Somewhere in between angering a yakuza-esque hairdresser because of my inability to understand his Japanese and realizing I wasn’t going to get the apartment I wanted because of gaijin-exclusion policies and always being two steps behind during conversations at izakaya and with co-workers, I threw my hands up. I’ll be back to Japan in some capacity (perhaps after law school), but the life of a lower-rung English teacher or editor or translator in that country finally became too much for me.

Gives me a ton of respect for immigrants in all countries, though. Including the USA. You have to WANT it.

To my surprise, in late November, a little over a month after moving across the country, back to Los Angeles (“Plan B”), I got a call from JET, asking me to come to Nagasaki city in January 2013 to fill in for an ALT who broke contract. I accepted, of course, and scrambled my way back to Michigan to get my affairs in order.

I’ve been reading your blog again regularily since coming to Japan, and it’s really helped to keep me grounded this past month. I’ve come to be an ALT at a strange time in my life, given that I studied Japanese for ten years, but that was ten years ago (I’m 32 now). My once-pretty-good Japanese has faltered and over those ten years pursuing a photography career. I forgot over half of my Japanese spoken language, 95% of my kanji, and even a few hiragana and katakana characters here and there. It’s slowly coming back, punctuated by the occasional plateau of uncertainty. That said, there are many times where I feel like my own language processor is overclocked and on the verge of burning out the proverbial power supply. Every one of your posts on this blog has interested me in one way or another, but this one really resonated with where I’m at right now, and I thank you for that. Keep up the good work! :-)

PS: adrenaline junkie – get a blog :)

You definitely hit the nail on the head with your concluding paragraph, Eryk. I think that’s why I love extreme sports/adventures such as skydiving, riding on top of a speedboat down the Amazon River next to a boxed-up corpse that is being sent back to family members in Peru, accidentally illegally entering Bolivia, etc. It’s in those moments when I feel most alive. A dose of adrenaline, if you will. I, too, have to remind myself that this Japan experience is indeed an adventure. As is with all things in life. That is, if I so choose to perceive it as such.

The velocity at which things occur majorly affects how we perceive things.

I guess that’s why an adrenaline rush is an adrenaline rush, right? It’s quick and not consistently occurring. In other words, it’s not routine (though I guess you could argue that you could make it a routine, but, our minds adapt and eventually a once-perceived “adrenaline rush” would become a monotonous routine again – kind of like living in Japan for several years. See: culture shock, honeymoon period, etc.)

I think the key here is that our “overloaded processors” need the “refresh” button hit now and then. For you, for me, for many people I’m assuming, that “refresh” button can come in the form of travel.
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On the note of refreshing, I think that’s what everyone needs, everywhere. Especially when we look at governments and societal structures. For example, I see Japanese bureaucratic institutions as an “overloaded processor” aka one big cluster**** (but I’d say that about any large government organization). People get caught up trying to stay within the rules, follow orders instead of critically thinking for themselves, reading the katakana on the side of the building, being controlled by social pressures. This takes a lot of energy from the people, and they lose focus (regardless if they’re an external or internal locus). They lose the big picture and then BAM! get hit by oncoming traffic, like a recession.

If only there were a way we could hit the “refresh button” for these institutions …

I DID hear though, that Japan might take a week vaca to China for Golden Week. (Or was that the other way around? Oh, was it the Ishihara Resorts now? Can’t keep track of the latest news, too many inaugurations of Prime Ministers filling up the feed).

I remember that I felt helpless in the first few months when I still needed help from my Japanese co-workers. I sat down and studied Japanese as much as possible.
I’m going into my 6th year in Japan now. I’ve travelled to all 47 Japanese prefectures (95% I was traveling alon). I have absolutely no problem to communicate in Japanese.
I rarely ever need help – probably just as much as I’d need back home as well.