the irony of expat home leave
Thomas Wolfe wrote that you can’t go home again. Dorothy Gale, on the other hand, swore there was no place like home.
As I headed back to the U.S. for the holidays after almost a year as an expat in Japan, I was eager to learn if I was more a Wolfe or a Gale. Would my old Ohio lifestyle come back to me naturally (like riding the proverbial bike down the streets of my Midwestern suburban neighborhood)? Or would I long for the now-familiar urban sights and sounds of Tokyo — the clanging Pachinko parlors, the omnipresent vending machines, the jam-packed subway trains?
Home certainly feels familiar and nostalgic, but it no longer feels entirely comfortable and I don’t feel entirely comfortable in it. Like an old sweater that’s been stretched out from too many wears. It no longer fits quite right, but you still love it because you’ve had it for so long.
The first week or so in Ohio was the strangest. I felt unsettled and surreal. Even though I was here in Ohio, I felt like a part of me was still trying to stay in Tokyo, to conform Ohio to my Tokyo expectations, to remain in my Tokyo routine and pace. I felt that rigid awkwardness you get when you try to swim in a pool while keeping your hair dry.
As time passed, I could feel some of the awkwardness shedding. I remembered what it felt like to live in a big house instead of a small apartment. I remembered how it feels to live at the end of a winding cul-de-sac in a sleepy suburb instead of a high-rise in the heart of one of the world’s largest cities.
But there’s still something a little off. It’s not like it was before I moved to Tokyo. It’s not really “home” because I know there’s another “home” that looks and feels and tastes and sounds totally different.
Maybe this isn’t an issue with being here in Ohio, but just an issue with being an expat generally. Maybe I’ll feel just as much a sense of surreal displacement when I first get back to Tokyo next week. In fact, maybe trying to be “at home” in two such disparate and distinct locations inevitably leads to a kind of transient difficulty fully settling into the culture and lifestyle of either place. I’m still too new to this to have the answers.
What I do know is that being back in Ohio these past three weeks has been a remarkable realization of how much my time as an expat has made an impression on me. I’m actually very pleased to have this tug-of-war between two lifestyles and cultures. I’m thrilled that my time in Tokyo is changing me, changing my expectations and my point of view, and making me see things I’ve always taken for granted (like Ohio) in a slightly different light.
And with that being said, here’s a little run-down of some of the things that I’ve decided I love, like, and loathe about life in Ohio that I never really noticed before I moved away:
Love:
- English bookstores: I can’t convey what an unbelievable luxury it is to have so many bookstores available with so much stock in a language I can read. And at reasonable prices. It’s a dream.
Like:
- Space: At first when I came back to Ohio, I was shocked and frankly uncomfortable by how much space there was everywhere. Restaurants with vast cavernous dining areas filled with gargantuan booths and tables. Parking lots the size of small villages. But after a little while, I came to appreciate having so much room to spread out. And the attendant quiet that comes with such space is awfully nice and peaceful too.
- Sales: For all its awesomeness, Tokyo is expensive. I really enjoyed having daily emails of 20% off sales at pretty much all my favorite stores back in Ohio.
Loathe:
- Driving: Hard truth here, people: driving is the worst. It’s dangerous, rage-inducing, and boring as f*ck. You can’t multitask like you can on the train. You’re cut off from the rest of the world while you’re in your car. (You’re also often cut off by jerk drivers). Once you’re done driving somewhere, parking takes time and is, more often than not, an utterly frustrating experience. Getting gas is the worst (especially in winter). And the emphasis on driving in Ohio comes at the expense of walking anywhere. So as you sit in traffic, cursing the person in front of you who, invariably, can’t drive, you also get the benefit of feeling your butt expand from lack of exercise.
- Salt and snow: Snow is pretty for about half an hour on Christmas morning. But then you have to shovel. And it turns yellow from dog pee (something I know has to happen, but it’s much better when the snow isn’t pointing it out like a urinary take on Jackson Pollock). And Ohio goes overboard with the salt everywhere. It ruins your shoes, tracks into houses and buildings ruining floors, and seems to provide only marginal benefit to keep the roads and sidewalks safe.
- Grocery shopping: The grocery stores in Ohio are definitely big, but they’re mainly big because they’re filled with lots of repetitive, artificially-flavored processed snacks that offer no nutritional value but do, to their credit, provide some fun analysis of the “what in the world were they thinking?” persuasion. Case in point: vanilla cupcake flavored Goldfish crackers.
