Tõnoharu by Lars Martinson

Daniel Wells is an American living in Tõnoharu, Japan, working as a teacher's assistant teacing Japanese kids to speak English. But he's unhappy in his job, even when other people around him think he should be happy: he's well paid and has a job that's light on duties and heavy on free time. But balancing that out, he can't speak Japanese very well and doesn't understand much of what he hears, and he's living alone in a foreign country, in a very small town where he is the only American, and practically the only foreigner.

So even though all his friends at home, who are working jobs where they are slaving like dogs for low pay, think he's insane for thinking about quitting and going back to the states, that's just what Daniel is doing. But his time to renew his contract is coming up, and now he has to seriously think about leaving... or staying.

He remembers his time when he first arrived. The man he was replacing, Wendell, claimed that the reasons why he was leaving the job after a single eight-month contract were personal, but a teacher at another nearby school was also leaving after the same sort of term, and Dan feels that the man lied to him. The teacher from the other town, Constance, seems so much more ready and intelligent than Dan will ever be. He kind of likes her, too, but he's too much of a sad sack to let her know that he's interested in her. Dan knows he's pathetic, but can he ever overcome it and let Constance know how much he likes her, or will he continue to get his heart run over with a road grader.

This graphic novel was actually rather depressing to read, but that's a condition of the story, in which a guy who is pretty ignorant about Japan goes there to help teach English and never thinks about how much he's going to miss understanding other people's conversations or not being an alien (foreign born, not the kind from outer space) in a land which is nothing like the one he came from.

Constance, the other teacher's helper, becomes more of a lifeline to Dan than he realizes. So when he is unable to express to her how much he likes her, he is especially defeated, which just makes his feeling of general malaise worse. By the end of the book, he hasn't decided whether or not to renew his job, but since this is only the first book, and he seems to stay in Japan in the second, it becomes rather obvious which he will choose. Or maybe that's still exploring the first eight months of his contract, it's impossible to tell at this point, but asking a question in one volume and taking multiple volumes to get back to that point doesn't seem to be the smartest thing, storywise. So again, who can tell?

Despite my general feeling of dissatisfaction with this book (that merely reflects the feelings of the protagonist, it's not a very long story, so if I see another volume, I am likely to pick it up and read it also. The feelings of Dan come across so very clearly that it's almost like living them yourself. But it brings out the feelings of sympathizing with him, and at the same time wanting to kick his butt and tell him to grow up! Learning to deal with those feelings is part of growing up, but this situation is only a little more extreme than most. This book is brilliant in getting you to mirror what Dan is feeling, but because those feelings are depressing, it's not a comfortable sensation.