TASTE

Part 1 of 6: The Onsen

In March of 2004, I moved to Ichihara in Chiba Prefecture, Japan to teach English at an Eikaiwa. I was a month shy of turning 26, had graduated from university with a bachelor's in Mathematics, and had decided that teaching was to be my life's calling. I'd cut my teeth as a private tutor for years and worked at various cram schools in and around Vancouver. Despite all this, I felt I still needed something more, something impressive that I could put on a resume down the road. Teaching overseas just felt like the obvious choice.

At least that's how I sold it to my parents when they asked why I wanted to fly halfway around the world to teach in a country I knew nothing about. Truth be told, I just wanted to move out of the house. I was a man by this point in my life, but only by age I felt, having grown up very little under my parents' roof.

As the oldest of three boys, I always strove to do everything first. But even with my one- and six-year head starts, my brothers would often beat me to the finish line. The elder of them, Tommy, had moved out the previous year to pursue his master's at the University of Waterloo. At the start of this story, he was eight years into a relationship with his girlfriend, Janet. In contrast, I was single and living with my parents. My longest relationship up till then had lasted all of three months.

My parents adored Janet. She was polite, well read, and respectful of her elders—perfect daughter-in-law material. She got along great with me and my friends. To us, she was just one of the boys. Heck, she even looked the part: shoulder-length black hair; a slim, athletic build; skinny jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt most days; and even a raspy, masculine tinge in her voice.

Before Tommy moved out, we saw a lot of Janet around the house. My parents would have her over for dinner three, four, sometimes five nights a week. I didn't mind it at all. The lovebirds respected my privacy and remained mostly out of sight.

Four months into my stay in Japan, I received an email from Janet. She'd been accepted into the JET Program as an assistant language teacher in Mito up in Ibaraki Prefecture—three hours north of Ichihara. Till then, I'd had no clue where Mito was or that Janet had entertained the idea of teaching overseas. I guessed it made sense. Tommy was going to school out east while she was searching for jobs (unsuccessfully) in Vancouver. If they were fated to do a long-distance relationship, what difference would a longer distance make?

I replied to Janet, telling her how psyched I was. "You're gonna love it here," I said, making sure, however, to temper her excitement. Meeting up with any kind of regularity was going to be challenging given the distance between our cities. That's fine, she wrote in her next email. At least I'll have a friend close by.

It would be another two months before Janet would make it to Japan. The day of her arrival—a Friday—I took an evening train into Shinjuku to visit her at the hotel that she and the other new hires were staying at. Orientation would be the next day, all of Sunday was set aside for travel, and Monday would be their first day on the job.

Janet was sitting patiently in the hotel lobby when I arrived. She had on sweatpants and a faded denim jacket over a sweatshirt. When she heard me call out to her from across the lobby, she got up, scurried over, and hugged me for possibly the first time in all the time I'd known her.

"How was your flight?" I asked, happy to see a familiar face after so many months.

"Long," she answered, letting out an exasperated groan. I'd suffered through the same gruelling 10-hour flight back in March, so I knew she had to be exhausted.

"Come up to the room," Janet continued. "I want you to meet Sonya, my roommate for the weekend."

We took the elevator up to her floor and walked down the hall to her room. Sonya, a fellow Vancouverite, was in the middle of unpacking the contents of an oversized suitcase. She casually waved to us, finished her unpacking, and fell forward onto her mattress with a thud. Like Janet, she looked completely spent.