and sometimes I enjoy learning some here and there even for fun. But the language itself I think it's weird, doesn't sound well and doesn't go well with a lot of things I like. Hey, look, it's not a matter of prejudice or hate, it's a matter of personal taste. I prefer languages that stem from latin.

But, I like to communicate, I love Japanese people, and I like to eat and try to cook good food. So my trips around Japan and my continuous challenge to keep trying to read menus and food packages were the biggest responsible for my current level of Japanese. I think I still sound stupid and I can't understand almost anything. And, well, my shame has be growing, because, if before I could say "Oh, I just arrived", now I got 2 years on my back. But still... I can o the basics.

So I decided to face the language from a different perspective: I don't have to like it, I just have to learn it because of a much more ambitious aim: to understand life around me, talk more to people (and not hide or run from them - in case you're asking, yes I do it for real) and to cook! Of course for a person like me it's dificult to learn things I don't like. But I have done it so well in the past, so why not to do it now?

Here is my next challenge: bake bread with Japanese ingredients!

Have a great spring!