Around five months ago, I left Australia for Japan. I never intended to live permanently in Australia again.
Ever since I was a child, I was always disappointed by my country. I lived most of my childhood immersed in books, which are still, for me, the most important objects in the world. It disappointed me that none of the authors I loved were from Australia: not Alfred Bestall (of the Rupert books), not Enid Blyton or Tolkien. As a teenager, I felt the separation from the culture of the American fantasy and science-fiction authors who inspired me, and later I was away from all the literary writers and philosophers from the Northern Hemisphere whose work preoccupied me at university. I felt let down, too, by Australia’s dry landscape, compared to the mountains, the lush forests and snowbound winters of England and North America, that I knew from fiction and from film and television. And as it neared time for me to enter working life, I felt that there weren’t any opportunities for work that interested me in Australia. Not any at all.
As Yoda said of Luke Skywalker, so one might say of me:
All his life he has looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was.
This is not the way I wanted to be my whole life.
For a long time I’d thought of leaving. It’d stopped me from working out issues in my first relationship, which lasted six years. I always figured I’d have a way out. And I always figured it’d be pointless to start something new if I’d be gone in months, a year, two years…
Through university, I was fascinated by Japan. It seemed a place where I might be able to carve some kind of life, as a valued outsider. I applied for a job on the JET Programme in 2002, but failed. The following year I got a place after having been put on a waitlist, but I turned it down, partly because I was infatuated with a woman in Melbourne, partly because I was disappointed by the calibre of the applicants who’d been accepted before me. I felt I was better than them, and felt bitter about having been passed over.
Finally, in 2005, I made it here. Japan has been nothing of what I thought it might be. It’s a beautiful country in parts, but Tokyo and Osaka can be dirty and ugly, and they literally stink, thanks to sewage vents placed in major pedestrian areas. The work culture is unforgiving, and makes most lives and people dull. The creativity seen in Japanese anime, manga and videogames is not an expression of joy in life, but an escape from drab reality. The quiet and charm of traditional Japanese culture is something largely lost in the past.
Certainly, I’m a little bitter. I found that I don’t like being an outsider at all. What I wanted, leaving Australia, was to join a culture and participate in it. I wanted to find a career, a community of minds, a woman to love and a place to live and one day raise my children. Since I was about 8 years old, I’ve wanted to be a novelist, and I also wanted to find a place with a strong literary culture that I could be a part of. Japan cannot be any of these things for me. And so I am, still, in search of home.
The new header image shows part of the beautiful Vancouver skyline. For my next destination, I’m currently torn between Vancouver and Montréal. More on this later, but if anyone can help me decide, please let me know.
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Hi!Ben
I joined your class in Belitz Umeda. AKIKO!
I don’t understand the use of this website at all.
So, I wonder this way of leaving message is right.
Well,I just leave a message.
Thank you for your class that I enjoyed.
I always feel the lack of my vocaburary not to explain my feelgins…
But I try to comunicate better!
See you again at class!
If this blog is any indication of your literary prowess, you may want to reconsider becoming a novelist.
Hi Akiko, yes… I think that you have understood how to leave a message!
I enjoyed my class with you, too.
Akiko2… Evidently I’ve offended you, and I’m sorry, but I’d like to hear more about how you feel. Let’s not just trade insults.
i stumbled upon your site doing my rounds on the good ole www.
superd commentary and insight,especially ur prowness concerning gaming,and the impotance and implications that that it has solidified in our dark and morbid times
dont listen to that bitch Akiko 2
i knew a jap chick once,all she wanted was attention(and my money and time…).dont listen to her
Thanks, Ron.
In response to your comment about the Japanese girl, there are far too many men who’ve been trapped here, in a country they don’t like, by scheming Japanese women who’ve wanted to capture a gaijin husband. At worst, some women here will get pregnant to keep a man who’s about to break up with them, and abort the baby if the strategy doesn’t work. Of course, not all Japanese women are like that, but it’s a pattern that’s been reported to me twice, by people affected enough by this kind of manipulative relationship between the sexes that they know it well. The fact that it happens enough to be commented on as a pattern is chilling. I’ve got no quarrels with abortion, but I do have a problem with people manipulating their sex partners.
My friend…come to Dublin, Ireland…
Small isle, cosmopolitan city, English speakers, Atlantic weather, land of Poets and Novelists, good jobs better beer…
Like you, I was looking for my place for a long time…I am not Irish, but I feel this place is magic…
Cheers. Joseph
Hey Ben,
Just writing you to let you know that your feelings for leaving Australia pretty much echo my own. I have always wanted to visit Japan and finally leave in October to leave for NOVA. Websites like your own provide invaluable information for foreigners not knowing what to expect from working in Japan. Although I try to have a completely openminded approach to living and working there, I don’t want to base my preparation on all the over-positive, advertising fluff one reads on the internet. Reading a cross section of the blogs of english teaching foreigners who actually are live there and locals alike aid me in forming (what I hope will be) a well-rounded expectation of my experiences there.
Joseph: Well, I may consider Dublin, though I’m having a good time back in Melbourne, now, and I’m not anxious to leave yet. Unlike you, I am Irish, or at least my ancestors are, so maybe I should go back and discover my roots someday.
Ato: I’m glad I’ve been able to offer you some insight. I’ve been pretty negative about Japan sometimes, but this post, looking back, is one of the places where I’ve been fairest. If you do get to Japan, I hope you find a way to make it work for yourself. Just be careful: there are a lot of pitfalls out there for gaijin, but if you’re aware of them, you won’t fall in. Best of luck.