Catching Up:

I’m not famous. If you care enough about my doings to visit this blog, you may have been aware of my recent birthday.  And if you’re my Mom, you’re probably aware it was March 22nd… which isn’t so recent.  Yeah, this blog post took awhile.  The gifts for entering my marathon year came in many forms, but they can be boiled down to one word: change. And it all came from the people around me.

Normal life is resuming for me in Osaka, Japan.  My 26th birthday came during the peak of the abnormalcy (LibreOffice says that’s a typo, but if normalcy is a word, so damn well is abnormalcy), and it surpassed expectations by about ten thousand percent.  So here goes the most narcissistic story I’ve ever written, a post about my own birthday, as a grown man.

My transitions have been dramatic, and I submit them as my excuse for the even greater shortage of blog posts than usual. Life has finally begun to settle, though there is more work ahead.  But of course, nice weather has returned at last, bringing with it the famous cherry blossoms, sweet breezes, a forthcoming trip to Korea, and new excuses for me not to publish blog posts.

Last year, my birthday was actually a big deal. For my 2014 New Year’s resolution, I set my birthday as a deadline for arriving in Japan – before even securing an interview with my previous employer – and arrived on time by about two weeks.  My first birthday in Kyoto was heralded by an overwhelming sense of accomplishment.  Just for being here.  The victory still disorients me today as I try to come up with a new life goal.  Additionally, it was the night I met the incredible Yuu Koyama, maybe the funniest man I have ever met.

That was 25, which was a nice round number anyway.  I suspected that 26 would be as meaningless as the number itself is in almost all walks of life (drum tap).

The Adversity:

I had no expectations of the day for several reasons.

Amongst my friends, there were bigger things to celebrate.  Co-trainee Rob was leaving Japan on March 21^st.  Within four days, one of my best Japanese friends, Koichi, was also to leave the country, moving to Melbourne, Australia.  A party was planned for them.  The sudden imminent departure of two from a small group overshadowed a birthday I never mentioned.

This was no act of introversion.  My struggles pushed ordinary calendar events out of the way.  I’ve tried to write this out in many ways, but it’s easier to just list the timeline, which was proceeded by a long, grueling job hunt:

• March 16^th – I had to have my apartment vacated, and move into a hotel.

• March 17^th – My final job interview, at which I signed with a new company.

• March 20^th – Last day at AEON.  Checkout from the hotel.

• March 22^nd  – birthday

• March 31^st – New job began in a different city.

I had two weeks to find new housing, in a foreign language.  Next I had to move 90% of my possessions to Osaka, keeping enough clothes, personal items and documents to function out of a company-supplied hotel room for my last five days with the former company.  The challenge was set, but I needed help.

Some friends stepped up huge for me and offered to host for the stretch until I found a new apartment in Osaka, and a coworker offered to hold on to my small couches.  There was no time for a “Sayonara Sale” and I didn’t have the money, patience, or tolerance to just buy new stuff.  Because paying movers or paying people to take your old furniture, is like paying money to admit you’re weak.  So I moved it all myself, with brawn.  It took several runs from Kyoto – the distance from Boston to Worcester, or the Beltway to Baltimore – to get all of my clothes, furniture, and other possessions to safekeeping.  It was like playing refugee!  With fast trains, rejuvenating meals and money.

Indeed, beyond great friends, I have never been so thankful for Japan’s sprawling, cheap, efficient commuter line trains.  Yet a car would have been nice.

Meanwhile there was little time for celebration at AEON.

Amongst coworkers, there were even bigger distractions.  My American coworker’s father passed away at the end of February, necessitating his return home for two weeks.  This, in a tight schedule, with a number of major projects going on, several of which were long term and not imminently necessary, and none of which our brilliant and wise bosses in their infinite wisdom were willing to postpone, all while my replacement was preparing to transition in, led to a legendary office scrum. That office was often a struggle, but this was the Perfect Storm.

On the other side of Kyoto, Koyama, always an island, actually reminded me of the approaching day, only to rant “I have no money!” and proclaim that he thus couldn’t afford to celebrate it with me in any sense. Yes, this counts as a reason on its own to expect a quiet birthday.

Beyond Koyama there was no discussion of the topic in my life. Between my job, job hunt, packing, moving, arranging for after the move-out, and most importantly, a solid amount of time devoted solely to lamenting how little time I had, I simply didn’t think about my approaching birthday and never mentioned it.

My distracted coworkers, employers, and friends, with problems and crises of their own, did not appear to be filling my mother’s usual role of pressing my birthday upon me, and if I had cared to think about it, I wouldn’t have blamed them.

What did it matter to me anyway? I’m 26. At this point a birthday is nothing more than a day when hundreds of people will look at my Facebook. Instead I set to work with my little spare time writing a blog post about Koyama. In case it wasn’t obvious, I’ve had no free time.

Thus I spared no thought to my upcoming birthday. And yet, each and every one of those subgroups prepared for my birthday in their own spectacular fashion.

My Birthday(s):

The first surprise came on my last day of work.  My best friend in Japan had 12 hours left in the country and I was in a hurry, but on my way out, I was obstructed by my manager, who told me I had to stay.  Eventually I was boxed into the office, where the entire staff, in the midst of so many crises, found the time to purchase and present me with a lavish spread of birthday cakes-by-the-slice.  They followed this up with this beautiful poster card:

I’ll admit, I wasn’t always the happiest worker at AEON, and I had my differences with management, and I am a lot happier at my current job.  But this final act touched me deeply and helped us finish on a positive note.

Of course, I had a celebration of my own, while eating my slice, by asking each and every question I was previously forbidden to ask… about why the man I replaced was fired, about their honest opinions of troublesome students, and about the odd rules we all have to follow.  I also poked fun at the sensitive issues that originally required me to leave the company. More on that in a future post. お疲れ様でございます, AEON.

This was the first Happy Birthday To You sang to me that week.

Next I rushed off to Osaka with 100 pounds of my remaining possessions, arriving on one of the last subway trains around midnight, with Koyama, who was toting his younger sister.

“You want to fuck my sister?” he asked as we walked to the apartment, possibly not understanding the gravity of this inquiry.  “She face, my face, same!  She gross!”  It was plainly obvious she didn’t understand a word he was saying.

Rob’s last night was a blast. It was somewhat of a blur through different bars popular with foreigners.  He has it more fully covered here.

I remember that the usual pains of parting were absent.  We dealt with it the old-fashioned way.  We drank a lot, we spoke the truth about the crappy feeling of losing our friend, and we partied more.

One thing I remember was meeting Mike, a Londoner with the JET program of foreigners working in the Japanese public schools.  In my next job, I’m teaching children.  At the time I was terrified of this, so I asked Mike about it.

“You have nothing to fear man.  You’re a rock start to them,” he said.  I was momentarily distracted by somebody giving me Koyama’s wallet, and I absently pocketed it.

A rock star?  Like doing karaoke American-style?

This was the first time I didn’t think of teaching children as the end of the world.

For Rob’s last meal in Japan we went with sushi.  The sushi was some of the best quality I’ve ever had, even in the food’s homeland.  I grossly detest food porn for its complete inability to convey the pleasures of food.  I don’t have any pictures of the heaping plates of blood red tuna or smoked salmon on lightly sweet, fresh-boiled rice.  You’ll just have to assume it’s better than any seafood you’ve ever posted on Instagram, better than you could ever imagine unless you fly here and taste it yourself.

The weekend had an awesome start.  The next morning was even better.

For some reason, Koyama had eschewed his clothing during the night and needed his valuables kept safe.  Trying to buy ramen early in the morning, he realized that he never recovered his wallet.  His anguish and torment built.  At last!  Japan had finally seen an actual crime: Koyama’s wallet was stolen!

In total rage, he took out is iPhone, and, realizing it had no “find my wallet” feature, he hurled to the ground as hard as he could, smashing it to pieces.  He followed this up by punching the ground with equal force.  Did I mention he doesn’t have any money?

Koyama, Rob, a few others and I slept at our friends’ apartment, which as of that morning had become my short term home.  With the sunlight pouring into the room, Koyama awoke in a hot pot of Japanese shame, with his hand and shirt covered in blood, his wallet missing, and his phone in a million pieces.  He started flipping couches.  This woke me up.

“Whaa?” I said.  “Oh, here’s your wallet Koyama.”

There was an explosion of commotion, laughter, and shock, while Koyama raged and stormed. Poor Koyama.

We took Rob to the train station.  The time had come.

From arriving on the same day, to surviving the same brutal training and enduring the same AEON struggle, to Rob hanging out with me on my last night living in Kyoto, to my hanging out with him on our last night in Japan (both covered here) – Rob was my pledge brother.  My sidekick throughout Japan, whom I committed to this journey with, suffered with, climbed Mt. Fuji with, found triumph with, and whom I killed two hookers and swore an oath of secrecy as blood brothers with, was gone.  I was alone.

This wasn’t a good feeling, but it was necessary. In my time in Japan, I had never felt so alone. That for one year after my birthday of triumph, it felt necessary, fitting, and beautiful, that I should once more be feeling alone and afraid in a new country all over again.

In this moment my birthday gift was reality hitting like a ton of bricks.  A shock to the soul that reminded me – this isn’t some dream study abroad trip.  It’s life, in another country.

Once the band-aid was ripped off, it became apparent that it was still Saturday.  Suddenly I had new male companions.  One of them suggested we go to “Nipponbashi,” an area of Osaka which was hosting a massive anime festival.  I was never into anime, but that’s as much of a reason not to go as not liking beer is reason not to go to a bar.  So we went.

The place was incredible.  Thousands of people were in really elaborate costumes, with designs and accessories familiar and not.

At first I took photos like these:

 

And a video (I apologize for vertical):

There were girls in many kinds of anime outfits and, while cute, they also seemed really funny. I wanted to laugh at all the anime fans and their impossible fantasies, their drooling eye-candy buffet, and their shamelessness in taking pictures of girls to take home and pleasure themselves with. It made me feel above them. Then Pikachu showed up, and I fell right into line:

I wish I had a Pokéball.

Keeping the nerd theme going, that night we went to Space Station, a bar in Osaka entirely devoted to video games of every generation.  I drank draft beers and got destroyed in the newest version of Super Smash Brothers.  It’s like an improved version of my sophomore year of high school – in that cold draft beer is an improved version of warm cans.  They also had other drinks, many other games, and new people to meet.  Normally for something that great I say ‘God Bless America,’ which obviously doesn’t really work here.  Yet I am religiously and morally bound from saying any other country in that phrase.

Besides, I didn’t need to.  Another American in the bar had the whole pride-thing covered.

Overhearing a loud American man shouting “AMERICA DOES BIRTHDAYS RIGHT, HAPPY BIRTHDAY,” I turned to see a bizarre foreigner quartet having birthday shots.  A black Finnish man was passing shots to his white Australian dreadlocked friend, who was turning 27.  It was the crack of midnight – we had the same birthday.  As my friends had just left (my party was to be another night), I felt it necessary to join this club.

The one American amongst them let out a gutteral roar of excitement when he met me, and bought me a beer before I knew what happened.  Absently watching his Swedish friend with a Captain Hook-curled mustache played Super Mario Brothers, the American then proceeded to give me a long rant about three main ideas:

1. Atheism is the only acceptable religion.

2. Nobody should be proud of something they can’t change.

3. He was really smart and there was nothing wrong with making that known to everybody.

A friend once told me I’d make a great bartender, because I’m “always willing to hear out an idiot.”

Sunday was my actual birthday.  All the celebrations surrounded this day – which I had given months earlier to a very small “Takoyaki” (fried octopus ball) party in Kyoto with some former students.  I was returning as a tourist to a city of which I still felt completely and totally a resident.  And yet, I was returning unfettered by a oppressive workweek.  Freedom!

I spent much of the daylight doing what I always wanted to do but couldn’t while trapped inside the walls of my windowless classroom – sitting by the river and reading.  Despite moving to the other side of the planet, I’m a man of simple pleasures.

The party was another surprise.  As soon as I met up with the former students of mine, all girls, all beautiful and kind, I began to wonder what I ever had misgivings for.  Routinely I take for granted the opportunities I have abroad.  My coworker was there too, and he’s cool too.  He’d have to be Hitler to ruin that anyway.

The students not only remembered my birthday, they got me awesome gifts.  They made me beautiful cards.  They sang to me.  We cooked the takoyaki ourselves with tools and ingredients given to us by the staff.  I may have proposed to one of the girls.

That was my second birthday song.

But alas, none of them wanted to go to a bar and continue partying.  What a pity.  No more pretty girls!  Was my life’s celebration to end at nine o’clock?  Was there anyone else in Kyoto who wanted to start drinking without warning?

Bleeding, broke, and with his Mom’s phone, Koyama etched out one sentence:

As it had been a year ago, I was left alone on my birthday, in Kyoto, with nothing to do but trundle down to Man in the Moon at Kyoto Station.  The bar that welcomed me to Kyoto a year before did so again with yet another of this weekend’s unanticipated welcomes.

It was packed.  The only open seat was at the entrance of the bar.  Attempting to hang my jacket, I was invited to sit down by two old Japanese men, entirely with grunts and hand gestures.  They were in a party with the table across from them, containing another old Japanese man, a very old Japanese woman drinking heavily, and a young Japanese woman.  They were all dressed spectacularly, and they were all incredibly drunk.

The three Japanese men guffawed and laughed at my foreign-ness and tried to ask me questions.  I couldn’t help but notice that the repeat of last year’s birthday was coming full circle.  Just like the birthday I celebrated in the same place a year earlier, Japanese was being spoken to me by eager drunkards, who communicate with gestures and offer me drinks.  And once again I understood close to nothing.  I should really study the language.  And yet I was as happy to be abroad then as I am now.

An extremely well-dressed English-Canadian man returned from the bar and observed the Japanese men babbling to me.  One of the men, who looked like Humpty Dumpty, turned to him and started coughing food on him.  The English-Canadian man listened.

“They want to buy you a beer,” he told me.

So began my next birthday celebration.  The Englishman, Dave, turned out to be married to the young Japanese woman at the table across.  He worked at a school in Fukuoka, Western Japan.  This entire family had just attended the wedding of the Dave’s wife’s sister in Kyoto.  And suddenly I was on their wagon, drinking at their expense, because I guess they hadn’t spent enough on the wedding.

The moment came when one of the old Japanese men asked my age, and before I could answer, Dave explained that the cultural norm dictates that I respond, “how old do you think I am?”

He pondered for a moment.  “Niju-rokko,” he said.  What a guess!

After confirming that, indeed, it was my niju-rokko-th birthday, the men gave a delightful rendition of the world’s greatest reaction.  They made me eat some of their pizza and kept ordering more beer for me, while questioning every detail of my life through Dave.

Eventually I tired the old men out with my awesomeness, and they departed for their hotel.  Just as the old folks stumbled out, Koyama stumbled in, with his hand partially bandaged.  Excited as usual to see foreigners, he fit right in, sharing his crude life details with Dave and his English-fluent wife, complaining about his coworker/crush who doesn’t love him back, and finally, giving me a birthday gift:

Yes, that’s a fleshlight.  “I had no money,” Koyama kept explaining.  So he resorted to humor. This is what I strive to do even without financial plight, and it’s why Koyama is my buddy.  Almost no other Japanese men could ever make that cut.  They would just hide and isolate themselves until they had enough money to buy me an expensive, useless gift.

It was nonetheless a weird moment when Koyama handed me a fleshlight across the table.

Then the lights turned off, and it became apparent that my birthday was being celebrated yet again.

When the bartenders brought me a cake, the entire bar sang to me.  Twice.  That’s not the first time that’s happened to me.  These were my third and fourth birthday songs.

Dave and his wife were extremely friendly and wouldn’t let me pay for a drink.  They even bought me the cake (or possibly Koyama did, as I never asked).  But Dave’s greatest gift to me was reassurance.  Aside from confirming Mike’s assertion that I’d be a “rock star” to the children, Dave emphasized the impressionability of young kids; how they’re blank palettes for me to work with.

This was the happiest objectification of humanity I’ve ever listened to.  I had to start working to really understand what he was talking about, but the peace of mind was worth all the cake in all the bakeries in Japan (and there are a lot of bakeries, for some reason).

However, it was far too late to take a train back to Osaka.  I was stranded in Kyoto.

Koyama, as he had done many nights before, and as he had done the night I met him one year earlier, gave me a ride on his bike.  This time however there was nowhere to go but his apartment.  During the ride, just as we did then and any time he gave me a ride since, we sang English songs obnoxiously loud.  The first time this happened, Koyama had just launched into We Are The World without warning.  Ironically he probably can’t make that sentence grammatically – hence the power of songs in learning.  But he sang it beautifully on both my 25^th and 26^th birthdays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9BNoNFKCBI

The next morning, Koyama roused me extremely early, during a debilitating hangover, so he could kick me out of his apartment and go to work.  I returned to Osaka and went to sleep.  It was Monday morning, and unlike most of the world, I didn’t have anywhere in particular to be.  But my birthday was over.  Thank God I thought.  Time to get to work.  Of course, I hadn’t started my job yet, but I needed to find an apartment.

But my birthday continued.

Professional life has made sleeping beyond noon nearly impossible for me.  An attempted nap ended around noon, to many Facebook notifications.

I don’t care who you are.  If you wish me a happy birthday, I will thank you.  Not thanking people is rude.  On the other hand if you like someone enough to wish them a happy birthday, you should at least personalize it somehow.  Or write their name.  Or write an exclamation point.

I try to make my responses as deep and sincere as the wish itself.  Some people post photos on my wall, recount good times we’ve had, and poke fun at me being an old man.  This is the touch of humanity that keeps life worth living.  These people are why I maintain absurd principles like Facebook thank you’s, and I dedicate some thought to those responses.

When people write “happy bday” without punctuation, I’ll respond with “thanks”.  Because those lazy bastards who only wish me a happy birthday because they have ADD still deserve something.  Everyone does.  We are the World.

I’ve done this for years. But Facebook always thinks I’m some spambot for writing on so many walls.  Now I comment on them, my habit is out, and look as weird as I really am.  One can imagine how long this takes.  That’s how I spent most of Monday – getting laughed at by my short-term roommates and some friends for sitting on my computer thanking 150 people on Facebook.  Maybe I’m more Japanese than I realize.

When I finished, one of my short-term roommates, Aaron, came out of the kitchen.  “There’s your birthday cake,” he said.  During my extended sojourn with my computer, this man churned, chopped, baked, and decorated a beautiful cake.  It’s true, you really meet the nicest people abroad.

Like I said about the sushi, I am violently opposed to food porn.  This picture doesn’t translate how good the cake tasted.  But perhaps it gives an idea of how hard this man worked on a cake for me:

Aaron stepped out, presumably to get a group to sing Happy Birthday to me.  When he returned, I had already started eating the cake.  My fifth birthday song thus never happened.  But within five minutes, the whole house and the two visiting friends all offered to take me out to dinner.  It was no use explaining that my birthday had already been heavily celebrated.  What did it matter to them if they hadn’t yet celebrated me?

Of course, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, and ate a lot of American food.  Just when I realized how catastrophic this four-day birthday celebration was for my health (in the wake of moving my life’s possessions across two cities), a full sundae came out.  And they sang my sixth birthday song.  At this point I’m a professional at handling the awkwardness of being sung Happy Birthday To You.

The next day was Tuesday.  It was the first day my former English school would open without me.  So how will this writer spend his first day off the job?

Am I going to Disney World?

Not quite.  I went to Universal Studios Japan.  As a matter of fact this had nothing to do with my birthday.  As you may remember from when you started reading this post last year, Koichi, who was now my (extremely) short-term roommate, was moving to Australia in a few days.  Before he left Japan, he wanted to visit USJ.  He must really enjoy waiting in lines, because he chose a day smack in the middle of Japanese public school vacation.

The line for the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride was 290 minutes long. In other words, longer than most internal surgeries and intercontinental flights. Everything else was forbiddingly long as well.  No one I was with seemed willing to commit to any of the lines and we sort of dawdled for a few hours.  I only write this paragraph to encourage people not to go to USJ until they introduce some kind of quota system on busy days.

Nonetheless, waiting in line after line, drinking sugary butterbeer at Harry Potter World, and getting on a few good rides later in the evening when most people had left, felt really great.  Between streets designed to look like Manhattan, sweet fatty foods everywhere, and big-movie music, USJ is a massive ultra-concentrated slice of America.  Having gone on my first day not working, it was fittingly accompanied by an eerie feeling of unprecedented and unbridled freedom.

And for good measure, I made sure to send plenty of Snapchat videos to my American coworker teaching at AEON.  Having fun is just that much better when other people are miserable.

The USJ trip was one more awesome capstone to an unbelievable birthday weekend.

That night we returned to Space Station.  At the bar, Mike, who reviled the long lines more than anyone, suggested that Nintendo ought to create “NintendoLand.”  Nintendo, just up the road in Kyoto, has a suitable location closeby in Nara – the famous “Nara Dreamland” which closed after the arrival of USJ.  But that’s way too cool, daring, and logical for Nintendo to pull off.

On Wednesday, we held Koichi’s goodbye dinner.  There we ate my birthday cake.  By the craziest egomaniacal definition this could also count as part of my birthday celebration.  Hey, I was receiving ‘happy birthday’ wishes for the next week anyway.

The next day we took Koichi to the airport to see him off.  It was weird watching him go. He was not the pledge brother Rob was to me, but Koichi is my good friend.  He is among the most English-fluent Japanese people I have met and he has a blunt way of explaining this strange country to me – unlike everyone else, he sugarcoats nothing.  “I don’t think she likes you” is something he wouldn’t have been afraid to say.  “I’m moving to Australia” was something he said matter-of-factly, without wasting time crying about it.  I did enough of that myself.

Overall I had an amazing birthday celebration.  I got everything I wanted and more.  Confidence in my new job – and yes, my new job is awesome and I love it.  A new life – for I am in a new city with new friends and a new adventure.  A new apartment – and help setting it up from a number of friends.  What I got, in a word: change.  Given by the rocks, the bits that didn’t change.

My gifts spring not from cakes or birthday wishes, but what I already had: the people who baked the cakes and made the wishes.  I would not be emerging on the other side of my Japanese winter, I would not be enjoying this new life, if it weren’t for those at home who have wished me well, sent me postcards, or lost to me in Fantasy Football, and if it weren’t for such a strong, dependable, trustworthy support network in Japan, built in just one year, of incredibly reliable, faithful, and trustworthy people.  My people (except for the Pikachu girl).

Like I said, I’m a man of simple pleasures.

If you’re here, you made it!  Thanks for reading.  Follow on Twitter or Instagram @gregnasif.