My entire stay in Japan originated because of my interest in Japanese. It wasn’t a particularly serious interest at first, but I discovered somewhat to my surprise that I really liked studying that language. It was only natural that once I actually got to Japan, I continued my studies, even though it meant paying almost [...]
When I first arrived in-country, I had a weekend of training and a week of dual-teaching with the prior teacher before officially taking over the position. It’s a useful system; my predecessor didn’t have a lot to say about teaching, but he did get me familiar enough with the local area enough that I could [...]
It’s pretty much a tautology to say that the tastes of individuals are varied. Somehow, it was still a surprise to learn that entire societies have tastes, and they vary even more widely. Japanese food peculiarities go way beyond sushi; that’s just the part that gets exported to the world. In a Japanese grocery store, [...]
Bicycling is big in Japan. Between the expense inherent in the car, the expense the government pays for registration and inspections, and the expense in parking, cars are just too expensive for everyday use for many people. Still, they need some way to handle medium-distance personal travel, and bicycles fit the bill nicely. One of [...]
Japan has been crowded for as long as anyone can remember. Even in prehistoric times, when the very first boatload of proto-japanese people landed and set up a settlement, they built their town in an area the size of a basketball court and reserved the rest of the land for a mixture of golf courses [...]
Socialization posed an interesting problem while I lived in Japan. I was the only fluent speaker of English in quite a large radius. I interacted socially with some of my adult students, but there was no way to be completely unreserved with them: they were my students; they paid for my livelihood. Almost as important [...]
One of the nicest things about living in Japan was that there was always something new and unique to see anytime I felt like going out to find it. Going to a new country, you expect to be surprised and delighted by the differences at first, but for the novelty to gradually fade. I suppose [...]
Logistically, it worked out best for me to fly east from Boston Logan to London Heathrow to Tokyo Narita, a trip which involves 26 hours of flight time and another 12 of waiting in airports. The time difference from Eastern Standard Time to Japan Time is 13 hours forward. I arrived at Logan at 3am [...]
Coming up into senior year of college, I had too many credits. Taking just the courses required for graduation would have left me with only a single class in the second semester. The school wouldn’t discount me a semester’s tuition even if I finished early, and my scholarships vanished if I dropped to part-time student [...]
When I was in Japan teaching, I never worked more than five hours in a day. I just didn’t have a high volume of business there. Today, I got home ten and a half hours after setting out to go to work, looked at my watch, and was happy because I had got out early. [...]