Sayonara Suckers!

I never really cry all that often in public, or actually ever really. I think the last time I wasn't able to control my tears in an open and embarrassing display was back in 2001 at the post office in Korhogo. All that nasty little woman, donned in her pange and head wrap, sitting behind her closed off little window, had to do was take one look at me and my papers and brush me aside. She told me to return the next morning. She didn't have time for me. She said this after I'd been waiting there for several hours, and before I was to hop on my bike and ride the next hour and a half to my village where I'd be for another two weeks before I could make it back to that small little window and the same nasty woman. Remembering the experience still infuriates me and even now I can taste the helplessness which stiffens the back of my tongue. I had a public freak-out which probably caught me more off guard than the handful of employees at the post office and the long line of customers waiting to be treated in the same manner. I was hysterical. That is the last and only time I can actually remember bawling in public, and having to wipe my snotty nose on my own sleeve.

It seems to me, however, that shedding tears in Japan is quite a common thing. At least shedding them during the heart-felt send-offs at the end of the teaching year is rather normal. And, seeing these displays through the eyes of a hardened observer, I have to say, it all seems kind of fake. (Get out the stake! I have a feeling I'll be burned alive for even insinuating such a thing! How could one be so cynical?)

Kids cry during graduation. Kids cry during the closing ceremony. Kids cry when they see their friends off at the port and kids cry when they themselves leave. They cry when they say goodbye to the teachers who've been transferred to new schools. And the teachers, in turn, cry right along with the students. But, it isn't so much the frequency of the ocular output that makes me question the sincerity, it's the uncanny timing and way it's carried out that makes me think there's something calculated to this generally genuine emotional display. It's as if everyone was sent a memo noting the appropriate time and place to cry and that's their only opportunity to do it. If it's done any other time, when the heaviness of life hits them, it most certainly wouldn't be allowed.

Maybe it's just that I cry in a very different way than the people I've seen cry in Japan. If I've got a reason to be upset, and do indeed cry, I sob. I'm inconsolable. My tears are uncontrollable. I gush. I leak. I stream. I'm a wreck. My nose runs, I hiccup at the loss of oxygen as there's way more stuff being purged from my body than being replaced. I'm utterly incapable of shedding a tear here and another solitary one there. I can't daintily dab my puffy, red eyes and move about my business as my students and fellow teachers do after soft, teary goodbyes are said. Their ability to do it confuses me, and I construe their small, tender displays as moments of cunning.

Looking at it from the other way around, I'm sure anyone witness to my wild abandoned sadness would think the same thing. How on earth could someone act in such a way? It's so strange, and different and just not done. It has to be fake.

Watching the various send-offs this week makes me think of my own sayonara coming up at the end of July. I wonder how many students will come to hold up a osewaninarimashita banner for me. I wonder how many of them will and run to the end of the port, waving hysterically, as my ferry pulls away from the dock. I wonder how many of them will dab discretely at their puffy, red eyes. But, most of all, I wonder if I'll cry. And if I do, will I cry in the crazy, frenzied way that I'm used to behind closed doors, or will I do it softly -- discretely as I've seen is appropriate in Japan?