The Longest Mile by Circa Survive
When I listen to that song—and it may happen with other songs but I was just listening to it and felt compelled to share this—it makes me feel as though I am somebody else. Or a sensation as though I remember somebody else's present, yet that person is me, somewhere else, somewhen else. It's a silly thing, but a curious feeling.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Catchin' Up
Saturday morning while doing laundry and sipping "leche con Quik" (my signature chocolate milk—yes, I know it's Nesquik now but I'll never acknowledge it!) is apparentely the perfect time to write a blog post. I've got some hilariously bubbly j-electronica pumpin' in my headphones (band's Perfume, if you're curious). Now while it's pretty uncharacteristic for me, I'm gonna cut to the chase. In less than 3 months I'm going to be in Japan. I'll be starting a new arc in my life story (to those familiar with anime/manga jargon, you'll know what I mean by arc) as an English teacher in Japan. To be sure, I'm still here and it's 77 days away (but who's counting down the days, right) and there's still a chance something could happen to prevent me from going, but barring any unforeseen occurrences July 30th I'll board a plane taking me to an archipelago on the other side of the world. This is still sinking in but every so often it reaches a new depth of understanding within me and I realize how insane it is. In good and bad ways, it changes my life pretty much entirely. I'll be in a country I've only ever heard of and learned about, one that is thousands of miles from "home" with a language I only really started to learn at the age of 19 or 20, where the only people I'll know are the handful of new friends I'll have just really started to meet the day before departure. I'll have left just about everything behind: Puerto Rico, Rochester, Cleveland, Rocklin and Sunnyvale. Those are all distinct chapters of my life.
Going back to the arc analogy, I would say my childhood up to high school is 1 arc, one that lasted 18 years. The second arc would be my college years, including the year I spent in Cleveland and the time afterwards moving here to California and working at Tiny Prints, where if I wasn't leaving for JET, I would have been for 2 years this September. Yet this august starts a new arc. One that takes me farther than I've ever been from the place I was born. And who knows, maybe this chapter in Japan will be an omake and I'll just come back to California after one year and get on with my life as a web developer. I'll simply have a treasure trove of experiences of a year-long dream, a life lived in a land distant and separate. Or maybe I'll be compelled to stay, to make Japan my new home. It's no secret Japan has stolen some of my heart for quite some time. And I've talked about this before in my Divided Heart post last year (seriously can't believe it was that long ago by the way) but it seems as though I just can't settle. For better or worse, I've been relatively nomadic for the last 10 years of my life. It might be the stage of life or perhaps it's the budding of the wandering flower that is to be my life.
Needless to say, I am excited about going to Japan; to an extent qualifiers such as super, really, very, extremely or even ridiculously can't quite encompass the feeling. I've been dying to go to Japan ever since I started to get really into the language when I was learning it in college and for one reason or another I simply haven't been able to go. Yet in the last few years I realized I didn't want to just visit. I wanted to go and be part of the culture, inasmuch as a gaijin (foreigner) can do so. Of course, I realize it's not all puppies and rainbows. The economy all over the world is really suffering and there has been talk of cutting funding to the JET program so it may not even repeat next year regardless of whether or not I want to do it again. Not to mention the geological phenomena that has been plaguing the entire world as of late. Ever since January 2010 it seems you can't go a month without hearing about some place in the world having a strong earthquake and it was only 2 months ago that Japan went through one of the biggest if not the biggest earthquake in recorded history (or something like that). As for the radiation concerns everybody keeps talking to me about, all I've read from very trustworthy sources (you know, like the news, government officials, experts on the subject) is that some of what people hear is greatly blown out of proportion. Plus, I really don't think JET is sending anybody to areas where they would be greatly inconvenienced or where their life is in any way threatened. Speaking of which, I still don't know where I'll be teaching and won't find out until the end of the month, at the earliest.
I suppose this wasn't as much a catchin' up post as it was a me rambling about going to Japan post, hehe. Well enough, I say. For the record, I do plan on continuing to use this blog for my posts from Japan if and when I get over there so be watching out for these. I'll see if they happen at all though, considering "leche con quik" is probably gonna be hard to come by over there :)
Going back to the arc analogy, I would say my childhood up to high school is 1 arc, one that lasted 18 years. The second arc would be my college years, including the year I spent in Cleveland and the time afterwards moving here to California and working at Tiny Prints, where if I wasn't leaving for JET, I would have been for 2 years this September. Yet this august starts a new arc. One that takes me farther than I've ever been from the place I was born. And who knows, maybe this chapter in Japan will be an omake and I'll just come back to California after one year and get on with my life as a web developer. I'll simply have a treasure trove of experiences of a year-long dream, a life lived in a land distant and separate. Or maybe I'll be compelled to stay, to make Japan my new home. It's no secret Japan has stolen some of my heart for quite some time. And I've talked about this before in my Divided Heart post last year (seriously can't believe it was that long ago by the way) but it seems as though I just can't settle. For better or worse, I've been relatively nomadic for the last 10 years of my life. It might be the stage of life or perhaps it's the budding of the wandering flower that is to be my life.
Needless to say, I am excited about going to Japan; to an extent qualifiers such as super, really, very, extremely or even ridiculously can't quite encompass the feeling. I've been dying to go to Japan ever since I started to get really into the language when I was learning it in college and for one reason or another I simply haven't been able to go. Yet in the last few years I realized I didn't want to just visit. I wanted to go and be part of the culture, inasmuch as a gaijin (foreigner) can do so. Of course, I realize it's not all puppies and rainbows. The economy all over the world is really suffering and there has been talk of cutting funding to the JET program so it may not even repeat next year regardless of whether or not I want to do it again. Not to mention the geological phenomena that has been plaguing the entire world as of late. Ever since January 2010 it seems you can't go a month without hearing about some place in the world having a strong earthquake and it was only 2 months ago that Japan went through one of the biggest if not the biggest earthquake in recorded history (or something like that). As for the radiation concerns everybody keeps talking to me about, all I've read from very trustworthy sources (you know, like the news, government officials, experts on the subject) is that some of what people hear is greatly blown out of proportion. Plus, I really don't think JET is sending anybody to areas where they would be greatly inconvenienced or where their life is in any way threatened. Speaking of which, I still don't know where I'll be teaching and won't find out until the end of the month, at the earliest.
I suppose this wasn't as much a catchin' up post as it was a me rambling about going to Japan post, hehe. Well enough, I say. For the record, I do plan on continuing to use this blog for my posts from Japan if and when I get over there so be watching out for these. I'll see if they happen at all though, considering "leche con quik" is probably gonna be hard to come by over there :)
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