Longtime expatriates all play
‘Survivor’
(This article, which first appeared in the Japan
Times of May 31, 2003,
is reproduced in Eyes on Japan by kind permission of the
author.)
It’s not reality TV. It's reality.
Yet I too am a survivor.
True, I have not been secluded
on a desert island. I have not had to overcome boomerang matches,
firemaking
contests and knockout votes.
Instead my challenges list like
this:
Struggling doggedly with
another language and culture, not just for a few weeks, but for every
single day of every single year, year-in and year-out . . .
Raising two kids between two
lands and a pair of families separated by a wide world of differences and
understanding . . .
Sweating through a boiling cost
of living that overcooks even the smallest of expenditures . . .
And — perhaps the hardest
task of all — watching other folks in similar situations not survive,
but rather pack up their bags and head home.
I am reminded of these old
friends every day, for like a true survivor I have inherited their
cast-off belongings.
I sip coffee from the mug of an
ex-colleague who is now who knows where in the upper Midwest. I watch
videos on an ancient tape machine from a former neighbor from Texas. I
gaze upon a bookshelf filled with novels that I keep claiming I will
someday read, all forsaken by good buddies who exited this land long
before they intended.
"What rubbish," says
my wife. "You act like those people are dead. But all they are is
gone."
So? And is that not death?
At a business lunch one friend
tells me of another who had at last taken all he could of the stagnant
Japanese economy and moved his family back to Seattle.
"No," I gasp.
"He's left us? Already? But he was so young!"
We toast his memory with cups
of bullion as if we were at a wake and not a cheap eatery. In both our
eyes reflects the ultimate question:
Who will be next?
Not that I ever planned — or
even plan — to stay in Japan forever. In truth it often seems that the
years have bushwhacked me, that they have accumulated unexpectedly from
out of nowhere.
Yet I draw a fast and easy
camaraderie with those who sit in the same expatriate boat, especially
those people of the same generation or in the same line of work. It is as
if we have all shared a common misadventure, one of tripping clumsily
through a colorful land of overly arranged flowers, ceremonies and
relationships.
It's almost as if we were
family. When one of us leaves, it hurts.
Of course keeping contacted
with such dearly departed has never been so easy as the present, when the
shortest distance between two points lies not in a straight line but
rather within some eye-blink of cyberspace.
Yet e-friends are not nearly as
close as those smooshed with you into the same commuter train. For they
no longer take the Japan challenge. They no longer . . . survive.
There is no pattern as to why
these people left. There is no rhythm nor rationale for non-surviving.
Some hated every minute of
being here. Others loved it so much they would speak Japanese even with
fellow foreigners. Some couldn't go through a meal without rice, seaweed
and something fishy. Others knew the location of every set of Golden
Arches within 10 km. Some were married to the land, as so many of us are.
Others just liked to flirt with it.
Whatever, they were part of the
expatriate whole, which is always diminished by another absence.
"Do you ever wonder,"
I ask my business-lunch friend, "when your day will come? I mean,
most of us go back, sooner or later. The alternative is much too
permanent."
"Sure," he says.
"The only problem is timing. Most people stay too long . . . or too
short. But when is just right? Once I figure that out, that's when I'll
go."
He has unknowingly paraphrased
Sartre. And I, knowingly, flip the remainder of the paraphrase back at
him.
"Isn't it the other way
around? You don't leave because it's finished. It's finished because you
leave."
So he leaves — the meal, that
is — as existentialism makes a rotten desert. Most of us Japan hands are
waiting for something much sweeter, like a home, a job and a pension, all
happily planted in a resort-type setting.
Benefits that expats cannot
receive unless they first stop surviving and . . . go back.
"Sometimes I worry,"
I now tell my wife, "that I'm afraid to go back. That the prospect of
starting over again — even in my own culture, even among my own friends
and family, even in the bosom of my own hometown — is just too daunting.
"I worry that surviving
here this long has changed me forever."
"No doubt it has,"
she answers. "No doubt after all these years you have traded away one
view of reality for another. Isn't that why it's worrisome to watch others
return? It makes you anxious over both settings — the one you have
chosen and the one you have left behind.
"It's the same for
me," she goes on. "It's the same for anyone who has embraced
something different. The tighter the embrace, the harder it is to tear
yourself away and glance backwards. How can others do it?"
What's left then? Except to aim
ahead. When you're an expat in Japan with a long-term commitment,
"Survivor" always has another episode.
"Something else I worry
about," I confess to my wife, "is that so many longtime
residents here turn out a trifle weird. You know what I mean?"
She smiles. "Yes, I think
I do. But survivors can't be picky, can they?
"Besides," she pats my
hand, "for some survivors, it may already be too late."
©Thomas Dillon for the Japan Times 2003 All rights
reserved
Editor's note: Sincere thanks to the author for
his kind permission to republish the above article, which first appeared
in his regular Japan Times column "When East Marries
West".
This page last updated 2008-06-16
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