A Foreign Birthday

8/26/08

** A quick word to parents. I had many parents express to me that they were interested in sharing my blog with their children. I was thrilled that so many folks would take interest in doing so, and hopefully you’ve found my blog fun and entertaining for everyone (including for us big kids) so far. This blog is no exception, but I wanted to make sure I tossed out a quick fore-word saying that I will be delving a bit into some personal stuff that at times may have nothing to do with Japan. Don’t get me wrong, the blog will stay squeaky clean, it’s just I’ll be mentioning some things about Jacob the person this go round as well as the usual stuff about Jacob the JET.**

Yay!!! It’s my birthday! And as all of my birthday’s go, I normally don’t let people forget it for at least a week. This year’s birthday was kind of special. Birthdays are always kind of special, but lately I’m beginning to appreciate more about them than just the presents and attention that I don’t have to feel guilty about. If you’re anything like me, you remember the following on your birthday.

• I’m two years outside of my golden birthday (the day of the month you were born on is usually regarded as your golden birthday, for me the 26th)
• These gray hairs are spreading and appear to be going nowhere fast. In fact, they appear to be multiplying like rabbits.
• It’s now my third consecutive birthday single. Birthdays, much like Valentine’s day, tend to function as a singles awareness day.
• Is that a bald spot?! No… for real… IS IT!??!?!
In all honesty, I tend to be scrubbing the back of my scalp a bit less vigorously than I usually do.
• I’m too old to be a twink anymore, (a title I never relished anyway) and yet I still appear to be young enough to continue to get acne.
• Oh, a chocolate decadence cake with extra frosting?! Oh, you shouldn’t have. No, really…
• What do you mean I can’t check out college kids anymore?!
• Muscle aches from activities that usually… didn’t make you ache. I hear this trend continues.

But, hopefully you remember some good things too.

• As awful as you like to imagine your life is, people care about you!
• Yet another year on this planet is a divine gift and should be treated as such.
• I bought this laptop and didn’t have to ask my parents to buy it for me. (although they did ship it to me, thanks Mom and Dad!!!)
• The perpetual sense of confusion and bewilderment is still around, but at least it doesn’t bother me anymore.
• I have so much more free time to do something fun on my Birthday. Whoever said your college years were the best in your life and that you had tons of free-time was obviously not a chemistry major. They may have been great times, but without lab reports to write, homework to do, and finals to study for, I have so much more freedom that I did a few years back.
• I finally stopped getting carded at movies. Well, most of the time.

Kidding aside (well, only sort of kidding) I really like Birthdays because it gives you a milestone to have a look at where you’ve been and where you are going. I also like them because they let me catch up with and spend time with friends, old and new, and celebrate. There just aren’t enough excuses to celebrate in August anyway, so with a dearth of things to do in this hot, hot month, it’s easy to coerce people to pay homage to my special day. I’ve always felt sorry for you December people :P This birthday was extra special because I got to celebrate it with some new Japanese and JET friends.

Mama-san and Papa-san, as I mentioned in a previous article, have been talking about my birthday since I got here and volunteered to throw me a party. I invited my oyasan (landlord), her family, and a handful of JETs to come to the festivities. The plan was to meet at the Ono’s restaurant, buy dinner, and have a cake that Mama-san was making. That’s not what happened!

Apparently the Onos (by the way, the area I live in is called Ono also, and they have owned this restaurant for generations… let’s add 2 and 2 shall we?) shut down their entire restaurant to host my friends and me. Oh, and there was no menu, I think they made everything they knew how to eat. It was huge. It was like Thanksgiving and Christmas exploded on her table, sans the turkey and cranberry sauce. It wasn’t just so much that there were more kinds of food and pasta than I can remember, but what was extra sweet was that it all seemed to be screened for an American disposition.

They’ve figured out we like chicken and beef. Everyone always asks if I want fried chicken. Not only was the selection incredible, but they just kept bringing out serving after serving. Anyone who knows my authentic Mom knows I’ve been in this situation a time or two, and I knew how to pace myself. The others? They were a bit green in no time. As a seasoned veteran of the “more food than I could ever eat but need to try because my Mom worked so hard on it and I’ll feel guilty if I don’t try” buffet due to my own Mom’s influence, I gave the impression I was on course 24 and ready for desert when I was actually just taking super small portions and bites. There wasn’t a soul who wasn’t thoroughly impressed and I felt very lucky to have had such a nice party from people I hardly knew.

My birthday was on a Tuesday, and I had to leave to go to a meeting in Nagasaki on Thursday. Thursday was also the night of FIS Japanese Classes. My FIS group said they might go to a restaurant that night in honor of my birthday, but I had to catch a train that night. Granted, the last train left at about 10pm, but I wanted to leave and get down there earlier, so I planned to leave at 7:30pm. When I got to FIS, however, they informed me that they had invited lots of people from around the area to come and meet me and have dinner with me at a nice restaurant. Looks like I was taking the 10pm bus after-all!

It’s touching! I’m a stranger to these people and yet they seem to worry about me, what I feel like, and if I have lots of friends surrounding me on my birthday. Maintaining friendships is difficult in any country, but when I was at home, I had a pretty good idea about where my support was going to come from. I’ve been so surprised since coming here at how easy it has been to find a group of people who can carry on the same function. Once-upon-a-time I was talking with a Vietnamese co-worker of mine who I was socially friends with though I found her a challenge to work with. She was super-pro America because of her experience of leaving Vietnam and the warm reception she received from the North Carolinians she encountered upon her move. I didn’t realize at the time when she was telling me about how touched she was by someone showing her were the bus station was, and even buying her a ticket at the bus station, why that was something that would stick with her so long. I get it now.

Pics and Videos from the gala event can be found by following the highlighted links :)