cultural ptsd

“We’d like you to introduce yourself first in English, then in Japanese,” came the request.
I was facing three strangers in a room whose defining characteristic was that it simply had none. Stark and barren, manufactured and blank, I sat uncomfortably in a similarly indistinguishable suit, and commenced to distinguish myself by choking spectacularly.
Because while mixing the two languages together comes naturally, when asked to switch – in seconds – from rattling off bar certifications in English to doing something similar entirely in Japanese, I start to sound like a drowning child with Tourette’s. My brain shut down, that time, and I spent an eternally slow second moving my jaw silently, groping for words I knew, deep down, weren’t there (though, I figured, it didn’t hurt to look). All while being stared at by people I had met less than five minutes ago.

It comes as a surprise to many that I am barely literate in Japanese. I cannot read a newspaper or write a coherent paragraph about even the simplest concepts, but can converse enough to deceive people into believing I am a “normal” Japanese person. I lack the accent that my sister has developed after too many years away from Tokyo, as well as any external signs that I am not entirely of this country. This has led to numerous embarrassing episodes in which I am forced to stumble, verbally blind, through simple, daily interactions. Most recently, at my local bank, a teller kindly showed me the characters to copy into the relevant spaces as my hand shook, my face flushed in shame. “Look,” I wanted to say, “I’m not really an idiot. Really. I promise. I just never got around to learning my own language. But I’m not useless in English! No, I mean it. I passed the bar…two bars, actually! That means something, right?” But only able to convey so much, I pushed down the peeking tears of embarrassment, thanked her, and walked out into a street that seemed too bright, too crowded, and too overwhelming for my small words.
This struggle to express myself is – putting aside my lack of a scrotum – the more emasculating and disenfranchising because words are my chosen medium. The ease with which sentences can flow from mind to typing fingers, the catharsis of hitting all the right tropes, the allegories articulated by alliteration…all become mangled or nonexistent when I attempt communication in my alternate language. The pressure builds further as I look as if I should belong here – those freckles I work on all summer fail to suggest foreignness and only inspire pity at my blemished complexion – the façade slowly giving way as furrowed brows press together for simple vocabulary and my grammar disintegrates like dampened rice paper.

“Oh, that’s just culture shock,” some people might say. “Don’t worry, you’ll get over it.” And it’s true that we are all allowed some time to hide under this all-encompassing excuse for our respective inability to adjust appropriately to a different culture. But if they are implying that there is some finite period after which one recovers and emerges with an understanding of what has occurred, my linguistic ball gag is more akin to a full-blown case of PTSD. The frustration slips into my decidedly unilingual thoughts, tripping up thought processes with guilt, and translates into even my writing. My usual rote escape, a week or two has slipped by before a comment from Josh forced my hands back onto the keyboard. But the words are now tinged with a measure of guilt because I cannot do even half of this in Japanese. It brings to mind how I once coyly, lightly quoted Sage Francis – “This ain’t a good impression, but I work better on page/They say words are my profession” – only now, unable to mop up after myself, to feel the heavy irony of those lyrics.
And linguistically muted, there has been a companion stranglehold on any desire to push the pedals, my cluelessness as to ride routes underlining another loss of freedom. Hesitant to ask for yet another guided ride, yearning for the lost ability to swing a leg over my bike and head confidently towards a familiar route, I have chosen to [ironically] spin resolutely in place. It doesn’t do much for my legs, or my lungs, but it gives me a brief hour to dream to a sunrise, before facing the perpetual frowns of unfulfilled expectations.

Back in that sterile room, scrutinized further by the glare of fluorescents, my interviewer asked me what I missed most about the States. For a split second, I was chasing Dave N., Jeremy, and Chris through a typical New England summer, the wind softly teasing the robust greenery around us. I could feel myself squinting up at the sun before standing up in the pedals, realizing I was close to getting dropped. “Nature,” I replied, a little lamely, because there was no way to express the sweet smell of bike rides, friends, and a favorite boy. “Good,” came the reply, as if satisfied with my feigned detachment from my former life. I smiled as I kept the door firmly closed on the threatening flood of homesickness, consciously resisting the pull towards a place other than lonely, and feeling – for the first time in weeks – an intense ache distinct from the blunted, dull sensations of my current day to day.
I kept a cautious hand on that emotional door until we all bowed, said our “thank you”s and finished with our formalities. As I boarded the train, I tried to concentrate instead on the straps of my bag digging uncomfortably into my shoulder, on how tired I was, and how I was out of tissues, so crying wouldn’t really be practical, at least not until I got home.
But I still thought of Boston the entire way back.

superbly packed

Apologies for the radio silence...the job hunt has been all-consuming but I'll be back soon!
Especially because I did this this past weekend...

Thanks to Tom at Superb for packing my track baby with so much care!

sweet onekan

A day or two ago, my mother pointed out several tall, skinny trees, their bushy branches peeking up over walls enclosing neighboring yards. Nestled amongst the sturdy green leaves were clusters of small, orange, waxy flowers, almost hidden away, as if self-conscious of their own bland appearance.
“They’re called kinmokusei [Sweet Osmanthus],” my mother said, “those flowers don’t smell like anything up close, but from far away, their fragrance is intense. See? Do you smell that?”
I looked up and sniffed, but didn’t sense much other than my slightly dehydrated throat.
“Uh…no…?”
My mother looked at me as if resigned to the fact that I could actually disappoint her further. “I can’t believe you can’t smell that.”

A ready excuse – that my throat was still chafed from my ride on Sunday – came to mind but hopes of absolving myself dissolved as I realized Sunday was more than 48 hours ago. I tried instead an expression of hopeful expectation mixed with an apologetic one that fell predictably flat as my mother sighed and turned away. I looked for more Sweet Osmanthus trees, resolving to try harder.
To my defense, Sunday’s ride along the infamous Onekan had left me with a slightly sore throat, the product of inhaling too many fumes along the way. My first ride since flying back to Tokyo, I’d successfully persuaded Deej to guide the way while soft-pedaling along to my struggling legs. The opportunity to ride also, quite conveniently, had the effect of forcing myself to attend to my IF, which sat sad and stripped of several crucial parts. Like a neglected child, it lingered silently, waiting eagerly for my withheld love.

It’s not that I intended to put up my road bike for the rest of the year [this is Tokyo, after all, where even the winters are extremely mild at best], or that I was too busy to ride. A half-dismantled bike, however, was easier on the eyes when I spent most of my days staring at the same empty job sites, and giving long, thoughtful hours to my relative ineptitude. A smear of dirt on the underside of my saddle reminded me of New Hampshire, Ride.Studio.Cafe., and a fridge filled with little more than containers of condiments, where I had left a mostly-full, screw-top bottle of Trader Joe’s white wine. What I wouldn’t give, I thought to myself, to be sucking down that amber-colored liquid right now – straight from the bottle – even if “taste” seemed an afterthought to whatever lower grade vineyard bottled the thing.
I was, in effect, “thinking about my life,” as Irvine Welsh once aptly put it in The Acid House, “and that is always a very, very stupid thing to do.” Realizing the futility of walking the same desperate mental circles, I pulled my head out of my own ass for five seconds to beg Deej for a ride. It worked. We planned on hitting the rollers along Onekan early Sunday morning.

A relatively short loop, it’s a quick out-[to-a-Starbucks]-and-back type route, conveniently located just across the Tama River. When Deej told me it was mostly rollers, I expected something more like Boston routes, where there are flat sections punctuated by small hills. The Onekan, though, feels more like riding a series of hills until the last mile or so, where the combination of no lights and flatter ground make ideal conditions for a dead-on TT sprint. The hills won’t kill you, but they’re challenging enough when, like me, you’ve gone weak in the legs and soft in the middle.

And given that a veteran Tokyo cyclist who loves to climb was guiding the way, we inevitably hit a back road off the Onekan. The grade surprisingly steep, we picked our way up the road on the sidewalk while cars aggressively sped past us. The sidewalk less than two feet wide, crowded on either side by intrusive telephone poles and hedges, I realized that spinning in the saddle wasn’t a prudent option as the uneven asphalt – punctuated by tree roots – made my butt bounce against my saddle. I stood up and spun, almost got hit by a car when we were back on the road, then slogged the rest of the way back to the Onekan.
Our flavor of Paris-Roubaix behind us for the day, and never one to chase or race, I established a steady pace on the way back, letting other cyclists slip past undisturbed. But the Onekan presents enough competitive opportunity to keep things interesting, and when a slight woman on a carbon fiber whatever, in Assos shorts and Lightweight wheels, bringing up the tail end of a paceline spun by, a prickle of ambition coursed through me. By the time we drew up behind her, I was secretly frothing at the mouth to go, my wheel dangerously overlapping Deej’s. He looked behind at me, I nodded, and we pushed up, over, and past. I felt briefly like an asshole, but that didn’t keep me from patting myself on the back just a little.

I remembered that cathartic surge forwards again when I finally smelled those Sweet Osmanthus flowers. My mother was right, they’re hard to miss; their thick scent permeating the air like the heavy perfume of an overbearing female relative. I looked up at those ordinary flowers – one might go so far as to call them unattractive – and found again that lost realization that appearances never quite matter. That that huge piece of paper I got from Boston College Law – however impressive with Latin words all over it – probably shouldn’t saddle me with daily existential crises.
And that although I may be the only person in Tokyo with black Sidis, that I might have a small, tiny measure of something in my legs, too.