DO NOT CROSS

The news link was floating on my Google homepage when I signed on to do my Rosetta Stone drills for the day. It was March 11, 2011 and I hadn’t thought when I woke up that day — a 17-year-old homeschooler in a small town who had never travelled alone — that I would remember that date for the rest of my life.

The Japanese do.

The day a 9.1 earthquake triggered a 132′ tsunami that wiped out much of the Tohoku area, crippled Japan’s infrastructure, and led to nearly 20,000 casualties is often referred to as “3/11”.

I remember clicking the news link. I remember spending the rest of the day crying. How do you mourn for a people you’ve never met, can’t reach, couldn’t speak to if you tried?

Why do I want to mourn with them? Where did this love come from?

I’ve been in love with the Japanese people for over 15 years, so naturally I’ve been asked “why” a lot. For some reason, I’ve never started my answer here. I tell them about watching Japanese TV shows that my sister found, how we loved hearing the language, and how studying a language causes you learn about a culture, then about hearts and minds, and one thing led to another.

It’s all true, but that’s not why I’ve been trying to get to this country for half my life. A love like that wouldn’t have gotten me through teaching myself Japanese without ever going there; through going there 5 times without being able to stay. A love like that couldn’t have survived moving 12 times and quitting 6 jobs, being broke and displaced, lost and lonely. A love like that wouldn’t have outlasted disappointment, and depression, and a pandemic, and getting older.

A love like mine could never.

My answer to “Why Japan?” should begin with March 11, 2011, because that was the day I found out that my fondness for Japan had a deeper root, not in my heart, but in Someone else’s. The pain I felt that day was his. The love I have for them now is his.

It’s a steadfast, tenacious, uncompromising, irrevocable love.

Why Japan? Because he first loved them. Why did he place his love for them in me? That I can’t answer, but straight-shooting, I ain’t ever been real bothered about it. The next logical question on my mind, ever since I was crying with my sister on March 11, 2011 has been merely this:

What am I going to do about it?

I have some ideas. Probably really bad ones. Wanna come along?