Why Japan?

I get this question all the time. With earnest looks of either encouragement or disdain leaping from their faces, many friends, colleagues, and strangers have asked me about my intentions for moving so far away. In truth, I always need to pause for a moment and think about it. Why do I want to leave such a place -- Arcata, California, and Home -- that has endowed me with so much and left such a great influence on my being? I have been lucky to have friends who would eagerly share their homes and food with me, to have relationships that have nurtured each ounce of my character, and to have family who have exhausted their lives supporting and believing in me. Much of the people and experiences in my life have caused me to sow seeds and grow roots that dig deep into the stratum.

Those moments and the people who go along with them have been extraordinary, but they have not existed in a vacuum. I'm going to Japan because I'm not ready to become sedentary, to dig deep into this culture or this reality. I'm restless. Between the moments of joy, there are other seconds, days, and weeks of my life that create a discontent with the status quo. The moments linger in the back of my throat and conscience, unnamed and distasteful. Here, in Arcata, I often look out to the sea. Deep and dark, the sea calls out to me. As it rhythmically sighs, the ebb and flow pull at my emotions and desires. The smell of salt, swirling faintly with rebirth and decay, awakens me. I'm seduced by its infinite multitude, beauty, and possibility. I feel welcome to explore its unwavering mystery.

The sea exists as a metaphor for me: it is the opening and gateway to the rest of the world. While reading about the early adventures of Ernesto Guevara, I found refuge in his words delicately written in The Motorcycle Diaries:

We would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of his own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly – not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice (76).

I long to reach out to the rest of the world. There are over 6 billion people on this planet with different sensibilities and worldviews. While in Japan, I look forward to seeing how they conceive education, transportation, food, family, and government. Of course, the Japanese will not be a homogeneous culture, and I expect to find many different perspectives and points of view. Nevertheless, I believe that the overall experience will be a completely different paradigm when compared to life lived in the U.S. I am trying to go with an open mind; I am conscious and wary of the western mentality of the paternalistic conqueror. I hope that I don't come off as being brash or pompous. We'll see.

All in all, My motives for going to Japan go beyond my melodramatic cravings. In my application essay for JET, I wrote the following passage that I believe emphasizes my true motives and feelings:

I have a strong desire to develop cross-cultural empathy and work in cooperative teaching environments because I enjoy interaction and problem solving with others. Education is communication, and it is reciprocal. To better understand how non-native speakers of English acquire language, I feel the need to subject myself to a similar experience. I must become the immigrant, the language learner, the pupil. In Japan, I will need to deal with the dizzying process of acculturation. Though I have traveled throughout Mexico and Spain, and I learned much about their culture, my travels did not lead to the in-depth cultural experience that I am looking for. The JET program affords the opportunity of full immersion and an understanding of Japanese public education while experiencing the subtleties of Japanese culture. By working alongside the Japanese, I will experience the Japanese perspective on language learning, teaching, and cross-cultural communication. I believe that I have had an excellent educational experience in the United States thus far, but I feel the intercultural experience provided by JET is a priceless opportunity. Ultimately, it will refine my character as an educator.

As the passage illustrates, I see the JET program as an opportunity of cultural exchange and education, and when the adventure has ended, I hope to better understand who I am and the world in which we live.