In Like Flynn

Honestly, I don’t even know where that reference comes from.

But I think it makes sense.  I went back to the Taiko group I went to last week, and practiced for a good couple hours.  Best exercise I’ve had in a while.   I’m going to go watch some shows with them on Sunday too.  Pretty sure I’m in this one for the long haul.  Check that off the list of things to accomplish.

And oh yeah, I got the days off to go to Obama city for the election =)  I can’t wait…it’s going to be a big day when two Americans stroll into Obama wearing Obama shirts and buttons and ready to party hard.  I plan to be just as happy and crazy as I was depressed four years ago on the same day.

I have a few days of vacation/weekend after the election, so I will probably go to Tokyo and spend it seeing exchange student friends of mine from Waseda that I haven’t seen in a year, or two or three for some of them…depending on whether I get the last day I requested off too, I may have a 9-day vacation coming up.  I hope so, because that would be just incredibly epic.  But if not, Obama and Tokyo should make for a pretty damn memorable 5 days.

Overall, my schedule has become more full than I thought it would be.  I have to get up at 6-6:30 to make it to school on time, then I spend most of the day around a lot of people speaking Japanese really fast, and then I get back at 5-5:30 pm and just veg a lot.  That’s been the pattern for most of the past 2 1/2 months, with some notable exceptions and very slow but steady improvement.

Adjusting is an interesting process, and it’s different than I thought it would be.  I never really experienced culture shock in the regular sense, or felt alone, or scared, or homesick even, really (though I do miss the good beer and coffee…).  Adjusting for me has mostly been about the subtleties of life here that have taxed me while I barely notice.  The attention and focus that I give to trying to understand every Japanese word that comes out of someone’s mouth on the bus, in the teacher’s room, from my kids, all the time.  In the U.S. I just tune all of it out as background noise, as we all do.  But when it’s in Japanese, I want to know what people are saying.

I also just found out that I have to decide by November 13 whether to recontract for another year or not.  That is in a mere three weeks and only a few days after I return from my epic journey across Japan.  This was a surprise to me because the formal time to recontract is in February.  But apparently Isahaya likes to get everything in ahead of time for *financial* reasons that I won’t explain in detail here…Since arriving I’ve just assumed I would stay a second year to really make the most of my time here, since a lot of the first few months of the first year is spent running around like a chicken with your head cut off.  And to save up some more money, and of course, to cement my Japanese ability into a real asset to bring home.  So I’m leaning toward the second year and haven’t really come up with any reasons for why I shouldn’t stay.  I’ve got a good gig here, and I might as well take advantage of it for the time being.  I consider myself a pretty reflective person.  So I think that when the time comes, when I decide what I want to do next, I will know and will come home.  Until then, let it ride.

いじょうです。