It's not every day that you take a job in another country. Or a job that was vacated by one of your best friends. Or both. But if you do, you should know -- you'll end up living a slightly surreal, Trekkian Mirror Universe of that person's life.
This is how the word "coincidence" gets misused -- it's not a coincidence that Stacy moved from Japan to the States as I was moving from the States to Japan. It's exactly by design, because I moved to Japan to replace Stacy. (Except I can never replace Stacy. She's irreplaceable. to the left, to the left ...)
But it is a little odd.
Stacy recently wrote a great post about feeling her life in Japan slipping away. It almost blew my mind to read, because I'm going through the same thing in reverse. Even though I miss my friends in the States, and my TiVo, it's astonishing how quickly I've gotten sucked into my new life in Japan. I feel strangely disconnected from things that mattered so much two months ago. I'm no longer part of our D.C. office; I'm part of the Tokyo office now, and the people in D.C., who I worked with for six years, are "them." My house, my car -- those seem like memories of things that belonged to someone else. And in a way they did.
I started to write that I'm a different person now, but that's a bit much with the hyperbole. I'm ... not sure how to explain it. I can't find the word. I'm living outside my comfort zone, and loving it. I eat different food now. I live without a car, and don't miss it at all. I spend my spare time learning kana instead of watching TV, and it's exactly what I want to be doing. (So I'm totally dismayed that Stacy says she's already forgetting kana -- am I putting all this effort into something I'm going to forget two months after going back to the States? Yes, probably.)
I mass e-mailed my family the other day about my adventures in apartment hunting, and someone wrote back "you must feel so far from home." But I don't, at all -- this IS my home now. Of course there are things about the States I miss (chicken biscuits), but there's more than enough awesome things here (lack of open-container laws) to make up for those things.
To my Mirror twin: enjoy life on the flip side, and thanks for leaving those Q-tips in our desk. Gotta love that they're individually wrapped! God bless Japanese overpackaging.
Things I can say in Japanese now:
Whose cell phone is this?
Things I can't say, but need to:
Do you have any boots ...
... in black?
... in my size?
... for less than $600?
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5 comments:
I don't know that it's hyperbole to feel like you're a different person now. It is life altering to live outside the US. You're allowing yourself to change and adapt in ways that wouldn't be possible in DC. It's actually a great thing that you feel like you're acclimating so quickly.
I know exactly what you mean, mirror twin. OBVIOUSLY.
Also? I hope we don't have that thing where when I get hurt, you feel pain. Or when you get drunk in Roppongi, I puke in a gutter in Raleigh. :)
I'm no mirror twin -- or mirror triplet, as the case may be -- but I feel your disorientation! :) I'm in DC, living in your (still mostly empty) house, stepping with one foot back into a life that exists just faintly at the edges. BTW, in case you were curious about the over-under on how long it would take me to zone out and drive to my old place instead of yours: two days. I wouldn't have minded so much, except I was in a hurry and had to grapple with the lights at South Dakota and Riggs after going to the Ghetto Giant. Doh! So there you have it, as you wrestle with the old life/new life conundrum: You can take the woman out of DC, but you can't take DC traffic patterns out of the woman.
Maybe you are the same person in different circustances?
I need to learn to say that boot phrase in english, too! I thought I knew it, but the other day, the nice man at Kenneth Cole did not concur.
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