Through fresh eyes

After you've been living in a place for a while, you tend to forget the things that shocked or amused you so much when you first arrived. You take for granted the fact that, in Japan anyway, there are cigarette vending machines on every corner. You understand that you don't have to tip at restaurants, and the displayed price for the convenience store candy bar is exactly what you pay at the register - you don't give it a second thought. You think nothing of the teenage kid decked out in his punk-rock finest, hair dyed red, a skull-n-crossbones patch safety pinned to his black bowler hat, strolling arm in arm with a girl in full kimono, a Louis Vuitton clutch dangling at her side. So nothing amuses me more than going to all my favorite locations accompanied by people who are seeing Japan for the first time in their lives through fresh eyes, wide and bright from the adrenaline rush that comes from actually being in a place to which you never thought you'd have the opportunity to travel.

So it was that Katie and I were called upon by our Japanese surrogate parents, the Masaokas (to whom we are indebted forever for all the help they've given us over the past year, not the least of which involved guiding us through the labyrinthine entrails of Japanese hospitals and American insurance companies when Katie had her emergency appendectomy last August), to come to Kyoto Station to meet our predecessors - the people who had my same job and lived in my very house two years ago. We knew precious little about Ned and Megan: they were from Washington State and had translated the menu at the Chinese restaurant next door which we frequent into English. That's about it. So we were excited to meet them and, selfishly, were excited to have any excuse at all to go to Kyoto.

When we got to Kyoto Station (Ned refers to it as the Death Star because it is the largest and most futuristic-looking building you'll ever set foot in), we saw Mr. and Mrs. Masaoka surrounded by a group of foreign kids; they looked like high school students. "Oh no," Katie said, "Mrs. Masaoka found a group of high school kids on a school trip and has probably taken it upon herself to personally show them around for the day." Such behavior would be totally normal for Mrs. Masaoka, which goes to show you the kind of person she is. She was dressed in summer kimono, which we suspect she does for the benefit of the foreigners she meets (when Katie's family came in March she showed up to our house dressed like that, for example). As it turned out though, Megan and Ned are both teachers back in Spokane and Ned had brought along some of the students from his Japanese class - apparently he teaches mainly social studies but also beginning Japanese on the side. So Katie and I go down to meet 12 more people than we had originally expected to, and we didn't quite know what to make of the situation. As it turned out, the kids were all really nice and subdued from the jet lag, so we were mercifully spared the horrific fate of keeping tabs on a bunch of teenagers running amok around the Old Capital.

Ned and Megan were incredibly nice people and a lot of fun to talk to; they knew the area around our house quite well as they had lived there, of course, so we talked about that quite a bit. Ned's students seemed to be quite mature and responsible as it turned out, so Katie and I were able to talk to them and answer their questions about living in Japan. The best part, of course, was just watching their reactions to things we simply take for granted living here: the ubiquitous vending machines, the lack of public trash cans, the fashion, just to name a few. To watch them taking pictures of the most mundane objects and shouting excitedly about stuff you see on your way to work every day energizes you and makes you feel privileged to live here. I often felt the same way when I was working downtown in DC and would walk down Pennsylvania Avenue on my lunch break past the White House, passing groups of tourists pointing and taking pictures. I was so fortunate, I thought, to live in such a place. I've no doubt my friends currently scattered across the globe experience the same when they spy a group of out-of-towners talking excitedly to each other, bedecked in backpacks and walking shoes, cameras at the ready, able to see things they'd long since forgotten through fresh eyes.