Remember when you were a kid, and your parents were always trying to get you and your siblings to SIT STILL FOR ONE MINUTE so that they could take a picture? Kevin and I sure do.

After several photos, with NOT ONE OF THEM bearing a normal expression or pose from either of us, my father finally gave up.

There’s nothing quite like the process of re-adhering to a schedule after two weeks of vacation during which you cross the international date line twice, use the resulting jet lag as your primary excuse for initiating and terminating sleep whenever you want, and trade in your cultural mine-field-laden, “adult” life in a foreign country for getting waited on hand and foot (yeah, they’re that happy to see you after a year and a half abroad) at home with your parents. When my keitai alarm went off this morning, I actually had to pretend that I was still in my parent’s panoramic-view-of-Nanaimo-across-the-water house in Canada, going through the sequence of “morning routine” actions I developed over there, just so that I wouldn’t be so depressed about returning to the “morning routine, J-version” that I retreated fifty folds into my futon, never to emerge again.

It was as I was working through a bowl of granola in a catatonic fashion (a lot of sitting and staring, not a lot of chewing) that one of those revelations of the daily-minutiae sort suddenly struck. Here I was thinking it would take something big and earth-shattering like a quake to get me moving (ground preferably tilted in the direction of my school, so that I could roll rather than mount the hated bike), when really it was just something I happened to overhear on J-TV.

Now that I’m pretty much on the quarter-century mark, there are not a lot of things I can remember precisely about grade one, but one of the things I do remember precisely is that we had a unit on Japan. A poster of Fuji went up on the bulletin board, and a Japanese woman visited our class to help us work through a workbook. We learned the names of a few fruits and vegetables, puzzled over the cartoon of a Japanese child scrubbing himself before he got into the tub, and made sure we at least knew TO-KYO and KYO-TO. Most importantly of all (to my mind, anyway), the Japanese woman led us through a wonderful little Japanese song, complete with actions. I remember thinking it was such a crime that she only showed it once, because I was determined to remember it, even though I was only seven years old and couldn’t understand a single word of Japanese. In other words, for the past eighteen years, I’ve been carrying around this nub of a memory of a Japanese children’s song and a few corresponding syllables, not quite sure whether it’s the real thing or a figment of my childhood imagination.

… UNTIL I HEARD IT THIS MORNING ON J-TV. Dropping my granola, I raced over to the television just in time to catch an animated Kitty-chan miming actions over the hiragana lyrics written across the bottom of the screen:

て　を　たたきましょう (te wo tatakimasho)

たんたんたん、たんたんたん (tan-tan-tan, tan-tan-tan)

あしぶみ　しましょう (ashibumi shimasho)

たんたんたんたんたんたんたん (tan-tan-tan-tan-tan-tan-tan)

わらいましょう (waraimasho)

あっはっは (ah-ha-ha)

わらいましょう (waraimasho)

あっはっは (ah-ha-ha)

あっはっは、あっはっは (ah-ha-ha, ah-ha-ha)

ああ、おもしろい (aa, omoshiroi)

Creepy, because not only had I correctly remembered the melody, but the syllables I’d managed to remember were also in the right places. Developmental psychology is correct. Children are freaking sponges.

If only I could go back and reassure my grade one self not to worry, because one day I’d learn Japanese and go to Japan and hear the song again on television, only this time I’d understand all of the words, so I could memorize it in a matter of seconds. Or tell my grade one self, Dude, see that Japanese woman up there? One day you will (technically) be capable of teaching a classroom full of first graders exactly what she’s teaching, Japanese song and all.

Actually, forget technicalities, I’m already doing what she did, just in the opposite situation. If even one of my Japanese grade one students goes on to suffer from an ear worm for eighteen years before going on an exchange to Canada, turning on the TV and shouting “ATARI!” when they hear the familiar strains of “Skinnamarink” on some children’s show, I’ll consider my JET Programme experience a success.

It would seem that the once-impenetrable fortress of “student lack of motivation” has been felled, only to reveal the dawn of a new battle: spelling.

Photos from Max’s and my recent trip to Nikko, Japan.

“Nikko is Nippon.”

To view some more elaborately-gilded mausoleum-for-the-Tokugawa-shogun goodness, click here.

… I dance because it’s the medium through which there seems to be the least amount of layers between the emotions of my heart and my audience. Technique-wise, I currently feel as though I’m chipping away at solid stone to release the memory of the fossil within, but emotion-wise, with the right exercise and the right music, I can feel my heart glimpsing through, like rays of the sun piercing through moving cloud.

–Just outside of a subway exit, somewhere in between Ebisu and Roppongi. It wasn’t the best place we could have chosen to meet; groups of people kept on pushing by, pinning me up against the luminescence of the vending machines.

Waiting for Michel, I tried to count the years since we last saw each other. He’d been with Alberta Ballet during my first season with the company. Six years. Until he’d snagged me on Facebook, mentioning that he’d be in Tokyo for a teaching gig and — hey, why don’t we try and meet up during that time? — I really never thought I’d see him again. Ah, but that’s the beauty of living in a place like Japan. You find yourself seeing people you never thought you’d see again, and doing things you never thought you’d do again.

*

I’m still not quite sure how it happened. After a dinner of Mexican we hopped on a subway train to Ebisu, where we sipped on Japanese umeshu plum wine at a table in an open-front restaurant. Michel was describing the ballet studio where he’d be guest-teaching with great enthusiasm.

“You’ve got to see this place. Sponsored by some architect who happens to love ballet. The main studio is huge – easily the size of the one we danced in at Alberta, with good floors and a high ceiling and live piano accompaniment. It’s not often you come across a space like that in a city like Tokyo.”

“Keep selling it like this and I really will come. Ever since I quit Japanese Tea Ceremony I’ve been toying with the idea of picking up a few ballet classes…”

“You should. They’re all open classes, and you should see the mix of dancers we get. Everything from seasoned pros to fifty-year-old secretaries trying ballet for the first time.”

…Or maybe that’s precisely how it happened.

After weeks and weeks of hunting my bleak existence for inspiration, I walked into the ballet studio where Michel was teaching the next day, smelled the familiar mixture of odors (sweat, vinyl flooring, canvas-lined ballet slippers, resin, wool outfits, hairspray, and perfume), heard the familiar tinkle of the piano guiding a group of dancers through an enchainement in front of a mirrored wall, and thought to myself: I have found my haven. These last five years, I’ve been going out of my way to avoid anything that might tempt me to try ballet again, anticipating a horrible surge of pain — the type of pain that can only come from the jagged edges of a broken dream — but here I was, allowing myself to be tempted, and what I felt was not pain. Instead, I felt a startling sense of longing.

*

The Afternoon Of

Now I entered the ballet studio not as a guest, not as an undancing mortal, but as a dancer. I may not have looked any different than I have over the course of my five-year retirement, but the tattered carpet-bag over my shoulder contained a crisp new black leotard, black tights cut off at the feet, yoga pants, a headband to secure my chin-length bob, a bottle of sweetened coffee, a bottle of water, a container of hair pins, socks with grips on the bottom (I haven’t yet purchased ballet slippers), shower gel, perfume, and a towel. All items just as religiously and meticulously arranged as they had been when I was dancing professionally.

Michel was already in the main studio, finishing up a junior-level class. At the sight of him I had to pause and take a breath; struck as I was by a tidal wave of nostalgia. That particular shirt he was wearing, the reed-thin dancer’s physique — it was as though he’d been cut from the fabric of my memories of being at Alberta Ballet, and transplanted into this different setting, this present setting, in Japan. It hurt a little, just to consider: How different would my life be right now if I hadn’t quit my professional ballet career? A pang in the heart like knives. Dizzy with vertigo.

All of this washed away by Michel’s face when he saw me limbering at the barre.

“Look at you,” he smiled, encouragingly, “ready to give it a go?”

“It’s time,” I replied, “let’s see what this body can do.”

Hidden amongst a forest of Japanese dancers, all different shapes and sizes and abilities, all moving in unison to the music, I explored the terrain of muscle memory. I’d been expecting something like Mars, but everything I’d carefully cultivated was still there, albeit choked by time, increased body fat, and disuse. However, all systems physically, mentally, and emotionally responded favorably.

I was dancing.

Let me tell you why I dance…

As many of you may not have known, my computer was broken for about a month, which accounts — in part — for my extended absence from this blog. But I’m back now! And admittedly, a little over the blogging thing, but will continue posting photo links and bits and pieces of my writing for the benefit of everyone at home.

But on with the photos, circa the middle of September and running through to the present.

Kamiyubetsu

More photos here.

Dan’s Birthday Extravaganza

More photos here.

Kawagoe Matsuri

More photos here.

Saitama MYC 2007

More photos here.

Michel in Tokyo

Religion…

Politics…

My So-Called Future.

*

What does any person I talk to know about me, anyway? What does anyone know? I’m like this huge, building-sized wall mural, which people peer at through a keyhole. That’s about all you can convey of yourself in one dinner date, a keyhole’s worth. But then everyone likes to take that tiny little keyhole’s worth, and extrapolate all sorts of things. They think they know the entire mural, every detail, right out to the corners — even what type of building you’re painted on — just from that keyhole glimpse. And then, despite your intimate knowledge of your own mural, right down to which parts have recently been embellished, you take these flash-keyhole-judgments so seriously, you fool yourself into thinking that the person knows something about you that you don’t, even though they might not know shit. And then the other person gets to go home, promptly forgetting the fraction of truth that they may or may not have seen, and meanwhile you’re on a train somewhere in the middle of Tokyo, in tears over how much of your original design to preserve, and how much to whitewash and start all over from scratch.

*

This aching heart ain’t something I done
This aching heart’s been handed down
But I’m done with it now
I’m done with it now
I’m done with it now

– Matthew Good, The Boy Come Home

I’ve learned the hard way that talking helps. Up until recently my life experiences have conspired to make me believe that it’s always better to keep one’s hand of cards close to one’s chest, rather than put them out on the table. But if one year in a foreign country like Japan has taught me anything, it’s that it’s okay to make yourself vulnerable. We get so caught up in projecting this… certain image to others. A strong image, an infallible image. But then where does the humanity go? I imagine that if you don’t let some vulnerability out, it starts to pool up within, until you’re this incredibly unbalanced person with an impenetrable exterior of steel and a mess of neuroses on the inside.

So, how was your first year in Japan, anyway?

It was very much like a free fall. I lunged back, took a running head start towards the edge of that proverbial cliff, and jumped. Like jumping right off the edge of the western coast of Canada, holding this enormous, blind faith that Japan would catch me. I felt a little as our forefathers must have felt — you know the ones, the ones who finally decided to challenge the theory that the world was flat and ended at the horizon. Of course, modern collective knowledge reassured me that there was much to see beyond my horizons, but it took a bit of faith that first time, willfully throwing myself past the boundaries of firsthand knowledge and into the realm of — what had been, up until then — imagination and hearsay.

Did Japan catch you?

Not right away. Hence the free fall. Only now that I’m out of the free fall can I look back and say, “Yeah, the free fall was a necessary state of evolution,” because when I was in it — well, it sucked. I was falling and falling, and getting caught on all of these… things along the way. Things like fitting in with the ex pats, fitting in with the Japanese, negotiating the ways in which I’d never fit in with either group, no matter how hard I tried… changes in food supply and availability, something you’d never expect to shake you up quite as badly as it can… language issues. University instills you with this illusion that you know all sorts of things, like how to speak Japanese, for instance, but then you get out into the real world… and it’s like that Hungarian Horntail in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Studying Japanese from a textbook in Canada is like holding a miniature model of the dragon in your hand, but then you come to Japan and realize that the language is massive, and fire-breathing, and unpredictable, and that not only do you have no clue how to subdue it, but that you’ve also pretty much forgotten everything you thought you knew in the first place.

But you’re out of the free fall now, right?

I think so. As I said, for the longest time I was falling, and getting really frustrated and trying to see the ground through all of the “issues” I kept on getting snagged on. I was tired of the issues and the challenges. I was impatient. I just wanted to hurry up and hit the ground running. But then it occurred to me not to be so impatient. This isn’t a race to get back to Canada and go to grad school. This is a rare opportunity to check out of “real life” for a while, tuck myself away in an obscure little sphere of time and experience — a little floating world — and allow myself to get pelted by the weird challenges entirely unique to this place. Well then, as soon as I’d riddled that out — it took me an entire year — lo and behold, there was the ground to break my fall.

How is running on the ground different from free falling?

Like NIGHT AND DAY. Once you’ve been through the experience of having a ton of expectations and having nearly all of them disappointed, you learn to be a lot more wary of expectations. And then its like something gets unclogged, and things start to happen. It doesn’t take quite so much effort to form relationships with people, situations no longer feel quite so alien, even the lights in your apartment will seem to hit the furniture at different angles. I can recall so many nights last year, taking the train home from Tokyo, feeling utterly vanquished by the city’s hollow restlessness and how it wouldn’t hesitate to further hem me in my misery with its endless mess of jam-packed concrete, escalating heat, and impersonal crush of human bodies. Contrast that with Friday night two weeks ago, in the car of a Japanese friend of a Japanese friend, freely cruising the highways of rural Saitama until we found this mountain in Chichibu, far enough removed from the incandescent glow of Tokyo to see the stars. Up we crawled the hairpin road, right to the very top, where we got out of the car and seated ourselves along a low concrete divider. No sounds, save for the lowing of cattle from a nearby farm, the tinkling of wind chimes, and the subdued nighttime chirping of the cicadas. Above us, the stars seemed to echo the sound of the wind chimes, visually, and ahead of us, dropping away from our feet, lay the lights of Saitama, congregating into a very bright Tokyo far down low on the horizon. Rows of pitch-black, pointy mountains framed the scene.

“I dare you to yell something,” said the Japanese friend of my Japanese friend. All I could see of him was the bright orange tip of his cigarette in the darkness.

“Okay.”

I attempted to gather up every feeling, every remnant of frustration I’d felt over the past year, all of those impulses to speak, yell, or cry that I’d never acted upon and release them all in a single, Godzilla-like roar.

And what was it about roaring at Tokyo from the top of a mountain that shifted things, imperceptibly?

For once there was no hollowness, no echo. Rather, the landscape seemed to catch me, snatching my voice from the abyss to hold and mull it over, thoughtfully.