11 hours left in Japan.

My scheduled departure from Fukuoka to Seoul is 16:45 and it is currently about 5:30 a.m. I am making excellent headway as far as packing and apartment preparation goes - I might even be able to sleep for a couple hours. This is my second all-nighter in a row and I suspect I will sleep like a dead baby most of the flight home.

I don't have feelings obviously but if I had to use emotionally based language to describe what's going on, I'd say it's a kind of deep sadness not dissimilar to how it feels the few days after a breakup. I have been purposely overstimulating myself with booze and lack of rest so that I can hide behind it (and look awful in all the photos).

There's something incredibly moving and awe-inspiring about watching the sun rise. I have grown to associate it with a successful night out, with a tinge of sadness that it's over. I guess the three year long wild night that was my time in Japan is seeing the sun rise.

Funemployed

That's me. Funemployed. This morning I went to the immigration office and downgraded my visa from a 3 year working visa to "temporary visitor." I packed up my things from my desk at school and at 4:30 this afternoon was escorted out the door by a hodge-podge group of teachers and a few students (there was hardly anyone in the building).

I came home and had a nice big cathartic cry, something I haven't done at all during the entire process of farewells and goodbyes. It's been overwhelming and surreal, and a large part of me is fighting the inevitable huge changes that lie ahead. I still have a couple days left in Japan so I'm going to enjoy myself and look forward and spend my time with the folks I care about.

Above all else I am dreading the loss of my social circle that revolves around Oldies. I went there for dinner last night - Miho made me a chimichanga - and we sat listening to the '80s satellite radio channel, uncomfortably skirting around the issue of me leaving. She is a dear friend, a sister, and possibly the kindest person I've ever met. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't fuck around pretending to care about people. I know of course we will see each other in the future and stay in touch, but it's not the same when I can't walk 20 minutes down the street to say hey.

Two lives, one heart, we all knew it was gonna be hard.

I'm going home!

Bought my one-way ticket home last night. Korean Air via Seoul to JFK, KE085. It was a truly underwhelming experience and I was in a foul mood when I purchased it. July 31st it is, love it, hate it. I naturally feel both emotions at warp level intensity.

LOVE:
Happy reunion with my folks.
Better selection at supermarkets.
Able to start fresh and prepare for the Big Move to Austin.
English everywhere.
Wearing clothes with a "S" in the size tag.
Makeup, daily goods etc are cheaper.
Driving my car.
Hanging out with old friends and rekindling my social life.
Better coffee with free refills.
Delicious salads.
Pleasant summer weather as opposed to oppressive heat and humidity.

HATE:
Fat unhealthy people with entitlement complexes.
Getting stared at and objectified in public by men.
Crappy and sparse public transit/sidewalks.
Dealing with the rift that 3 years has inevitably placed between me and old friends.
People are spawning and/or have spawned and I hate babies.
Having to deal with the "designated driver" question if I want to go out for drinks.
Gas is $4/gallon and the car only gets 18 mpg.
Sharing living space with people for the foreseeable future.
Looking a bit different as opposed to fitting in 100% lookswise.
Not having a super secure job that pays well.
Missing my Japanese friends, people I've met, and way of life.

"Cafe" music and パリ syndrome

In Japan, "café" is its own music genre, and it is 99% either chilled-out bossa nova or some sort of quaint take on a French chanson. Essentially, all that is domestic and adorable is equated to France here. There are not enough fingers and toes on all the polydactyl cats in Asia to count the number of twee trinkets, clothing shops, kitchen accessory shops, notebooks, stickers, etc etc etc ad nauseum that boast meaningless French. I don't know what you would call it...with English it's Engrish. Furansuçais?

Either way, it doesn't take a genius to work out that Japan has a boner for France - ah, excusez-moi, "boner" is rather inaccurate - perhaps a giddy wetting of the vaginal walls in preparation for getting boned on tour packages to the French capital. I have done a little traveling in France - been groped and offered cocaine in alleys by its nationals, sipped wine in spectacular vineyards on a beautiful summer day, smoked Gauloises and downed strong coffee, taken that tedious day trip to Monaco - all those things you do in France should you find yourself there. There is romance everywhere and it is a magical place - the Japanese got that right. But it hits a lot of Feudal Nipponese tourists a bit hard when they actually put themselves on a plane to CDG.

パリ/Pari/Paris is every Japanese woman's fantastic candyland of love, and you can't go anywhere in the city without running into gaggles of J-ladies carrying hazardously wide open shopping bags draped over one arm. With so many beautiful buildings, quaint cafés, and incredible shopping and style, the appeal is a no-brainer. About a million Japanese visit Paris in a given year. Unfortunately, as with any enormous city built on tourism and political unrest, there are obstacles that get in the way of Japan's vision of perfect bossa-nova France - sexual harassment, a sizable crime rate, racial and ethnic tension between immigrant groups, bums upchucking on Le Métro, graffiti (heavens, no), etc.

I know this was all over the news five years ago, but as I see it, no modifications in the Japanese attitude toward "café" lifestyle and tacking French onto everything have been made. So I'll leave you with a link to an article describing "Paris syndrome," which basically amounts to "Japanese people going insane from culture shock because their dream visions of Paris have been shattered." It doesn't take a whole lot to make people go crazy here judging by the country's suicide rate, and Paris syndrome doesn't surprise me at all.

(...This all came up because I'm thinking I'd like to go to France again soon. Japan has infected me. I just downloaded half a GB of Putumayo world music albums.)

Awaken

"Awaken" as a word always reminds me of Metalocalypse, particularly of Mustakrakish the Lake Troll.

But awakening is pretty much exactly how I've been feeling over the past few days, as if I had just been dormant and lackluster for those couple cold winter months. I put on five pounds and now I'm taking them off, I feel motivated to do my hair and put on Outfits with a capital O, and overall life just seems pretty awesome. I've got things to do before I leave Japan, and I've got lots of things to do once I get back to America.

I'm stuck in this really funny place between wanting to savor the rest of my time here and just hurry up and get back and re-start my "new" life. It's unbelievable how easily and rapidly you accumulate plans and obligations; every weekend for the next month and a half has been spoken for in some capacity or another. I have concerts to play/attend lined up for every weekend from this Friday through the end of March; my mom is visiting Japan for two weeks during spring holidays, I have a road race to train for in early April, and there's a big gathering in Nagoya the weekend after the race. With all these things to be planning and thinking about, I am still just sitting around watching videos of people eating fried butter at the Texas State Fair and daydreaming about America.

America really isn't that great, but I've built it up in my mind as some kind of wonderland. Nothing makes you love home like living away from it, I guess. Obesity epidemic, tipping culture, culture of unjustified entitlement and all, I have to admit I feel a bit proud of the big honking eagle on my passport. Now if only I could get a nifty burgundy/purple European Union passport too...

AMS?

Snapped a paparazzi shot of the lead guitarist in local rock legend Sinnocular at a tram stop this morning. He probably knew what was going on. That's what you get for being famous - Sinnocular are not only featured on the cover of this month's "Fukuoka Now" magazine, but an interview with the band as well as preview footage and concert dates are on the front page of the Fukuoka Now website!

I was so excited about Austin. I still am excited about Austin. But there is a new layer of possibility, and it's famous for pancakes, legal vice, and outspoken anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders. If I do in fact require everlasting culture shock and stressful acclamation to new countries and funny foreign languages to course through my veins at all times, chasing my man to the Netherlands with no visas, job leads or Dutch language skills could certainly satisfy.

I picked out that jacket and bought it for him. I wish someone would hire me to play paper dolls with rock bands. I'd be a great and much needed help.

Initiating a breakup.

I think Austin is going to win. I really love the idea of it and no matter what, there will be more going on there than there is in Albany, NY.

Not that there's anything wrong with "The 518," "The ToC," or "Smallbany" (a modest sampling of its many monikers) - on the contrary, I really loved growing up there and I had loads of nice friends, a great nuclear family with a big house with a great park literally in my backyard. Since Albany is the capital of New York State, there were internships to be had at the state offices downtown, some music festivals, and smatterings of interesting nightlife.

I suppose I realized I'd outgrown my pond a bit when I went home to visit last summer and felt like I had managed to do everything there was to do in the area in two weeks. Most of my friends from childhood are married, engaged, parents, soon-to-be parents, or otherwise domesticated. Some moved to other cities and states, and quite a few more simply grew boring and useless to me. My parents hate the high cost of living and the snowy winters. I found the lack of Thai restaurants indicative of many things.

(Universities and colleges in America are ranked informally by their percentages of Jewish and Asian students - the higher the percentages, the more expensive and competitive the school. I use a similar system to rate cities. Cities with lots of Thai restaurants have lots of arts-conscious 20-somethings who have passports. People like me. Albany has no well-known Thai restaurants and only a small handful of Indian places. Manhattan/Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Boston have at least eight of each on every block.)

Walter will be coming to Austin too. There we intend to recreate our present perfectly betsu-betsu (separate, individual) lifestyle - each keeping our own apartments and doing our own things, forming our own circles while having loads of adventures together. Our relationship and our bond seems unshakeable today, but if for some reason we don't make it as a couple, it's not like there's any shortage of cute single people around. Austin is consistently ranked as one of the best U.S. cities for young singles. Single girls make good girlfriends. Everybody wins.

My parents will probably move to the area too, since as I mentioned they are not fans of winter and in their mid-sixties are becoming a bit fragile for heavy-duty shoveling on a steep driveway in icy conditions. Dad's from rural Tennessee and Mom's from Dee-troit; they're both already sort of out of their elements in suburban upstate New York. Austin is still Texas, but compared to other major cities it seems, on all accounts, more foreigner-friendly, at least toward atheist liberal types. I've been doing some research; housing is affordable compared to NY and they should be able to find a tiny house or condo near downtown to grow old in.

In the past, my breakups with boyfriends have all been fairly straightforward, like ripping off a Band-Aid that was sort of falling off already anyway. I think saying "smell ya later" to my hometown will be like that, too. I'm ready for change and coming off of a three-year stint abroad, if I don't immediately flood my senses with more excitement and change, I'll wilt like a corsage after prom night. I'm so excited for this.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Where Do I Go?

Gadling.com: Top 10 Travel Spots in the United States

You know, out of the places on this list I've only been to three. I've been to far more interesting cities, towns and mountain ranges that didn't make the top ten list, but the fact remains that I ain't seen nothin' when it comes to my own country. Since I'm not recontracting to work another year in Japan this means I'm going back to the U.S. in August. Rather than just staying in the Albany/Capital region of New York forever, I intend to relocate somewhere new - preferably somewhere with less snow and lower living expenses. There are so many options. Where am I supposed to begin? I guess making a list of considerations has been overdue. Here are five so far.

1.) Austin, Texas.
+The only city in TX with a considerable number of Democrats and Thai food places. Job market OK considering. Warm weather, little snow. Lots of young people and artistic types. Friendly to country and cowboys. There is a decent airport. Living costs reasonable compared to Northeast.
-Far removed from pretty much everywhere else in the country. TX is flat and plains-y, a stark contrast to the woods and mountains I'm used to. Rich Tex-Mex food means it will be extremely difficult not to get fat. I'd need a car to get around.

2.) Boston, Massachusetts.
+Near home, visiting the folks would be super easy. Lovely city and I already have a lot of friends and acquaintances there. Great public transportation means I wouldn't need a car. Lots of young people, great restaurants and entertainment. New England is familiar.
-Cold snowy winters. High MA income tax. Rent and other costs of living very high, would need to share living space. Completely urban environment may be off-putting and overwhelming due to competitiveness.

3.) Knoxville, Tennessee.
+A change of pace from the Northeast. Family all over town. Comparable size to where I grew up. Proximity to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Decent if not great arts scene. The airport is OK. Cheap cost of living, could probably afford my own place.
-Southeast means lots of conservatives and other people who non-ironically voted for Mike Huckabee. College football dominates everything. More sheltered worldview than bigger cities. Would need a car to get around.

4.) Tucson, Arizona.
+Definitely no need to worry about shoveling snow in winter. Beautiful surroundings and lots of outdoor recreation. Active arts/nightlife/entertainment/music scene. Airport is fine. Cost of living reasonable though not especially cheap. Good food.
-So hot in summer that I could die if my A/C unit breaks. Would need a car. Would also need to learn Spanish to be an ideal job candidate. Somewhat isolated from the rest of the country. Currently host to a whole load of political and racial tensions that may take a while to clear.

5.) Los Angeles, California.
+Ideal climate and weather. I already know lots of people there. Unbeatable restaurants, shopping, and nightlife. Excellent international airport. Proximity to beach, desert and mountain hiking. I would have no trouble keeping weight off.
-Very expensive to live in; would need roommates, car, and connections. Cutthroat competition for everything, possibly very isolating environment. Rampant eating disorders. Traffic and pollution a real concern. CA income tax very high.

The Arctic Chill

Lately it's been cold here in Tagawa. Not so cold that it's hazardous to step outside or anything like that, but just relentlessly unpleasant. The temperature hovers around freezing, and if we're lucky it's ten degrees warmer inside.

I believe I've voiced complaints in years prior about the Japanese lack of effective heating in homes, schools and offices, but every year it's such an all-pervading onslaught of discomfort that being cold becomes the only thing I can think about. Every night I fill a 2 liter bottle with boiling water and place it in my bed where my feet are supposed to go, and every night I squirm around for at least half an hour trying to get my feet warm. Every day at work I hover over a kerosene stove cursing Japan and the weather gods in an effort to warm up freezing fingers. Students pop their heads into the staffroom and exclaim "It's warm!" because the hallways are even colder. Teachers come and go, every other phrase uttered: "It's cold!"

What bothers me about this isn't the cold itself. It's the fact that even though insulation and double-paned windows and central heating are a very tangible reality that has been adopted by countries with much smaller economies, the vast majority of Japan just won't do it. Instead they've come up with temporary solutions like kotatsu, a heated table you sit underneath, and kerosene heaters that require you to crack open a window. Sitting under a kotatsu is great and all but wouldn't it be nicer if you didn't need one at all?

I suppose this rage has been inspired by my recent trip to Germany. Germany, like Japan, suffered great losses during the Second World War, and was at least partially rebuilt with American funding. They're both well off financially but Japan is slightly richer. The cost of living seems comparable, and the people in both nations are infamously rigid and workaholic. Both have cold snowy winters and warm summers. They're not so different. So why is it that the Germans get to be warm indoors all winter long while the Japanese refuse to adopt modern comforts?

The Price You Pay

I'm doing things and seeing places and meeting people and learning stuff, which means while I am doing, seeing, meeting and learning, I am also missing everything and everyone that is elsewhere.

How many close friends' weddings is it worth missing to continue my stagnant lazy adventurer lifestyle here? Then again, how many of those friends actually noticed whether I was there or not? My parents are getting old and it's starting to show - I should be there for them since they won't be around forever, but all they do is sit on the couch reading library books. Stuck at work during my 36 hours of free time each week, I can't shake the nagging assumption that at this given moment I could be anywhere on earth doing something else. Maybe tripping on a mountain with hippies and pagans at the Beltane festivities in Heidelberg, fighting my way through restaurant menus in China, or going for a cherished morning exercise walk with my white-haired mother through our quaint suburban neighborhood.

No matter what you find yourself doing, you'll always be faced with the painful dilemma of missing out on one of the other areas of your life. Everyone has experienced the minor yet really annoying annoyance of missing something fun because you couldn't get the time off work. It's shitty because you need to make money but you really, really wish you could have made it even just to say hi. You just know someone there said "oh, [your name] had to work" and everyone else said "oh too bad" and that was it. They didn't miss you as much as you missed them, yet of course you built up the event in your mind until you were convinced it was PARTY OF THE YEAR WOULDN'T MISS FOR THE WORLD fantastic. It's not really rational but it still sucks, yeah?

I suppose that's how I feel about being in Japan in general. I have to do my job and put in time and to be frank I certainly have a much more "exciting" life from an outsider's perspective than the average Jack or Jill in my hometown. But sometimes I do yearn to be in two or more places at once, living both my main lives plus living all the fragmented sub-lives I've built through meeting people and making connections in my travels. I often wonder what the people I know and care about are doing right now, and feel irrationally jealous of them for having quick access to futile crap like Nordsee or Dunkin Donuts. And I hope they do too.

Homesick?

I'm at home right now but I feel more homesick than I ever have. I'm homesick because I miss how things were, and of course I know I have to get on a plane in a week and fly back to my other life. I'm a completely transient, temporary fixture here and my friends are grown and no longer need me since I'm never around. It's a fool's hope to think life would screech to a halt and wait for me while I run around frantically "figuring myself out" or whatever it is I've been doing in Japan, and not surprisingly I'm finding that the gap between me and the people I consider bosom friends is widening with age. In the past two years I've been away, countless friends have gotten engaged, married, moved in together, started families, divorced, whatever. The economy has been in a rather hellish state of woe and the faces of the government have changed and my countrymen seem to have gotten fatter, sloppier and stupider than ever before. So it's not without considerable and significant changes in the environs that I'm finding myself just a bit stupefied and feeling like a fish out of water being back, but it is still weirding me out to feel like a stranger or alien in my own hometown.

Incoherent and a bit rabid, those are my thoughts. It's of course my own decision to have extended my stay in Japan for three years' total and to have been a shoddy correspondent via email and Facebook and whatever. Maybe that's just how I plan on going about creating a fresh start or a new life. Hurts like a breakup to see everyone changing and getting married off but it's that time in our lives and of course I'm a bad friend if I resent people for making a choice I will not personally make myself.

MILFs of America

Stay tuned for the Japan edition!

Irreverent Engrish at its finest?

Not only is this beast screen printed with "MUHAMMAD" a dozen times, but it was on super sale at Jusco for only 500 yen! While it doesn't flatter my head shape or match any of my clothes, its value as a cultural artifact of a nation which has no clue is probably at LEAST a 1,000 yen value. If not more.

Culture shock?

As mentioned in yesterday's update, one of the kids at my high school died in a motorcycle crash.

Today there was an announcement about it at the daily morning meeting, the kids were informed during their homeroom, and then...normal sports day practice as though nothing had happened. With the exception of the student's girlfriend, who stayed in a secluded room all day presumably crying, I saw only one or two kids looking upset. The rest were running around giggling as always. The teachers put on their best poker faces and went about their daily business.

It's the most remarkable cultural difference between USA and Japan. When a teenger dies, USA is like a Jewish funeral, with days of mourning, wailing and weeping. Japan is like...well, Japan. "Too bad. It cannot be helped." And then back to the regularly scheduled program.

One day this society of endless "push on some more" is going to implode and there will be chaos. But until then, I somehow admire the Japanese in their stoicism and tolerance during tough times.

日本の文化について

I watched Shaun (Cramp) beast one of those the other day at the mall. Download the .avi file and watch. Everyone asks me how big the burgers are in America and I'm just like...smaller than a MegaMac, you fools.

*

I've got a real love-hate relationship with being here, as those who followed my dormant Japan blog were forced to read about every other day. Some days suck me in to the point where I feel like recontracting for a third year, but on others I sit on Orbitz pricing flights and fantasizing about running away back to the West. Generally speaking, Japan is okay. I don't really like it, but it at least amuses and befuddles me to the point where I can sit and chuckle.

The apparent absence of goats in this big pasture of sheep freaks me out, probably because I'm so goddamned American and I think even a collectivist society should consist of entirely individuals who prize uniqueness and go "rabble rabble rabble" when something's dissatisfactory. There's one guy in my biweekly English conversation club, Shin. who breakdances and has applied to be a comedian in Tokyo. His English is damned near perfect, he loves to talk about politics, and he does a great "Tickle Me Elmo" impression. We inevitably turn every meeting to the topic of Japanese complacency and collectivism, and Shin always bangs his fists on the table and says "we need a fucking revolution - it's not good enough." He may not instigate the complete overhaul and radicalization of Japan but it means way more coming from him than from the millions of angry teenagers in the USA who shout "revolution" because Jimmy Eat World told them to say so, you know? It seems to me that most Japanese who reject Japan's values would rather leave the country than try and change the nation from within, and I can't blame them at all. This is a country where staying at work until 10 pm doing nothing is valued more highly than being extremely productive and leaving on time, being 10 minutes late requires paperwork that will travel through three levels of bureaucracy, and people still buy CDs - which are twice as expensive here as in the States! I've met a lot of unhappy young, medium and elderly people who are looking for escape, through marriage or education or whatever, and I can totally see where they're coming from.

Even the impeccably stylish young demographic with their skinny legs and flawless makeup and amazing clothes all wear variations of the exact same outfit. Fashion isn't used to make statements so much as to fit into style niches here. Wearing Doc Martens with a studded belt doesn't necessarily say anything about you. Maybe the goth-lolitas running around still like SMAP and Lilo & Stitch. The massive popularity of reggae and cannabis paraphenalia has not educated the youth about Rastafari or the joys of pot smoking, and half of them still think Jamaica is in Africa. I always love to find the 3-4 kids per class with a cannabis pencil case and say "マリファナ好き?" ("so, you like marijuana?") and watch their faces as they recoil in horror. It just blows my mind how so many people run around professing their love for HEMPU and JAMAICA yet they haven't bothered to understand the meaning of that funny leaf that's plastered all over their grandma's air fresheners.

But then again, here I am the hypocrite, criticizing other people for being unaware and unconcerned about things - perhaps not even intentionally - while I sit on the other side of the world not reading the international news or thinking about anything terribly important. Ah well.

*

I have overslept every single day this week because I keep staying up too late. I'm so exhausted that it feels like I'm high. Maybe I'll go sniff some markers after lunch. They smell so nice. Oh my god, put me back to bed please