Finding Home

I'm not going to bore you with a paragraph about how great Thanksgiving is. I'm totally not going to spout off about my years of experience mainlining gravy and mulled wine, or spoiling my appetite on fudge, or adding 2 sticks of butter to my mashed potatoes like my mom taught me, or making a taco shell with turkey skin and stuffing it with stuffing because calories don't count in November. Nope, this paragraph didn't happen. It didn't have to, because everyone knows how wonderful Thanksgiving is even when your family is nuts and the bread dough doesn't rise or the turkey is overdone or someone didn't bring the pie like they said they would (THANKS A LOT, DEBRA). Thanksgiving is like a little kid, or a kitten – it gets a free pass to be a shit-show and still be universally loved by everyone even when it knocks over the wine and doesn't pick up after itself.

On my 31^st Thanksgiving, I woke up in my new home in Japan. With no family within several thousand miles to meet up with or cook for, I slept in. When I awoke, there was an oddly calm and slightly hollow feeling in stark contrast to the chaos of every other Thanksgiving I've experienced. I opened the blinds to let in some light, and saw a blanket of snow. It was the first time it has snowed in November in Tokyo in 54 years, because the universe decided to double-down on flipping everything on its end to the point of altering climate patterns.

I put on my boots and Jan strapped on his Converse and we trudged through the most obnoxious type of snow – the type that is wet enough to permeate everything but dry enough to stick to your eyelashes and ruin your makeup. Instead of heading to a family brawl to eat turkey and all the fixin's, we decided to head to Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo.

 

Alright, let me break it down for you. Roughly $6 BILLION worth of seafood filters through Tsukiji market in a given year. Y'all, the United States could nigiri its way out of the national debt, hold the wasabi. There is SO MUCH FISH, and the whole place smells like your clothes do after you've spent all day at the beach. There are giant fish heads the size of my Honda Fit strewn about everywhere, there's a display of delicious-looking, deep-red meat that upon further inspection is not in fact beef but whale, and, most elusive of all – there are WESTERNERS. There are tens of us!!


Full disclosure, we messed up. It might have been the chaos of the snow or the constant onslaught of delicious sushi and deep fried treats, but we got so enmeshed in the outer market that by the time we finally figured out where the inner market was – where the magic truly happens – they were packing up shop. It was deserted save for a few workers catching a quick break to eat lunch as cleanup began. We headed home, frozen to the core but with bellies full of amazing sushi. It's pretty crazy to think that I've likely eaten sushi back home in the States that traveled through Tsukiji Market.

We woke up on Friday morning and Skyped with our family, who had just finished eating Thanksgiving dinner. We drank our coffee as the sun rose while we watched them drink wine as the sun set. The contrast was very befitting of our new life in Japan. We've been here six weeks, and for the first time it truly sank in – this isn't a vacation. This isn't a drill. This is home, and life as we knew it is still happening on the other side of the world. What the hell, nothing crumbled into dust when we left?! Are we that inconsequential?? I expected to tune into Thanksgiving dinner to see a dystopian landscape descended into chaos. My family's ability to exist without me is highly offensive.


To assuage our awkward and bumbling adjustment to life in a foreign country which still doesn't quite feel like home, we hopped on the train towards Machida and accidentally ended up buying a 200,000 yen Bengal kitten.


Meet Gibson.

Okay, let's just put out in the open what I know you're all thinking. You don't have to say it – we are fully aware that we purchased the most adorable cat in the Far East. After a brief train ride in a cardboard box that he shit all over while meowing like his claws were being ripped out, we got him home. And ever since then we've been watching a microcosm of our current lives.

Every inch of his world is new and different. He's curious and inquisitive but I know his secret, because I feel the same way. He purrs and explores like he knows he's safe and he puts on a good front, but he looks around with wide eyes and tiny pupils that just scream “WHAT THE F*$% IS GOING ON”. I feel you, Little Man. It's scary being in a new place where everything is different and the food is funny and people sound weird and you don't know where to poop (no seriously, the toilets are really confusing here). But Gibson taught me something about adaptation that I wish I'd learned 6 weeks ago.


He found a blanket, he buried himself in it, and he has been sleeping for the last 18 hours while purring so loud I can hear him from across the room. He knows there is all kinds of cool stuff to check out and he's really excited about it, but he is taking a goddamn nap.

Since we've gotten here, it has been non-stop activity. Getting adjusted to my new job, moving from temporary housing to permanent housing, attempting to learn a language which is mercilessly different and generally indecipherable even with Google Translate, and spending every spare moment exploring something new. We are fully determined to soak up everything our new home in Japan has to offer – so much so that we forgot about something very important because we've been experiencing the human equivalence of shitting in a box on a high-speed train like Gibson.


Take a nap. Rest. Let life simultaneously sink in and disappear.


It's the middle of the night here and I'm writing this blog entry because I am not yet able to take that advice. My household goods shipment finally arrives in the morning, and I'm steeped in anticipation of being surrounded by things that feel like home. The first thing I'm going to do when the movers are finished is grab my favorite blanket, which will have traveled here all the way from Oregon, wrap myself in it like a burrito and just... sleep. I haven't given myself permission yet to just take a moment to relax and adjust.


I've been so eager to be surrounded by things that feel like home, that I've sort of lost sight of the fact that “home” is far less tangible than that. I felt at home in an Airbnb in Eugene on the day of my grandpa's memorial service, because I was surrounded by people I love. I felt at home in a hotel on an Army base in Japan because I was watching Rick & Morty with my husband and laughing to tears.  Tonight, even though my "stuff" won't be here for a few more hours, I feel at home listening to my kitten purr and my husband snore.

Home is a state of mind.  But a cozy blanket helps.