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.

Why?

Albert Einstein once said that one should "question everything." He was a really smart guy and was pretty much on point with his theory of relativity, so who am I to disagree.

In fact, I've spent the past seven years or so in higher education trying to learn to become and to teach others to become a critical thinker and to ask the dangerous question: why.

Thus, it baffles my mind to live immersed in a culture that shies away from this idea and at times even seems to be afraid of it. Now, certainly, I am generalizing. And three months of living in Japan does not an expert make. However, in my attempt to learn about and acclimate into Japanese culture, I have asked "why" many a time to many a person. And at least 70 percent of the time, the responses I get are some variation of "I don't know," "just because" or "because it's always been this way."

To me, this is alarming. Or should it be? Is it okay to live in the status quo; to generally accept things for what they are without question; and to rarely ask why? If this is your culture, go for it I suppose. After all, ignorance is bliss.

And besides, asking why can be a dangerous action. While a "why" is generally followed by a "because," a because can lead to another "why" and infinite "whys" thereafter. Oh what a slippery slope a "why" can be.

But, I can't help but think that we all have free will and the ability to form and defend opinions for a reason. After all, why would we all be so different if we weren't meant to learn from these differences by asking questions? Why would we live in such a varied and dynamic world if we weren't supposed to explore it and learn from it and question it? It just seems to me that we were created to ask why. So why not?

Maybe some people never read Curious George when they were kids. (after all, everything we need to know, we learned in kindergarten) Maybe others are taking Nike's "Just do it" campaign a little too seriously. Or maybe it isn't that people are afraid of asking why; it is that they are afraid of the answers they might get.

Now there's an interesting thought to chew on.

Regardless of the reason, I still think that asking why is important, if not necessary. Particularly for those of us in democratic nations, isn't it our duty as citizens to ask why?

I just really can't wrap my head around this one.

On life, earthquakes, and Japanese hair dye...

On life...

There are days in the life of every gaijin (foreigner living in Japan) that stand out as being more special than the rest. For some, these days include the first time you are able to successfully order food at a restaurant, the first and last time you try natto (fermented soy beans), and the first time you get really lost on your bicycle and end up 2.5 hours from where you live and were trying to go. For me, today was that day!

Being my day off, and somewhat poor until pay day later this week, I decided to spend the day doing free things around my "city." So, armed with my city map that I picked up at the train station, I hopped on my little blue bicycle (which I have named Baby Blue.. very manly, I know), bought a bento for lunch, and headed toward what appears on the map to be a big temple/park to eat and study Japanese. What a nice and relaxing day in the countryside.

Not so! In Japan, there are generally no road names, and thus, no street signs. While some highways have numbers, signs indicating which number highway you are on are few and far between. So, despite my best efforts, I got lost. Really really lost. I stopped and tried to ask 5 different people for directions, but they were all terrified to talk to a foreigner and were little help. One elderly woman even ran away when I tried to ask her. It was kind of funny for me.

Anyway, after 2.5 hours of cycling through the mountains and rice fields of the Japanese countryside and thinking I was on the right track, I realized I was in an entirely different gcityh not even in the same direction as the park/temple I was trying to get to. I was so determined.. Iwas a man on a mission, but at this point, I gave up. I found a bench to eat my lunch, and then cycled the 2.5 hour route back home. What a wasted day.

My legs are so tired and sore now.

So my question is why! Why have an entire country without street signs? Maybe it is one of those cultural differences that I just donft understand, but seriously! Wouldn't it be so much easier for EVERYONE to get around if there were at least a few signs to guide you??

Other than my accidental adventure today, this week has been pretty chill. I had a picnic with all of my codomo (child) students and their parents yesterday in the park near my apartment. It was really fun and I even cooked and made 21 bento boxes for their lunch.

I also made some really good decisions about what I will do the rest of this year regarding my job/living situation, and about what my next move will be after this year. All in all, it was a good week.

On earthquakes...

On Friday night, I experienced my first earthquake in Japan. It happened around 9:40 at night as I was waiting at the train station for my train to come to go home from work. It was just a baby earthquake, but it was really exciting for me.

Thatfs all.

On Japanese hair dye...

It's blatantly obvious to anyone on the street that I am not Japanese. Everything about me from my hair, to my clothing, to my skin color screams outsider. This leaves me with two options: 1) do my best to study culture and styles here and try unsuccessfully to fit in, or 2) to have fun with it.

I have chosen option 2. Since there is absolutely no chance that I will ever blend in here, I might as well have fun and experiment with different clothing styles and looks. So, that is exactly what I have been doing. I even tried dying my hair. Last week, I tried "crimson brown" and as of today, my hair is "cool ash." It's kind of fun. (in case you were wondering, cool ash is my favorite so far)

On to the whole point of this seemingly random blog...

While my daily adventures, earthquake experience, and recent style/hair color experimentation may seem completely unrelated, I have blogged about them all together for a reason: to show what a different person I have become here.

Those of you that know me know that I am anything but a nature person. I am a hyper-organized urban t-shirt and jeans kind of guy with a low threshold for change. But not here; not now.

My living situation here has forced me to change nearly everything about how I live. Who'd have thought 4 months ago, before I left, that I'd become the type of person that goes to the river (and in the river) nearly every day; someone who owns and uses a bicycle daily; someone who doesnft freak out or panic despite being truly lost in the middle of another country or while experiencing an earthquake; someone who now says things such as "the river is looking low today," and "it looks like the rice is about ready to harvest;" someone who is no longer scared of bugs; and someone who is totally happy living a traditional Japanese life style???? Not it!

But it's true. With the exception of two things, I am as happy as can be here. J

(The two things are the insane obstacles to even trying to find a boyfriend in rural Japan, and my employment situation. Hopefully both will be resolved soon.)