Will life go on post-BSG?

Okayama is disappointing. Can't wait to get back to Osaka!

Last episode of Battlestar Galactica was amazing!!! I cried about 9 times... rare that a TV show can make me do that!

I'm sad to think that there will be no more BSG, but really look forward to watching Caprica.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about and didn't watch the reimagined BSG... well you've got some renting to do!

Moving On...

Well, I'm moving on. Both in the short term and long term.

Firstly, I'll be moving to a new place in Japan, but only temporarily. At the end of February, I'll be residing in Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture. It's supposedly a very historical area, and I'm quite excited!

I basically volunteered when my company said they needed someone to move there for three months to help out while they're understaffed. They hope to have new blood being hired from overseas by three months time, but regardless of what they hope, I've been promised I'll be returned to my old job at the Multimedia Center here in Osaka. Given the company's past track record, I'll be looking for some new jobs just in case.

Regardless, it is a pretty sweet deal because the company's paying my rent and internet, so I'll keep paying my rent on the Osaka apartment (even though I'm basically wasting that cash, it'll be nice to have a place to sleep in Osaka that's *mine* and also it'll be nice to have a place that is completely independent and in no way beholden to my employer.)

I've had too many incidents of this company trying to screw me over to sleep easy knowing my only shelter is owned by the company.

Regardless, I don't seriously anticipate any problems, and very much look forward to my new locale. Last night was the last lesson I'll teach at my old workplace, and there was a bit of a surprise for me at the end of the evening; apparently everyone had chipped in to buy me a present... (originally, there was a list of 14 folks including myself, who were going to get fired unless one of us went to Okayama... and with that threat hanging over everyone's heads, still nobody volunteered and it was looking grim, so I thought "what the heck, I'll volunteer and save us the drama, but everyone on the list owes me a beer".)

Well, I got five beers and four bottles of top shelf imported liquor! A bottle of Cognac, a bottle of Black Bush Irish Whiskey, a bottle of Bourbon, and a bottle of single malt Scotch! I was a bit overwhelmed and quite appreciative of the gesture of thanks, to say the least!

Anyways, I'll be moving this weekend and will write up some first impressions of my new place hopefully in the next week.

Time flies!

GREAT NEWS!!!

December 24th came and went, and nothing terrible happened to me! Nothing at all! It is an immense relief to know that I've escaped without some terrible fate being visited upon me, as has happened the two Christmas Eves previous.

The past few months have FLOWN by! I had to deal with a ton of visits to various offices in the Japanese bureaucracy in order to renew my VISA and notify appropriate offices of my renewal, deal with some tax issues, and I also had bronchitis for about a month!

I also met my girlfriend's parents for the first time, which went as well as one can expect with a huge massive language barrier. They were very nice and paid for me to join them at a nice onsen, and we feasted on snowcrab. So delicious!!

Before I came to Japan, I was just barely beginning to dabble in seafood. At some point in my college years, I decided to open my mind (and mouth) and try out all the foods that I refused to taste out of some mental decision, taken as a child, that I wouldn't like whatever.

I took that to the next level when coming to Japan, arriving here in the mindset that I would try ANYTHING at least twice before making a decision. Interestingly, there is almost nothing I didn't like the second time, though often I dislike the first taste of something simply because it is so completely different from what I had expected it to taste like.

I'm still not a fan of prawn brains, though.

I had a nice two week holiday for Christmas and New Year's. Earned entirely by working extra shifts all through November and December. We got a measly three days paid vacation for the entire holiday season from our generous benefactors, but I can't really complain seeing as how my job is so easy and stress free.

I also went to Nagoya for the first time, adding another location to my "places been" list. (It is one of the largest cities in Japan, and the current "up and coming" city, seeing the most growth. It is an economic city with a lot of businesses based there.) It was a lot of fun, and I ate a ton of delicious food, including Nagoya's famous chicken wings, Nagoya's famous miso-tonkatsu, and a famous eel restaurant!

I also hopped over to nearby Okazaki city, which is home to the Tokugawa Ieyasu Bushi Museum. If anyone's read Tom Clavell's novel "Shogun", the main Samurai lord in that book is based on the real life Ieyasu.

He was a brilliant and ruthless man who ended the "warring states" period of Japanese history, brought peace and prosperity, and established a dynasty that would last for more than 200 years. Learning about his life and exploits is what originally inspired me to want to come to Japan, so it was really fun and exciting for me to visit the museum and see a bunch of stuff, including his real armor and other items that remain from his life.

For Christmas, we had a small party at the apartment and did a Secret Santa exchange. I got a really cool toy helicopter that really flies! That beats the hell out of the remote controlled race cars I had as a kid; toy technology impresses me constantly.

We also had 4 or 5 group dinners during the holiday break, where we (my roommates and I) met with our friends and celebrated over delicious food and cold draft beers. It was really fun and relaxing, but unfortunately my celebrating caught up to me and I ended up with a cold for New Year's day. (It's the most important holiday in Japan and a lot of fun.) Alas, this year I stayed home and rested, but caught some of the famous TV specials that they show every year.

At some point in the past year or so, it occurred to me that I wanted to work for the government. The harsh reality of being an adult, with a grownup job and the realities of needing insurance, savings, job security, and a decent place to live made me think that a government job would be sweet as far as most of those factors went. And most importantly: not having to work on public holidays!

I remember thinking to myself "it's a shame I can't work for the government and at the same time get to live abroad like I'm doing now in Japan", and suddenly realizing that its called Foreign Services (or "being a diplomat" in simpler terms)! So I've begun to research a career in that field, and things are looking promising. I'll have to return home to take a few tests first, however.

Home... that's a big question. Well, not really. I know where home is. The question is "When?". I've pretty much decided that I'll be home before next year's Thanksgiving, but at the same time this decision makes me incredibly sad whenever I think about it.

I'm 25 years old and not getting any younger. I do not want to waste my life as a career English teacher when there are much better options out there for me. But at the same time, my job is really enjoyable, with no stress, and I'm loving my life here in Japan.

I don't want to leave.

Teaching(?) English in Japan

Japanese society.. a mysterious enigma, for us gaijin.

I spent years in college studying cultures, learning how to critically consider foreign ideas, remove myself from my biases, etc. I do believe that this has helped me to be more observant, though I still feel woefully inadequate at trying to understand the Japanese mind.

Nonetheless, I've been reading a lot of books on the subject, and feel like I do have some bits of understanding.

Japanese society seems very stressful, a tightly buttoned machine in which you don't have a lot of chances to really relax and be yourself. Quite the opposite of English cultures.

I've long believed that students can only get so far into learning English before they start understanding the culture as well.. I believe that our languages are intricately tied to our culturally-biased interpretation of the world. We speak the way we think, in other words.

Westerners are individualistic, and our speech reflects that. We're a speaking based society, in which the burden of communication is placed on the speaker; you must make yourself understood by choosing correct wording, etc. Japan is a listener based society, in which the burden falls on the listeners to be able to guess at the meaning of the speaker. In fact, many Japanese can seemingly read each others' minds, communicating through the barest use of words and relying mostly on body-language and intuitive knowledge of their friends and family.

That too sounds quite stressful, to be honest.

The following is entirely based on the collective anecdotal evidence of various English teachers, as taken from numerous conversations with myself. We believe that the role of foreign language teachers in Japan, for many students, takes on a far different meaning than merely providing authentic instruction in the language... we represent some sort of freedom from the burdens of Japanese society, an "exotic vacation" in which they can immerse themselves in the more individual-friendly English culture.

Note: I'm not saying that there's something inherently better about English speaking culture, nor that individualism is better than collectivism. Indeed, many a day I curse my selfish, pig-headed brethren for being less capable of a bit of collective consideration.

But what I am suggesting is that Japanese society, with its focus on the group, is inherently more stressful than English culture, due to our emphasis on the individual. You don't have to worry about anyone but yourself, and that must be attractive to people dealing not only with their only daily stresses, but with having to accommodate everyone else in their daily lives as well, through group-centric thoughts and actions.

So basically, what I'm trying to get at, is that many times as foreigners, we tend to act as a sort of counselor, or at the very least, a sympathetic ear, for our students. Every English teacher has had a student book a private lesson, come in and immediately begin the conversation with some sort of tragic news; a death in the family, their current depression, or troubles at work.

We then proceed to do absolutely no English lesson for the entire time, merely listening and consoling as we would a good friend. (I mean hey, we're getting paid really good money for what we have to do, so most of us can be bothered to act the part of a good friend, even if we're not genuinely sympathetic.)

This seems really weird to us, as we would generally want to confide in our close friends and family, rather than basically a stranger.. but then again, perhaps that isn't something that the Japanese feel easily able to do. Opening up in Japanese society, as I understand it, is something that's prohibitively hard to do.

Anyways, it is always quite interesting to live in Japan, though usually in the most unexpected ways.

Pregnant in Japan (Whiskey Water)

One of my friends is a Scottish girl married to a Japanese guy, and she's pregnant. It is interesting to hear from her on various aspects of being pregnant in a foreign country. For starters, the Japanese doctors/medical practices/beliefs are sooo different from collective Western ideas.

The Japanese doctors are highly against weight gain, so much so that you should lose weight to compensate for growing a 5 pound baby inside of you. They actually said if she felt the urge to eat, instead she should smoke.

The doctor who, according to plan, will be delivering her baby also said that she will probably not get any painkiller as Japanese medicine prefers to keep things natural. He said that he will determine at the time of birth if she's in enough pain to warrant pain-killers. She related that she felt like kicking him in the groin at that comment.

Also, if they opt to do a c-section, the cut will be done up-down instead of from side-to-side. Another observation is that in Japanese culture, everyone feels like they have the right to give her advice about the baby / being pregnant.

I'm not sure if this is just an exceptional situation owing to the fact that we live in Osaka, where the people are known for being pushy/friendly/outgoing, or else if it is because she is a foreigner and therefore normal rules of politeness don't apply, or else because this is truly the social norm in Japanese culture, but regardless, she is constantly relating stories of people giving heaps of unwanted and unnecessary advice. Even to the point of picking apart everything she does, from sitting position to food of choice, in relation to "what's good for the baby".

Sounds like it would piss me off right quick.

While on the subject, a student recently had a pretty keen observation that he shared with me about the cultural differences and why, inherently, there are more foreign guy / Japanese girl couples than the opposite... particularly in the expectation of gender roles. In Japan, men are expected to work and "bring home the bacon" so-to-speak, while the girls are supposed to be in charge of everything in the house; raising kids, providing food, cleaning up, etc.

So a Western guy, who is more expecting to share the duties, finds himself pleasantly surprised at how lazy he can get away with being while the wife works on all the household chores (generally while maintaining at least a part-time job, as the middle-class is losing ground in Japan as well as America), while the Japanese guy finds himself perturbed at how much the Western girl expects him to help out around the home.

This same friend recommended a traditional Scottish cure of the common cold to me: Whiskey Water, or "wussky water" as she says. I find the Scottish accent totally endearing! But anyways, hot water with a bit of Whiskey. Good times!

My friend Dave recently visited me here in Osaka. He's a buddy from high school who is currently teaching in South Korea. I almost typed Korea by itself, because in Japan they don't differentiate; nobody ever talks about North Korea unless they are talking about dangers of the world, etc. So they just say Korea, and I always jokingly "assume" they mean North Korea. It always flops.

Anyways, this wasn't the first time Dave was able to visit. But the first time, after a fun day of visiting around Osaka, we made our way to a Mexican restaurant, and we were promptly food-poisoned. I spent over 14 hours throwing up... and this was at least once an hour, but at its height 4 times an hour. It wasn't fun. This time we were optimistic of a healthier visit... and were mostly rewarded for our hopes.

But the last night before he left, I started feeling a bit of a cold coming on. That cold eventually turned into that hellish fever I mentioned previously.

Even when we were both in college in America, ever time we visited, illness soon followed. I was at a loss for the possible cause of this situation, when Dave, in a fit of wisdom, said that it was perhaps related to the massive amounts of alcohol we imbibe together. Upon reflection, I believe that he could be onto something!

The Latest!

For the first time in my adult life, I had a fever of over 100 degrees. Clocked out at 103 to be exact... very close to crawling to the hospital once I realized how bad it was, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it (a few more degrees and I would definitely have called up a ride). I was simply too tired from the ordeal of working my entire ten hour shift with a 103 degree fever. I was MISERABLE.

Luckily, I am now fully recovered and ready to teach some English again! Which is what I gotta go do now. So this is going to be a short post.

Just wanted to say that things have been quite busy here as I've been doing a ton of overtime, but that will all end with September; from October onwards I'm back to a reasonable schedule with lots of time for me to spend playing video games instead of posting on my blog..!

Out of Service

My old PC finally bit the dust.

Do not ever, under any circumstances, purchase from Alienware. If you don't know, they're a (highly fraudulent) custom build PC company specializing in "gaming" machines. They have a really terrific marketing department, and a really terrible PC-building and repair department.

Regardless, it is my second Alienware PC that never worked right from the very beginning, and I paid super premium for years of dealing with crappy service and idiot technicians.

But that isn't what I want to talk about today. I just wanted to explain my absence; my PC finally and definitively quit working, so I had to wait a month and buy a new one.

The longest month of my life.

Anyways, I hope to be posting a bit more as I've had some thoughts about the differences in our educational system in America and the one here in Japan. Among other topics.