Eye of the beholder

Those of you that know me know that I am a huge country music fan. I'm not however a Garth Brooks fan. So, when one of his songs accidentally happens to pop up on my iTunes playlist, I usually quickly skip it and move on to the next and hopefully better song.

However, a little while ago, a catchy little old school duet by him and Trisha Yearwood came on called In Another's Eyes. On first listen, I didn't think much of it. But once I started paying closer attention to the lyrics, I began to totally love the song and the message it was trying to say.

In another's eyes
I'm someone who
Loves her enough to walk away from you
I'd never cheat and I would never lie
In another's eyes, yeah

Although the song mostly deals with relationships and trust therein, the song got me thinking about how to different people, we are different things/roles. I guess a better way to say that, is that everyone has a different perspective on who and how we are. It's pretty amazing to me that every single person that I meet, even for a second, will forever have a unique opinion/perspective of me, and definition/description of me, my actions, and my personality.

And what is even more amazing to me, is that to each person, their own unique perspective of me is truth. It's all in the eye of the beholder. While it may be true for one person that I am a nice and caring person, it may also be true for someone else that has met me that I am a mean and heartless person.

I personally don't believe the latter to be true, but that is just my perspective of my self. And I guess the notion of self really is just that, another perspective.
There's really not much point to this blog, other than 1) to share what I think is a pretty interesting and possibly thought provoking idea, and 2) to remind us that even introverts like me, which typically spend so much time and energy looking inward need to remember that we are all connected in a pretty amazing way and that the external matters too.

I've been reading a really fascinating book called Buddha which is essentially a biography of the Buddha's life and spiritual journey. (I highly recommend the book) Pulling from the song and the book, I finally feel like I am starting to put it all together. Like some big spiritual jigsaw puzzle.

It's all just about being a good person and doing the right thing. It's pretty simple: when we do the right thing, we feel good. When we do bad things, we may not feel bad right away, but guilt or remorse almost always follow at some point. I think maybe we just have taken this really simple idea and made it really really complicated. And when you think about it, almost all of the many different religions in the world talk in some way about the notion of doing the right thing.

They just seem to be variations of the same idea. We even come fully equipped with our very own moral compass to guide us in deciding what is right from what is wrong. It just seems so simply obvious now.

If we live our life doing the right thing and doing good for others; refraining from selfish or unethical behavior, we will live peaceful and un-conflicted lives, die with a feeling of peacefulness, but live on forever in the infinite perspectives of us from everyone we meet along the way.

If you can't tell already, by no choice of my own, I seem to have ended up in the middle of Japan on a bit of a spiritual journey myself. These ideas are just that; ideas that have come to me along the way. So please totally disregard them if they are crazy, or please think about them and let me know what you think if they seem to make sense or be on the right track to something.

Peace out.

Chris solves world problems, part 1

Note: this blog is not meant to be taken seriously or offensively.

Last weekend, I found myself in Osaka and just happened to end up at a Mexican festival celebrating Mexican Independence Day. How fun, I thought.

What a great way to meet some new people and maybe even enjoy some delicious (and hard to come by) Mexican food. So, I went along with my two Japanese friends, only to discover that there was not a Mexican person anywhere in sight. I looked and looked, but the entire festival consisted of all Japanese people and one American (me). Only in Japan would there be a Mexican festival without any actual Mexicans.

I did enjoy a refreshing Corona though. :)

Anyway, recently as you know, there have been huge problems and even protests over illegal immigration into the United States, predominantly by Mexicans. Evidenced by the Mexican-less Mexican festival in Osaka last weekend, there also seems to be a desperate need for a Mexican presence in Japan.

So, I say: People of Mexico: if you are thinking about illegally moving to America, head to Japan instead. Cranky border patrolling conservative Americans will be happy, and the fine people of Osaka can finally stop dressing in sombreros and trying to speak with a horrible Japanese-Mexican accent at their annual festival.

Problem solved. Next up: world peace.

Adventures in Japan

Many people write me asking me what it is like living in Japan. So, I thought I'd share some of the high points of my very typical Saturday.

12 pm – went to the beach to study Japanese

1 pm – saw two huge grasshoppers mating next to my beach chair. They apparently thought I'd like to watch. Turns out that I did.

6 pm – went to Nagoya and studied Japanese at Starbucks
6:15pm – guy at Starbucks put 5 shots of espresso in my latte for some reason
8 pm – found a lone box of Kraft Easy Mac at the international grocery store and nearly had an orgasm out of excitement
8:01 pm – realized that that would have been weird
9 pm – went to my favorite gay bar in Nagoya and was hit on by a really hot Japanese guy
9:45 pm – found out that he was only 19 years old
12:30 am – cycled home from the train station and was again reminded of the importance of keeping my mouth closed when I cycle at night so that bugs don't fly in
2:30 am – laid awake cursing the Starbucks guy for giving me the 5 shots of espresso that were keeping me from falling asleep

So, as you can see, I am every bit the same loveable dork that I was in America. Hopefully this gives you some picture of how similar but slightly different my life is here.

Turning 25

Yep. Ol' Chris is about to reach the quarter century mark in just under 2 weeks.

Am I excited to be getting old (25 just seems so old and grown up), nope! In fact, I would kind of prefer to just let it slip by unnoticed.

However, I still want presents. haha J What kind of present do you get for someone living in a far away country you ask?

iTunes gift cards! Lots of them!

iTunes is my connection to current pop culture, including American tv shows which I can watch again and again. So really, a gift card is the gift that just keeps on giving.

How do you get the card to me? Even easier, just send me a message with the code.

Seriously, I'm only kidding. But if by any chance you do want to get me something for my birthday, or just because, an iTunes gift card is perfect and would make me really happy.

I quit!

I love Japan.
I love living here.
I love the food.I love the people.
I love my students.
And I love teaching.

What I don't love, is my job. I'm not going to name my company, as that is super unprofessional, but suffice it to say, I am really unhappy there. And the situation is bad enough, that I realized that it is time to be brave and quit.

Japan is loaded with awful employers (English schools) that take advantage of and treat their foreign employees badly. I thought that I had done the right research and had picked a good one, but I guess I was wrong. Nearly everything I was told during my interview turned out to be a variation of the truth.

My grievences are too numerous to name, but some of the big ones include having to spend more than 50 hours at my 29.5 hour per week job, being forced to eat lunch and dinner 5 days a week from a convenience store, being forced and rewarded for milking my students out of every cent they have, being forced to teach more than the maximum number of classes listed in my contract, only to find out that the maximum number is something that is completely disregarded by my company, having to commute nearly 2.5 hours a day, and working at a company that consistently makes my Japanese coworkers cry as a way to "motivate" them to achieve their absurdly high and unattainable profit goals.

This isn't for me. And to be honest, it goes against my morals to even work at a company like this. So, on Friday, I drafted a carefully worded letter of resignation, and early yesterday afternoon, I resigned my position.

I don't have a job or anything lined up yet, but I gave 4 months notice (what my contract says I must do, but in practice isn't enforced), so I have lots of time to figure it out. I feel very guilty about leaving my students this way, but in my heart and in my head, I know that this is the right decision.

So, my last day will be January 10, 2007. After that, some options include:

Finding an assistant teacher position in a public elementary school or kindergarten.
Finding a part time job, and finding private students to teach.
Finding a non-english teacher position.
Moving to Thailand or Indonesia to teach.

I thought that I would feel really scared to have quit my job in a foreign country, but actually, I feel totally liberated. There are so many options and places I can go and things I can do. I'm really glad that I made this decision.

GWM iso LTR

Being a gay foreigner in deepest rural Japan is very difficult. Before I came to Japan, I already knew that Japanese culture generally isn't very accepting of homosexuality, and that there would be many challenges for me. And there are many challenges. Challenges such as my only coworker not being comfortable with me being gay. Challenges such as some of my students saying obvious and derogatory comments about gay people to me. (some of my students know and some don't) And of course, there are many challenges associated with the language barrier.

But despite these challenges, I have remained positive. I've bought books and maps to find gay bars. I've scoured the internet, yet I can not find a single gay person that lives within 30 minutes of me in any direction.

The reason for this blog is that this weekend has been pretty tough for me in terms of this. To be perfectly honest, although I have a number of friends here, I am quite lonely for the companionship of a relationship. On Saturday night, I ended up going to a really romantic restaurant with two friends, and while they talked all night about their respective partners, I sat there alone. Then, last night, some of my friends wanted to go to the gay bar that I finally found in Nagoya and go to sometimes, but the bar master wouldn't let them come in because they were not gay, and it was really awkward for me. Now, I feel too awkward to go back there, which is bad because that was my one venue to meet people.

I know that neither of these incidents is a big deal, but for whatever reason, they made me feel really sad and epitomized all of the difficulties I've experienced here because of my sexuality. It just made me feel completely hopeless about ever meeting someone while I'm here, which is a long time.

I know that I'm being a little dramatic, and I've spent the past two department holiday parties on the singles couch, so I'm no stranger to being single.

I guess I just wish it were easier.

Hair Disaster!

Japan has many disasters: earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons; but none are as devastating or surprising as the hair disaster. Those of you who have read my previous blogs know that I recently have begun experimenting with different clothing styles and hair colors. I first tried a dark reddish-brown, which looked pretty good, and then I tried a color called cool ash, which I think looked great. Well, I got a little carried away yesterday and decided to try blonde hair.

This was a big mistake. It didn't just look bad. It looked awful. Really really awful. But, I had a big night out planned in Nagoya, so I cycled back to the drug store and bought another box (a medium brown) to fix it before going out. Problem solved, right?

Nope! Because I had so recently dyed my hair the blonde color, the brown didn't really take, and instead turned my hair a pinkish-orange color. I thought it looked bad, but everyone told me that it looked decent enough. So, I went out to Nagoya last night and rocked the pinkish-orange hair. (It takes a hell of a lot of confidence to walk around a major city with orange hair)

Anyway, when I came home this morning, I of course wanted to fix it, so I dyed it dark brown. Surely this worked right? NOPE!!! Now my hair is golden-brown. But, in the light, it just looks gold!

Needless to say, I have learned my lesson about dying my hair and won't do it again. I guess I will just go with the gold until it grows out and I can cut my hair again next weekend. Either that or I will just start coloring every hair with a black sharpie.

Another very deep and philosophical, yet interesting blog

When I was a kid, I did pretty much as I was told, except with regard to religion. In that area, I was always something of a rebel, as I am a firm believer that you can't force religious beliefs upon someone; people have to choose to believe for themselves. So, despite being forced to go to Sunday school for many years and constant pressure from my family, I strayed away from my Catholic upbringing and have developed my own set of beliefs, in which I am very confident. (I think of these beliefs more as spiritual beliefs than religious beliefs)

Among these beliefs has always been the notion that everything that happens, happens for a reason. So, as I was relaxing at my beach (in my new blue beach chair) and listening to Norah Jones yesterday, I began to wonder if maybe the reason that my company ignored my preference to live in a city and stuck me out in the middle of nowhere, is to teach me a valuable lesson: that many times, the things that we think we want, arenft always what are best for us, or that happiness can happen anywhere.

Somehow from there, my thoughts strayed and I began to think about the whole concept of everything happening for a reason, and the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous the whole idea began to seem.

There are currently 6.5 billion people on the planet. The idea that somehow every thought, action, and inaction has been mapped out for these, as well as all past and future generations is a hard pill to swallow. There also is a huge contradiction between each individual having their own free will, and the idea that their destiny has been pre-planned. The two ideas seem to be mutually exclusive. But, even if you can get past these two problems, you have to agree that there seems to be little if any point for such an enormous plan. If [insert your God of choice] has the power to create an entire species and map out its entire existence, why not just skip ahead to the end? Why waste all the time of scripting us to get there ourselves? I hardly can believe that [insert your God of choice] is sitting around somewhere in one of those reclining massage chairs eating Doritos and watching us live out his/her plan, as if the Earth is some sort of eons long Imax movie.

So, I decided that I no longer believe that everything happens for a reason. This lead me to question why so many people believe what seems to me to be such a ridiculous idea, and I have come up with a theory.

In general, people don't like things that they don't understand, making difficult decisions, or accepting responsibility. Well, conveniently, the idea that everything happens for a reason eliminates all three. Take death for example: when we don't understand why someone had to die, we say that it was all part of God's plan and that the Lord works in mysterious ways. When we need to make difficult choices, the idea that everything happens for a reason essentially removes all pressure, since theoretically, whatever choice we make, we were supposed to make. And when someone looses their job, we comfort them by saying that it all happened for a reason, instead of the awful truth: that maybe they deserved to be fired.

I think that this entire concept is one that we created to make ourselves happier.

Therefore, if things don't happen for a reason, then by default, it would appear that things just happen. They are what they are. This means that we should stop making lame ass excuses for things and start accepting responsibility for our choices and actions. If we don't understand things, we should explore them and try to figure them out. And most importantly, we shouldn't waste so much time looking for and assigning non-existent meaning to the past and worrying about finding our purpose in the future. Things happened in the past because we chose to make them happen. And if there is no master plan for our lives, our destinies are ours to create. Just do things that make you happy and let that be your purpose. It's kind of arrogant to begin with to even assume that humans, as one of thousands of species on this planet, are even supposed to have a purpose or anything more than to procreate and fulfill our role in the food chain/ecosystem.

So, I think that we should all just relax. Live in the present; we'll have plenty of time to worry about the future when it gets here. And hold ourselves accountable for our choices, letting both our conscience (it's there for a reason) and our HAPPINESS guide those choices.

What would that be like?

I know that this is probably super boring to read and is probably all covered in day 1 of any philosophy 101 class, but it's interesting to me and I've never taken any philosophy classes. In some ways, I feel a little bit like Julie from the Real World New Orleans...I have tons of time to sit and think, and am questioning and refining my beliefs and opinions daily. (only Julie was 9000 times more dramatic than me. And she cried a lot and was kind of annoying.)

I'm really curious to know what other people think of these ideas, so please let me know.