Making Tough Decisions

For the most part, there are really only 2 Japans: Tokyo and everywhere else. Tokyo, as we all know is that resplendent Mecca of neon and maid cafes and girls in clothes that don't match and vast oceans of people trying just to cross the damn street and trains packed with people who all wear the same suit and karaoke bars and so forth. Tokyo is clean and beautiful; you know it's both, because in Japanese they're the same word (きれい).

The other Japan is bucolic, serene, a vast temple to nature in which all seems to make sense, and the world is at peace. Ancient women perfectly L-shaped for the task of planting and picking rice by hand balance baskets of exotic fresh vegetableｓ on their backs. As you wander up the mountain at whose base sits a quaint, quiet little village, you notice little shrines and nooks where people have set offerings of mikan and sake seemingly to nothing. The sunlight sifts through the trees and dapples the ground with just enough light to see by and not enough to reveal any subtle flaws.

For better or for worse, I don't live in either of these Japans, the ones the guidebooks proclaim as simultaneously mysterious and marvelous. I live where most people drive minivans, down the street from a gas station operated by a woman who sells me kerosene in the kind of tobacco thrashed voice you thought only belonged to people in high school health class videos. I live next to a Chinese restaurant and belong to a culture circle (um, that's a difficult one to explain) in Toyokawa. My friend Yasuko introduces me as a 主夫 (a homemaker) for lack of something better to call one in my position, a position in Japanese society most don't even know exists.

And lately I've been ripping my insides out trying to determine whether I should stay. The best part is I basically need to decide by tomorrow night. So, it's time for a little audience participation, people. Why should I stay? ("because you're an annoying jackass!") Why should I leave? ("because you're 160 lbs. of graduate school beefcake [you have to scroll down a bit]!") You decide; I'm sick of thinking about this.

N.B. If you look really closely, you'll notice that I'm wearing a t-shirt that says kichiku beihei and that my hair was already starting to thin on top.

Edit: there seems to be some confusion about what I mean. The "stay" would only be another academic year, after which the Japanese gove-mint would officiously kick us out. Besides, overstaying your visa is a really bad idea here.