When us East Asian Studies people study Asia and the reaction of the west to Asia, the concept of “the other” or the mysteriousness of another culture always gets used to describe something we’re not familiar with. The other is so foreign that sometimes we prefer it to our own drab reality. Sometimes we fantasize it, and for those who have been there, we sometimes wish we were there even if when we were there we constantly complained about it being too foreign.

So far I’ve been back for a year and things, while I was only gone for a couple of months, have changed. People I thought I knew to my core have changed to people I may or may not know now and people who knew me tell me that I’m different. What does it all mean? Its effect is that we estrange each other like we were in quarantine until they go through the familiar motions we associated them to be before they left.

Not for me, however, I haven’t converted back to the person I left before I went to Japan. I go, daily, through the motions that I went through when I was there. From checking email, to blogging, etc. and while I no longer long to be home (since I’m here) the motions I do perhaps is what keeps those I knew well from embracing who I am now. Perhaps if I was still there and kept doing what I did there and what I do now (the motions) perhaps I’d still have that bond with people who desired to stay in touch with me while I was there.

Work somehow adds to the mix in that is also keeps who I used to be from coming back. I thought who I am now was who I used to be, but perhaps I’m not..

It’s hard being green… ~Mr. Kermit’t’Frog

~J

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