I double-checked my boarding pass to make sure I was at the right gate. Of course, the large screen right in front of me could have given me the same information, but I was nervous–I had never flown overseas before.
The last time I’d flown out of Seattle–returning to college in Iowa after Christmas the year before–I’d walked past this very gate, which had a Tokyo flight then, too. On that occasion, I’d noticed the screen listing Tokyo as the destination, and thought of the VanderHaaks, long-time family friends who were living in Tokyo. For a fleeting moment, I had wondered what would happen if I accidentally lined up at this gate instead of my own flight to Minneapolis a few gates down. I pictured myself boarding, falling asleep before takeoff as I usually did, and waking up several hours later, puzzled at why we hadn’t landed yet, and why this flight to Minneapolis was more ethnically diverse than usual. Then, as realization set in for this hypothetical version of me, so did panic: my cell-phone wouldn’t work in Japan and I didn’t have any cash on me. Would my debit card work in Japan? How would I book a return flight? How would I be able to contact my parents or Dordt College to explain the situation? And even if I wanted to contact the VanderHaaks, how would I do that, not knowing where they lived, and not having their phone numbers? Plus, I didn’t speak any Japanese. How would I get myself out of this mess?
This entire train of thought had crossed my mind in the space of about a second as I walked past the Tokyo departure gate in January of 2008. Now, one year later, I was boarding the flight to Tokyo on purpose. I was going to spend six months in Japan volunteering at the Christian Academy in Japan, the international school where Brian VanderHaak was the Head of School and Bette VanderHaak was the art teacher. Brian was going to pick me up at Narita airport, so I wouldn’t be left in the lurch like hypothetical me. All the same, I checked my wallet to ensure that I did in fact have the yen bills for which I’d exchanged $100 dollars earlier, and then checked my backpack for my Japanese phrasebook. Check and check. I was as prepared as I could be.
Still, part of me wondered if it wasn’t too late to board that Minneapolis flight instead. I knew what to expect in Minneapolis.
On the plane, I decided to give my new phrasebook a try for the first time with the Japanese flight attendant:
Flight Attendant: What would you like to drink?
Me: (reading the translation for “Water, please”) Mi-zu-o-ne-ga-i-shi-ma-su
Flight Attendant (saying what I would later understand to mean “your Japanese is very good!”): Nihongo jouzu!
Me (panic-defaulting to Spanish to convey my lack of understanding): ….no entiendo.
The human brain is a funny thing. The part of our brain that deals with learning additional languages defaults to whatever additional language we’re most comfortable with. For about three months, “no entiendo” would slip out without me realizing it, before being replaced by “wakarimasen”. It’s a surprisingly good feeling to say “I don’t understand” in the language that you do not understand.
Up to that point, the longest flight I had ever been on was between Seattle and Minneapolis at about 3 and a half hours long. Throughout college, I’d had an uncanny ability to fall asleep before takeoff and wake up when the landing gear touched tarmac. I’d never brought books to read because I had never needed to. But this time, a) I couldn’t sleep, and b) at about the 3 hour mark, I started getting antsy. I tried watching a Japanese movie on the seatback screen, but this only made me more keenly aware of how little I understood, and made me feel more anxious.
So, I watched the small plane icon which represented our flight crawl a millimeter at a time across the map screen. When we crossed the international date line, I marveled at the fact that I’d just traveled ahead in time by nearly a day.
Brian and the school had prepared me for the immigration line at Narita ahead of time. Though I was planning to volunteer for 6 months, the maximum stay for a visitor to Japan was 90 days. The school had started working on acquiring a work visa for me right away, but there was no guarantee that it would be ready before 90 days were up, in which case I would need to temporarily leave the country in order to reset my visitor visa. At this point, I was not supposed to mention any of that–none of it was illegal, but giving the long answer to the purpose of my visit to Japan would have certainly attracted attention and questions that I was not in a position to answer well as a first-time visitor to Japan with no Japanese language ability, in addition to creating more work for Brian and the school.
I braced myself for the worst, but to my surprise, the immigration officer did not ask me any questions other than where I planned to stay in Japan.
So, relieved but bleary-eyed and exhausted, I retrieved my suitcases from baggage claim, and exited through the sliding doors into the arrival wing of Narita airport. It was then that the realization fully hit me: I was in another country. I’d been to Canada often, of course, but this was the first time I’d been overseas, in a country where something other than English was the official language. Plus, Japan was and is one of the most ethnically homogenous nations in the world, with about 97% of the population being ethnically Japanese. As I stepped into that arrival wing, my head spun a little bit. Not since visiting the Wal-Mart in the Navajo community of Gallup, New Mexico while on a college choir tour in 2006 had I felt so conspicuous. While there were other foreigners in the arrival lobby, they definitely stood out. Here, for the first time, I could hear Japanese being spoken all around me. Or at least, I assumed it was Japanese. It was not English, anyway.
Brian, big, tall, mustachioed, was not hard to find in the crowd. I made my way over. “Well, welcome to Japan”, Brian said, gesturing around. “No trouble at immigration?”
“None at all”, I said.
“Good. We’re just waiting for the Hoads, then we’ll get loaded up. Nate, this is Rick and Lois Seely. Rick is our business manager at the school, and Lois teaches elementary art.”
I realized that two foreigners standing nearby were waiting with Brian, and I shook hands with Rick and Lois.
“We were on the same flight as you. We spent Christmas in Washington visiting our daughter in Seattle”, Rick explained. “Glad you didn’t have any hassle at immigration. They can be sensitive sometimes.”
“This must be a little overwhelming for you”, Lois said. “But staying with Brian and Bette will give you a familiar place to go home to each night. Rick and I are Brian and Bette’s neighbors, so if you ever need anything, please let us know.”
When the Hoads–Alex, the middle school science teacher, and Kathy, an elementary teacher–arrived minutes later, Brian led us out to the parking garage where the school van was. We loaded up our suitcases and got into the van. I sat shotgun, though getting into what would have been the driver’s side door in the US added to my disorientation.
“This drive takes a couple of hours, usually,” Brian explained. “I’ll stay off the highway as long as I can, and take the roads through the rice paddies as they aren’t affected by the traffic as much as the highway can be at this time of day.”
The roads through the rice paddies were no wider than 4 meters (13 feet); wider than the van, though not by much. They also had some tight turns and curves that kept me wide awake in the passenger seat as I wondered at the logistics of navigating a bulky 12-passenger van around corners with a concrete wall on one side and a fence on the other. Brian seemed to take it all in stride; clearly he had driven this route before.
While traffic was indeed much lighter on the rice paddy roads than on the highway, when we did meet oncoming traffic, it became a game of who would pull over to make room for the other to pass, as there was not enough room on the road for even two small cars, let alone a van and anything else.
As we drove, I learned that Rick and Lois had been at CAJ for years, and that both had grown up in Japan as missionary kids and graduated from CAJ themselves in the 70s. The Hoads, like me, were new to Japan, having only just started at CAJ the previous August. Alex had wanted to teach science for a few years after finishing a long career at Boeing.
I told the long story of how I came to Japan, and emphasized the crazy coincidence of talking to a long-term substitute teacher at Unity Christian in Orange City, Iowa, who told me that he had started his career at the Christian Academy in Japan, and that I should look for similar opportunities while I was young, a full week before Brian had reached out to extend an opportunity that couldn’t have been more similar.
“Do you know what his name was?” Rick asked.
I admitted that I didn’t catch it.
“Ohh, I wonder if that was Jon Kooiker. He was a new math teacher while I was in high school, came from Iowa with his wife, taught at CAJ for a couple years, then moved back to Iowa.”
“This guy looked like he was in his 60s, and he was subbing for math.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet that was Jon Kooiker… I remember we all had nicknames in his class”, Rick reminisced, “We called him ‘Quaker Oats’ because of his last name.”
Until that moment, I had half-wondered if that mysterious sub had been an angel sent by God to point me toward Japan. Though the mystery had been solved, I was relieved to learn of another point of connection between my old life and my new one.
I realized that while we were talking, we’d gotten back onto the freeway. It was dark by now, and for the first time, I was struck by the city lights sprawling all around–streetlights, skyscrapers, apartments, headlights, traffic lights…
We dropped the Hoads off first at their apartment by the school. When we arrived at the Shasta compound–missionary housing where the VanderHaaks, Seelys and a few other families from the school lived–we unloaded the suitcases from the van. I said goodnight to Rick and Lois, and followed Brian into the house. I was greeted immediately and forcefully by a small black lab who decided that my presence was an invitation to dash haphazardly around the room. Bette was sitting in an armchair with her laptop in front of her. Emily, who was home for Christmas from college, was on the couch with her laptop next to Chris, a high school Senior also at his laptop. David, a sophomore, sat at the desktop computer. Greetings followed.
Bette looked up and smiled, “Welcome. Looks like Hana is happy to meet you”.
The dog was still ricocheting like a pinball around the room.
“Well, pick a chair”, Brian gestured.
I collapsed into the recliner in the corner and pulled my laptop out of my backpack.
“Ah, you have your screen, too,” Brian chuckled, “You’ll fit right in.”
And, for the first time that day, I did.
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| I was only 22, but my beard was already in its 30s. |
