One Year

Mike went to America last month.  It was stressful for him to figure out how he was going to get to the airport.  There used to be a shuttle that would come to one of the hotels and pick up people and take them to the airport but that shuttle isn't running anymore.  We finally settled on the subway as the best option.  I walked with him to the bus stop, where we rode until Shibuya station.  At the station we went and found the ticket office where he picked up his previously purchased ticket.  We said our goodbyes and he found his train and I took the bus back home. He took two trains to the airport, different than the normal ones we take around town.  When I got home I decided to take the kids to get Kakigori, the name for Japanese shaved ice.  It's much better than the normal shaved ice you think about.  American shaved ice is really sugary sweet but like most Japanese treats, their shaved ice is sweet but much more mild in their sweetness.  The texture is much different too.  They take a block of ice and shave it and then fill it with the flavoring and then pack it down and do this about three times until you have a mountain of shaved ice.  I actually loved it.  

But!

And, this is where I run into issues living here.  Our Kakigori experience ended up lasting three hours.  We live about a twenty minute walk from Yelo, where we bought the shaved ice.  The feels like temperature was 100 degrees.  We showed up and there were four people ahead of us.  It is typical for there to be a long line waiting outside the restaurants and every time I pass one of these long lines I think to myself, "Nothing is worth waiting in a line that long" and then I always equally admire and scoff at them in my mind for their patience.  It doesn't seem to bother them and I am too impatient to understand.  Anyway, I figured four people would not take that long to wait for.  30 minutes passed and we were dripping with sweat.  Isaac was trying not to grumble.  The girls were bored and impatient and Will just pretended to ignore us all.  I spotted a vending machine and got water for everyone.  40 minutes passed and I thought, "How did this happen?  We've waited this long.  I can't leave now."  60 minutes later they came out and got us.  There were 12 people (including the five of us) inside and one shaved ice machine and one worker.  He served us each separately.  Over an hour later we each got our shaved ice and headed home.  

I tried to focus on how yummy the shaved ice had been--I'd been wanting to try this Japanese summer treat--but I had a hard time enjoying the moment.  I knew the boys were annoyed at how much time this outing had taken and we were all needing a second shower since we were dripping with sweat from sitting outside in the humidity for so long and we all just wanted to go home. I tried to joke about it, "Well, we had our Japanese Kakigori experience AND our Japanese waiting in line experience.  What else were we going to do with our time?"  But inside I was irritated with the heat, the walking, the waiting.  I thought, "I just wanted to do something fun with the kids while Mike was gone and instead it turned into an unpleasant ordeal for a small amount of pleasure."

I share this experience to describe my mindset this past year.  I am struggling to love it here.  I find that I keep trying to find experiences that we will enjoy and that will be memorable and in the process I can't seem to get past how frustrating making these experiences happen is.  I know that it is partly my own fault.  I wish that I was better at just letting things be what they are.  I've talked about that here on this blog before--even this year, the Christmas post perhaps?  Living here has brought up all of my weakness to the forefront of my mind.  It makes me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed and I compare myself to others a lot, wondering why I am struggling to adjust to this way of life still.  Perhaps others are struggling just as much as me but they don't talk about it.  I do hear people say things like, "Everything is harder here" so I know that it isn't just my own experience but no one really talks about it in depth and I really just have this blog and my journal to remind myself of all my many complaints.  

Regardless of what it should be or maybe is for someone else, what this year has been for me is hard.  I knew it would be before we came but I think I was hoping that by some miracle it wouldn't be.  I came here trusting that if God wanted us to have this experience He would support us and I can confidently say that I know He has.  Saying that doesn't eliminate that fact that supporting us doesn't mean taking away all the hard.  I think that is where I get tripped up.  

For me, it is usually around the year mark in any new place where I start to feel discouraged about my progress adjusting.  I start to think, "Maybe I won't ever feel comfortable here or maybe I won't make any good friends here."  Why does it take me so long?!  Somehow, the second year is always where I hit my stride and I can genuinely say that I am looking forward to entering the second year here because that means I'll start liking my experience here.  I know it won't necessarily work that way but it has in the past.  It might take me a long time here and I might never truly embrace it but I still hope I can.  

In the meantime, I have started therapy online and I'm looking forward to it.  I hope she can help me have a more positive mindset.  I signed up for something called Mood Gym a few months ago which is a website that helps you work on cognitive behavior therapy.  I see myself in so many of the warpy thoughts they identify and I hope that working with the therapist will help me to figure out how to change those thoughts.  It isn't that I can't identify when I am having warpy thoughts and even change those thoughts, it's that those thoughts take effort and work and I would like to get to a place where my first thoughts aren't the warpy ones.  I assume it just takes a lot of practice and awareness.    

In my journal I wrote down all of the things I love about Japan and all the experiences that I am grateful to have had.  It's not a short list and Kakigori is on it, even if waiting in line for an hour is not.