Adjustments

This is the last week of school for the 3rd grade junior high school (9th) and 6th grade elementary students. Friday is graduation, though school will continue for another week and a half for the other grades. I don't understand the logic of the extra 8 days of school, but that's okay. I've accepted that I don't need to understand everything, especially something that doesn't really impact my life one way or another.

With graduation approaching, I started looking through my selection of suits. I was extremely disappointed. It's not that the suits I brought with me are bad. Rather, they were cut for a different build of person, an American size. No, I haven't shrunk (at least not vertically), but I have gotten slimmer. I'm not really sure how to describe it, because I've hovered around 75kg (165 lbs) for years now. Anyway, after putting on my suit jacket only to feel like I was preparing for a cross-ocean venture, I decided it was time to buy a new suit. And I came home with two.

I went to the local "western suits" store in Nago and was helped by a salesman there named Nishi. He was happy to help me figure out exactly what kind of suit would fit on my current build and we started going through a series of designs. I had the great luck to want to purchase a new suit during a very good special they were running. With the purchase of one suit, the second (２着目) was only going to cost me 1,000 yen (or about $10). Nice. I got two suits, a new shirt, and a slim pink tie for just under 60,000 yen ($600). I'm picking them up Wednesday after the pants have been hemmed to my liking.

They're really slick. My favorite part about them is their slim cut. I'd always felt a little "lost" in suits that I had picked up in the states. Understandable, since my build back then didn't fit the average build of an American. These suits are cut for style, slim and athletic, and I'm really happy to have spent the money on them. Now that I've got them, I'm going to have to look for reasons to wear them.

So, anybody have any ideas?

A New Venture

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Run of Higashi

29 out of 2009

Take this year, 2009. Remove the chafe. What are you left with?

29. My number for this year (and one I share with a close friend). That's all that mattered today.

Thanks everyone for your wishes and support!

See you next year.

Opportune

I went to dinner with some ALTs on Saturday night. One of the things we talked about was showing up to school on any given day and being told of a change in schedule, specifically the kind where scheduled classes have been rescheduled and our workload for a day reduced. We all agreed it was a nice thing to experience.

This is what happened to me today. I showed up to school this morning and found the weekly schedule on my desk. Two classes for every day of the week, plus an additional three elementary lessons scattered throughout the week. But this week is 学年末テスト(gakunenmatsu tesuto) “end of term test” week, meaning the junior high school students have tests for three out of five days, so half of the scheduled classes are periods during which the students will be taking tests (no need for me). Those classes scheduled before the tests are being used for test review, which apparently means I don’t have to attend.

So my two classes today, while not canceled, don’t need me. I’m using the time to write this as well as to study Japanese. I should just ask for the day off and go home and make some bread, go for a run, do some laundry, whatever. But in Japan (and only in my experience as an assistant teacher in elementary and junior high schools), work doesn’t seem to be about doing a lot. Rather, it seems to be about being seen a lot. This was kind of true for me at the Fed - I would fly through work that would take my counterparts a full week to do. I would find myself taking nice walks through Chicago or reading a lot in the library on the 11th floor. I got to do my work and have some leisure time as well. Maybe you’re going to tell me I should have asked for more work to do, but I am a highly devoted member of the “work to live” club, not the “live to work” club. When I’m dying, the last thing I’m going to wish I had done was more work.

It’s 9:50. I’ve got about seven hours to go. I wonder if I could get away with one of those long trips now.

One more

I have signed a contract for a third year in Higashi. I’m staying because, overall, I love my life here and I like my job. I love getting to spend time with kids and watch them mature from one year to the next, let alone one month to the next. Though sometimes it can get a little too quiet and rural, and while there are moments when I yearn for things like faster internet and a lifestyle that doesn’t include needing a car, I like Higashi (and considering I lived in Chicago before this, it would seem that proximity to large bodies of water is a necessity for me). I like the warm weather and the ability to spend time walking on beaches without it having to be a special trip. I’m still learning lots of Japanese, really, lots of it (see below on learning curve).

Obviously, staying a third year has more to offer me in the way of good things; otherwise I would not have decided to stay. The image that just popped into my head was one of a learning curve, starting to rise slowly, at some point increasing dramatically, and then finally settling off and drawing toward a finite limit (though in cases of life experience, is there ever a limit?). I find myself somewhere on that steep slope, with a whole lot learned and a whole lot more to experience.

My friend Cliff puts it this way: “When I leave Japan, I want to be ready to leave Japan.” JET gives ALTs a limit of three years (in exceptional cases four or five). Assuming I sign off after three, I will have spent roughly 1/10th of my life in Japan. That’s a lot of time. And I'm not ready to leave just yet.

And since I feel like being provocative, I’ll give you a preview of my idea after JET. It involves one motorcycle in the range of 125-250cc, lots of time, and a westerly direction. A few years ago when I did the Mongol Rally (2006), I completed a circum-navigation of the earth going east. Though I can hardly consider Chicago a starting point this time around, I consider myself heading west this time. So I’m set for a plan for the next 18 months. After that, I think the 30’s are going to turn out to be my most interesting decade yet.