It hit me recently that when I told my family I was moving to Japan, they didn't argue with that decision. They didn't even grill me on the details of why. It was just kinda accepted. So I haven't really been forced to articulate why I needed to come here, why I needed to work for a Japanese company. Other than I needed to. There's a reason there, but its worrisome I can't articulate it better.
That worry and doubt of course leads to asking if this is the right path for me, when there were any number of options that didn't involve leaving the states. (Most of them revolved around gainful employment, which I wasn't otherwise finding, but that's a different story.) But thinking about this in November, when I went back to campus for The Game and had a chance to see a glimpse of what my college friends were up to, something else hit me:
"Oh crap. Everyone's so much happier than me".
Maybe "happier" wasn't the right word for it. "Doing better"?
I was jealous of how much of the college network everyone else seemed to retain even after moving away. A staggering proportion of my JE friends ended up in the DC area, and get to see each other all the time. A further staggering amount of couples stayed together, something I had considered so impossible after my own experiences with distance. I thought it so impossible that I didn't even dare to ask before Graduation what they were planning on doing afterwards, assuming it would be a touchy subject. Most everyone had jobs in something they really wanted to do (at this point I was still jobhunting and feeling pretty anxious about it).
Nobody else had an hour commute to and from work, nobody else had lost 10 pounds because of a spartan budget, nobody else struggled with something so basic as buying groceries because they couldn't read the label.
Of course, some of this is just the inevitably human tendency of thinking the grass is always greener. And realistically, I'm sure everyone else has their share of difficult things they're dealing with that I didn't get during our too short (always too short) reunions. In the day and a half of alumni coming back to campus, I only got serious, lengthy conversations with a small handful of people as I tried to see everyone at overlapping events.
Corinna (one of my JE friends, who of course knows lots of other friends from college working near her in NY, and has a comfy living situation, and is still together with her college sweetheart, yadayada) came for a visit two weeks ago on her way to visit her family in China, and spent the weekend at my place. It was great to see her for many reasons, including making the world feel a little more connected, that a Yale friend might casually drop in to Shinkawasaki station for a visit. She also provided me with perhaps a much-needed dose of perspective.
To a lot of my friends, I'm the one with the enviable position, the incredible freedom to jetset around the world. Somebody is paying me, not because I produce a profit for them, but so that I can invest in myself. I'm in such a fantastical wonderland every day that seeing Mt. Fuji or eating fried squid is mundane.
Corinna is very wise. Also she brought these AWESOME maple cream cookies. God bless Canada.
Again, because I am delinquent on pictures, instead please look at the internet-famous Shironeko blog, a series of videos devoted to stacking things on top of cats.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Third Semester
We're now two weeks into the third semester of classes, and its been a haul.
Here's a breakdown of my week:
Politics & Economics - M&Th, 10:00 -12:00
This is fun because I know diddly squat about economics and now I'm learning about them in my non-native language. But we're using articles taken from a college level textbook, which is in itself pretty exciting. The reading for this class tends to be the toughest assignments I have, if for no other reason I can't keep track of all the different departments in the many layers of bureaucracy.
Modern Japanese History - MTuThF, 1:30 -3:00
The first day we talked about Meiji, and I was all "Yaaaaay this was my senior essay topic I can say lots and people will think I'm smart yaaaaay" and then by day 2 we had moved past Meiji. And then I was sad. The class covers from 1900 to the present, but the bulk of the material is Postwar stuff.
Integrated Japanese - TuW, 10:00-12:00
Nothing too exciting, just a straight-up grammar class. Homework is usually just writing example sentences for a grammar pattern, so its comparatively pretty manageable.
Business Japanese - F 10:00-12:00
The first hour involves roleplays of set phrase and interactions with keigo (the elevated, I-am-sorry-for-committing-an-inconvenience-upon-you-by-my-very-existence style of speaking), and the second hour is a series of practical workshops on resumes, interviews, stuff like that. Since I'm the one person in the class already with a job lined up, I was volunteered to go first for the panel interview next week. It will be a six on one interview with the other students poring over my resume and preparing questions as representatives of the company. The Sensei will play the role of (what I think translates to) "Chief Tormentor" and be mean to me. To see how fast I cave under pressure. Waaaaah T_T
Outside of the regular classes, there's also...
Calligraphy painting - Tu 3:15-5:00
My handwriting is lousy to begin with, but that's all the more reason to try to learn the stylized painting techniques for kanji characters. I still don't excel, but I'm approaching what I might dare to call adequacy. The teacher compliments us (in all sincerity) "oh look how good you're getting at writing your own name!". Makes me feel a little bit like a kindergardener. The sensei also tells me that my characters have their own "distinct interestingness", (独特な面白さ）which I think is a polite way of saying I'm doing it wrong.
By the way, the characters I chose to spell my name are
井惇 (Eaton: "well" and "considerate")
伊雷 (Eli: "having style" and "thunder")
Business - Th 3:15-5:00
This is different than my Business Japanese class, and also different from the Business & Society class additionally offered by the center. (You'd think they'd be more creative with names). Its the only lecture class I've had here, and also the least interesting. We receive upwards of 30 pages of charts and graphs each time, and the teacher points out a couple fun facts, without a very clear path of where he's going. Someone best described it as the kind of one-sided conversation you have when you sit down next to the drunk old guy at the bar.
Apart from just the class hours, school day itself is pretty long--I'm almost always in the building by 9 AM preparing for morning, working through lunch to prepare for afternoon class, and staying until the building closes around 5 doing homework, so I keep myself pretty busy.
In lieu of having pretty pictures, I shall instead introduce something else japanese-y. The cellphone carrier Softbank has a commercial campaign centering around the antics of the Shirato family, mainly starring the iconic white dog Otoosan (Dad). I'm not sure how these commercials sell phones, but they're entertaining. Softbank also manages to sell a lot of Otoosan merchandise in the process.
Here's a breakdown of my week:
Politics & Economics - M&Th, 10:00 -12:00
This is fun because I know diddly squat about economics and now I'm learning about them in my non-native language. But we're using articles taken from a college level textbook, which is in itself pretty exciting. The reading for this class tends to be the toughest assignments I have, if for no other reason I can't keep track of all the different departments in the many layers of bureaucracy.
Modern Japanese History - MTuThF, 1:30 -3:00
The first day we talked about Meiji, and I was all "Yaaaaay this was my senior essay topic I can say lots and people will think I'm smart yaaaaay" and then by day 2 we had moved past Meiji. And then I was sad. The class covers from 1900 to the present, but the bulk of the material is Postwar stuff.
Integrated Japanese - TuW, 10:00-12:00
Nothing too exciting, just a straight-up grammar class. Homework is usually just writing example sentences for a grammar pattern, so its comparatively pretty manageable.
Business Japanese - F 10:00-12:00
The first hour involves roleplays of set phrase and interactions with keigo (the elevated, I-am-sorry-for-committing-an-inconvenience-upon-you-by-my-very-existence style of speaking), and the second hour is a series of practical workshops on resumes, interviews, stuff like that. Since I'm the one person in the class already with a job lined up, I was volunteered to go first for the panel interview next week. It will be a six on one interview with the other students poring over my resume and preparing questions as representatives of the company. The Sensei will play the role of (what I think translates to) "Chief Tormentor" and be mean to me. To see how fast I cave under pressure. Waaaaah T_T
Outside of the regular classes, there's also...
Calligraphy painting - Tu 3:15-5:00
My handwriting is lousy to begin with, but that's all the more reason to try to learn the stylized painting techniques for kanji characters. I still don't excel, but I'm approaching what I might dare to call adequacy. The teacher compliments us (in all sincerity) "oh look how good you're getting at writing your own name!". Makes me feel a little bit like a kindergardener. The sensei also tells me that my characters have their own "distinct interestingness", (独特な面白さ）which I think is a polite way of saying I'm doing it wrong.
By the way, the characters I chose to spell my name are
井惇 (Eaton: "well" and "considerate")
伊雷 (Eli: "having style" and "thunder")
Business - Th 3:15-5:00
This is different than my Business Japanese class, and also different from the Business & Society class additionally offered by the center. (You'd think they'd be more creative with names). Its the only lecture class I've had here, and also the least interesting. We receive upwards of 30 pages of charts and graphs each time, and the teacher points out a couple fun facts, without a very clear path of where he's going. Someone best described it as the kind of one-sided conversation you have when you sit down next to the drunk old guy at the bar.
Apart from just the class hours, school day itself is pretty long--I'm almost always in the building by 9 AM preparing for morning, working through lunch to prepare for afternoon class, and staying until the building closes around 5 doing homework, so I keep myself pretty busy.
In lieu of having pretty pictures, I shall instead introduce something else japanese-y. The cellphone carrier Softbank has a commercial campaign centering around the antics of the Shirato family, mainly starring the iconic white dog Otoosan (Dad). I'm not sure how these commercials sell phones, but they're entertaining. Softbank also manages to sell a lot of Otoosan merchandise in the process.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Oh hey look I have a blog (明けましておめでとう）
I have been hardcore neglecting this blog. More backlogs of stories to come, but a couple things for now:
I have employable job skills! (lolwut)
I went back to the states in November for the Boston Career Forum, the world's largest English/Japanese career forum. So I flew to 11 hours to Boston to interview with companies that also flew to Boston, even though their Tokyo offices are generally about 30-40 minutes from my apartment. Yeah. I had a hard time explaining that one.
BUT- a couple weeks after I got back, I got a full employment offer from Rakuten. Just accepted it right before the new year, so for the first time in 15 months I am not thinking about a job search, at all. Funny thing though: I still know very little about the concrete job details.
Fastest explanation of Rakuten is that its the Amazon of Japan, but it also has a lot of subsidiaries including travel, electronic money, investments, even wedding planning. When I start in October I'll have a month or two of training/evaluation and then they'll put me where the they think I'd be the best fit. Seems like this should work out well for somebody with an interest in everything but necessarily "tangible" job skills (oh hey, me!). But my various investigations into company atmosphere and happiness of current employees give me good vibes. (doesn't hurt that the pay is probably the most I could get as a new grad without going into finance and banking)
Did a lot of studying over the break, and most notably, I finished the exams on all 1945 of the Jōyō kanji (daily use characters), the characters required in primary/secondary education and generally used as a guideline of basic reading proficiency for newspapers and such.
Of course, the list was updated two years ago to now include 2136 characters. (jerk move, Ministry of Education). But when I originally set the goal to master all the Jōyō kanji, there were only 1945 at the time. So it still counts.
Third semester starts on Monday, reputed to be the hardest term academically. I'll be adding an Econ class, a business Japanese class, and a contemporary history class. The work so far seems challenging and interesting, and by this point we're using pretty much exclusively textbooks intended for native speakers.
To make this post more interesting, a mildly offensive (but still hilarious) example of how Japanese pop groups don't quite get how its insensitive to parody other cultures. T-ara, which is actually a korean pop group that also produces Japanese versions of their hits, dress up like Tiger Lily, and wave their palms over their mouths going "wowowowowowowo" as they dance around the teepees:
I have employable job skills! (lolwut)
I went back to the states in November for the Boston Career Forum, the world's largest English/Japanese career forum. So I flew to 11 hours to Boston to interview with companies that also flew to Boston, even though their Tokyo offices are generally about 30-40 minutes from my apartment. Yeah. I had a hard time explaining that one.
BUT- a couple weeks after I got back, I got a full employment offer from Rakuten. Just accepted it right before the new year, so for the first time in 15 months I am not thinking about a job search, at all. Funny thing though: I still know very little about the concrete job details.
Fastest explanation of Rakuten is that its the Amazon of Japan, but it also has a lot of subsidiaries including travel, electronic money, investments, even wedding planning. When I start in October I'll have a month or two of training/evaluation and then they'll put me where the they think I'd be the best fit. Seems like this should work out well for somebody with an interest in everything but necessarily "tangible" job skills (oh hey, me!). But my various investigations into company atmosphere and happiness of current employees give me good vibes. (doesn't hurt that the pay is probably the most I could get as a new grad without going into finance and banking)
Did a lot of studying over the break, and most notably, I finished the exams on all 1945 of the Jōyō kanji (daily use characters), the characters required in primary/secondary education and generally used as a guideline of basic reading proficiency for newspapers and such.
Of course, the list was updated two years ago to now include 2136 characters. (jerk move, Ministry of Education). But when I originally set the goal to master all the Jōyō kanji, there were only 1945 at the time. So it still counts.
Third semester starts on Monday, reputed to be the hardest term academically. I'll be adding an Econ class, a business Japanese class, and a contemporary history class. The work so far seems challenging and interesting, and by this point we're using pretty much exclusively textbooks intended for native speakers.
To make this post more interesting, a mildly offensive (but still hilarious) example of how Japanese pop groups don't quite get how its insensitive to parody other cultures. T-ara, which is actually a korean pop group that also produces Japanese versions of their hits, dress up like Tiger Lily, and wave their palms over their mouths going "wowowowowowowo" as they dance around the teepees:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)