Being a Ronin part VIII

While in Japan, working for Interac, I got married.  It was really cool, because when I first went to go ask her parents for permission, I made sure to wear a good suit.  Some buttons got damaged while I was teaching, and the whole teachers room came alive with activity as everyone was trying to help out and wishing me good luck.  Later they all chipped in and gave me an envelope full of money.  Its rare in my life when I feel truly touched, but I did feel that way.
Some of my friends always want to know why I don't talk about my wife often, and its a simple reason... She doesn't like the idea of being on the internet, so while I love her dearly, I don't speak about her online because she asked me to do that.  When I do speak of her, I do so only in the vaguest of terms.

Soon after we registered as husband and wife, I left Japan to get work in the US.  I have to admit, my students really inspired me to make teaching my profession, so I decided to become a social studies teacher in America.  I also got a job again with DJJ.  It was still a messed up position, with me breaking up lots of fights, butting heads and basically being a hard ass, but it was an improvement from when I worked with DJJ before.  It was hard for me because those very hard and strict characteristics which makes a good officer, is very different from what I naturally am.  It allowed me time to take the courses I needed to become a certified teacher.  I also had some time to get a TESL certificate... just in case.  Unfortunately, the five years my wife and I spent in America did not work out and we came to the decision to return to Japan.  There is no more need for teachers in America, so my wife and I chose to go back to where my passions were ignited.  She left in October to get the ball rolling... and so here I am now... waiting to go... I have my spousal visa ready... All I need is the word to go.

And so that is my reflections on being a Ronin...

The wait

The wait...

The beginning sound of this music clip is what is going through my head constantly.  Every T has been crossed and every I has been dotted, so now its just a waiting game... When and where will I be placed in Japan?  How is this going to work out...  When can I start living?  Its all about the wait now.

Its making me slightly mad...

That 2!

Haha... I finally got more than one viewer... I have two!  Haha... I'm such a dork.

Anyways, I am feeling in a rather hyped mood today.  A strange feeling since I was pretty relaxed about an hour ago.  One thing I am going to miss, is sitting on the back porch while listening to distant thunder from a storm that will only brush us, but enough to kick up a cool breeze.  I can just look up at the clouds, hear the wind rustle the leaves and the cicadas hum.  Yeah... Im going to miss that.  Being Independence day however, the kids are now shooting off fireworks.  I can look forward to seeing all the trash in the morning from it.

Japan: The greatest hits...

When I was in Japan, the highlights of my stays there are... Not in any sort of order...

1)  My first trip to Kyoto!!! My parents and one sister came and visited, and believe it or not, I got to lavish my father with a meeting with Geisha at a tea house in in Gion!  How did I manage this?  I did some research and I found a Canadian fellow who does tours, and is the only foreigner on Earth that had the necessary connections..  Peter MacIntosh.  It so happened that NHK even got involved with this one and we were part of a documentary!  They bought my dad the chocolate cake.  The Geisha were amazing, and so skilled in the arts.  They danced and played shamisen for us.  They are also experts in drinking games, and soundly kicked my ass.  This is really number one, as most Japanese do not get to experience this closed world either.  I believe that particular tea house closed, but if anyone is ever in Kyoto.. really...  get a tour with Peter at kyotosightsandnights.com!!!

 Later, we went to Hiroshima (honestly unimpressed), Himeji castle (really impressed) and then Miyajima (freakin awesome!!!)

Front gate to Jizoin... Oh... and exgirlfriend...

2) My second trip to Kyoto!!!! haha.  Honestly, my first trip was so whirlwind, we didn't really get to see much of Kyoto at all.  I went with my girlfriend at the time, so she appears in a lot of my pictures.  The highlights of my Kyoto trip was Sanjusangendo and Jizoin.  The latter being a small shrine hidden in a bamboo forests almost unknown to tourists, which makes it so quiet and peaceful.

Stock image of the inside of Sanjusangendo

 

 

 

 

 

3) Trip to Nagano and the winery in Yamanashi with my wife.  Late in the cherry blossom season, my wife and I went on a bus tour of a famous park in Nagano to see the cherry blossoms.  It was so awesome up there.  I was using a pretty crappy camera at the time, so the colors seemed a bit washed out.  Later we stopped at a winery on the way back and sampled wines.. and resampled them, making sure they were all of the finest quality.

4) The Fuji fiasco.  Ok... I tried to hike up fuji once.  You do it in August from the fifth station, which is halfway up the mountain.  Once we got there, a frickin taifun came!  We ended up having to stay in an overpriced hovel to wait it out.  Of course next day it started to break... but it just didnt happen.  Perhaps one day I will conquer Fuji... but it kicked my ass that time around.

Fuji in the process of kicking my ass.  Oh.. and another exgirlfriend...

Being a Ronin part VI

The Interac years...

Me playing for Aogumi on sports day.  This is with the 1st year kids at Ichihara-chu.  They were fantastic kids!

Being at NOVA was not all that bad.  There were people who had a far worse time of it, but in my experience, many of those same people had 'entitlement issues'.  They often seemed like they wanted Japan to conform to them as opposed to them conforming to Japan... Sorry, there is no middle ground on the issue, but for those who have spent more than a couple of years there, it starts to become a big issue that a balance has to be struck on.  Its also true that working at a country school for NOVA was the best way to go.  Big city schools had every kind of manager wanting to stick their fingers in a the pie, and pissing off everyone else in the process.  In the country, everyone was a lot more relaxed and had fun compared to their city counterparts.  Truly though, it was the Japanese staff that got screwed over the most when it came to work demands.  As for me, I saw a lot of the crookedness NOVA was up to, and I wont lie... Being someone that had taken on a lot of extra responsibilities, I had a sense of entitlement myself.  I honestly think what did it was I used to get very steady yearly raises because of my performance except for my last year there.  Their reason was because I had too many sick days.  That was true, I got really sick and missed almost 2 weeks straight.  I have never been as sick in my life in fact...  The first time you get the flu overseas is a real trial simply because your body has no defense against that particular strain of influenza...  I shit you not there were a couple times that I thought I was about to die.  I actually should have gone to the hospital for that, but I am far too stubborn I guess.  I thought I was getting punished enough with 2 weeks of no salary...  We had no sick days, and they would not allow me to use my paid leave for some odd reason...  But 10 days of unscheduled leave was too much to considered for a raise.  I lobbied against that train of thought and I actually made them a graph of how, overall I was still becoming more and more skilled at my job...  They still didn't bite and that pissed me off, so I quit.  No... I didn't rage quit, I looked for another position, quit, went home for Christmas, then started a new job with Interac.

Interac was pretty cool as far as how the management dealt with you in comparison to NOVA.  I was almost given free reign to do whatever.  I pretty much worked by myself, going from Junior High and Elementary schools in Kimitsu.  Their Board of Education had me working at schools for a couple of months before going to a new school, which kind of sucked since I never really got a chance to connect with any of the kids.  My salary with Interac was almost 50,000 yen less a month than NOVA however... Thats a whole month worth of rent, so I started looking for a new place.  I found a tiny little apartment in downtown Chiba (a video of that place is in an earlier post).  When I moved there, they shifted my working area to Ichihara, and I would work at a Junior Highschool for 6 months before cycling to another.  I would also go to an Elementary school once every two weeks, and usually the same one.  Once a month, all the foreign teachers would meet for a few hours.  It was an odd grouping of people which consisted of this one guy from NY who was a fluent Japanese speaker.  He was a really great guy and I always enjoyed talking with him.  There was another entitled guy from Alabama who thought the whole country was dumb, but enjoyed the beer in Japan.  He was a pretty brazen outspoken guy, who I was pretty indifferent to.  There was also this really quiet little Asian girl who wouldn't speak.  I felt really bad for her because we had a pretty intense little group. I tried to be social with her when I could, but she would usually recoil from me pretty quickly.  Later by coincidence, I found a blog she had written and she verbally tore me a new one there.  I guess no deed goes unpunished...  I will post something more about that later, but for now I have written enough

Greased lightning

No... This has nothing to do with show tunes, Olivia Newton, or John Travolta.  It has to do with my visa... It came... Jumpin Jesus on a pogo stick that was fast!  I sent in my COE 1st day priority mail from UPS with return shipping on Tuesday, which was picked up around 4pm.  Fortunately I could ship it using my works account for a huge discount.  It was shipped back today (Thursday) and arrived at noon.  When I got it, I was expecting that I was missing something, because it got there on Wednesday morning and shipped out later that day...  But it was all there.  Its a really cool laser sticker with all kinds of security wing dings on it... There is a massive difference from my working Visa from 2001... Which was just a stamp...

I just sent a scanned copy of the visa, so the ball is in their court.  They said it will probably be August-ish for me... but we will see...