8 monthiversary (time flies)

In honor of our 8 monthiversary in Sapporo, I wanted to share these few thoughts on our experience here, cribbed from a recent email to a friend wondering, as everyone does, "Do you love Japan?"

Japan is a strange place, no doubt one filled with contradictions. A place where people who won't say "hello" to you at work will belt out karaoke songs with you at at volumes scarcely imaginable. Where everything is effortlessly efficient and yet there isn't a unified method for moving among crowds. Where you can get anything you want (whole octopus at your local supermarket or young women in bo peep uniforms serving snacks, for example) and yet decent cheese is virtually impossible to find. With impeccable design and aesthetics but some of the most oppressive architecture I've ever seen. Extraordinary natural beauty as seen from a window, fence, ride or boardwalk. Unparalleled craftsman traditions and gift shop shelves lined with jars of algae with "boners." A place where all aspects of life are so rigidly sanctioned that there are actually sanctioned ways to rebel against them. A place that is really easy to live in and hard to know well.

So, no, Japan hasn't stolen our hearts. Yet. But that's not to say we don't love it all the same. It is a place filled with sneaky sort of charm. Our friend Myriah, who lives in Yamanashi-ken, recently put it this way: Japan challenges you to appreciate subtleties in life - the gentle expression of a bow, the delicate flavors of a rice pastry, the utility of a single word. Even our appreciation for it has been similarly subtle. Hailing from the land of the direct and obvious, living in Japan requires a new way of seeing. Contrary to popular imagination, we're learning that Japan's real grace exists in its subtleties...the accumulation of small moments of magic. So long as we can see them.