Decision Time

Our decisions about recontracting are due the second week in February. Like last year, I waited until I went home for Christmas to do the most thinking about it. It was a lot tougher to decide than it had been last year.

I looked first at how I felt about having stayed a second year. I chose a second year because I wanted the chance to experience a full academic year, and a second chance at teaching the same curriculum. Working with the new teachers would help smooth out my lessons, and being in Japan a second year would help my Japanese tremendously. Several people at the various orientations warned us that the year would pass before we knew it, and they were absolutely right; most of the first year is still a blur in my mind. In my mind, it would have been a shame to finally get situated in Japan, to finally settle into a rhythm with work and life in general, only to up and leave a few months later.

I still fully agree with all those reasons, and am proud of having made that decision. The case for staying a third year is only slightly different. I would get a third crack at the same lessons, giving me even more time to polish and refine the various parts. New teachers would offer new insights and new suggestions on fine-tuning my technique and my lessons. My Japanese would only get better. I would get the chance to attend the graduation of the students who were first-years when I arrived, something that would be enormously emotionally fulfilling as a teacher.

However, after having gone so long away from home, I've begun feeling the need to be back. Sure, two-week visits are great, and they help me stave off homesickness. What I've started feeling is deeper. I need to be home for longer than two weeks. Nobody has made me feel pressured in the slightest about coming home, either--this is entirely me. I have no doubt that all my family and friends would keep right on supporting me for as long as I wanted to stay away from home.

What bothers me is the realization that I'm slowly getting attached here. I can't help but yearn for the same sense of connection and belonging in Japan as I've had in America. I desperately need to be around friends that I can relate to, that I can talk to and bond with. The other ALTs are great people, but we stay so busy with our schools that we don't get to see each other that often. I've made a couple of friends at school, and all the teachers are great coworkers, but everybody stays so busy with work that there's not much time to hang out with those few teachers who don't have families at home. My Japanese and their English are insufficient for any of the deep conversations I took for granted back home.

If I stayed another year, I don't see myself getting around that. Every day I spend here, increasingly frustrated with my inability to communicate on a deep level with any of the people I see every day, is one more day since the last time I saw my family and friends at home. Despite the unconditional love and acceptance I get from all of them, I understand that those relationships can only survive so long on occasional visits, postcards, and the occasional phone call. While I have no doubt I'll always be able to hit it off with any of my friends after any number of years without having seen them, the familiarity won't be as strong. I don't want to lose any more of that connection than I have already.

Nothing about the drawbacks taints the benefits of staying or going. It'd break my heart to say goodbye to the teachers and students, while I'd be overjoyed to be a domestic phone call and a reasonably short drive from friends and family; it'd hurt a great deal to miss even more of my cousins' remaining childhood, while every day I'd keep on falling in love with my job all over again. I think part of being a grown-up is having to choose not between the right thing and the wrong thing, but between two great things that have fine print.

With all this in mind (and a lot more, believe me), I've decided not to recontract. I'm not deciding to go home for forever and ever amen, but that I just need to be at home for a while. Now I get to spend six months saying goodbye.