Our Last Week and Our Return to Canada

Our last week in Tarui was a blur of busy-ness. We decided to leave a week earlier than planned in order to attend Adam's grandma's funeral. We cancelled many of the farewell parties, so we didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to everyone. It would have been nice to have the closure, but I don’t like goodbyes- so it was alright.

 

I went out for eel with my friend Tomomi.

Our farewell dinner with our Christianity discussion group.
They treated us to sushi.

Our farewell dinner with Fr. Rey from Ogaki Parish.
We had steak.

I spent the week calling to re-book flights, packing, getting more gifts and re-packing, going to the bank, and cleaning. This shufu (housewife) was working hard, let me tell you.

The day we left we had three friends and a co-worker come to our house to see us off in the morning. It was so sweet of them and a great last chance to say goodbye. Then, two members of the school board drove us to the airport. At the airport- anyone following Adam on facebook knows- we had quite the rigmarole. Expedia (by the way- don’t book with them) only cancelled our flights without re-booking them, despite us having a printed confirmation. A good 6 hours on the phone later we got a flight for that evening. We got home 6 hours later than planned. I did have my first experience of business class though, which I quite enjoyed. Adam and I ate as much food as we could in the half hour we had in the lounge in Tokyo and I managed to sleep for 6 hours on the long 9 hour flight- so I enjoyed the experience, but for $6000 dollar tickets, they should give you good service.

 

We camped out at Asiana Airlines for 6 hours and used their phone.

We named our suitcase "Tough Guy."

The food we ate at the business class airport lounge in Tokyo.

Our business class seats

 On arriving in the USA, we experienced our first situation of counter culture shock. We were in the airport and the people working at security and customs were “yelling” at everyone to make sure they had their passports and boarding passes out, this isn’t the line for this- go there, etc. Basically people just seemed really loud and like they were “yelling.” I don’t think they were, but coming from Japan it seemed rude. Back in Canada, we experienced Canadian customer service. In a way, it’s hard to comment on this since we were never able to actually understand what people in the stores were telling us- but the demeanor is different. People in Canada are laid back I suppose. We got incorrect information a couple times in Canadian customer service and a guy who was texting his friends while serving us. In Japan, I didn’t have one experience of someone texting/on their phone while I was talking to them. In Japan, whenever you come into a store, everyone working in the store calls out a welcome and when you leave, they all call out a thank you. I’m used to making a small bow before leaving a store because of this thank you call and the hosts bowing. In Canada, you can be pretty much ignored. It can seem rude at first. Adam and I were also pretty overwhelmed with all the English, noise, and talking to people. It wasn’t necessarily a conscious awareness for me, but rather just a growing frustration and feeling of stress. We came from spending days only speaking to each other in “normal” English, to being surrounded by most of Adam’s extended family. We’ve only been back a week and while we told ourselves that we’ll ease back into things and not get too busy, but we ended up seeing a lot of people and making more plans than we probably should have. We both feel like we’ve been back in Canada for quite a long time. Adam was telling his family that last weekend we climbed Mt. Fuji and I couldn’t believe that it was just last weekend. Japan already seems like a dream, but it also doesn’t feel like we’re back in Canada either. Our whole lives are just so surreal at the moment.

Arriving at Edmonton Airport.

The day after we arrived, we went to Tim Hortons.

Thus ends our Japan adventure- our first year of marriage. Thus begins our Canadian adventure- year 2 of marriage. I think I’m ready to settle down now and stay in Canada for a while.