The Leaving

After living away from your home for an extended period of time, it’s kind of inevitable that you start looking back on your life retrospectively:

“What have I achieved?
What did I come here to do?
What is there still for me to do?”

Failure to answer these questions and one living in Japan could perhaps find themselves in what I call ‘ALT-limbo’ – simply drifting from home to school, school to home, lather, rinse, repeat.

While the pandemic has moved these goalposts somewhat through nobody’s fault, it’s sometimes hard to see the 森 for the 木 so to speak. But I also don’t want to become another resentful, bitter gaijin; burdened and resentful of one of my favourite countries in the world.

Japan is currently going through its *counts on fingers* fourth state of emergency, mostly a consequence of a government who are frantically scrambling to save an Olympics that no-one wants.
It was golden week in May, a 5-day weekend that pretty much everyone in the country gets off – and just like last year, everyone was encouraged to stay home.

After the best part of five months I recently reinstalled my social media apps on my phone. While I’m usually pretty good at keeping up to date with the happenings in jolly old Blighty, I don’t think I’d realised how much the UK is beginning to open up again.

I saw my friends smiling and waving and clinking glasses in places I know. My mam sent me a selfie in Primark. My best-friend Sam threw a peace sign from our favourite pub in Glasgow.

Meanwhile, for the past few months it’s mostly just been me in my apartment. Alone.

“What the f*ck am I doing here?” I actually said aloud to the four walls on particularly gloomy Saturday, and threw my phone huffily away from me after an hour of scrolling through happy reunions at pub gardens and bottomless brunches.

“What have I achieved?
What did I come here to do?
What is there still for me to do?”

Too much time indoors means too much time to think.

Japan isn’t my first time living abroad.
I left Australia in 2013 after living there for a year and it felt right. I was ready. Honestly I don’t think I even cried properly. I caught my flight from Melbourne with nothing but excitement and anticipation ahead of me. There wasn’t a single regret in my bones as I landed at Heathrow, caught the tube and saw Sam waiting tearfully at the Kings Cross barriers.

So, when do you know that it’s time to leave Japan?

I had this conversation with my friend Liz – who is actually leaving Japan this summer – over a socially distanced al fresco lunch as she prepares for a period of uncertainty and unemployment ahead.

“Six years in Japan is quite enough for me,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ll ever know if it’s right.”

She’s right about the six years thing. After just two years, I sometimes find myself weighed down with cultural fatigue.

My pal once described Japan as “one big, awesome theme park.”
I sort-of get what he means, but living in Disneyland would do your nut in after so long.

After two years at the same schools I now feel like part of the furniture – which has it’s pros and cons. I’m sure teachers letting me have free reign in class comes from a good place as they find me reliable and have confidence in my lessons, but working in the confines of a tight schedule plus ad-hoc duties, I have extra responsibilities compared to a lot of ALTs.

However I am given the greatest gift of all: that I’m usually left alone to my own devices.
Many ALTs find themselves under constant surveillance from their schools. But long as I look busy and don’t take the piss, I’m free to do whatever I want between classes.

While age is a social construct (at least that’s what I keep telling myself), I recently turned 32 and it’s kind of unavoidable to look towards the future.

Sure, if I was a 21 year old fresh out of university with body parts that are still perky and a back that didn’t worryingly creak first thing in the morning, then staying in Japan for years and years and years would definitely be a good option.
But there are simply other things in my life that I want to achieve.

It’s easy when you’re living on the other side of the world to put higher stock in connections made here as you find yourself content in your gaijin bubble, warm and fuzzy like mold.

The longer I stay in Japan, people I’ve grown close to inevitably move on, either elsewhere in Japan or back to their home country. I find constantly both making new connections and letting friendships go mentally taxing, often akin to the grief of a break-up.

Unfortunately, that’s just a fact of expat life and comes with the territory. This didn’t bother me much when I was a young’un in Australia, staying in hostels and taking day trips to see koalas with people I barely knew and would probably never see again.
But the older I get, the less tolerant I am of such relationships, preferring a deeper attachment with a smaller group of people. It’s exhausting to constantly be saying farewell.

So while I’m not saying I’m about to split from Japan anytime soon, I am asking myself when will the (rising) sun begin to set on my time in Japan?

I’ve always toyed with the idea of moving to Japan ever since my friend Hayley suggested it to me nearly ten years ago now over pizza in her Sydney apartment, recounting tales of working at an eikaiwa during the day then partying in Tokyo until the early hours.

I started officially planning to come to Japan in 2017, then actually applied in January 2019 for an Autumn arrival.

During this time at my old job in the UK – through every crappy shift, being yelled at down the phone day-in-day-out, through every event I declined, everything I sold on eBay – I counted down the days until the big move.

Now what?

Is there really a perfect time to leave Japan?
Honestly, I’m not sure.

Even when the day comes and my plane touches down in Newcastle, I don’t think I’ll ever be sure.

~ Carla