Home

If touching down in Hokkaido was like coming home, then arriving in Sapporo is like having a big hug from your Mumma.  A cold, unforgiving Mother.  But none-the-less, she's still familiar and you feel a fondness through connection and obligation.  I do really like Sapporo though.  And because of the fact that I spent 15 months here (even though it was eight years ago), it does feel, in a way, like home.  It probably will never be my home again  - but visiting is always a good option.

It was a pretty grim first couple of months that I spent here.  I arrived at the end of March, and there was still a lot of snow and ice in the streets, as there is now.  I had an inkling of foreboding as I touched down at the airport.  It grew as I waved goodbye to my fellow new English teacher, who was on her way to the sticks of Hokkaido.  Then it grew some more when I walked down the corridor of my new apartment, getting a full understanding of what it must feel like to dwell in a psych ward at a public hospital.   When I shut my door, and looked around at the sparse furnishings, I suddenly realised that I was totally and incredibly alone, and in a very cold, strange country.  I didn't understand a word of the language, or the culture, or what I was meant to do when Monday morning came round, and I suddenly had seventy students that needed to learn English.

I did meet one other person over that first weekend.  A friendly fellow teacher who, alas for me, was leaving the country on Monday.  He kept dropping me off boxes of his stuff.  I thought he was being nice, until I realised he was using me as a kind of a human garbage storage unit.  I breathed a sigh of relief that I wouldn't get any more crap dumped on me when Monday came.  However, I came home that afternoon to find another box waiting for me on the doorstep.  In it were about 30 dusty video tapes of The Golden Girls (yes, he was gay).  I put one my video player months later, when I was bored out of my mind, and there was so must dust in it that it broke my VHS player.  The other strange item was a CD by an artist (if you can call him that), whose name I forget.  But the CD title was "Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy".  Needless to say, it didn't go platinum.

I found working for a Japanese company soul destroying.  The hours were long, the job was hard and yet simultaneously boring.  I made peanuts.  I was always broke, living pay check to pay check. Working in the corporate world - especially in Japan- was hard for a little hippy slacker like myself.  I didn't have the right clothes.  The guy who trained a group of us in Tokyo upon arrival, took me aside and said my outfits weren't appropriate.  His words; "I can see a lot more at the back than anyone should have to".  It took me a while to cotton on, and then I realised "You can see my crack???!!!"  "Yes I can Emily". I bought a grey polyester pants suit the next day.

I spent all my spare time alone for the first two months.  Sometimes I would go for an entire weekend without speaking one single word.  That kind of shit is hard to take for someone who likes to crap on as much as I do.  Also remember, I had just come from a summer in Byron Bay.  I'd been really enjoying my life - having fun with all my friends, going to the beach everyday, living in a beautiful house in Broken Head with my best friend, going out, working casually, I'd met a new guy.........Initially, I really wanted to leave Japan, but I just couldn't take the whole 'quitting after just two months' factor.  I'd had a goodbye party, sold my car and all my other belongings.  It would have been degrading.

Things got better (they always do don't they?).  I found my Japanese co-workers sweet.  I got in contact with my dear friend who'd gone to the sticks, and another girl (who'd showed me round my school), came back to live in Sapporo, and we became good friends.  I learnt some Japanese.  I got to know my students.  My company eased off the workload.  I had fun.  I chucked out the box of The Golden Girls.  I met a hilarious group of snowboarding ex-pats who became my weekend riding/karaoke/drinking buddies when the snow started.  And by far the best thing of all..... the new guy I'd met in Byron.....Well, he came to visit me, we fell in love in this snowy city and have been happy ever since (everybody..."Awwwwww").

So things aren't always what they seem at first are they now?  We are only here for one night, but it was still fun to pass through.  The very last of my old friends are packing their bags right now to move to Canada, so next time I come back there won't be anyone left to visit.  It was a great time though.  When I look back, even the hard times seem filled with positive nostalgia.  It's those challenging times in your life that make you adjust and grow, and hopefully become a better person.  And ultimately, they make you appreciate ever so much more the really good times (like now!).  Jesus I am turning it on tonight.  Don't worry, I'll be back on the mountain tomorrow and taking about powder and poo again next entry......
So long Sapporo xx