The Lab

Here are our mixing tables and a sample of the raw materials in the fridge. Most of the chemicals are liquids, but the powders, crystals and gums must be microwaved to make dilutions. Alcohol boils very easily, so we're talking 10 seconds max! The room with the fridges is SO smelly. It's not unpleasant but it's a real fruit-salad-soup, despite the fact that some materials are nestled Russian-doll-style inside three different containers.

Busy!

Thanks to all the faithful readers out there. :) My intention was to update my blog more frequently, but that is complicated by a number of factors - progress on my computer is slow to nonexistent, and I just plain don't have much time to hang around the school computer lab. But there are healthy consequences to this as well. The time I spend in front of a computer screen each day has decreased about 500%. And the time I spend with my nose in a bottle has increased about 900%. (Don't worry, I checked our chemicals against the FDA's toxicology list and all my brain cells should be intact). Perfumery is quite challenging and I'm tired at the end of every day. But the key is that I always want to wake up and come to school. Today we tried to construct a Thierry Mugler ANGEL-like accord. All the vanilla and chocolatey notes in this perfume made me hungry. But the chocolate effect comes from patchouli, not cocoa.

Versailles has been a great transition for me after Fuji...it's slightly bigger and my location is more central, with a beautiful lake 5 minutes away. The open-air markets are the icing on the cake. So while I still miss Japanese food and my daily dose of Mt. Fuji (not to mention my FRIENDS there!), as a small city Versailles feels like a step in the right direction.

Want to ask me questions? Feel free to post them in the comments!

A few photos of the lab (and maybe one of my roommate) are coming soon...

Perfume School 101

If you weren't lucky enough to receive a huge email from me (I say lucky with sarcasm, since it was too long for anyone to actually read), here's a more recent update...

First, I apologize for the lack of photos, but laptop problems persist and the school computers have no USB ports. Rest assured that when I have good pictures and am able to post them, I will.

Second, I love school. I spend about 7 hours a day in a small lab (with 7 other people from around the world) as we familiarize ourselves with raw materials (natural and synthetic), and learn about perfume families. This is more confusing than you might think. As scents become more modernized (read: more synthetic), the whole library of smells is growing, even while many synthetic products are replacing natural ones. More sources = more variation = more categories to organize. But to smell a chemical that is found nowhere in nature, that simultaneously evokes caramelized sugar, chocolate, cranberries, and raspberries...it is quite a heady experience.

Lately we've been working on creating floral accords from synthetics. Our teacher (a wonderful, kind, sophisticated, beautiful woman with wild coats) doles out numerous synthetic raw materials. We smell and describe each one, pencils flying as we try to make note of everything to study later. Then the teacher says, "Ok, now compose a rose." And we spend the rest of the afternoon diluting and mixing and re-mixing to find the right proportions of each material that will together produce a satisfying rose. Mine was a bit fruity, with a sweet note that lingered for days (a potential plus), and overall I was happy with it. What fascinates me is that anyone could identify it as a rose, though there was nothing natural about it.

(As a side note, "synthetic" does not mean it is never found in nature. Many synthetics are single molecules that occur naturally but are copied and built in a laboratory. For example, a molecule found in cloves can be isolated and then produced by people in a lab, without the rest of the cloves notes.)

The past few days were more challenging because we studied lilly of the valley. I don't have an image of lilly of the valley in my mind, which makes it difficult for me to whip one up out of synthetics. The other thing is that as new chemicals are created in labs, the market idea of what lilly of the valley smells like changes over time. So you can create different styles of this flower -- some greener (like cut grass) and fruitier; some softer and more floral, like baby powder or fabric softeners. Also, there is no natural version of lilly of the valley perfume. Despite all the available methods, it's impossible to obtain this flower's natural scent, so everything has to be synthesized.

Tomorrow we'll begin jasmine, which is my favorite floral note. It's a very complex, multi-faceted scent, but I already have an imagine in my mind of what the final product should smell like. I'm looking forward to breaking it down and learning about how each component works together. Jasmine is a white flower but it always makes me think of something three dimensional, sensual, and dark purple. And something that rotates on an axis. I have no idea why those images come to my mind, but anything that helps you remember a smell is a good thing. :)

Happy breathing...especially with the onset of fall!

Downtown Versailles

the flower market

My School

The Fragrance Academy

The Apartment

Thanks to Mom I now have some great photos...but for the moment this is all the school computer can handle. There's one of me being silly in my apartment, one of The Fragrance Academy, and one of the flower market in downtown Versailles.

La Cuisine

I guess it's no surprise that moving from Japan to France can give quite a culture shock!

You know the state of mind just minutes before falling asleep, where you think you are dreaming and don't realize that you are actually awake? A few nights ago in that stage of pre-sleep, I realized that I was "dreaming" about Japanese food: cold soba, instant sticky rice and salmon and seaweed, big hot oily restaurant portions of miso ramen with bamboo shoots and hard-boiled eggs, chewy rice cakes and sweet red bean paste...I am still going through Japanese food withdrawal. I want it every day.

Which is ironic, since I am in The Land of Good Food. Maybe I should qualify that with "In the West." My cheese and red wine intake have both increased by about 200%. I am certainly not complaining. I've had fun preparing various dishes I couldn't make in Japan: whole wheat garlic pasta, grilled cheese with brie, goat cheese and fresh strawberries, portobello mushrooms with (what else) big slabs of camembert. And did I mention the coffee ice cream? (Noel heaven, Bill!) Yum.

Antonio, on the other hand, prefers Spanish sausage with his bread, instead of cheese. Last night he made me eat a piece insisting it was the "secret of Spain." (Whatever that can mean for a tubular hunk of pig.) The sausage was bloody and looked raw, but considering my diet last year, I can't use "raw" as an excuse to say no. I ate it, and it tasted good. Kind of spicy.

I never guessed that moving to France would teach me more about Spain...but it just goes to remind me that no matter how much globe-trotting I do, I will always know less than there actually is to know out there. It may be a small world, but it's cram-packed full of stuff.

Alive!

Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of recent posts but I've had some trouble with communication. There is no phone line for the internet in my apartment, but in any case, my computer crashed recently. (Great timing; I guess all the traveling wore it out!) For now I'm relying on internet cafes and the computer lab at ISIPCA.

Getting established again has been quite a whirlwind, to say the least! This time there's no school full of teachers and office ladies willing to help me with the details, but at least I can speak the language. It feels really good to be surrounded by French again. Not to mention gardens and goat cheese and colorful open-air markets!

So far I like Versailles much more than I expected (I envisioned a small town full of people jaded by Chateau tourists). But people have been nicer than I remembered. And with its history and established neighborhoods, Versailles feels like a mini-Paris. Luckily I live near the Chateau gardens and a small lake that was donated by Switzerland about 400 years ago. I'm happy to be so close to nature in the middle of a town.

My courses have not yet begun but I've visited the school a few times. It's in the middle of a very charming residential neighborhood, and the old brick ivy-covered buildings look like they were former mansions. The halls smell like roses and violets, and everyone wears lots of black under crisp white labcoats. I can't wait for classes to start.

My living situation has changed a few times but for now this is the deal: the landlord rented the other room to a young Spanish man who is working in France for his Masters (something related to plastics and engineering). Initially I wasn't too thrilled about living with a guy I don't know, but since I'm renting I don't have much say in the matter. Antonio just moved in today, so I don't know him yet, but he seems very nice. And clean. And respectful. And he bought a TV. So far so good!

In the meantime, I've been to Paris a few times, and gone out with a French guy I met randomly while Mom was here. I think next week I'll go to school and try to be productive; I want to help teach the beginning French class for the other international students. It would be a good review for me too.

Mom had a lot of trouble with her luggage (that's an understatement!) but she was a huge help getting me settled and a lot of fun to explore Versailles with! I plan to return to the gardens for another bike-ride soon.

One of my favorite teachers in Japan, a kind man I often played tennis with, recently had surgery for lung cancer. So far he is doing well. I miss all my friends!

France is really wrapped in red tape so it takes a while to get settled. But I am REALLY excited to be here, I feel really good about my situation and my school, and I can't wait to get into perfume. Mom took a lot of photos, so maybe when she emails them to me I can post them on the blog. More updates to come and I hope you all are doing well.

Last Night in Japan

Meegan took these photos on my last night in Japan. We had dinner at a crepe shop (of all places, but it was one of our favorite spots--yay France!!) and then did a couple hours of karaoke (yay Japan!!) I was so into the music that I didn't know she took karaoke shots...but some of them turned out pretty well. Look how serious I am, hah! Chocolate crepes and karaoke are no laughing matters.

I would also like to point out that it was the first time the entire year that I left my apartment in a tank-top (straps are a huge no-no in Japan). But it was my last night, and I was ready to let loose and enjoy Fuji while preparing to re-enter the West. What a rebel.

Packing

I can't believe that the day after tomorrow, I'm moving to France.

Tonight I am exhausted from a day of hauling and folding and rolling. You'd think international packing would be old hat by now (hah!)...and to a certain extent it is. I've gotten lazier and sloppier because I can remember what I unpacked from Japan a month ago. But it seems that my belongings have expanded.

When I moved to Japan I had 2 suitcases, but a few months later my parents sent me a box of winter clothes. This time I am packing all my winter clothes, plus toiletries that are no longer allowed onto the plane...so this time I just have more stuff. Mom is coming to France as well (yay!!) and she generously offered to take a suitcase of my things with her. In total, I've got my 2 bags plus 1 that Mom is taking. At least we're not paying postage.

The funny thing is, when you look at everything, it's not even that much. It's basically everything I need to last me the entire year, including one 3-pound jar of crunchy peanut butter--which I insisted on packing because it's a delightful, filling, protein-packed spread the French do not import in large enough quantities to find in Paris without great huffing and puffing and wasted metro money. (Ever seen a French peanut butter cup? There's a reason why not. So into the suitcase goes the JIF.)

The initial arrangement was to share my apartment with a young French student. It's very unusual for French students to move out of their parents' houses, and evidently this case was no exception: she changed her mind and decided not to move in to "our" apartment. So currently I have no flat-mate, but this could change as soon as Friday.

As I talk with others or think to myself, I mentally translate my words into French. A few times I've had to crack the dictionary, to look up such random words as: bald, pillow, to dress / get dressed, empty. In Japan, there were often French movies on John's satellite TV. With only Japanese subtitles to assist, I got to practice my listening skills, and for the most part I could understand. I don't want to jinx myself, but I think French will come back to me pretty quickly. I also think that, compared to learning Japanese, it might even seem easy. Au naturel. :)

In the past couple days I've been self-absorbed trying to get everything ready. But don't think that you haven't crossed my mind. I am sad, yes, to leave the time zone again...there are many people to miss. But maybe I'll have lots of visitors this year!

I plan to have the internet at my apartment, but I'm not sure how long that will take to set up. This may be the last post from me until I get things situated...but just know that I am thinking about you all! Much love to everyone and I hope the upcoming "year" is good for us all.

I am so excited, and I can't believe this is really happening.

And I want to say congratulations to a couple of my best friends in the entire world:

Mayumi will become Atsushi-san on March 24, 2007

and then

Hilary will become Mrs. Lee on September 22, 2007.

I can't believe my friends are becoming "Mrs."s!!

One down...and tomorrow and I'm outta' here!
--Ben Folds

Other Kinds of Prayer

The only sure path is to live consciously, moment to moment, as you let go of the outcome.

Obsessive thinking signals that we are not telling the truth, either to ourselves or another person.

--Charlotte Kasl

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self, or the things that have happened to you. There's no need to go outside. Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself. A white flower grows in the quietness. Let your tongue become that flower.

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from inside!

--Rumi

Between living and dreaming, there is a third thing.

Guess it.

--Antonio Machado

Certain Kind of Prayer

I don't travel to run away. I don't travel to forget. I travel to learn. But I like the way Paul Theroux said it:

"You have to find out for yourself. Take the leap."

"Nothing induces concentration or stimulates memory like an alien landscape or a foreign culture. It is simply not possible (as romantics think) to lose yourself in an exotic place. More likely, you will experience intense nostalgia, a harking back to an earlier stage of your life."

Every time you give something up and move on to something else, you remember how full your life is, how lucky you are. If you're open to starting over, instead of leaving things behind, you end up staring everything straight in the face.

When I began to feel settled in Japan, I wrote a post about contentment. I was really happy and started to wonder, "So, is this it? Is this all it takes? Can I stop here? Is this good enough? What happens tomorrow when I am content today?" I started to feel this itch, like "home" was closing in on me much sooner than I expected. I was ready to feel settled much earlier than I had predicted. That was scary. But when I was really quiet with that idea, when I really let it sink in, I realized...nope! I'm not quite there yet! I have to keep going! So I leave for France knowing it is the best path for me to be on. What's a year, right? Look how quickly Japan flew by, and look how much I learned. I still want that. But unlike Japan, I approach France with something different in my chest. It's not in my heart or my stomach, but somewhere deeper. It's like somebody snuck inside of me and turned on a night-light: I want to settle down sooner than I thought. It's there and glowing--not blazing yet because now just isn't the right time--but it's going to spark into a flame pretty soon. I can feel it.

And I am so, so excited.

Today I'm getting lost in Paris and perfume. Tomorrow I'll be singing this:

If there’s a plane or a bus leaving Dallas
I hope you’re on it
If there’s a train moving fast down the tracks
I hope you caught it
'Cause I swear out there
ain’t where you ought to be
So catch a ride, catch a cab
Don’t you know I miss you bad
But don’t you walk to me
Baby run, cut a path across the blue skies
Straight in a straight line
You can’t get here fast enough
Find a truck and fire it up
Lean on the gas and off the clutch
Leave Dallas in the dust
I need you in a rush
So baby, run

--George Strait
...

One thing at a time. :)

Non-Attachment

If I hold you with my emotions,
you'll become a wished-for companion.

If I hold you with my eyes,
you'll grow old and die.

So I hold you where
we both mix
with the infinite.

--Rumi

Versailles

http://www.mairie-versailles.fr/newspage.php?id=1&pg=21&lg=eng

According to the website, 25,000 young people are in Versailles every day, studying architecture, landscaping, perfume, and chemistry.

I'm getting very excited.

Not Their Mothers' Daughters

Not Their Mothers’ Daughters
Japanese Women in Modern Society

Introduction

In Japan, the weather makes the man. Everyone knows that Shizuoka’s mild climate means the people are even-tempered. Farther south, where the winds are strong, the men have short fuses and unpredictable mood swings. “Don’t go south to choose a husband,” my married coworkers advised. I wondered without asking if the same weather precautions applied to women.

From July 2005 to July 2006, I lived by myself in an old paper apartment on the northern side of Fuji City, Shizuoka. Shizuoka is a mountainous region, my neighborhood Fujimidai so named for the view of Mt. Fuji startlingly visible from everywhere on a clear day. I went to Japan as many young people do, an inexperienced English teacher with no Japanese language skills, having graduated from college only two months prior. What I knew of Japanese culture came from coffee table books on Zen Buddhism.

In college I studied French and international culture with a focus on the western world. I lived in Paris for six months and when I returned to America the following semester, I enrolled in a cross-cultural women’s studies course offered to students who had been abroad. I wrote about France while I edited my classmates’ papers about places I had never been before: Spain, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, Japan. One student’s paper stated that, despite Asian stereotypes, Japanese women experienced a full range of emotions, but were not “allowed” to express them in front of men. When I heard that my classmate and professor could locate very little research material on the modern woman in Japanese society, I was intrigued. I thought back to the popular novel Memoirs of a Geisha, and wondered what Japan was really like, not for a geisha but for a “normal” young woman like me. It was then I realized, I had dedicated my college career to learning about the world outside the United States, answering questions about other countries’ values and ideals—but I had never seriously explored the world beyond the West. If you stood from a place outside The West, French and American perspectives could look similar. So how could their differences be that significant? I needed to learn more.

I wanted to explore a culture that had no basis in or relation to my own; a place that would challenge my views on the most fundamental topics. A professor told me about the JET Program, and the rest is now history. I moved to Japan and promised myself that, in order to make the most of this learning opportunity, I would stay in Japan for the duration of my JET contract. No trotting off to Thailand, enticing as a beach vacation would sound. I knew that the best way to learn about Japan was to know the people, and that’s harder to accomplish if you’re always skipping out of the country. I left the US with the plan to squeeze the most out of my 365 days.

What struck me more than anything was the Japanese idea of love. It was, at times, totally incomprehensible to me, making it incredibly difficult to understand the interactions between men and women. This paper is in part an attempt to make sense of the questions I could not answer during my year in this eastern world.

But there are reasons beyond the personal to write such a paper. During my women’s studies course, my classmate noted a significant lack of English material about Japanese women. It was as if Japan, for whatever reason, had been left out of the feminist discussion completely. While plenty of literature appeals to the exoticism of geishas, bar hostesses, and Japanese women pre-World War II, where was the accessible information about women in today’s society? This is my attempt to fill that gap, and give a far-reaching voice to the women I have come to love and admire—not those doing big business in Tokyo or the office ladies pouring tea, but the middle class women in suburban and small-town Japan.

This is hard for me to write. It wasn’t hard for me to write about French women because I wasn’t close to them. (I made friends there but they were all American. I was close to a small number of French adults, but had no friends my age. I was pursued by French men, but not taken seriously by the women). In short, I didn’t know them well, and I was often lonely for a culture in which I wanted to play a role. What unfolded in Japan was completely different. Because of the strict social hierarchy, my role as The Young Friendly American English Teacher was well-defined, and I fell into it easily. I became a mentor to the students, and a friend to my co-workers. Interviews I conducted were not merely question-and-answer sessions, but unprecedented pokes into their private lives. And, generously, they let me in. The people I met opened their hearts, doors, and homes to me, and I will forever be in their debt for such kindness. The Japanese have an (appropriate) reputation for being overly-stoic or formal in public situations, but my relationships with them were anything but. I loved them, and felt loved in return.

When you respect a nation’s people because you love a nation’s individuals, cultural differences becomes hard to judge. Instead of immediate criticism, I first questioned my own views. It was hard to judge right from wrong and to discern black from white. What I learned fascinated and confused me as my own world, now expanded, turned to gray.

For my research I chose to focus on one geographic region (Shizuoka prefecture). But I do believe, from the self-professed homogeneity of Japanese culture, that these ideas may be extrapolated to all of Japan, and that Fuji serves as a microcosm for most of the country. However, please do not confuse my own observations with fact or with the views of Japanese people.

While I would love to organize such a discussion under the neat headings of “Femininity,” “Marriage,” “Sex,” “Motherhood,” etc., it is impossible to write in truly distinct categories. The best way to understand one is in the context of the others. This is my attempt at revealing a whole picture; the real lives of women who balance each category every day —perhaps just as you would do, had you been born a woman on an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, sixty years ago, or yesterday.

This is a rough (!) introduction to the paper I am writing. I have no idea how long it will be, or when I will finish. But if you would like to read more, please let me know. I won't post the rest on my blog but I can send you a copy.

Hypnotic...Coincidence

Remember about a month ago, I posted a photo of "the strangest flower" I had ever seen? The plant is called a passion vine but I nicknamed it "the jungle gym." If I remember correctly, I also told you that it was odorless. Evidently I didn't put my nose close enough for fear of inhaling all the ants. But an interesting coincidence taught me that the passion flower does, in fact, have a scent. A marketable one.

About the same time I posted the photo, my friend Em told me about Lancome's new perfume, Hypnose. Japan's perfume market is somewhat behind (because so few Japanese actually wear them), so I couldn't locate Hypnose in Shizuoka. I want to check it out because in my current unprofessional opinion (hah), Lancome consistently sells some of the most gorgeous perfumes out there. The first perfume I ever bought was Lancome's Poeme, which is really too mature for a 6th-grader, but I liked it anyway.

At home in the States, I still haven't found Hypnose in a department store, but I have done the next best thing: I researched its principle notes (or scents) on the net. As soon as I clicked a link, what else popped up on the screen but a huge photo of a passion flower -- my jungle gym -- along with more classic hints of (typical) vanilla, vetiver, and jasmine.

http://www.lancome-usa.com/_us/_en/fragrance/animations/hypnose/notes.aspx?CategoryCode=AXEFragrance&

I hope the above link works!

If you smell this perfume before I do, please leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Miss American Pie 2

More quotes:

May 16
Why is it we work so hard to be interesting to one another? --p.221

HAH!

and

August 22
"Everything comes and goes, just like lovers and styles of clothes. Things you held high and told yourself were true, start changing when it all comes down to you." -- Joni Mitchell

August 23
Jesus wept--because Jesus knew.

August 24
I've failed, but there's a sense of freedom, too. The two emotions overlap. --p.249

--"Miss American Pie"

Miss American Pie

I'm reading a book my mother lent me called "Miss American Pie." It was written by a woman who works in Duke's Center for Documentary Studies, but even better, the author grew up in my parents' hometown. The book is basically a collection of her diary entries from middle and high school (in the early '70s). Even more interesting is the fact that my dad briefly dated the author's older sister (in early high school).

The author doesn't seem very close to her older sister, at least not during her years of teenage angst, so there's no way my dad is mentioned in the book. But I think the diary entries are so real and absolutely hilarious. Last night in the middle of reading, I jumped up from my bed and pulled out my own diary from 7th grade. (At one point I had considered burning all my journals, but I'm very glad I decided against it -- not because my journal entries are unusual, just because they are mine). Despite my entries being much longer than the ones in "Miss American Pie," it was frightening how identical some of them were. Especially ones like this:

June 20
Sometimes I [really want a relationship], but then sometimes I feel so peaceful being free.

June 21
Maybe I should become a nun.

June 22
Read up on nuns and I think I'd make a better veterinarian. --p. 92

or this:

March 21
I feel funny right now. Or it's more like I don't know how I feel. --p. 50

or an entry I can't locate that says basically:

Went to youth group at church to see X because I'm in love with him, but then he wasn't even there.*

So 20 years later and 14 hours north, a totally unrelated middle school student wrote the exact same things in her diary. Should this surprise me? No. But does it surprise me anyway? Yes. When Native Americans said that time is not a vertical or horizontal line, but a spiral, I think they were on to something.

*Entries taken from "Miss American Pie" by Margaret Sartor.

SAME Blog Address

Sorry guys, the France blog address was unavailable, so I'll just stick with the original http://laureninjapan.blogspot.com Keeps it simple for everyone.

Flip It and Reverse It

This post will include a lot of obvious things that weren't so obvious to me until now.

The saddest part of the "real world" adjustment has nothing to do with waking up early. (Put me on a regular schedule and I feel totally whipped into shape, ready to get up and enjoy coffee with the sunrise in the peace and quiet before it gets too hot!) No, the alarm clock does not make me sad. What is difficult, however, is having to make a constant effort to even talk with the people you care about; to carve out time days in advance for a phone conversation with someone you effortlessly saw every day of your life all four years you were in college. And this is the age of mobile phones for crying out loud.

Even though I have spent 21 years of my life in the US and only one of them in Japan, the sudden and complete change in diet is an adjustment I would classify as reverse culture-shock--one of those things you don't expect to feel awkward, which is exactly what makes it difficult. (We may be creatures of habit but I'm not an old dog yet.) When you love American food, Southern food, and your mother's food, you just don't expect returning to it all to be an "adjustment." Not all adjustments are negative, but every change requires that you deal with it. And one week later that is precisely what I am still doing.

Related to food is body image. Not a day passed in Japan that someone didn't tell me I was beautiful. This is quite common for MANY foreigners in Japan, beautiful or not, and it is actually not an accurate reflection of my "stunning good looks." To prove this, people who know me know that I'm basically white as a sheet--or porcelain, or milk, or ghosts, or blinding light, or however you want to describe it. In Japan I would walk by girls shrieking in Japanese about how beautiful my skin was. It was very embarrassing, mainly because I felt like it was undeserved. It's all about conditioning and perspective, after all. In America you're taught to be ashamed of pale skin. One day I turned to some girls and said, "You know, in America, they don't sell bleaching creams like they do here. They sell tanning products so people like me can have darker skin. In America this kind of skin is not beautiful. In fact, people tell me I should look more like you." Naively I thought this would halt the chatter and make me feel less self-conscious. But I just got blank stares in return, as if they hadn't understood a word. They understood alright, but it just didn't matter. It would be like me telling you all, "It's okay that I'm so pasty because in Japan they think it's beautiful." So what? Nobody cares about another country's standard of beauty; it's just as irrelevant to high school girls in Japan as it is to women in America.

My point is, the standards vary greatly from country to country. So to culture-hop successfully, you must have a very solid grip on what makes you happy about your own body. Otherwise I'd be candy-striped white and orange from all that American self-tanner I should be buying.

The other big issue is everyday social interaction. I re-learned how to communicate in Japan and it's totally different from in America. I am still struggling with how to interrupt people (nobody interrupts in Japan, it's more like monologue turn-taking), and maintain a low blood-pressure when everybody talks at once and suddenly you can understand the language everywhere around you instead of it being nothing more than Japanese white noise while trying to remember the fact that people at the next table can understand you no matter what you say or how quickly you blur your words together.

Also, because such value is placed on your presence in Japan, there is less of a need to "perform" socially and project an image of yourself by talking. In America it almost seems like a competition; if you go out but don't talk "enough," people will think you are a weirdo or a loner or that you have "no personality." Coming back to the States, I realize that Americans are constantly working to verbally project an image of themselves, so everybody is just talking constantly. In Japan it's not like that at all. People assume you have personality and don't require you to constantly prove it to be worth their time. What did Mayumi tell me? She said, "We [Japanese] value the moon behind the clouds." You don't have to see the sun to know it can provide sunlight worth waiting for.

So, I am adjusting to home, and appreciating all the luxuries that are a part of my new--yet very old!--equation.