Life is back to "normal"

Have you ever been so frazzled that you couldn't string two coherent sentences together? That's how I feel right now. Its been a lo-o-o-o-ng two+ weeks but thankfully things promise to stabilize a bit in the immediate future.

My biggest challenge recently has been a severe lack of private time in which to decompress. I feel completely overexposed in my community. For the past two weeks I was temporarily forced to surrender what little anonymity I do have here for the sake of social and professional obligations. Specifically I've had less than 1 hour of personal time each day for the past twelve. Thats just not enough time for me to regroup. I haven't yet figured out a polite way to say "I need my space!"

And as I write this I can't help but feel a little guilty because my so-called work consisted of a series of all-day enkais, private dinner parties, camping trips, museum tours, outdoor bbq, swimming at the beach, hiking, visiting castles, and shopping in Matsuyama, etc. A brief note to the locals: I have appeared on CATV (local cable channel) at least two or three times recently. Be sure to catch my performance as translator for a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. It was intense - there were twenty-something people in the room and they made the ceremony very, very formal. Now, I've been to many tea ceremonies during my time in Japan (because several of my Japanese friends study it) but, in my humble opinion, this one was a little complicated for beginners. Sure, it was beautiful, but you try telling a fifteen year old American boy that he has to make several apologies and thank you's - IN JAPANESE - before he even lifts the cup of tea. There were also a few funny moments for me during the tea ceremony involving the turning of the cup. For those of you who have never been to tea ceremony, I'll quickly explain. After the host or hostess prepares the tea for you, s/he turns the cup so that the image or design is facing the guest. Then the cup is placed to the side on the floor before you (the guest). You move the cup to the middle space and make a few statements in Japanese (to thank the hostess, to apologize to the guest beside you for drinking tea before they do, etc) The cup is moved again, the host/hostess is thanked once more, then you turn the cup clockwise about two and a half times before drinking the contents. When you return the cup back to the hostess more words are exchanged, there is some bowing, and you have to rotate the cup in reverse order so that the image is now facing the hostess. As you can see, this is all incredibly polite and highly stylized stuff. Anyway, I had to keep myself from chuckling when some of the kids received cups without distinct frontal images. They were so keen on doing it right, but it just became so complicated and there were all these things to say in Japanese...well, I'm afraid I didn't provide the best explanations but it was sweet to see how hard they tried despite my "help". I may suggest to the yakuba folks that they take it down a notch next year.

Highlight of the week: translating tea ceremony (I actually knew what I was doing)

Lowpoint of the week: Kamada-sensei and I doing an impromtu translation of the Japanese fairy tale "Momo Taro" (peach boy) in front of all the international exchange students, the host families, town office heads, and the mayor. Don't ask. It was abysmal.

In short, everything was a total blast but I only regret that I could've enjoyed it more had I not been so fatigued. I mean, this was a kind of fatigue that emanated from within my bones, you know? And I think the majority of my fatigue came not from the language barrier, suprisingly enough, but from a lack of clear communication about my schedule and their expectations of what I needed to do. From what I can gather, I'm not the only one who encountered this challenge. So I'll just leave it at that. For those of you who didn't know, I wasn't involved in any of the international exchange stuff originally. I only became involved at the very last minute when the CIR (international coordinator and translator) had an emergency and went into the hospital (don't worry, he's ok, it was a back injury that got better). I'm sure that all the chaos didn't help matters much.

After all that was finished, I had two back-to-back evenings of late-night dinner parties with various friends in Honai. One even involved karaoke. The fact that one of my friends is really into antiques, combined with a long visit to the Ehime cultural museum earlier that day, allowed me to add a few useful Japanese words to my admittedly limited vocabulary. If you ever have a need for local antique pottery from the Iyo period I'm your woman.

So, tomorrow I'm off to Tabemono Ichiban for a nice welcome party with some of the newly arrived JETs from the Nanyo B area. After that I leave Shikoku Island at 8am Saturday morning with Toshiko, Yukiko, and Toshiko's sister. We are spending the weekend in Kyushu. I'm going to climb Mt. Aso and then hit some onsen (hot water springs). Its probably dangerous to go to the onsen in this extreme heat but I'm willing to take the risk. I hope it will help me work out all the kinks in my shoulders!

More to come later...