Brian's Japan Adventure

March 17th, 2008

Non-Sleeper

As I sid in the last blog, I went to bed after chat at around 1am. Then I just laid there, tossing and turning until around 7am in the morning.  I may or may not have done some “lengthy blinking” but I sure as heck didn’t get much in the way of real sleep.  Around 7am I decided it was better to get up and be really tired all day than to sleep all afternoon and just make the problem worse.

I added some stuff to my freshly-reinstalled desktop computer and started downloading some TV shows that I had missed. I was already current on Doctor Who, and new episodes don’t start until later this spring anyway, but I had heard good things about Torchwood and the new Sarah Connor Terminator series, so I figured I’d give them a look. It’ll be a day or two before they are ready to watch.  The final episode of LOST doesn’t come on for a few more days, but I’ll probably catch that on regular TV for once.  Fortunately, I don’t watch much TV even when I’m not in Japan; for the most part it’s a massive waste of time.

I spent a little time in my office today, cleaning up old paperwork and junk.  I had a lot of “in-process” school papers and applications for the Japan trip and things like that cluttering my desk.  Toward the end of last summer, I had shut down the business and everything was about my Master’s Thesis or Japan related. I tossed most of this stuff. I have an appointment with my tax accountant on Friday, and I have to get ready for that.  I did a bunch of tax preparation before I left, so I am not quite sure how much work that’s going to be now.

Around 2pm, I drove to the local Community College and went to their pool.  I’m not sure what the pool schedule is for the Home University during the week, since they only have Spring Quarter hours posted online.  I’m an alumni at the Community College, and their pool is just as good (and usually less crowded), so I decided to go there.  Wow, I needed that; my back hasn’t felt this good in months!  I should have realized as my back got worse and worse in Japan that there was a reason for it.  Swimming always helps my back, but I never seem to remember that when my back is actually messed up.  The pool in Okayama was uncomfortable because of all the staring, but I could have gone once in a while if I had thought it would actually make me feel better. Oh well, NOW I know.

Anyway, I drove home and then pretty much went straight to bed.  That was probably around 6pm, and I did sleep more or less straight through until 6am on the next day. Hopefully that’ll be the end of my jetlag problems.

March 16th, 2008

Sleeper

I woke up around 2pm today. I had considered going swimming at the Home University pool today, but by the time I woke up it was too late for that; maybe tomorrow.

Upon getting up, I had a tuna fish sandwich with lots of onions; believe it or not, they had onions in Japan, but people don’t seem to like them much, and they aren’t really in anything. Or if they are in something, it’s so little that there’s no taste.

I then updated my main desktop computer with the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. I usually rush right out and update the day it’s released, and it seems there are always problems.  This time, it had been out for a while, and everything went perfectly. I’ll have to update Ubuntu on my Dell laptop eventually, but I don’t often use Linux there since that’s my Windows machine.  I then updated everything on the Windows machine; virus scanner, security patches, bug fixes, and all the wonderful stuff that Microsoft is known for.  Since it was a good time for it, I also updated everything on Mom’s computer.

Then it was dinnertime, and the folks and I went to a new place that wasn’t here when I left called Starlite.  I’m not sure what to think of it yet. The staff looked like a family of Russian Taxi Cab Drivers, but the food was reasonably good.  They’ll get a second try, but I wasn’t thrilled beyond words. It’s close to the house, so that’s always good for a few points with me.

Then it was back home, and I started looking into eBay and business tools.  I have a ton of stuff here from my business that I need to get rid of. Whether my selling becomes an “asset liquidation” or a “business restart” I have not yet decided. It doesn’t matter too much which route I go at this point, since I have to sell stuff either way and research is research.

Then I got into chat with PT and then it was about bedtime.  It was a really short day because of sleeping so late, but that’s to be expected with Jet Lag.

March 15th, 2008

Mega Naps

I woke up at 4:30am, about four hours after going to bed. That’s not a good sign.

My brother dropped off my nephew at the house around 7:00 and we watched him until it was time to go to my niece’s play, which started at 1:20 and ended around 1:30. It was shortt and fun, but well over an hour drive each way. I didn’t have anything more important that I had to do, but if I should happen to only be in town for two weeks, this might be a day I wish I had back.  Still, the kids are always fun, and the nephew and I spent more time together than I think we probably ever have in the past. He must’ve said, “I knew you were coming back!” and “I missed you!” three hundred times.  At least I know somebody missed me!

I got home around 3:00 and went straight to bed. I know, I said no naps, but that was before I only got four hours of sleep last night. The nap took me till 8:30 or so, and then I chatted on the Internet.  While chatting, I downloaded the latest Ubuntu CD, which I will try to install on my desktop PC a little later.

And that’s about it really. It was just a day for watching kids’ plays and taking naps. Tomorrow will probably be a little more eventful.

March 14th, 2008

I’ve Been Restored

I woke up without an alarm at 9:30 this morning.  That’s barely six hours of sleep after yesterday’s adventure. I’ll probably pay for that this evening.  I had Dad drive me to the hair place, where I quickly lost 10 pounds of hair. Still, I look almost civilized now without my “wild hair.”  We then went to the license bureau. The guy there took one look at my old license and asked my “Did you get caught?” indicating the long-expired license. I explained the story, but he wasn’t surprised; I assume it happens all the time. So now I was all cleaned up and legally restored. What Next? Do you really have to ask?

Lunch Time. All Issues Resolved!

Then it was lunch time. You guessed it; Chipotle. I had the steak burrito with black beans, hot sauce, sour cream, cheese and lettuce.  Dad had the same thing only the “bowl” version. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!  Or as they say in Japan, oishi! If Chipotle ever goes to Japan, it’ll revolutionize dining there.  I should buy stock in them.  Chipotle is located in front of Wal-Mart, so as long as we were there, it was time to visit the source of all evil, also known as Wal-Mart, America’s answer to China.

I looked at cell phones. My old one barely held a charge before I left, and I don’t expect it to last long now, if it even works; I haven’t tried it yet.  I picked up a gazillion brochures on rate plans, and I’ll look over them later. I also wanted to check out Skype accessories; I had seen dozens of Skype phones and accessories at Bic Camera in Okayama and wanted to see what was available here.  They had one lousy microphone headset.  I’ll have to try Best Buy or Circuit City. It seems that CompUSA has gone bankrupt in my absence.  I picked up a few grocery items, but I really don’t even know what I need yet, so we didn’t stay long. The cell phone brochures were the real reason for going.

And I was surprised to see that gas was $3.35 a gallon.  It was in the mid-$2.50 range when I left. That’s a pretty big jump in only six months. I think maybe I really will look at bicycles; there isn’t that much nearby, but over a long enugh period of time, it might still be worthwhile. My parents took my car to get checked up and looked over by my cousin the expert mechanic, and it was something like $300 for a whole bunch of repairs and replacements.  He knew I wanted to drive it some distance within the next month, so he went over everything.  But anyway, my car is here and supposedly ready-to-go, although I haven’t gone anywhere in it yet.

And that was the morning.  It’s about 3:00 now and I am back home.  I have yet to unpack, and I know my brother’s family wants me to have dinner tonight, although I don’t know where or when just yet. I have a ton of things around the house to clean up and unpack and set up, so I’m not about to get bored.  And that’s all just for tonight. I assume I’ll be ready for bed pretty early tonight, dunno yet.  More later!

I started to unpack soon after writing the previous stuff, and just as I was finishing my unpacking, the phone rang.  My brother and nephew would be meeting us for dinner, since my sister-in-law and niece had to go to a rehearsal for a play she’s in. I’m not sur if I am going to the play tomorrow or not, since it’s going to be an all-day ordeal and more than an hour each way. I’d like to go, but I do have a bunch of stuff that still needs to be done. I dunno yet.

Anyway, we went to Bob Evans, but I was busy talking to my nephew and since it was only a few hours since lunch, I didn’t order anything. We colored and talked about his favorite movie, and he said how much he missed me about 200 times. It was fun.  I imagine when he tells his sister that he saw me and she didn’t, there’s going to be hell to pay. Hopefully my brother will put him to bed before the other two come home.

Since Bob Evans is near Wal-Mart, I needed another trip to look at cell phones, but still didn’t buy one. I’m going to have to research things a little more. Now I am going to be indecisive over that.

And I think that’s going to be it for today.  I did some good stuff, but not really a lot of things; there’s plenty more to do.  It’s after 9pm.  I’m going to play online for an hour, then watch the latest episode of LOST, and then try to get to bed at a time appropriate for Dayton. Maybe I can beat the jet-lag boogeyman if I just don’t give it any foothold. Read my lips: No New Naps!

March 13th, 2008

Sayonara Nihon

Hai.  Watashi-wa kyo America-ni ikimasu. Yup. Today, I go to America. I’ve been here Six and a half months, 28 weeks or 229 days. I’ve learned quite a bit of spoken and written Japanese, although not nearly enough.  I know the ins and outs of chopsticks and Japanese variety shows. I understand recycling piles and days. I actually like riding the bicycle and trains to work.  I still haven’t totally mastered walking up the mountains, but I never really had to do it every day. I can order my obentos in completely understandable Japanese and my McDonalds in broken English. I can stand in front of a classroom and babble on about something for an hour without worrying about it ahead of time.  I can do laundry (at one temperature only) and still keep things basically white. I can do the Internet from half a dozen places around town, but they’re all still inconvenient when in a hurry. I can ride a train or a bus pretty much anywhere and find my way back. I even lived with a messy drinker for six months and didn’t kill him even once.

So I have learned to do a few things while here. There have certainly been times when I’d have been on the first plane out of here if the option had been available, but overall, it’s been great.  I learned a lot and taught some people some things too. There’s an old man running around with a beard and a woman who wants to teach Japanese to foreigners.  There may even be slightly better English spoken here, at least by a few. Without a doubt, there are a bunch of little kids who know a lot more than the word “Banana!”

There are a lot of things I’ll miss, and a few that I wont.  I won’t miss tiny little people skittering away from me in fear of the giant gaijin. Seafood everywhere.  Lack of convenient Internet. Hm. That’s not really so much is it?  I worked around the lack of  Internet. Food has been an issue here since day one, but I knew it would be before I came. I don’t like seafood, and here I am on a giant island that has traditionally lived primarily on seafood. There were no surprises concerning the food. I guess part of my purpose here was to be seen in public not eating little Japanese people, so they learn to be more accepting and less fearful of foreigners. Whether they like it or not, Japan is becoming more internationalized, and they’re going to be getting the foreigners. They know this in the big cities, but unfortunately, I was often not in the big cities.

Would I come back? Sure, if the offer sounds good. It would have to be reasonably soon or else I’ll forget all the Japanese I have learned.  Will I come back to do a Phys-Ed job in Fukuyama?  I really doubt it.  I like the school and the people, but I just can’t get excited over teaching kids sports.  Yes, yes, I realize I’m teaching them English while they do sports, it just doesn’t feel like something I’ll ever really like doing.  Now if the same school called me with a classroom teaching position, I’d be all over that idea!

The 40-Hour Thursday Begins

The phone rang at 7:00, and it was Mom wanting to know if I had anything for her to check on or do before I arrived. She told me the Dollar to Yen exchange rate is 108 yen per dollar at the local Dayton bank that handles currency exchange. I don’t know what it is at the airport yet, but I’ll go with whoever is offering the most. Granted, It could change by the time I get to Dayton, but I’ll have to take that chance if the number at the airport is low.  It was 117 yen to the dollar when I arrived, so I guess that means the Japanese economy has gotten worse relative to the US economy. Or maybe that’s exactly backwards; this was confusing six months ago, and it still is.

My Frugality Hurts!

I then took the trash out. I would have taken it out last night, but the clothes I wore yesterday were disposables that I had no plans on packing.  It just kills me to throw out a perfectly good pair of pants, but they were heavy and I never much liked them anyway. Here’s what I remember tossing:

•    1 pair of black pants
•    1 plaid shirt. I don’t even know why or how I ended up owning a plaid shirt.
•    2 pairs of smelly heavily worn sneakers. They should have been tossed months ago, but my only replacement was the leather dress shoes I brought.
•    About a half bag of brand new socks.  I didn’t find those new socks in time to wear them all even once. They just took up too much room in the suitcase.
•    3 pairs of slippers. I do have one pair of new ones that I’m taking home.
•    1 Heavy jacket.  This was a $300 Varsity jacket given to me by someone I used to do web design work for.  We had a bit of a falling out, so I won’t wear it in public in the States since it has the name of his company on it. It would have filled half a suitcase anyway.

Still, with the exception of the shoes and slippers, all of this stuff was essentially still good.  At home I’d have given it to the Goodwill or something, but here?  It went in the trash. Some foreigner would probably be thrilled to get that stuff, but I don’t know how it could be done.

There’s also a lot of stuff I am leaving behind for the next person here at the apartment. All the fiction books that I brought, bought, or was gifted, as well as all my giant comic books are staying. I would have liked to have brought one or two of them home for the kids, but as I said, they’re the size of a phone book (they probably wouldn’t have been appropriate for the kids anyway).  I’m adding to the “teacher book library” by leaving behind a few teaching items. The four sets of flashcards Mom sent, as well as the Reader Rabbit books sent by Ptuny are staying here. So are the various “craft supplies” such as pipe cleaners and colored cotton balls; I never did anything with those. Of course, there are the two famous paper Christmas trees and a 500-piece Thomas Kinkaide jigsaw puzzle. I probably would have attempted the puzzle after Marc left, but it was buried under other stuff and I only just rediscovered it.

Leaving all this stuff behind and throwing out all the clothes is just killing me. There’s no alternative, the stuff is not worth the cost of shipping it back home. Still, I am notoriously cheap, and throwing out perfectly good clothes just bugs me. No, I was specifically instructed not to leave clothes in the apartment. The person following me is a girl anyway, so the clothes wouldn’t have done her any good anyhow.

It’s now 8:10am and I just wrote all the preceding stuff right after getting up.  The iPod charged all night, and I think it should be OK as long as nothing goofy happens with it again.  I’ll also take my Palm Pilot on the flight, but the battery s only good for about four hours when playing audio on it. It’s not really meant to be an MP3 player. I can get several additional hours out of it by reading ebooks instead. I’ll also have the Nintendo DS in my carry-on bag, but I don’t do much with that. Essentially, my carry-on bag is all electronics and toys. I’ll also take along “Freakonomics,” some kind of “secret economic conspiracy” thing that Marc said was a good read.

And that is al I have to say about packing. The apartment is clean, the big suitcases are ready to go.  All I have to do is shove stuff into my backpack and walk out the door. Oh wait, it’s only 8:15 now. It’s gonna be a long morning.

The above was written before the plane trip.  The rest comes afterwards.

7500 Miles To Go

OK, So I am back and I survived.  Y-San piced me up at 12:30 and took me straight to the Okayama Station, where I had no problem buying my ticket exactly as Hyperdia suggested.  As I waiting on the platform for the Shinkansen to arrive, an old American guy walked up and introduced himself.  He works for some pharmaceutical company that does business all over the world, and he has been coming and going from Okayama for 20 years. I told him this was my first time getting to the airport, and he gladly volunteered to show me the ropes. He stuck with me all the way to San Francisco, and was a huge help speeding me trogh the trains and Kansai airport. I could have done it on my own, but he definitely made it go faster.  There was a two hours wait at Kansai, and he used his “Red Carpet Club” membership to get me into the private club there.  We had snacks and drinks and waited there very comfortably until it was time to board the plane.

He explained how currency exchange works, so I took care of it right there on the Japanese side of the ocean. I got about a 4% better rate than the bank in Dayton offered the day before, so that was a couple of hundred free dollars for doing my research ahead of time.

The trip was long, but essentially uneventful. The only time I started getting stressed out was in San Francisco. I had a two-hour layover, but I had to go through both Customs and Immigration.  This was largely a smooth process, but it took almost an hour before they sent up the checked baggage from the flight. I had to pick up my checked bags, walk them through customs, just in case they needed to be searched, and then re-check the bags for the next leg of the trip.  By the time I got through security and onto the plane, I only had 5 more minutes till they shut the door, so that was much closer than I would have preferred.

The third leg of the trip was on a smaller 50-passenger plane and we were supposed to be flying through rain, so that had me a bit worried.  I don’t know if we flew around the rain or over it, but we avoided the rain somehow and actually ended up landing in Dayton 15 minutes early. Since I had already done immigration and customs, it was just a matter of picking up the checked luggage and walking to my Dad’s van.  Mom, Dad, and even my brother had stopped in to pick me up.

Naturally I wanted a burrito, but it was after midnight before we got anywhere.   About the only place open was Waffle House.  How many times have you heard me say I miss Waffle House? Never. I don’t even particularly like Waffle House, but it was open.  It wasn’t even that bad.  Sausage, eggs, and hash browns were great, but I really just don’t care for waffles. We mostly just talked about things that had changes around town since I was gone.  My absence has been blamed for four or five restaurant bankruptcies in the past six months.

I got home around 1:30 and had to unpack a few things for the next day. I hopped on the computer very briefly before bed, but not for long. Then I finally got to bed around 3:00 Dayton time. As far as I can tell, it was a 40-hour day for me.  I got up at 7 am on a Thursday and got to bet at 3:00 am on a Friday morning, but with the traveling and time zones, it was a 40-hour “day.”