the duplicate nature of all that is

risen with intention, again the forceful fit
the hammer, heavy and slow at the zenith
swiftly, with a mighty blow, descends and strikes
and changes the form of it

that which dully bends at ease
from fires igniting its amber glow
as tho the tempered metal raged
with a soul that coolly knew its lot

there is science in the process (chains and bonds)
progress guiding unseen forces (strength and weakness)
but from the smith this is shrouded
he cannot see but the manifold light

the pounding clash is a heavy pain
from the burning sheet fly a hundred fire-starters
the resounding clang is a heady tone
in stillness its voice will still be heard

the echoes that, from the future, race
backwards in time, bouncing off the armor
the possibilities this tool bears at its creation
the purpose dripping off its length

now water, now steam - the fires stilled
the soul chilled in a violent restraint
they meet in a shallow gasp and hiss
hints of the heavy price paid in blood

all the secrets hidden in this blade
revealed in its flying through the wind
cutting all, nothing is safe, in rest stirring
torn is flesh, blood, bone, soul, spirit

2011: A Recap (part 2)

2011: Part 2 – Japan

OK guys, how we doin’? Need a break? We’re halfway there now! Don’t worry though, I think the second half may not take as long.
            I’ve already covered a lot of August in the two posts called Japan: A Beginning so I won’t go into much detail so as to not repeat myself. And for Pete’s sake those are a pair of really long posts in and of themselves! Long story short: Tokyo orientation for 4 days was insane, jet-laggie, earthquaky and before I knew it I was already in Oda. After that: few weeks reading, playing games, being hot and sweaty, relaxing and unwinding from the whirlwind of the preceding few weeks. Finally: Shimane orientation where I met many of the crazy bunch of people I live close to and often enjoy drinks/jokes/singing/dancing with. Oh yeah, I got my phone right before orientation and with it a window back into the internet. I missed it so!
            September is when school and my life in Japan began proper. Did a speech in Japanese at opening ceremony, started doing classes with the teachers, sports festival and the following welcoming party was a blast and I met and started to get to know most of the people that are now a huge part of my life. That is, the crazy Oda crew, the teachers at Ni-chuu, surrounding town JETs and last but most definitely not least, the student body at school; gotta love those kids, even the ones that don’t give a quarter of a rat’s fuzzy bottom about English. School is interesting, everything is new, some students are funny, others are difficult, some are undetectable, the teachers are great fun to be around and they make me wish I was already fluent at Japanese so I could also joke around with them. I’m workin’ on it!
            The remaining months of the year go by in much the same manner as September, really. Still just teaching and generally enjoying my time in great amounts. In October I’m starting to feel a little more comfortable with Oda, school life and life in Japan in general. It began to sink it that I’m really going to be here for a while all the while time just flying by faster than I can even fathom. Honestly, it feels like sports day was just the other day but it was actually 4 months ago! In October the kids had culture festival, which was also a lot of fun! Each homeroom chose a song and they practiced and practiced and practiced it for the chorus competition that takes place at the culture festival.
            By the time November rolled around there were still some schools I hadn’t visited, namely the elementary school I visit a few times per semester. I finally got to go to it around mid-November and it was great. While in junior high, it’s sometimes hard to get the students motivated or excited about anything or to even smile, elementary school kids are, in stark contrast, a savage bunch of happy, energetic kids that, for the most part, actually try to do well and want to play games and answer questions and repeat after you! It’s not impossible in junior high but it’s often not easy. I’m sure most teachers out there can relate. It probably also doesn’t help that school is apparently quite difficult in junior high but hey, we all did it, right? Just gotta try to relate and help ‘em get over themselves when necessary, or something like that!
            Finally we round out the year with the month that ended yesterday: December. It was a really feel-good month. It’s finally now after several months that I’ve begun to feel, in some way, comfortable in the classroom. I’m still a little apprehensive in there sometimes but a lot of things are starting to become pretty commonplace and the patterns are starting to show up. I’m slowly learning the kids’ abilities, attitudes, aptitudes and demeanor and most importantly, their names. I can’t try to learn all of their names – I’ve got over 300 students – but I want to learn as many as possible. Names are powerful knowledge and also a sturdy bridge, not to mention a practical requirement in most any relationship. Also, they all know mine so it’s only fair I try to return the favor.
            Right after the semester ended the teachers had the year-end dinner and party and it was WAY more fun than the one at the beginning of the semester. I should note that that one was a lot of fun too. The main reason this one was better is because I now know a lot of the teachers a little better and they know me a little better and so it’s easier to have fun, I guess. Also, more karaoke this time, which, as you know, is my favorite. Sad note: the school nurse ended her stay at the school and I didn’t even realize it when she was giving her speech at the closing ceremony but man was it sad. Needless to say, people everywhere were turning on their waterworks. I almost cried too. She’s a super nice lady and I’m actually really going to miss her.
            Wow, there’s a lot to talk about in December. Wrapping up, I just got back from a super amazing little vacay in Tokyo. Had a ton of fun with Steph and Maggie and their friends Janelle and Ally as we gallivanted about the city and hit up all sorts of places. Check out my album in facebook for a peek at the photos I took. Like I said in a tweet recently, I was only in the city for a few days – not even a week – and I already miss it. I really have to go again and have some more fun there. To give you an idea of how much going about we did, here’s a list of the places we hit up: Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya, Akihabara, Roppongi, Ikebukuro, Tokyo DisneySea, Ghibli museum, the Square-Enix store, the Evangelion store, the Pokemon center, and the list goes on, actually. I even got to have lunch with Kristen from Tiny Prints and her sister (who’s a JET like me) and their friend. We went to a tonkatsu restaurant that our friend Kimi suggested and it really was some of the best tonkatsu I’ve ever had.
            There’s a lot of things I didn’t even talk about but there’s really no way of saying everything and it wouldn’t be very nice to my poor, dear reader to make you read volumes of my often uneventful life, which I’m very much enjoying. This past year, 2011, was a year full of amazing things, saying goodbye to wonderful people, saying hello to friendly people, a year divided but that is really two halves of a whole lot of great things that happened to me. I’ve grown, I’ve changed, I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve eaten like a pig and drunk like I’m more than thirsty. I’ve learned even more about myself, my friends, teaching, learning, Japan, and Japanese than I could have imagined I would. And as 2012 begins, as we mark this new cycle of our planet around the nice warm star God gave us, I’m thankful for what has been, for all I have, and especially for what’s to come. I’m just gonna stand atop this clearing and stare into the bright, blank horizon of the coming year, try and brace for the bad stuff, remember to enjoy the good stuff and really appreciate and be thankful for the great stuff.


2012, here we go!

2011: A Recap (part 1)

Guess what! I want to listen to all the awesome new music I got thanks to my sistuz. (For reference I'm going to list it here: David Crowder*Band - Church Music; Innerpartysystem; Eisley - The Valley; Avril Lavigne - Goodbye Lullaby; she - Orion) Of course, what better way to listen to music than by sittin' down to write off a year's worth of life? That said, get ready folks. This is gonna be another of the biggies so hanker down with your favorite warm drink (if you're in a cold place, like my room, for example!) and enjoy my ramblings!

Now, before I start (what, did you think I’d just let you off without some more illogical preamble? Have you seen my blog’s name? I can’t even stop from interrupting even myself! XD) I’m just gonna apologize. To be sure, this blog and I have had a bit of a relationship. I’ve had it for several years and it really feels like every time I post something I include some sort of rant bemoaning how few readers I have or how little I post – two things that are bound to have some correlation. But, thinking about it with as clear a head as I can have at the beginning of this brand new year, I’ve always used it as a personal writing outlet. Such a thing is, at its core, for the benefit of my own catharsis. Following that, though, is the fact that writing’s natural progression is communication in some form and it’s from that that stems my frustration, minor and insignificant as it often is. The apology, then, is to my reader in being forced to deal with my violent love-hate swing surrounding this exercise in writing. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I can get behind having some impetus in regards to not complaining about audience or content around this blog.

2011: Part 1 – Pre-Japan

It makes sense to take this month by month but I’m not really sure I can recall what happened within those particular time frames (my memory’s not that good sometimes) so instead I’m just going to kind of wing it as I try to be as sequential as possible.

In January I was already in the midst of the application process for JET. I just checked my emails to verify the date and it appears it was mid-January when I found out I got the interview for JET. As you may or may not know, in 2008 I first applied to the JET programme and for whatever reason, I didn’t get to the interview phase of the applications process so getting it this time was pretty much mind blowing. I’m certain none of you are strangers to how much I was dying to go to Japan so getting just as far as the interview made me unfathomably happy. I was still cautiously optimistic because getting interviewed didn’t exactly mean I was going to Japan. Even then, I was, for once, confident in my placement. Maru-sensei, one of my favorite teachers (of all time), had such faith in my ability and prowess as a candidate for JET that I just knew I could do it.

[Other notable things in January: Not much? Played a ton of games… actually 2011 was a great year in gaming. If I recall correctly, I played through a ton of really fun/great games this year :D We’ll leave that for another post, if at all.]

This actually quite seamlessly leads into February, which is when the interview took place. Don’t recall much happening in February, to be honest. The interview went pretty well, I thought, and so began the waiting game. Actually, the waiting game began when I mailed in the application back in October 2010 when I started the application. The game clearly consists of a checklist where you have to wait some sort of vague span of time between each item. I will now proceed to painstakingly delineate said items and spans of time up to this point and update the list as I go through the post. (The time in parenthesis is the wait time until the next item)

[X] – October 2010: Send Application. (~3 months)
[X] – January 2011: find out I have the interview with JET (~1 month)
[X] – February 2011: interview in SF (~2.5 months)

           March 11, 2011 was when the Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami happened. The interview was in late February so I was quite fresh out of it and feeling closer than ever to going to Japan. I still remember being at work and watching videos of people screaming, of the swelling sea coming in, rushing into land and taking with it bikes, cars, boats and buildings. It was honestly frightful. The people that knew I was planning and trying to go to Japan asked me what was going to happen. I didn’t have many answers. I didn’t know whether JET was going to cancel this year’s applications. I heard of at least one JET who was in the Sendai area who died. I did have at least one answer though: I still wanted to go to Japan. Something inside me wanted to be there even then helping however I could.
            Time went on and April came and went. I can’t say I recall any particular thing that makes April stand out. Sorry, April! Oh, actually, I take that back. Imogen Heap’s 4^th album began in the tail end of March and the first song from it came out in early April. Love, love, love Lifeline and I can’t wait to hear the newest song coming out real soon (she’s doing a song every 3 months). AND – wow, gotta thank my sent e-mails box since it’s really helping this post out – it turns out it was on April 17^th that I found out I was on the short list for JET.

[X] – April 17, 2011: get into JET

Lemme just say, I stopped short of exploding right there in my chair at work when I got the e-mail. Suffice to say, I read it through a good 3 or 4 times just to make sure I wasn’t misreading it. I then proceeded to tell my close circle of friends, family and a selection of people. I would then proceed to tell others as I saw fit. I’m sneaky like that. Wow, just remembering finding out is putting a huge smile on my face. That moment for me was the consummation of so many hopes and the beginning of a future I’m currently living. I’m in the middle of the Japanese country-side staring out the window of my apartment past the reflection I can’t see on my window. I’m in this window, this door to the outside that is my current life in this country I’ve pined for for years. Forgive me for waxing metaphysipoetical.

I love May. 1) It pretty much kicks of with my birthday on the 2^nd – it always sneaks up on me, actually – and 2) it’s also the beginning of the summer, which is usually a fun season. May was when I started to put into action plans and efforts for The Big Move to Japan at the end of July. I also got my iPad in May :D Yes, it still rocks. It’s my Japanese video game playing companion so I can look stuff up and talk to my friends while I game. It’s the little things, folks!

June’s when I found out where I was placed for my stay in Japan: the town of Oda in Shimane prefecture. To be frank, I had no [insert expletive for color] idea where Oda or even Shimane were. I’d never heard of the prefecture and quite possibly any part of it. It was a little daunting to think I’d be living in a place I’d never heard of, even if it did happen to be in Japan. I remember looking it up in google maps and thinking something along the lines of “I’m in the middle of nowhere” or “country life… I hope my body can take it.” Obviously, I was being the classic drama queen I usually am but still had a positive outlook coz I was going to Japan! [Spoiler alert: loving it here, wouldn’t trade it.] Seriously though, I was a little concerned because it is a rural area and I’ve never lived in a rural area but seeing as I was ready and willing to embrace the unknown by simply going through with going to Japan, there was [and still is] nothing to be afraid of. 

[X] – June 2011: find out where I’m placed (~1ish months)

July is when I kicked the preparations for departure into HIGH GEAR. I had, at this point, 30 days to get ready to fly 2000 or whatever miles to my new home. I wanted/had to reduce the entirety of my belongings to things that I could throw away, give away, sell or take with me. I’d like to think I was successful, for the most part. Although there were some things I ended up not being able to take care of. (SORRY MIKE) Let’s not even talk about how I spent the whole night before my flight packing. Yes, the whole night, didn’t sleep a wink. The span from about 6-8AM was the toughest ever to stay awake through. I seriously could not sit down for too long for fear that I’d just conk out. In these last few weeks before moving to Japan I:

-        Sold my car

-        Sold my laptop

-        Sold my desktop

-        Bought a new laptop

-        Gave away a ton of clothes/things

-        Sold a bunch of stuff at a garage sale (for stupid cheap coz I needed to get rid of it)

-        Bought the best jacket I’ve ever owned (shout-out to Harim, holla!)

-        Had as much pearl milk tea as I could – no regrets!

-        Said goodbye to everyone I was possibly able to and had probably several too many farewell dinners that I feel guilty I got treated to. Thank you friends T_T

-        Probably a bunch of other things, it’s all a blur

And this all culminated in…

[X] – July 30th, 2011: fly to Japan

(next part coming soon)

Ramblin' Times

Ok, I'm gonna write coz 1) I have a few hours to kill, 2) I haven't blogged in way too long 3) I feel like typing on a real keyboard coz I do it way too much on my iPad or iPhone where it's really annoying and unwieldy, despite how good it actually is for a phone and a tablet. It's been almost 5 months since I moved to Japan. That's a month short of half a year and just typing that blows my mind.

This time I'm not gonna write one of those ridiculous updates I write that are like extremely long and annoying to read, I'm sure. So instead I'm just gonna ramble for a bit with whatever comes to mind! Why, it might be even more annoying to read. XD

And here's an idea: I'll do it in a list-ish format. You know, like with bullet points but more freestyle coz it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to, or use freestyle bullet points.

- First thought to pop into my head: My hands are really quite cold as I type this. You see, it's about 7 degrees Celsius outside, which puts it at 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Pretty sure it's exactly that temperature inside. Sure, I could turn on the AC and make it a little warmer but I just don't feel like it right now. I'll just have to type even harder to get my hands warm!

- Game I'm playing right now: Well, not right now right now, obviously, but I started Final Fantasy XIII-2 on the 15th (exactly a week ago, how 'bout that?) and I'm enjoying it a lot. It's in Japanese and I'm oftentimes surprised with how much I'm able to follow the dialogue. That said, there's a lot of times where I'm like 'I have no idea what anybody just said. At all.' The dialogue is also entirely voiced so I can't do what I did for Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - which was beautiful and wonderful and everybody should play it. What I did with Zelda, by the way, was translate every bit of dialogue I didn't understand. It was great practice and it was also possible because about 99% of the dialogue is done in the oldschool RPG style where you have to proceed it by pressing A or whatever.

- I turned on the AC.

- How's your Japanese? Wow, ok, I'm embarrassed to answer this question. I mean, it's bound to have improved in some way or another since I got here. There's some degree of immersion going on, after all! However, it's certainly not where I want it to be. While being fluent is my goal, I do realize it's something that's going to take longer than a year. It's also gonna take me actually practicing. It's surprisingly easy to go through the day using very little Japanese. The teachers I work with are able to speak English so I generally default to communicating with them in English. Also, I'm classically shy so I don't go out of my way too much to converse with the other teachers. Also, something really interesting happens when I speak Japanese. When I write, my Japanese is actually pretty passable! However, when I speak it, for some reason it's like my IQ drops by about 200 points - yes, it moves to the negatives - and my Japanese is magically limited to a beginner or lower level in terms of grammar and vocabulary. I don't know how or why this happens but it needs to stop because it's absurd and unfair!

- Here, read this: mspaintadventures.com No seriously, go and do it after you're done reading my thing. Like, right now, middle click that link or ctrl+click it or whatever you need to do to put it in a new tab for later on reading. Just start it coz it's not finished yet and it's really good and the archive is already hella long so it'll take you a while. It's super funny (a bit slow at first so take your time) and also really interesting. The dude's vocabulary is incredible, by the way. Warning: profanity.

- Oops, went to reddit and lost about an hour or something!

- This post is already so long! However, I think I succeeded in both making it shorter than one of those super long update posts and also not making it one of those posts. If you read through all this rambling and any of my other ramblings I've done in the past you have my utmost gratitude. I do wish I wrote more often but honestly I'm just at a loss for something good to write. I do love to write though and am happy to just ramble so if you enjoy my rambling then ok! If not then oh well, the internet's full of other things to read and also the world at large. Yay!

Japan: A Beginning (Part 2)

[I didn't explain this in the previous post but this and the previous one are ones I wrote last month while I was still disconnected :P]

August 18th.

Not sure what I’m going to write but I feel like writing anyway. I’ve officially been in Japan for about 18 days. It’s interesting though. My life is so different from what it was in July; from what it was two years ago or ever. There’s something about being in a foreign country that makes you think a lot. Introspection has always been one of my fortes, if you can call it that. But here, as much as my current situation affords an overflow of free time, which consequently leaves my mind free to deeply consider myself, I’ve found sometimes I just look out the window and stop thinking. There’s a big green hill right beyond the road behind my apartment, which my windows face. I guess technically they’re not as much windows as they are glass doors. In any case, maybe it’s the small-town…ness of it all that’s slowed me down. It’s likely partially the fact that “my life in Japan hasn’t really started yet.” That idea’s been my explanation for a lot of my feelings so far. Course, that’s not precise. I’ve been living here now for almost 3 weeks! But as it is, I have very little human contact, no “friends” and my job hasn’t really begun at speed. Students are still on vacation so there’s really very little for me to do. I do keep busy though. I’ve been able to catch up on a lot of the reading, gaming and even studying of Japanese that I’d put on the back-burner (and, to be honest, probably will once my life here “starts”). I’ve also been unable to communicate with any of my old friends because I haven’t had internet so that’s also given me even more time to myself. I’m hoping at least that bit will change tomorrow when I get my cell phone. Planning on getting as unlimited a data plan as I can get my grubby paws on *evil glimmer in his eyes*. As a side note, Japanese television is hilarious. I have access to 5 channels and from what I gather, 80% of Japanese shows are some form of variety show. I’d like to think this is not an exaggeration.

Actually, I’m gonna make a digression out of that side note. Japanese TV has occupied a surprising amount of my time. I honestly didn’t think I was going to end up watching much TV while I was here but lo and behold I’m actually starting to keep tabs on some shows. Namely, and to my personal shame, I’ve somehow gotten hooked on a show called 花ざかりの君たちへ　いけめん　パラダイス (hana zakari no kimitachi he ikemen paradise) and I wish I could translate that mouthful for ya. I was going to attempt a translation but I almost went all orz on the floor just now upon realizing what the title might be in English. (orz is an emoticon, imagine a person bowing down on the floor where the o is the head, r is the arms and torso and z is the legs, bent) Anyway, you’ll have a good enough idea when I tell you that the show’s about a girl that pretends to be a boy in an all-boys school. I first saw it because it’s the show right before the anime I like to see (which, incidentally is always at the same block of time in the same channel… and hanazakari plays every day). And now, for better or worse (read: worse. Definitely worse) I’m hooked. The show is so ridiculous in so many ways that I realize about 14 times per episode how much of a guilty pleasure it is and how cautious I’m going to have to be about whom I share my interest in the show with. Knowing me, I’ll tell everybody I talk to. I’ll run it through the English teachers before I talk to the kids about it though *cough*. Besides hanazakari, I’ve found Japanese television to be pretty darn educational! Did you know there’s a giant golden beetle in Indonesia? That electric poles here are numbered? That a giant bear about 3.5 meters attacked a number of villages in Hokkaido at some point in the past? That Japanese people are apparently ALL foodies? That I’ve seen the same ponzu commercial exactly nine thousand eight hundred and fifty two times (and counting)?! *phew*

I haven’t been too adventurous yet. I keep wanting to go try out a gyoza restaurant nearby but it’s just so against me to go to restaurants on my own. I suppose it can’t hurt, right? And the food may end up being extraordinarily delicious and make me become a usual and be friends with the owner and and… well, we’ll see about that . However, in the meantime I generally just go to the local combini (convenience store) or Pal (closest supermarket) when I’m scavenging for food. One of these days I’ll go to that gyoza restaurant, alone or otherwise! Time’s a-counting down though. Finally (hopefully) getting my phone tomorrow and then this Sunday I’m going to Matsue (Shimane’s capital) for the Shimane orientation with the rest of the new Shimane JETs! Should be fun even though I’ll have to wear a suit in good ol’ tropical summer weather again, hooray! And school starts the week after that! Can’t wait to give a speech at the school! Ok, I can wait. Forever, in fact. No, just kidding. Public speaking may not be one of my strong points but I’m really excited to start teaching and hanging out with the teachers and kids at school. I’ve been thinking about this going back to school thing a lot too. I think it won’t have fully sunk in until I have to get ready in the morning for that first day, butterflies in my stomach and all. I’ll be able to have lunch with the kids too, which is gonna be neat… until they make me try natto (fermented soy beans) D: It looks gross, smells gross and probably doesn’t taste great either but they gotta eat it for some reason, right? I’ll give it a try, I suppose…

Ew, I just remembered the mountain of e-mails and flood of tweets I haven’t read. Ok tweeps, please forgive me but I’m going to start at 0 on my tweets. To be fair, I may actually have the time to go back and read what you’ve been saying for the past few days but I think it’d be bad to try and go back to July 31st tweets and start from there. Not sure my body could take it. My emails though I will read in their entirety and answer any that need answering. Hopefully that won’t take a month to do as I’m sure I have at the very least over 100 emails and that’s probably a gross underestimation. I also won’t really have internet per se for another two or so weeks but at least I’ll be able to check my mail and twitter on the phone *crosses fingers*. I think I’ll leave it at that, friends. It’s already tomorrow (the 19th now) and even though I’m sad because I’ll probably have to miss hanazakari while I’m out getting a phone but it’s ok because I’m bound to have to miss it while at school anyway! Plus, whenever I get innerwebz I’ll probably be able to stream the episodes >:3 GUUUDO NAITOOOOO~~~~

Japan: A Beginning (Part 1)

Today is August 9th, 2011. I’m in Japan. At the time of writing this, I don’t have internet. I don’t have a cell phone. I’m technically not yet working either. I’m channeling Emily Dickinson, instead: reading and reading and playing video games. Ok, so she probably didn’t do much of that last one but that’s because she was born when she did. Being a good hikikomori (look it up), she would’ve totally been all about the harvest moons and the WoW and what not. *ahem* Despite the tone the first few sentences of this passage may seem to carry, I’m not begrudging, in any way, my decision to come be a teaching assistant in Japan. Even my current situation I am trying to make the most of. I have already finished Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and am about halfway (or more) through inFamous, put several hours into Mass Effect and restarted Magicka. And that’s only on the gaming front. Though, to be honest, I’m only halfway through Lewis’ Mere Christianity. (I do so enjoy his writing)

I’ll backtrack a little bit and then meet again at the present, so as to update you, my friends, a bit more; give you a better picture of how and why we got here. Actually, the ‘why’ should be clear at this point so I’ll mostly skip it. So then, let’s go back to the beginning of the month. On july 30st, after a sleepless night of busy packing – of course, I had done oh so little packing up until the day I was flying – my dear (now ex-) roommate Mike and his lovely girlfriend Jing drove me to the airport for our goodbyes and my departure. As a note, I’d like to defend myself of the judgments I’m going to be rude enough to presume you had by saying I didn’t just leave packing to the last day out of laziness and procrastination. To be sure, there’s probably a time in which I could’ve done more towards it than the last day, but I would be lying if I said I had that many free moments in the 2 weeks prior to my leaving the US. Those last two weeks, I’ve been saying for a while, were the busiest I remember having. Ever. Well, at least so far. Even holidays at TP don’t quite compare, and that’s saying a lot! Of course, it wasn’t all work. I was busy meeting with people over meals and preparing all sorts of things for my leaving, not the least of which was doing things like selling my desktop computer, laptop and car – only the first of which was, thankfully, a painless and quick process. I must also say, I don’t regret all that in the least. I don’t really know how I could’ve done it any differently.

Continuing, my sleep deprivation ended up being quite the blessing. Sleep does not come easily to me when riding a plane but that 10 hour flight was made much shorter thanks to how horrendously tired I was after settling in with a nice pillow and a reclined seat. While we didn’t have the kind of seats that recline into a full bed, they did recline more than your average plane seats and made for just enough comfort for me to sleep several hours, if my memory serves me. The flight was largely uneventful and the food wasn’t stellar but it was well enough to suffice. We did eventually land in Japan and so began my feeling of bewilderment… and jetlag. At this point another feeling began to grow in me. It only got worse during Tokyo Orientation too. Snapping back, we get off the plane, go through customs, get our suitcases, cart them over to the busses (at this point I’m skipping a particular little hiccup which eventually came to nothing so I’m deeming it a moot point ;), gave them to the nice people that would ship them over to our future place of residence, got on the busses, got to Tokyo from the airport, checked in and finally got to rest up for a few minutes at the hotel room.

On the way to the hotel I noticed two things worth mentioning. One is that the climate was uncharacteristically cool for the area, something we can all be grateful for, especially the fellow JETs that were helping lead us where we had to go who had to stand outside all day. The other is that it was during this trip to Tokyo that I first began to have flashbacks of home when I looked out the window. Despite driving on the left side of the road, most of the greenery, and even some of the architecture, was strangely reminiscent of Puerto Rico. This is a perception that has since not died down but been reinforced the more of rural Japan that I see. Certainly, this is probably part of the culture shock phase they told us about during orientation where you’re still wearing your rose colored glasses and while everything is new, everything is somehow also wonderful, great, and very familiar to wherever you’re from. That said, the feeling I mentioned earlier that began once we landed in Japan and went on to be amplified and accentuated by the orientation is this: what have I gotten myself into?! ***Spoiler alert*** This feeling has, in fact, died down quite a bit so there is no need for alarm. Also, the only times I’ve so far felt homesick at all have come as a result of my having difficulty communicating and so are only reflections of my not wanting to work hard to do something that was quite natural and simple previously but I should’ve seen it coming and it’s really not that bad, when all is said and done. After all, this IS an adventure, and what good is adventure without a little danger and adversity?

Onward we go into orientation! At this point in our story it is July 31st and it’s actually not even the first day of orientation. However, since it is the first of only 4 days in Tokyo I’m just calling that whole ordeal/ride/madness orientation. Sunday night, my roommates (one of them the guy I sat next to on the plane) and I went out to get something to eat. We didn’t stray too far from the hotel since we didn’t want to get lost and were truly famished. After walking around the blocks nearby and eyeing the options we settled on a little ramen shop. It was quite delicious, or so our empty stomachs lead us to believe, and then I had Starbucks in Tokyo. Hell yes! That was one of my first starry-eyed moments in Japan so far. You can imagine why. Second day! Orientation went from 8:30 in the morning till about 8 o’clock at night. Maybe 6? In any case, I won’t bore you with the details. The long and short of it was it was serious information overload. Also, they gave us French fries during breakfast. Obviously, that night we went karaoke-ing! It was great fun. Actually, it was a freaking blast, hahaha! Could you really expect any less from me? Third day! Pretty much the same as the day before except this time a bunch of us from the 島根県(Shimane)* troupe went to have dinner together… and then we went karaoke-ing! During dinner was the first time I was part of a nomi-houdai. To those unfamiliar with the term, think buffet but of drinks instead of food. Yeah, there were people who were drunk before karaoke, where they had more drinks. And after karaoke, where they had more drinks. I’ll withhold their names but let’s just say, they weren’t the happiest campers Wednesday morning when we’re all flying out to Shimane to meet our new superiors. And with that, “adieu Tokyo” I thought as we flew away from the pretty lights and the bustling streets of the chilliest big city I’ve yet been to.

August 3rd we left Tokyo and the 8 of us new Shimane JETs flew to our new homes. That day, unlike the ever-so-kind, cool-ish weather of the day we arrived in Tokyo it was awfully humid and quite hot. At the airport all of our respective supervisors, most with sempai (senior) JETs came to greet us. They were all very nice and from the airport my we went to a ridiculously good Italian place in 出雲(Izumo, the city we flew into). Yes, yes, I know, why eat Italian when you’re in Japan? Why not, I say! And it really was quite good. The portions were actually not get-fat-and-feel-squeamish-when-you’re-done sized, believe it or not. From there we went to 大田(Ohda), my new home away from home… and directly to city hall where I met some of the bosses of the Board of Education! Thankfully, I wasn’t taken to meet the Mayor, as I heard some other JETs had been. After doing some paperwork, my supervisor stayed behind and I went with the two other JETs to get me some groceries at a supermarket. Don’t be fooled, friends. Ohda is a small town but it is not without its luxuries. Namely that supermarket that’s really more like a Target/Wal-mart than anything. And then they dropped me off at my new apartment! A little about the new place: it’s bigger than I thought it would be, fully furnished and I even have a great TV, YAY! The following day we did some more errands like opening a bank account but that night (it was either Thursday night or Friday night) the two JETs from before plus a third and a friend of theirs took me to a fireworks festival on the bay. Let me just say, Disney’s friggin imagineers have to come see this show. Not only did it last about a half hour, they had fireworks I’d never seen before. Cat fireworks, mushroom fireworks, 5-phase fireworks, by Jove it was stunning. Also, the food was ummmmmehhhhhhhh! (that’s Japanese for my-taste-buds-are-exploding-in-ecstasy, btw) One of the culinary fixin’s was a “French dog”, I kid you not. Dunno why they called corn dogs French dogs but hey, we call fried potato sticks French fries so there you have it. Incidentally, they did have French fries but they called it furaido poteto (fried potato, yup).

And since that day there’s been the odd human contact but for the most part I’ve hung out at home playing video games, reading, showering. Even exploring the town a little bit, by which I mean I walked around the block and then came home coz I was sweating too damn much. But hey, at least I scored a killer chocolate croissant and an awesome lemon soda on the way! HEALTH! And today, I even went to my base school and met the principal and the English teachers I’ll be working with. They were all rather nice, of course. So here we are, back at August 9th. However it will likely be a few days, maybe even weeks, before I am able to post this up on my blog since I won’t have internet for a while. Also, believe it or not, but I did leave a lot out of this retelling of the last few weeks but I’m sure you’ll agree this post is already quite long. In our next installment, I’ll probably talk about such titillating topics as: driving in Japan! Taking a train! Shimane orientation! More Karaoke! That speech I have to write and do for my welcoming ceremony at school! Food, food, and more food! Until the next one …which may or may not happen again before I have internet! XD

*Shimane is the prefecture I’m in, think a “state” within Japan… or just wiki it jeez! ;P

What Might Be Me

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.

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 :)

TheME

I think there's 2 major reasons this blog doesn't get updated pretty much at all. One is that I only have a handful of readers and that, despite my love for them, I don't feel like what I put here is worth either my or their time. The second, and probably more important one is that I just haven't the slightest what to put here. It was a good outlet for poetry but since I'm not really writing much lately (and again because of the audience) I feel like I need to either kill this blog or theme it. It's really not worth it being something where I post anything because, frankly, I end up posting nothing.

So here's my plight: tell me what you want to read from me.

And here's an awesome youtube video out of my favorites because those are always fun :D

eyes shut

a stillness, shifting on the surface of the tense dead of night
rhythmic drumming passes by and through, eyes open and shut
there is more in this moment, a gravity stretching my shadows
the rushing stream, a running stream of red breathing
looking into the void behind my eyelids, a thought, sought, caught
weak light, pulsing in the black depths of my mind's eyes
open and shut, valves in my bloody core, chamber to chamber
desperate to empty, pushing out only to fill endlessly
coolly drawing in a quiet sigh in a late preamble
seeking inside, eyes shut, a darkening blank
falling, a cruel illusion secretly whispering the deep truths
atop this spinning, floating sphere, eyes open, still falling
eyes shut