Conclusions from a Monkey Hunt

I am amazed at how much a person can change in five months...namely me. Seven people from Calgary came in last night and will be here in Japan with us (the Nordaas' and I) for almost three weeks. Last night we sat around and had supper together, immersed in English conversation. It was overwhelming. I kept wanting to reply in Japanese.
And you'd think that now, by hearing my own language regularily again, I'd finally be able to understand what's going on. Nope. I have become oblivious to sarcasm and don't understand humor. Other people's humor. Canadian humor. It's not that I haven't been laughing; I laugh a lot...it's just always at myself and the stupid foreigner things I do, and my ridiculous Japanese. But all these native English speakers are really quite overwhelming. It's funny because I went home last night after being with these people for about 6 hours straight, and I was craving Japanese, so I turned on the TV and just sat there, reimmersing myself in the familiar of not understanding. It's really quite weird.
And that's only after five months...think of what it'll be like after a year!!
A quick change of topic...
For those of you that were wondering, no, I never got to see a monkey in the wild. How disappointing. I saw monkey poo, but no monkey. But I did make a little asian friend. I was at this nature center on the way out into the country to go monkey hunting, and this little girl walked up to me and just stood there, staring at me. Apparently I'm rare in these parts. The two Japanese people I was with told her that it was okay to talk to me, that I understand Japanese. I told her they were lying and that I don't understand much at all. But that didn't matter to her. She took me all through this nature center, showing me these exhibits of things I don't know about even in English, chattering the whole time. I think I only got about 30% of what she was saying. So maybe I was the monkey that day.
These two Japanese people I was with are becoming pretty good friends; they're about 6 years younger than my parents. They are convinced that everywhere I go I turn famous, just because of who I am and what I do (I'm big and white, and I reguarly do things unintentionally that get attention...like accidently turning a drinking fountain into Old Faithful, shooting water 2 meters up into the sky...) They have motorcycles. I told them I would like to come to their house and ride one one day. They said sure, but were both kind of hesitant about it. They're like, 'but you turn famous wherever you go' (their way of saying I'm accident prone and it probably wouldn't be a good idea for me to drive a motorcyle). I saw their point and we agreed that it would be best if I just rode on the back.
So from all this I conclude one thing: I'm not changing a whole lot, at least the parts that matter. If anything, who I am is getting stripped down so all that's left is genuine. I can't try to fit in with the crowd, because I'm the only one of my crowd. I can't hide behind language or sarcasm because no one will understand. And I can't hide what my personality is, even in another language. It's funny how you often have to have every comfort zone taken away to find out who you really are. And it's funny how you often have to go so far away from home to find out what really matters.