Running Through My Head

With the arrival of spring, coupled with my growing distaste for the elliptical machine after a year's worth of obsessive use, I've been supplementing my gym workouts lately by getting out and going for runs. We've got a nice, if polluted, river that runs through town, and it offers generally automobile-free paths on either side. I usually run along one side of the river for a few miles, cross over when a bridge presents itself, and then return along the other side of the river.

The last few times I've gone out running, I've been witness to some interesting things. At one point along my usual route I pass an elementary school, and with this being spring, there is often baseball practice going on in the afternoons and on weekends. I always like to glance over and take it in for the 30 or so seconds that it takes me to jog by. Such was the case on Saturday; there was some infield practice going on, relays from the outfield, and a few nets set up with players doing soft toss hitting practice. I happened to focus on the soft toss just as the batter rifled a foul ball right into the face of the dude who was tossing the balls, just a few feet away. Ouch. The tosser just kind of keeled over onto the ground, and I was listening for ambulance sirens as I continued on my way. About 10 minutes later I passed the school again on my way back home and all seemed well at the baseball practice. Kids are resilient, and the junior leagues here use so those soft, spongy balls, which probably prevented a broken face for the unfortunate young man. Whatever his fate, it was a random thing to witness.

This evening I once again went out for a run. I had planned to take the day off from exercise, but it was such a beautiful spring evening that I decided to head out for a little while at least. There was beautiful sunset tonight that reflected off the clouds long after the sun had dipped below the horizon. There bats EVERYWHERE swooping around gobbling up insects, and lots of people out walking there dogs and enjoying the moment. There was also a group of girls I'm pegging at about 15 years old, who were hanging out next to the river smoking cigarettes. As I approached I heard one of them say 'Oh, gaijin!' Gaijin is Japanese for 'foreigner.' So as I passed them they all blurted out 'Hello!' I obliged and returned the gesture, which must have set off an English freakout switch in their brains, because they immediately started blurting out the most nonsensical English to me. I wanted nothing to do with these girls, and from the sound of it at least some of them began to chase after me, yelling things like 'Yes I do!' and 'You win!' Fortunately this type of situation doesn't arise all that often for me. 'This type of situation' being one in which some Japanese person loses all inhibition upon site of a gaijin and freaks out, trying to talk to you, often as loudly as humanly possible so everyone within earshot can stop what they're doing and watch you try and weasle out your way out of the situation. Luckily, in this case I already had a good head of steam going, as running away is usually what I feel like doing when I find myself in such circumstances.

But I was in a remarkably fine frame of mind after running away from a bunch of 15 year old girls. As I continued to make my way home under fiery pink clouds, I pondered what it is that I love about living in another country (aside from my wife, of course). It's not that day to day life is that much different, in fact it's remarkably the same as it would be back home. I get up, go to work, come home, exercise, take drives to the beach, go out with friends, admire sunsets, play my guitar, spite George Bush. These are all things that I've done wherever I've lived. I realized, and not for the first time, that it's really the small, quirky things that happen to me living in a different country, that never would happen to me in the States, that make living abroad so interesting for me; things like being verbally assaulted by cigarette smoking 15 year olds in Rainman-like English. The setting that makes all the difference in the world.