Saturday August 19, 1989

M Sinclair Stevens — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:12:58 +0000

Accounts

¥3240	train Kamegawa-Hita
¥100	machine drink
¥600	video rental Ferris Bueller, The Hunger
¥500	omiyage for office

Postmark: Beppu August 19, 1989

Today JQS and I are off to another small town, Hita, where another AET (assistant English teacher, like me) lives. We’re going to barbecue and shop and act American!

As you can tell by all the edits in this letter, I’m dying here without my Mac. The first thing I’m buying on payday is a word processor. So watch out. The next letter may be in kanji.

Postmark: Beppu, August 26, 1989

[On Thursday] I told Tonai-sensei and Murakami-sensei that I was going to Hita for the weekend so they wouldn’t plan anything for us. They exchanged worried glances but said nothing.

However, [yesterday] they were armed with maps and train schedules. Murakami-sensei had called the bus station and the train station to check routes and prices. Should we take the bus (for which we needed reservations) the express train (which is more expensive than the local train but goes straight through), or the local train (which is slow and requires that we switch in Oita City)?

You understand that I have no say in this decision. Whatever they decide for me is what I will do. What we sometimes mistake for kindness is closer to a sense of duty and with it comes many obligations. They are in charge of me. If I get sick or lost or do something stupid, I make them look bad. In turn our school, the JET program, and even the prefectural government could look bad. They have to do what they can to keep me out of trouble and, in turn, I also have an obligation which involves giving up a lot of who I am and what I want for the good of the group.

After two hours of pouring over train schedules, drawing diagrams of the Oita train station, practicing phrases in Japanese such as “I’d like two tickets to Hita.” and “Excuse me, is this the train to Hita?” I think we are all set. Maybe I’m not a good student because my teachers evidently had second thoughts (which they did not share with me) about letting me go it alone.

Today Tonai-sensei drives us to the Kamegawa train station and transacts the purchase of the tickets for us. When we get to Oita station, we are surprised to find Murakami-sensei waiting on the platform. What a coincidence running into her. Where is she off to? Nowhere. On her day off she is compelled to buy a ticket to meet our train and wait with for us 40 minutes until we are safely on the train to Hita.

As we are finally away, I think “Free at last! Now I can kick back, act American, and not watch everything I do and say.” When we get to Hita, I spot Amy at the station. I run over to her and standing behind her is her teacher, Kajiwara-sensei. He thought that since I was coming to Hita, he’d spend the weekend with us showing us around town.

Journal

Last Sunday Amy (the private school JET in Hita) called up and asked us over. I don’t think that Hita is that far away but it seems far because there is only a local train and that takes almost two hours from Oita. The train is packed and we have to stand for a long time. The farm wives and grannies express pity for JQS and encouragement, alternating between saying kawaisoh [poor little dude] and gambatte [hang in there]. One offers him some candy.

Amy meets us at the station and we walk to her house. She has an old Japanese house with a garden to herself. I’m so envious. It’s an L-shaped house with the kitchen in the corner of the L. One wing is a one-story and is two formal rooms, an eight-mat room and a six-mat room. The other wing, which is two-storys has two bedrooms upstairs, the kitchen and another room where she has the TV and her futon. She seems to camp out in this one part of the house and ignore the rest.

Amy used to teach English in Germany and although she’s travelled a lot more than I have, she seems to have a much more difficult time adjusting to the Japanese rhythm of things. Maybe it’s because she has something “foreign” to compare it with and I don’t. She doesn’t seem to be happy with her house because it’s old and too big and empty…all the reasons that I fell in love with it at first sight.

Hirose Museum, Hita-shi, Oita-ken

Her liaison comes over and takes us to the Hirose Tanso Museum and an old-fashioned restaurant.

That evening we walk up to the video store and get “The Hunger” and “Daddy-Long-Legs” *.
Note: We have conflicting memories on which videos we watched. We both remember “The Hunger” but JQS remembers watching “Innerspace” and I wrote down “Ferris Bueller” in the daybook. Maybe we watched all four or maybe we watched two of them on another visit.

Note from 2003-11-12

A funny thing that happened when I was with Amy. After a month in Japan, I was desperate to speak English with another native speaker. But when I was with her that weekend, I “cursed like a sailor”–swearing much more than I normally do.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if using very informal language, even rough language, was an attempt to force our relationship into an immediate intimacy–providing the illusion that we were old friends who could say anything to each other.