Christmas Time!

So, after being away from home living in Japan for almost a year and a half now, I have finally gotten the chance to go back to Winnipeg for a few weeks to catch up with family and friends. I really didn’t want to miss another Christmas with my family, as I’ve already missed three from being overseas. This was my chance to reunite with everyone. This entry is meant as a way for me to remember this Christmas, and the little changes that I’ve noticed in either myself, or being able to recognize some of the peculiarities of the place that I’ve lived all my life that can only be observed when you are fully removed from your own culture, and fully immersed in another. These peculiarities or differences is perhaps a good place to start this journal.

I have been living as an expat in Japan now for almost one and a half years, and have really gotten to experience a lot, see a lot, and learn a lot. I feel that change can be so gradual sometimes that you sometimes forget or don’t recognize that it’s happening this very moment. That is until you remove yourself from all you know and return to it, oh lets say, a year and a half later… December 16th, 2010, I caught my flight out of Hokkaido and flew to Tokyo, where I was able to spend a good afternoon walking and shopping around Tokyos Akihabara district. This was a nice time of walking around and observing the very nerdy and gadgety part of the city. Tokyo; a nice contrast to the small town that I’m currently living in. What I found to be even more of a contrast though was arriving in Vancouver nine hours after leaving Tokyo. I am always surprised at the differences that I notice first coming back home after having spent time overseas. Depending on where you’ve been, how long you’ve been there, and what experiences you may have had, coming back to a familiar place will always feel a little different for each person I would say. What always shocks me when coming back to North America is how large people are in comparison to a lot of other places. One thing that really shocked me this time is people’s mannerisms. Coming from a country where people are extremely polite to those they don’t know and to their superiors, using extra formalities, and polite gestures, I was really surprised with my ticket taker at the airport. I was ready to catch my flight to Winnipeg, when I found out that someone had mixed up my seat number on the plane with someone else’s. The ticket taker began joking with me casually and the person handed me my ticket with a new seat number over their shoulder as we were talking. The first thing that I noticed was that there were no formalities to the interaction, no real polite phrases said, and no apologies for the mix up for the time taken to fix the mistake. In Japan, it would have gone sooo differently. Both ways are fine, but it was a bit of a surprise. I’ve now been back in Winnipeg for a little over a week, and can’t stop listening to the way people talk here, how they talk, what they talk about, and how people react to how the other person had said something. Perhaps the reason I’m so observant right now is because I haven’t heard people speaking this much English to one another outside of my circle of friends in Hokkaido. My first thought was, “Wow, people really sound rude and blunt when talking”. It looked like no one cared about their work, and it sounded like a lot of people had no problem talking about how their date went last night when their customers were clearly in earshot. My current impression of people here is that everyone seems really laid back, or casual, not only in how they speak to one another, but how some people here dress. It seems as though almost every person in Japan really goes all out to present themselves very well everyday. Not to say that people here are slobs, but there are a few people… This Christmas is to be extra special in that my younger sister Alexis is back from a year of living in Mozambique. It sounded like last years Christmas was a little bit lonely without my sister and me around to eat all the food and throw wrapping paper at everyone.

Really happy to be with family right now, and just see what I’m missing in Winnipeg (so far, it doesn’t look as though I’ve missed much). That being said, family, friends, cousins, have all gotten a little bit older, having kids, gotten married or plans of getting married. These changes remind me that the rest of the world sill refuses to stay still when I want to go on a long adventure. Is asking time to stop for a little bit such a big request? I am already looking forward to going back to Hokkaido, start snowboarding again, continue to study Japanese, and have more awkward/broken conversations with people. Speaking English alone is just not challenging. For the time being, I am completely content hanging around in Winnipeg, catching up with old friends, and making travel plans with my younger sister for this upcoming summer.