I Was Home for Christmas (But Only in My Dreams)

An extraordinarily belated Merry Christmas to all of you, and a Happy New Year! The holiday season having come and gone I’m sure a lot of you have had family and friends on your minds in the past few months, maybe even having met up to exchange presents or ring in the New Year together. It’s much the same for us ex-pats; we probably think of home most often during the festive times of year, maybe even more than we do when we are physically at home. The aftermath of the season also brings out a common workplace inquiry: “Did you go home for Winter Break?”

My answer, as most of you can guess from the title, is “No, I didn’t.” When I studied abroad I also didn’t go home for the holidays, though my reasoning then was quite different than it was this year. But when you’re away for Christmas you do a lot of thinking about Christmas, and the long and short of it is basically this:

Being abroad for the holidays can be pretty lonely sometimes.

I say sometimes because there are certainly caveats, and I don’t want to come at this topic as if it is all doom and gloom; however, I also don’t want to sugarcoat what for myself (and possibly others) can be one of the less positive realities of living in a foreign country.

Before looking at more modern circumstances, I’d like to review my first holiday season in Japan, which was two years ago now. During study abroad, I was quite reluctant to go home for Christmas. I was resolved against it, in fact, for a number of reasons: first, Winter Break was one of the few opportunities I had to really travel, as there weren’t many breaks in our academic schedule. Second, I had decided to study abroad to force myself out of my comfort zone and away from home, and wanted to see the whole term through without going back. Third, I had a very definitive return date to the US; I knew exactly when I would be going home, and how much time I had left in Japan.

In addition to these reasons against leaving, I had a few pretty good reasons to stay—first, I had many friends through study abroad who were also staying, which meant that there was the possibility for us to hang out and travel. Second, I had a wonderful host mother and host sister who helped me celebrate by making as close to an American Christmas dinner as you can in Japan where there aren’t the ingredients to make an American Christmas dinner. And third, thanks to the scholarship my program offered, I had the monetary means to explore the country with the time I had off.

With all of this, I didn’t think it such a bad idea to stay in Japan for the holidays. Actually, I thought it was a great idea, and it was. I had a lovely Christmas, Skyping my family and having a big dinner with people who were dear to me, and while it didn’t feel like Christmas it certainly didn’t feel very lonely. What’s more, the day after Christmas a friend and I packed our bags and took the train up to Tokyo, spending New Years in the city. That trip was one of the happiest I had in Japan (though admittedly, I was privileged to have a lot of awesome trips), and when I returned to school I felt like I had really enjoyed the holidays, even if it wasn’t the same as being with my family.

But this year was a bit different. Many of my fellow teachers had either gone home for Christmas or were traveling to see friends, so there weren’t many foreigners around to foster holiday cheer. Holiday cheer certainly doesn’t foster itself in Japan, at least not in a way that feels like home. Christmas carols play in stores and the occasional decoration can be spotted around town, but the “Spirit of Christmas” that seems to sparkle in the icicle lights on a neighbor’s porch or that is felt in the warmth of a fireplace isn’t really present (pun unintended but appreciated) in Japan. It isn’t that Christmas is totally absent, but it definitely doesn’t feel the same; here, Christmas is more of a couple’s holiday, and if families do give gifts then it’s only parents to young children. Family activities are reserved for New Years in Japan. The most festive thing about Christmas in Japan are the stunning “illuminations,” which are usually only found in big cities and which are, in my opinion, the closest Japan gets to Christmas magic. During study abroad I visited the Kobe Luminarie, and this year I had the chance to see the Hakata Light Festival and International Christmas Market in Fukuoka. I also got to see illumination in one more place…but we’ll talk about that in my next post.

Back on topic, this year’s Christmas was a bit less festive than last time I was in Japan. In addition to many of my friends not being around and not having a host family to make dinner with, my rural location made Christmas decorations and celebrations scarce, and since I’m no longer a student I was expected to work on Christmas Day (I ended up taking a vacation day). To make things more difficult, my choice to not return home meant that I didn’t know when I would be home next—unlike study abroad, which had a set expiration date, the JET Program is from 1-5 years based on your performance and your choice to stay, and having waffled back and forth for months about whether or not to stay a second year it was difficult to make that decision to not come home for a bit. It felt, in some ways, that not going home for Christmas meant that I wouldn’t be home for a very, very long time.

That’s not a great feeling to take into the season. So then why in the world did I stay in Japan?

The reason is multifaceted. One big reason is that, considering I had been contemplating staying for a second year, I was terrified going home would make me really, really homesick. A lot of ALTs, especially those who have been struggling with their job or their sociocultural connections in Japan, find it really difficult to return after the holidays are over. The decision to recontract is always due not long after that return, which means that a lot of people are heavily influenced by that homesickness as to whether they want to stay or leave. Not that homesickness is an unreasonable cause to go home but that feeling, along with the winter blues, is guilty of convincing many an ALT that they are dissatisfied in Japan, and when spring comes they end up regretting their decision because they weren’t actually as badly off as they thought. Another part of my decision was concerning vacation days, which if I were staying for two years I could save for a larger trip later, or if I were going home after one year I could use during summer vacation to travel near the end of my contract. And a third contributing factor was that, while I didn’t know when I would be home again, I did know when I would see some of my family again—my mom, having some extra vacation days to use, left Japan a few weeks ago after visiting me for three weeks. (While that doesn’t excuse my entire absence, it’s one reason why this post has been late!)

With those three things on my mind (and also a baby Japanese bank account to look after), I chose not to come back to America for Christmas. And while it certainly wasn’t my ideal Christmas, I also can’t say that it was all too bad.

One of the saving graces of the season was the shortest, least convenient (for both parties) hangout in the entire world, which happened just before Christmas. A good friend of mine from study abroad, who currently lives in America, was traveling in Japan during her Winter Break, and in desperation to see one another while we were in the same hemisphere we travelled to one of our favorite places in Japan, Fukuoka City.

Our time together was laughably brief: the time from when we met at the train station to when we said goodbye at the airport was only about 27 hours. But that 27 hours was more than worth it; after all, a good friend is someone you can pick up a conversation with just as easily as if you saw each other yesterday, and I think that all we did while together was talk. For me, just as when I had visited my friend in Korea, it was a blessing to feel so at home in the midst of the JET Program which, while having countless advantages, is a Trial by Fire, Foreign Language Edition. She and I visited many of our old haunts (which were significantly colder than we had left them in the early summer of 2017), ate at many of our tried-and-true favorite restaurants, and talked over all of the things that are too difficult to say in just a text message. It was the feeling of home and familiarity that felt so absent in Aso Caldera, and I was lucky to have that to hang onto for the next few days into Christmas.

I also was lucky enough to get the 24^th off, not for Christmas but for the observation of Emperor Akihito’s birthday, which meant that I was able to Skype family on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day only by taking the one vacation day. This helped brighten the season, albeit from far, far away. While not as easy as my Christmas two years ago, then, this Christmas wasn’t all bad. I still had the opportunity to see family and friends, whether in person or through the magic of modern technology…and I’m still blessed with the monetary ability to travel.

…Which brings us right up to my next story! Turns out that while I didn’t go home, I also didn’t stay in Japan for my whole break. But that’s a bit off-topic for this post, so I’m saving it for the next one, which should be up relatively soon from the time this is going up. After all, I can’t spoil everything in just one go! This post may have been a little somber, long, and long-overdue, but the next one won’t be. I hope you look forward to it, and to the rest of my backlogged adventures!