Home Is Where Your Heart Is

As I sit in the hotel lobby eat­ing my all-inclusive break­fast of pack­aged mar­malade pas­tries and drink my apple yogurt juice box, it has finally sunk in that I’m not home any­more. But then again, where is home? I’ve been liv­ing in Japan far­away from my home coun­try for 10 months, but could I really call that coun­try my home? Today I’m in Guangzhou, China, where I will be spend­ing a 24-hour lay­over on my jour­ney to Nepal. Although close in dis­tance to Japan, this fel­low East Asian coun­try could not be more dif­fer­ent. Stand­ing in line at the air­port, I got the feel­ing that every­one behind me was plot­ting some sort of devi­ous plan to cut me in line, of which a cou­ple suc­ceeded. My first expe­ri­ence with the Chi­nese cul­ture and I hadn’t even left Tokyo Narita air­port. Get­ting off the plane upon my arrival in Guangzhou last night, the smell and feel­ing of the dense humid air, the noise of the peo­ple loudly chat­ter­ing away in the shut­tle bus, I strangely felt very much at ease in my host coun­try. For the next five weeks I will be away from this place we call ‘home,’ but I’m now real­iz­ing that home is not where you reside or where you spend the most time in, but home is where your heart is, wher­ever it takes you. So from tonight on, for the next five weeks, Nepal is my new home, and what­ever changes that entails, whether it be new food, new lifestyle, new cus­toms and beliefs, new LANGUAGE, I could not be more excited!

Aspasea

An Unex­pected Outcome

As you know, I came to Japan in Sep­tem­ber of last year in the hopes that while away from home I could do some soul-searching. Why I needed to go all the way to Japan you ask me? I had the belief that by get­ting in touch with my ances­tral roots I would be closer to fig­ur­ing out what it is that I wanted to do with my life. But what I found and where I found it was not what I had expected.

In Novem­ber of last year, I vaca­tioned to one of the many thou­sands of islands in Indone­sia. Lom­bok is a beau­ti­ful island in Indone­sia that has yet been tainted by the tourism and mod­ern­iza­tion like that of it’s neigh­bor­ing island Bali. Lost on a motor­bike in a city where very few speak Eng­lish, look­ing aim­lessly for a water­fall, my friend and I ran into a very help­ful boy. I told him where we were try­ing to go and he pro­ceeded to tell us that he would take us there him­self but that first, we should come to his home and enjoy a coconut together. We fol­lowed him a far dis­tance through rugged ter­rain and into a small vil­lage where neigh­bors and chil­dren came out and greeted us with friendly waves. I remem­ber think­ing to myself that I had never felt so part of a com­mu­nity, and one that wasn’t even mine. When we pulled up to his home, or rather a small hut shared with seven fam­ily mem­bers, a stray dog and some chick­ens, he invited us in for some lunch that his mother had pre­pared. Over some cof­fee and a meal of rice and lentils eaten with our hands, he began to tell us about himself.

His name was Aman*, a 16-year old boy with so much ambi­tion. He had won 2^nd place in Lombok’s Eng­lish speak­ing con­test and he had an aspir­ing dream to attend a uni­ver­sity and become a busi­ness­man to bet­ter his family’s sit­u­a­tion. Although in the eyes of my biased privileged-American self his fam­ily did not have much, the biggest con­cern on his mind was find­ing a girl­friend that liked Aman, for Aman. Not once did he com­plain about his sit­u­a­tion and not once did he come across as unhappy. He made me real­ize that no mat­ter where we are born and into what­ever cir­cum­stances, we are all the same. We are all human beings striv­ing for the same ulti­mate goal of hap­pi­ness. Yes, some of us in the devel­oped worlds have more toys, cars, clothes, houses, but in an increas­ingly mate­r­ial world, we are start­ing to real­ize that even with all of this ‘stuff,’ we con­tinue to suf­fer from unhap­pi­ness, vio­lence and crime. In Bhutan, the nation’s wealth is mea­sured by GHP, Gross Hap­pi­ness Prod­uct. Although it con­tin­ues to be one of the world’s most poverty-stricken nations, they still main­tain a level of GHP that is much higher than that of the devel­oped coun­tries. How­ever, it is not to say that the con­di­tions in coun­tries of such eco­nomic scale should be left the way they are sim­ply stat­ing that they are mea­sur­ably ‘more happy.’ There are still those that do not have access to the basic human rights that I have taken for granted all of my life. In short, this boy’s warm-heart and abil­ity to make the best of his sit­u­a­tion inspired me to pur­sue what it is that I want most in life: to help those in sit­u­a­tions like that of Aman by uti­liz­ing my net­work in help­ing to increase their own oppor­tu­ni­ties for a fuller life.

I’ve grown up in a very priv­i­leged envi­ron­ment where I am encour­aged and more impor­tantly, able to reach for my biggest dreams. I feel that it is my duty and oblig­a­tion to take advan­tage of my sit­u­a­tion and help those that need it most in any way pos­si­ble. I am now work­ing for a non-profit called Inspire a Child that com­bines sport and schol­ar­ship to increase edu­ca­tion atten­dance rates, and in two weeks will be trav­el­ling to Nepal to imple­ment our first project of build­ing an envi­ron­men­tally sus­tain­able soc­cer field. I am absolutely pos­i­tive that with­out hav­ing stud­ied abroad, I would never have had these expe­ri­ences and self-realizations, let alone meet the peo­ple I have or opened the doors that I wasn’t even able to see before I left. It is in get­ting lost, whether it be lit­er­ally on a motor­bike look­ing for a water­fall in Indone­sia, or fig­u­ra­tively, when falling into feel­ings of iso­la­tion and ques­tion­ing your own moti­va­tions, that you find your­self in an ever clearer light and in so doing, get a few steps closer to fig­ur­ing out who you are what your pur­pose in life truly is.

*Name has been changed

Aspasea

Any­thing is Possible

A year ago today, com­ing to Japan still felt like a far­away dream to me; one that I was ecsta­tic beyond words for, but also one that felt unreal. How could a nor­mal uni­ver­sity stu­dent like me have received a chance to cre­ate a new life for myself abroad? Hell, I was just get­ting used to the idea that some­times, and only some­times, life does play in your favor. And now I’m here. My one-year pro­gram has quickly dis­ap­peared and I am left with my final three remain­ing months. Where did it all go? The nine months I have had with Japan have been amaz­ing ones. I have trav­elled up down and around within the bor­ders of Japan, vis­it­ing Bud­dhist tem­ples in the tradition-packed city of Kyoto; gone snow­board­ing in the moun­tains of Niigata Pre­fec­ture where there was so much snow that mul­ti­ple times I had to get out and push a stuck car loose; hit all the famous onsen (hot spring) spots in Kyushu, the south­ern island of Japan, includ­ing a hot spring resort hotel with an infinity-style onsen and gourmet buf­fet; spent six­teen hours walk­ing the length of the famous Yaman­ote train line in Tokyo (of which my feet con­tinue to suf­fer from); karaoke-d my heart out time and time again; and not to men­tion par­tied with mod­els in the Rop­pongi dis­trict of Tokyo on a reg­u­lar basis.

I wasn’t jok­ing when I said I Karaoke my heart out.

Kinkakuji: a famous tem­ple in Kyoto

Towards the end of our long walk

Feed­ing the ele­phants in Thailand

Motor­bik­ing in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

The stun­ning Shwedagon Pagoda

A year ago today if you told me that I would have done all of these things in this short amount of time, I would have laughed in your face and I def­i­nitely would not have believed you. Reflect­ing on these expe­ri­ences, I have learned that any­thing is pos­si­ble. It started off with a dream to study abroad. If I hadn’t applied to that pro­gram and had the guts to say good­bye to my home and hop on that one-way plane to Japan, these expe­ri­ences would have been deemed impos­si­ble. Even more than I am excited for my upcom­ing jour­ney to Nepal, I am ner­vous and scared. No expe­ri­ence, no lessons learned could pre­pare a priv­i­leged Amer­i­can girl for a month devoid of basic ameni­ties that for twenty years she had taken for granted. But with­out tak­ing risks and push­ing your­self into uncom­fort­able ter­ri­to­ries, its impos­si­ble to live a life that you would look back on in ten, twenty, fifty years and feel that you have lived it to the fullest. Study­ing abroad made that pos­si­ble to me. See­ing dif­fer­ent coun­tries, cul­tures, meet­ing peo­ple from all walks of life, it has expanded my world but also in some ways, shrank it. If trav­el­ling has taught me one thing, even if indi­rectly, it is that as long as you set your mind to some­thing and believe in your­self, there is no way that you could not attain it. Every object, dream, goal, coun­try, is at your reach. But it’s the steps that you take from this day for­ward in grasp­ing it that are the most impor­tant. Just remem­ber, that any­thing is possible.

Maya Bay, Phi Phi Islands, Thailand

    

Vis­it­ing the chil­dren at the Light House Orphan­age in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Aspasea

A Japan­ese Wedding

Expe­ri­enc­ing tra­di­tional cer­e­monies in a for­eign coun­try are always some of the more sig­nif­i­cant mem­o­ries of my time abroad. You not only wit­ness a rite that is such a momen­tous occa­sion for those involved, but they also draw you deeper into the cul­ture of your host coun­try. So I was stoked when invited to a friends’ wed­ding here in Japan, and even more stoked when I found out that it would be held in a tra­di­tional Shinto style, which these days, has con­tin­ued to become more and more obsolete.

A Japan­ese wed­ding is so dif­fer­ent from many coun­tries’ because they have a smor­gas­bord of rit­u­als from which they can pick. You could have a Chris­t­ian chapel wed­ding, Bud­dhist, Shinto, or even choose mul­ti­ple styles if you so wish and it does not nec­es­sar­ily have to cor­re­spond with your beliefs. As the West con­tin­ues to have a big­ger impact on Japan, the Shinto and Bud­dhist style wed­dings are grad­u­ally declin­ing and con­tin­u­ally becom­ing a rare sight as the west­ern style becomes increas­ingly popular.

It was a beau­ti­ful sight to see. Dressed in extrav­a­gant wed­ding style kimonos (the bride head-to-toe in white, groom in black), the bride and groom, fol­lowed by their fam­ily mem­bers walked a cob­ble­stone path, lead­ing to a shrine where together, they took part in sake drink­ing rit­u­als; prayers of good luck, hap­pi­ness and pro­tec­tion; and watched sacred dances per­formed by a miko (a fig­ure that was once looked at to be a shaman). What’s inter­est­ing is that by tak­ing part in this cer­e­mony, I real­ized that even wed­dings are a direct reflec­tion of the fact that Japan­ese soci­ety is divided into an in– and an out-group. As the rel­a­tives all sat together in an under­cover area behind the bride and groom and took part in the cer­e­mony, us friends, sat and observed from the side­lines. I almost felt as if I was an anthro­pol­o­gist observ­ing human behav­ior. This dis­tinc­tion is made in all aspects of the Japan­ese cul­ture. Even lan­guage is set up on an “uchi-soto” con­text (uchi-inside and soto-outisde) where tense and polite­ness change dra­mat­i­cally depend­ing on whether you are speak­ing with some­one in your in-group or out-group. By see­ing this reflec­tion of social behav­ior in the Japan­ese tra­di­tional Shinto wed­ding, it allowed me to look at wed­dings in my home coun­try more objec­tively. It is com­mon at an Anglo-Saxon wed­ding that the rel­a­tives and friends sit and watch the cer­e­mony together, which shows that the dis­tinc­tion between rela­tion­ships are not as separated.

The beau­ti­ful bride and groom and their clos­est relatives

Of course rit­u­als are expected in the union of two souls, but what I was really sur­prised upon was that there are also many cus­toms the guest must fol­low. As a guest of the newly weds, its cus­tom­ary to bring a gift of 30,000 yen (roughly $385USD). But these bills have to be han­dled in a very strict and del­i­cate fash­ion. On a trip to the bank to pull out this lump sum, you have to specif­i­cally inform the teller that you are going to a wed­ding and in so doing, they will hand you three very, very crisp bills. So crisp, that it feels like they could slice through a wed­ding cake. After that, you have to put them in a spe­cial wed­ding enve­lope adorned with intri­cate threads.

I’m sure some­thing along the lines of this thought may have crossed your mind: “$385?!” But what you receive in return for this lump sum makes it well worth it. The din­ner alone, with the sim­ple and yet elab­o­rately detailed pre­sen­ta­tion is so beau­ti­ful to look at that it’s almost dif­fi­cult to eat. At the end of the recep­tion, after food, cake, speeches, etc., you reach under your seat to find a bag full of gifts (expected to be half of the value of the con­tri­bu­tion) rang­ing from desserts, flow­ers, Japan­ese pot­tery, and var­i­ous other good­ies. Recently, many cou­ples have been offer­ing a cat­a­logue of var­i­ous items and hotel pack­ages that the guest can later choose from. But of course in my opin­ion, the expe­ri­ence itself is even more amaz­ing then any­thing a cat­a­logue could offer me.

Aspasea

Lessons From Fukushima

On March 11th of last year, 2:46 pm Japan local time, a mas­sive 9.1 mag­ni­tude quake shook the sur­face of the earth. An earth­quake so big left build­ings and homes uprooted from their foun­da­tions in the Tohoku area of Japan, and could even be felt by civil­ians 350 km south in Tokyo. Min­utes later, the ter­ri­fy­ing earth­quake was fol­lowed by an even more death-defying tsunami of up to 40.5 meters in height, tak­ing with it the homes of hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple in the Pre­fec­tures of Iwate and Sendai. The sheer mag­ni­tude of this dis­as­ter took the lives of 15,854, injur­ing 26,992 and 3,155 more were dis­placed and left miss­ing for days on end. If we thought that it could not get any worse for the Japan­ese, we were soon proved wrong. The fol­low­ing day, the Fukushima Dai­ichi Nuclear Power Plant received severe shock from the tsunami caus­ing an atomic melt­down of three reac­tors and high lev­els of radi­a­tion to seep out into the air. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of fam­i­lies were forced to evac­u­ate their homes within a 100-mile radius.

Today when we hear the name Fukushima, we are all reminded of this ter­ri­ble dis­as­ter that occurred more than a year ago today. The inter­na­tional com­mu­nity reached out and was by Japan’s side in this time of cri­sis, but noth­ing could be more inspi­ra­tional than the com­mu­nity coop­er­a­tion and strong indi­vid­ual lead­er­ship that the Japan­ese took on to help their own peo­ple. Cur­rently, there are still many fam­i­lies (approx­i­mately 340,000 peo­ple) in the Tohoku area that are unable to return to the city that occu­pied their homes, whether it be because of the earth­quake, tsunami or due to the dan­ger­ous lev­els of radi­a­tion. And yet, the affected com­mu­ni­ties con­tinue to keep their heads held high. Uplift­ing mes­sages of “You can do it, Japan!” are posted on build­ing walls, strung up on poles and hung all around cities through­out Japan.

This week­end, I was invited by my friend Olivia to go to Fukushima dur­ing the city’s annual Earth Day fes­ti­val. Here, a col­lec­tion of NGOs, NPOs and pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions gath­ered to cel­e­brate the day of the earth through tap danc­ing lessons, toy dri­ves, numer­ous games and arts and crafts for chil­dren. Home baked cook­ies and snacks and a num­ber of acces­sories were being sold to raise funds for var­i­ous causes related to the strug­gling fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties in the Fukushima area. Con­sul­ta­tion ser­vices were also offered for those locals and vis­i­tors want­ing more infor­ma­tion that can often be hard to retrieve.

Peach Heart was one of the many orga­ni­za­tions par­tic­i­pat­ing in this Earth Day gath­er­ing. This orga­ni­za­tion was founded by women for the women; A net­work for 18–30 year-olds from Fukushima Pre­fec­ture or liv­ing as refugees out­side of the area to gain com­mu­nity sup­port and unite over the shared goal of dia­logue to keep their sto­ries and events of Fukushima alive. Peach Heart is involved in mak­ing and sell­ing hand-made masks out of var­i­ous fash­ion­able pat­terned cloths with their pro­ceeds going towards fund­ing their orga­ni­za­tion. I thought this was such a great idea because masks are com­monly worn by peo­ple all through­out Japan, for var­i­ous pur­poses such as dur­ing a com­mon cold, aller­gies and pro­tect­ing one­self from harm­ful pol­lu­tants (and accord­ing to some girls, when they are too lazy to put on makeup in the morn­ing). Olivia and I were so impressed, we stocked up on sev­eral of these masks to give away as gifts and even for our own use.

 

Pos­ing for Peach Heart

“You Can Do it Fukushima”

Many of the vol­un­teers head­ing the booths were those directly impacted by the 3.11 cat­a­stro­phe. To see them there with their smil­ing faces, help­ing their neigh­bors in any way pos­si­ble, left me with an inde­scrib­able feel­ing of joy to know that our fel­low human beings were not defeated in times of such cri­sis. Upon speak­ing with the vol­un­teers, I learned that many of them had lost their homes from the tsunami. My heart imme­di­ately felt for them, know­ing that they have gone through more mis­ery and strug­gles in the past year than I could even begin to contemplate.

That night we fol­lowed the fes­tiv­i­ties to a newly built cen­ter, pro­vided by Japan NGO Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Coop­er­a­tion (JANIC), where aid groups can meet and col­lab­o­rate through ideas and projects. JANIC is an NPO that col­lects and dis­perses funds from out­side donors to reg­is­tered Japan­ese NGOs and NPOs, and was founded from the neces­sity of an orga­ni­za­tion to help bet­ter coor­di­nate the activ­i­ties in Japan­ese soci­ety and to facil­i­tate coop­er­a­tion with groups over­seas. This event was an oppor­tu­nity for Olivia and myself to net­work and meet many amaz­ing indi­vid­u­als all work­ing towards the com­mon goal of eas­ing the pain and dam­age done to the Tohoku area and inhab­i­tants. Many per­for­mances were put on includ­ing singing, lyri­cal danc­ing, and even tap dance. A com­bi­na­tion of food, good music and awe­some peo­ple, made the envi­ron­ment so warm and invit­ing. When the lyri­cal dance group per­formed, I could not help but be moved to tears. Each move­ment and sway of the body pos­sessed so much energy, so much vigor. The pain on their faces and sor­row in their eyes was a cul­mi­na­tion of each and every one of their strug­gles and it was expressed through their danc­ing in such a way that I could feel their agony to the core of my being, giv­ing me goose bumps.

My expe­ri­ence of the 24 hours I spent in Fukushima can be eas­ily summed up in one word: Inspi­ra­tional. It was inspir­ing to see so many youth tak­ing charge, inspir­ing to see so many groups ded­i­cated to bet­ter­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Fukushima and even more inspir­ing to see the locals pos­sess such strong spir­its and self­less ded­i­ca­tion to improv­ing the lives of their neigh­bors. When ask­ing our new Fukushima friends what the one mes­sage is that they would like to state to the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity, many replied by say­ing, “Never for­get about Fukushima.” There are so many lessons that the world can learn from this abysmal dis­as­ter, whether it be the ever-increasing need in the dis­man­tling of all nuclear power plants and con­vert­ing to a bet­ter, safer method of energy, or even from the incred­i­ble uni­fi­ca­tion of the com­mu­nity through relief efforts in restor­ing their home. I’m blessed to have had the oppor­tu­nity to meet such peo­ple and it has truly been a reward­ing expe­ri­ence that I will hold dear to my heart forever.

-Aspasea