Sliding Doors

I could have ended up in Japan. This photo essay starts in 2007...

It was a good year. I had just finished finishing the Psychosocial Support Guidelines for Emergencies for the New Zealand Government. It was my first Government job, and it had gone ridiculously well. I accepted a Principal Adviser role at the Ministry of Youth Development, and things were ticking along in my second year in New Zealand after a rocky start.

I was so homesick in my first year that I considered going back to the UK. 

Several times. 

I’m glad I didn’t.

One Saturday morning, I opened the newspaper and was browsing through the small ads, as I was prone to do. One caught my eye: It was asking for applicants for a programme run by the Japanese Government, called Young Core Leaders of Civil Society. It was a funded trip to Japan, representing New Zealand as part of a group covering youth, older adults, and disability sectors. 

Why not me, I thought. 

I applied. 

I got on.

And that’s where my relationship with Japan began.

I’d always been interested in Japan. In fact, one time, I routed my trip back to New Zealand from a visit back to family in London through Tokyo. It was a fascinating short stopover, but I felt like a ghost.

My outward appearance marked me out as a person of uncertain origin. I wasn’t white-skinned, but I wasn’t Japanese. I was foreign. And I was not with Japanese people. I was alone, wandering through the city, cafes, bars, sushi joints and metro system. Every time I looked at someone, they'd avoid my gaze. But whenever I snapped my head up on the Metro system, I found eyes that had been scanning me hastily averted away.

There was no way to connect.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Novemnber 2006

Tokyo, November 2006

But this Core Leaders Programme could lead to a deep way to connect with the country, I thought.

How right I was.

As part of the New Zealand delegation, alongside groups from Belgium and Denmark, we spent 10 days discussing issues core to helping build a lasting civil society, learning from each other, and trying to understand how to use the best of what we all offered. It was an incredibly valuable learning and leadership experience for me, and one that I recommend to others if they have a similar opportunity.

With my fellow New Zealand delegates to the Young Core Leaders of Civil Society Programme, Tokyo 2007

I look like I’m explaining something, don’t I? With Belgian and Japanese delegates, Tokyo, 2007

Visiting a Japanese school and talking with kids with an interpreter, Osaka, 2007

I also had a homestay experience in Osaka, where my family made me a delicious sukiyaki and we video-called my parents together because they really wanted to meet them. Family came up as a really important theme during all my time in Japan.

Me and my homestay mum, Osaka, 2007

Final day in Tokyo before leaving, 2007

At the end of the programme, we went home. But I immediately felt a longing to return.

I applied to the JET programme to teach English in Japan.

I got on.

But I also applied to the Faststream programme in the UK - a senior civil servant training programme that is more difficult to get a place on than a medical degree. 12,000 people apply for 300 places.

I got on.

I deferred my decision for a year. Partly because I could decide about what to do, and also because I didn’t feel ready to leave New Zealand yet. But time kept ticking and a decision had to be made.

This was my sliding doors moment.

I chose the Faststream programme, and reluctantly wrote to withdraw from the JET programme. But in the intervening year, I had applied for a short-term Fellowship from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science, based at the National Institute of Mental Health in Tokyo. It’s a prestigious Fellowship and kind of big deal.

I got on.

With my hosts, the wonderful Profs Yamada and Kim, National Institute for Mental Health, Tokyo, 2009

Office in/out board, National Institute for Mental Health, Tokyo 2009

More bookstore disaster reading

On my daily commute, Tokyo, 2009

I spent a wonderful month in Tokyo, working with colleagues, and even presenting at a conference in Osaka (as part of a Japan-led collaboration - I thankfully wasn’t required to say anything).

With our poster in Osaka, 2009

And then I went on a brief tour, including up to Hokkaido, the northernmost of the main island of Japan, where just 5% of the population live - but still more than the entire sum of people in New Zealand.

Lake Shikotsu is a caldera lake in Chitose, Hokkaidō, Japan. It is a part of the Shikotsu-Toya National Park - 2009

However, during this time, the H1N1 influenza Pandemic reached NZ, and I made my way back to Tokyo to fly back to NZ. I worked there for 6 weeks before taking up my post in the UK Civil Service, initially as Vaccine Policy Co-ordinator, before rotating through several roles, including as a Private Secretary for a Minister of State for Health, and Lead Writer of the UK Pandemic Influenza Strategy after the H1N1 pandemic ended.

Leaving Tokyo, masks were compulsory on my Air New Zealand flight back to New Zealand, H1N1 pandemic, 2009

Then the Canterbury Earthquake sequence began, and I faced another sliding doors moment, this time in London. But I’ll save that for another post.

Back to Japan … I felt like I had unfinished business there. I often think about relinquishing my spot on the JET programme and the lost opportunity to engage more deeply with the county, the people, and its culture. Colleagues and friends there often commented that I seemed to have an affinity with the place that seemed uncommon.

And the last few years have felt very narrow when I think about my wider engagement with myself and the world. Of course, the pandemic has placed limits on this, as has my role as a parent to young children, as well as my work roles. But as I try to loosen my chosen obligations, such as the work I do, I am also trying to expand into areas of my life that have withered because of unavoidable circumstances. It's possible that I've taught myself to stay still even when possibilities show up again. Perhaps I have learned to stay narrow because that is what was needed. Perhaps, I don’t have to stay so narrow any more. Perhaps, even within the obligations and responsibilities of a life, we have more room than we think, if only we lift our heads to see.

I feel that this might be affecting lots of people. They are tired of ploughing the same narrow farrow, but also don’t know what else to do, And as we blunder together to the next phase of life, I guess I’m feeling like I’m emerging out of the stumbling phase and putting in a structure to be more intentional about enjoying the roles I have, and crafting other experiences that bring me and the ones I care about joy, laughter, and sense of wider connection.

So yeah, I’m applying for that new life programme.

I reckon I’ll get on to this one too.