budget – DILLON TRAVELS

Trials

Towards the end of my term as an assistant English teacher I would reflect by pausing in the hallway and leaning in towards the open window while walking between the toilet and the teachers room during a free period and think: this is the greatest job I’ll ever have. That is actually the thought I started to realize during the start of my second year. Truly, of course, it couldn’t be the pinnacle of my work life, and I began to acknowledge that. By the beginning of summer, as I was already well into figuring the terms of my new job, I determined that working at the school wouldn’t be the best job in my entire life — only the best job I’d have for a while.

That, I know to be true. I mean, how could it not be? Every morning I’d wake up and make the fifteen minute bike to school. It didn’t matter what I wore, because I’d change from the locker into my slacks and button down and occasional tie. Because we had started choosing our own schedules, I hardly ever had a class during the first period. This allowed the perfect to time ease into my day. I’d check my favorite new sites, and catch up on the SRS kanji reviews I had from the day before. I already had a year’s worth of worksheets, so every lesson was less starting from scratch and more ironing out the harder details. Each class I was supported (and supporting) another teacher, it took the pressure off our jobs, gave us brief moments to catch a breath. In the back of class I’d goof off with anyone not paying attention, or subtly wake the dozing student. Between classes were the best. I was a near celebrity. From the beginning it was never hard for the students to become curious about my height or complexion. But after two years I’d become a role model, a mascot, a friend. And none the less humble for it.

If I could stay young forever I would have never left. But that’s the funnier part about schools. Every year you’re teaching another generation, the material hardly advances, but you have to figure out how to improve. Except at the end of the year one group leaves, and so quickly they’re replaced. When I lived in New York, right before I left, way before I knew what teaching was like, I was talking with a roommate who was an associate poetry professor in the upper east side.

“You’ll go on to do great things, man, don’t worry about it,” he told me. This is a guy who only six months before had picked up a guitar and six months later had performed at bars in Williamsburg.

“How do you do it?” I asked. “Every year, teaching a new class, and then forgetting them by the next summer.”

He scratched his head, but answered honestly and unabashed, “You just get used to it. I mean, some students will come back and stick out to you, but you can’t be best friends with them all.”

Even if it’s true, I can’t agree with him. Already I’m forgetting a lot of students names, their faces stick out, but I can’t remember if they graduated last year, or are still studying for the entrance exams. They, like so many people in my life who I’ve been trying not to forget, are moving forward. You don’t get used to it. You just have to accept it.

At least in my new job I don’t have to worry about those things as much. I’ve only been working for three months, and it feels like that only should be an already. On a team of four we’ve completed an anniversary video for the prefecture university, I made ten videos of contestants for (not just beauty) pageant for a magazine, we had a photo-shoot for an eyeglasses commercial, and I’ve had the amazing opportunity to help host a promotional food and culture event in Singapore and Hong Kong (and during the former I literally mean host as an MC). It is the type of job I would look for anywhere, and I got so lucky to find it so quickly and close to the place I’ve already lived an worked.

There are somethings awful to be said about the Japanese workplace, however, they are things I never felt or recognized during my time at school. I’m trying my best not to conform, while at the same time showing my co-workers that I’m contributing. But almost every night when 6:30 comes by it seems like I’m the only one to notice. I’ve already wrapped up my work, started packing, but then feel obliged to stick it out for a little while. Once I leave I still have to make the forty minute drive in increasingly wet weather home. I usually take this time to listen to podcasts, but only that will get me so far. This of course, leaves little time to explore my own hobbies or even rest properly at night before I have to get up and do it again in the morning. Of course, I like waking up later, but the morning commute doesn’t make it much of a difference, and leaves no practical time to run, exercise, or even properly shave like I used to (although the beard is starting to grow on me).

I am really thankful to find this kind of work, but everyday is a different task, and in the end I’m still not quite sure what type of work I’m doing. Am I a producer, a video editor, designer, a photographer, a writer, an illustrator… all are things that I would appeal to do, but I’m worried about developing an expertise. I’ve had the time to get educated, and even to get the base of my experience settled. Now it feels critical to figure out what I want to do, focus on it, and make that into a career.

Recently, I’ve got that opportunity. I’ve been working on illustrations, and replicating this specific type of style, but in that case it’s the most frustrating thing I’ve had to do in months. In school there were times once or twice a year where we’d have to stay late in order to grade standardized tests. Except there was nothing standardized about the way we graded. In some ways is was a reflection of our own teaching ability. The first time it happened I actually cried after an tense debate(/argument) over one of the smartest answers, too clever it was hard to meet the right criteria (I wrote about that once, but a bit too embarrassed to link to it here). Now it feel like that every day, except the debate is with myself over what I’m going to do and if it’s even within my bounds to accomplish what I want.

One of the wisest men I’ve met once told me near my college graduation that when it comes to your job, whenever you’re asked if you can do something respond: yes. This is a true philosophy in my life, as there’s almost nothing I’ve had to do that I haven’t been able to learn or problem solve my way out of.

These trials have slowly building up since I left school. I forgot what it was like to be without a job, to be out of money, to start new and be away from friends. I thought it would be good to stay where I’m familiar, instead of jumping completely into a new life. Now everyday I’m away from Tokyo seems like a waste of time. Luckily I have someone there who can also say wise things from time to time: it’s all about perspective, the opportunity that I have now is better than most.

He’s right, and if I really focus, if I don’t doubt myself, then I can do it. Even after 25 years my mom still tells me I can do anything. She’s wrong, but if she can believe, then maybe I can too for a little while. When my frustration came to a head while drawing, while trying to figure out how to paint in this particular style, how to make the shadows overlap and blend so perfectly that the transition between colors is stark but seamless, I took a break, I came back to my standing desk, plugged in Hucci as loud as I could, and figured out the problem.

There are a couple of idioms that keep running through my head lately: make your bed… spilled milk… if wishes were horses. With all the work and a bit of stress through the last month I didn’t really have a time to stop and pay attention to myself. Now that it’s the end of the year, it feel like the natural thing to do. I’m not only asking the questions like where do I want to go, what do I want to be, but I’m finding answers to them. They’re answers that mean tough choices, and risky results, but I’m solid in all of them. I may be stuck now, but it won’t always be that way, and it doesn’t have to be that way. I just have to tell myself I can do it, be thankful for where I am, and blast some dubstep as loud as I can.

Debt

Fresh off the indulgent heels of the New Year vacation, my post paycheck raid of Costco, and endeavors in Nagoya, I started to notice a big trend in the way I was spending money. Particularly the way I was spending too much of it. With a week left until paycheck all my good times had worn thin, and the budget I’d put in place was stretching beyond limits. After months of living paycheck to paycheck, I realized I finally needed to put into action some sort of plan to become financially free.

Last year I’d used a handy online service called Mint to keep track of my purchases. At the time it wasn’t really too difficult — half my paycheck went to rent while the other half went to student loans — but it was still nice to check-in and see how much negative my net worth could be on any given day. My post graduation stint in New York had stacked my credit cards to their limit which I barely managed to reign in after 0% credit card transfers and a plump tax return. When I came to Japan my credit cards (thankfully I only have two) were back to being maxed out as I had to pay for move in fees, furniture, and food, and wait it out until the first month’s paycheck. I stopped using Mint entirely because I had no idea what to budget and the yen was especially weak against the dollar. Unfortunately, Mint has yet to enable foreign currency, and since I was still paying student loans I was using both the yen and the dollar.

I got pretty good at handwriting my expenses on scraps of paper in my free time. They would include the easy essential like rent and utilities, but then the difficult questions popped up like, how much money should I send home? and, what are the chances that I go to a big city for a weekend? As one is want to do around New Years, I decided it was a good enough time to revive smart habits and keep track of my spending. In this case, I literally mean every cent I get and spend. It’s pretty easy to do because there’s also a cell phone app I can use. Before everything would plug into my debit/credit card accounts and automatically get marked in my budget. Now I have to consciously plug in each time I spend money: on food, bills, clothes, games. I use a 1:1 ratio for yen to dollars which also means that I’m technically saving money while all my trends seems more expensive, too.

february budget

By Valentine’s Day I was broke and finally coming down with the unavoidable cold that had stricken at least half my students. Stuck inside on the still cold weekends (a wet and rainy winter) straining my stock of groceries with dinners of rice and whatever canned goods I could find, I found a sort of resolute second wind to analyze my future even deeper. When it came down to figuring what I wanted to do — after having contracted for another year, meaning I’ll be in Japan until summer 2017 — the more pressing question seemed to be how I would be able to do it.

When I left St. Olaf, and before I really went, I had no clue what money has to do with anything. My family (including the many friends of my family) has always taken care of me, and there was no limit to supporting the things I wanted to do. With it was the facade that none of my eccentric interests from nordic skiing to running camps, volunteering with church, and gallivanting internationally with a youth choir or study abroad programs came with any difficulty. Even the federal loans in my name that had been taken out for me for school went untouched all for years of school. I had no clue that when I got my first job outside of my work study that I should be saving for the future. And even when my college roommates mentioned it’d probably be a good idea, I still had no knowledge of the real price I was paying for tuition, or the fact that I could’ve started paying off my loans before I graduated. I should say that I think St. Olaf has made substantial improvements to increasing student awareness of post-grad life and employment opportunities, but for me, who was already a it stubborn and naive, it was three years too late. At the end of my senior year I had a brief session where my loan paperwork was put into a file and the dates of repayment were explained to me, but even that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. Instead, I connected my bank accounts, automated my payments (which would start six months after graduating, or January 2016), and set everything aside.

Until now, that is.

over time network

Many of my friends were lucky enough to graduate without debt, and I often become envious when talking with them. With only $40,000 in loans even I can’t fret too much, but it’s still at least $500 out of the bank each month. When calculating the interest by meeting just the minimum payments I was looking at paying $10,000 more than what I’d taken out. Even divided over a decade, a thousand dollars a year that I could instead save and put elsewhere didn’t seem nearly worth it. What about my emergency fund, inevitable housing down-payments, that thing they call a 401k?

So, the first big questions are answered: How much do I owe? How much will I pay? and when will I have to pay it?

The next questions were the real challenges: When do I want to be debt free? How much money can I afford to budget? What’s the snowball method everyone talks about?

The ideal date, of course, would be before I leave Japan. I feel there’s no use in saying as soon as possible because that has no tangential goal to it. Although, with the plan of only staying twenty four months in this country, and already being through six of them getting rid of all my debt which well over a year’s worth of salary even before taxes will probably be unlikely. So instead I’ve set an arbitrary five years as an absolute, with the formal plan being three years from now. I still want to live comfortably, but within my means. I’ve discovered that creating sound financial habits seems to be a better goal than constantly wiping away debt only to watch it grow again.

With that said, there’s the extremely meticulous task of figuring out how much money I can throw at my pile of debt an when I’ll be doing it. Since I’ve been here I’ve been focusing on getting rid of the credit card debt I racked up in the past months. It’s finally at its last couple hundred which means by next paycheck I’ll toss in the amount in my savings and unshackle that chain. Except if you remember I have two credit cards. While the one with the most expense on it is currently at 0% APR it also had double the amount of the other, remnants from New York, my junior year of college, or even the first time I’d gone to Japan. The fact is ever since I’ve had it, it’s always had a charge on it. This was definitely the mountain I’d been chipping away at.

As I mentioned before, I really had no clue what to do about money. A big reason for that is still letting my mom work as my health insurance and tax advisor, but those also come with the perks of taking care of my co-pay and getting an early tax refund. Such is the case for next month as my taxes have already been filed. There is so much that I fantasize using that money for: camping gear, a Playstation 4, even getting a car or at least upgrading my bike. However, now is the time for self control. I’ve looked at my debt as a game, and I definitely plan to win. My tax return can almost single-handedly take care of my last credit card, so it’s going towards nothing else.

Getting rid of credit card debt also means I could put the almost two hundred bucks I was spending every month, to the bigger behemoth of student loan debt. So, $200 added to the $500 seemed good enough, but there are still plenty of factors to consider. Every month of living in Japan has been a bit of a puzzle because of the exchange rate. When I first landed the yen was up to $1.22 to the dollar. That meant I lost more than a fifth of what I sent home. Thus the dilemma: should I send money home at a constant rate, or should I save over here and wait for the yen to get more even? The correct question is the latter, as the yen is finally dipping towards the $1.10 mark. But even then, can I trust my habits yet to conserve any surplus of money I’m hanging on to? At this point I’ve settled on sending the Japanese equivalent of $1000 home. It’s rough and arbitrary, and maybe once I see how all this planning unwinds I can reassess it, but for now I like the safety of knowing I’ll have a meager cushion in my American bank account and an even point to work with over here.

monthly trend

Reaching the final stretch of financial figures — or at least my horizon line — the ultimate question was which loan to pay of first. I’ve got a private loan from St. Olaf that is the most expensive individual one (9%), a loan from Discover for when I studied in New York (8.5%), a federal loan through St. Olaf that I pay off quarterly (5%), and then an accumulation of federal loans that were distributed each semester equaling half of my total (avg. 4.4%). I’ll spoil it here and tell you that I’m paying them off in that order, but it was a decision with some thought. Economically it’s the best decision to pay off the loan with the highest interest because that results in the lowest overall interest cost. However, there was plenty of research to persuade me to take on the “snowball method” of paying off a small loan first. The idea is with the elimination of any debt no matter how small you become more motivated to stay on track. Except, in my case, I would already be clearing my credit cards which was already a sort of snowball in itself. Instead, I took the “stacking method” without the worry of self control or necessary motivation.

It certainly is slow progress, but it seems everyday I read some new article about personal finance, login to my Mint account, or draw up another budget for the next month which inspires me to continue the debt-free path. Especially as I turn toward considering what I could and want to do when I leave Japan, not having to worry about student loans keeps my options open. A scary part about living here is knowing that the salary is limited. Maybe I can be an artist in the future, but will have to take on unpaid internships, or consider myself a freelance writer without a steady income, and probably likely I’ll wind up in another city with absurd costs of living. Now I’m relatively safe (far from the reaches of Donald Trump’s presidency) and while I’m safe I might have to do the safe thing.

You hear a lot about the student debt crisis, and I definitely don’t think enough is being done through the government to regulate it. How can we expect higher education to be a necessity in entry level jobs without providing students the means to survive while having that entry level salary. I’m certainly glad and shaped by my experience at St. Olaf, but I applied to college as this issue was burgeoning across mainstream media. I guarantee my choices would’ve differed had I been smart enough to figure out the true cost of college.

Gavin asked me while we were discussing this at lunch the other day, “Wouldn’t you rather use that money to have fun now?”

Yes, of course I would, but I used to always think, what if I die tomorrow? All that saving would be for nothing. Although I still like to apply that thought to many aspects in my life (writing, travel, friendships), money is one where it can’t apply. With money I have to think, what if I don’t die tomorrow? As much as I don’t want to face the fact that I’m growing older the fact remain that I will eventually turn thirty. By then there are plenty of things I’ll want to finance, least of all being student debt.

Costco

Of all things great about America: grilled meat, Hollywood, shopping malls, Applebees, and credit cards, currently there is nothing I’m more thankful for than wholesale warehouse stores. Really, there are hardly any places outside the country full of such familiarity. For months I have longed for something more than the Walgreen’s style drug stores or the Home Depot home improvement imitations you can find in Japan. Especially now because I have an allowance in my budget, I’ve yearned to walk down the sheen fluorescent floors and red aisles of a Target. In Japan there are some 45,000 convenience stores (colloquially called conbini), but really none are quite as convenient as the Target (or even Walmart) of America. And it’s funny. Back home I tried to avoid going to such stores, focusing on buying more local and sustainable goods. Here in the land of plastic packages and default organic, I’m not even sure if those values are applicable. Some things I buy already have such a neutral environmental impact compared to American counterparts that I’ve completely lost my awareness of an items impact. (The same is almost as true with my vegetarian values, but I still refrain from cooking with meat.)

The real discovery here are the roots of my American lifestyle. With half a year here I still can’t shed some of the living habits I’ve taken for granted. Probably the first example I noticed was in going out. I’ve finally been to a couple of bars in Japan, but that lifestyle is hardly livable. Where before I’d go on a weekly basis with friends, to meet friends, or to hang with the coolest bartender on earth, now I can only venture out once a full moon (if even) for fear of burning a hole through my wallet. Then came the lack of an oven and the realization that I’d be without my favorite midnight pastime of making chocolate-chip cookies. And with that of course came all the other complicated dietary choices I’d have to make. The void of cookies, any type of cereal, the smoothies, the soy chorizo from Trader Joe’s, canned beans, macaroni noodles, blocks of cheese and creamy peanut butter. For the past couple of months I’ve been bouncing around a couple of supermarkets: picking up olive oil and ketchup at one; the bulk of my groceries come from another on my way to school; finally the sketchiest one miles away from my apartment has the cheapest ice cream and frozen fruits. Apart from the lack of any insulation (a condition which my thermostat growing up already trained me well for), I think the shuffling around for errands and groceries was the last straw. I was(am) finally homesick. Or at least, in this sense, culture sick.

That’s how it came to be that after the first paycheck of the year I was literally begging anyone with a car to take me to Costco. Perhaps you’ll be surprised to find out that there are Costcos in Japan. I was pretty shocked back in the fall when I learned it. There are a mess of McDonalds, Seven Elevens, even a few Ikeas, but never would I expect Costco. Even Walmart operates under a subsidiary in this country. Whatever the reason, it existed, and I’d been trying to go for months. So desperately I was getting ready to bribe people, offering to pay not only the way, but also for the first jar of peanut butter, or box of mac and cheese. Luckily, Carmelo took pity on my dismal soul and offered to take me.

See, the biggest problem is the closest Costco is a bit over a two hour drive north in “Historic Kanazawa” (my grandma clipped an article from the Star Tribune around this time so you may have actually read about it in the travel section, but I can’t find a link on the website). On a good day its actually a pretty pleasant drive, but being that Costco alone takes a couple hours to tackle and the whole drive can be around five hours there and back you really have to devote an entire day to it.

So early Saturday morning I went to his apartment and a couple “are you ready?”s later he, his girlfriend Eri, and I jumped in the car to make the trip. As I said, it’s really not a bad trip to make. You pass through multiple cities, valleys, alongside mountain ranges, and a number of love hotels. It went buy quick with the good company and before I knew it were wound up the ramp to Costco’s parking.

I should mention that it’s been more than a few years since I’ve been in any sort of Costco or Sam Club. In college I would really only stop through the Sam Club liquor store because it was incredibly cheap to buy handles there and you don’t need a membership. Before then I think I was still in Junior High when I went, and really the only reason I remember for going was to buy bulk toilet paper. Never had I gone without supervision–not to mention we had just gotten paid. I pulled a couple of ￥10,000 bills from an envelope I’d used to send money home, and then took out a couple extra just in case. After all, this was a rare instance, and I didn’t want to get caught without enough cash to pay for whatever peanut butter came my way.

We walked toward the entrance with a bounce in our step. I was clutching a pocket notebook with a list of everything I was hoping to find when a worker pulled the oversized cart in my direction and we heading down one of those sweet escalators that are made especially for excess. As we slowly descended towards the trove of imported goods I made snarky observations of those returning towards the surface. “Who goes to Costco to buy only muffins and laundry detergent?” I said incredulously looking at the almost empty carts. Waste of a trip.

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As soon as we entered I made the decision to go down every single aisle. I live for the deal, the obscurities, the things I didn’t realize I needed until I realized I needed them. We started with the electronics, the tableware, the luggage. I stopped first for a LED rope light which I tagged for later, continuing the search for some ambiance to my room other than the fluorescent light. Next came hair dryers, batteries, wind shield wipers. I added a pair of running gloves, and then a bulkier pair of winter gloves to the cart. We went down the liquor aisle. I took a bottle of Kaluha, Vodka, Gin, Rum into the cart, made it to the end of the aisle and then put them all back. If I was gonna suffer through the winter then I guess I’d have to do it sober. We crossed past the wine, though, where Carmelo and I both decided to pick up bottles of wine (red and white) for the next time Yukie invited us to dinner. Next was fruits and produce. Not too punny if I say I went bananas for the bananas, but it’s so hard to find a practical fruit in this country. The grapes are often the size of strawberries, while the apples are like grapefruit, watermelons can be found in cubes, and don’t even try to differentiate the variety of oranges they produce. About all of the above goes true for bananas, so I definitely picked up a couple bunches of green ones to last a while.

Then we turned a corner, I was partially distracted by a man demonstrating a blender with a set of empty cups beside him, when it came into view. The Peanut Butter. I could’ve ran into it easily because it was more like a physical wall of Skippy advertisements.

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The jars came wrapped in sets of two, all crunchy. I took a pair, then another, and two more, and one more for Gavin, and then another because, hey, it’s peanut butter and I wouldn’t know how long it’d be until I’d return. We could’ve (and probably should’ve) left then, and my trip would’ve been accomplished, but we had hardly even hit half the shelves, and now we hit a stride. I’m kind of surprised at how packed it became around this time of the day, too. I didn’t expect Costco to be such a destination, but all types of Japanese folk and even some foreigners were perusing or stuffing themselves between the aisles.

I picked up biodegradable laundry soap, and biodegradable dish soap. Another mark in my notepad to pick up cheese by the end of it all. The jars of pasta sauce almost equaled jars of peanut butter. I considered a stack of canned diced tomatoes, but stuck only to the canned corn. Spices went in, sea salt, pepper, a bag of chia seeds, Nutella, triple-bound-bulk bottles of Heinz ketchup, salad dressing, soy sauce, katsudon sauce, and four liters of Kirkland olive oil. Bags of raisins turned out to be one of the best and cheapest options for salad toppings and late night snacks. We wrapped up around health and beauty, but I was disappointed they didn’t have the right type of razor heads that I use. “Hold on, I’m gonna go through the candy and snack aisles” so cleverly stacked in the middle of the warehouse before the registers. Eri came over with a huge box of Nature Valley bars in her arms, and I found the second most prized item on my list: chips and salsa. Apart from chocolate-chip cookies the single best non-meal meal I can survive on are chips and salsa. Granted, that’s mostly because of my grandma’s unbeatable homemade salsa stored in mason jars I would hoard away from my mother at any given chance last year. But still, at any given point from at least the past five years it would be considered a staple in my diet. Except now–trying as hard as I could to stay in view of my budget–I faced the dilemma of figuring out the ratio of bags of chips to salsa jars over the amount of time it would take to return to Costco. I picked up a box of 40 bags of microwaveable popcorn for hardly 25 cents a bag, figuring it was worth it even though I’ve yet to have a microwave.

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By the time I got into line, Carmelo and Eri had already checked out, and I frantically waved for them to notice me because I was using Carmelo’s member card. I made it without a hitch and was grateful to see that the number I’d calculated and the number that appeared on the register were exactly the same. In Japan, perhaps by law, every item will have its cost in small font and then the actual cost with tax as the main price so it’s easy to make sure your stay within whatever limit your spending.

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We celebrated out success by ditching our carts like cars outside a California diner, and getting in line for the classic American grill food they had serving. I opted for a combo slice of pizza and hot dog, almost going overboard with a churro and sundae. The eating space was packed but I snagged an open bench table with an older woman who’d completely passed out at the end of it. Along with the casual leaving of carts along the eating area it hit me as a classic display of Japanese safety, that a woman could just fall asleep anywhere and feel OK about it. Although, when Carmelo and Eri joined the table she popped her head up with a bit of dismay.

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There was almost no better way to top off the day feeling so content than to eat so downright American made food with a Mexican in Japan. Carmelo and Eri smiled wide, completing the menu with a churro, smoothie, sundae, and bulgogi bake. Well, at least there was a good moment.

There was hardly anything to make us feel better, but there was certainly enough to make us feel worse. As I took another bite out of my hot dog I heard from the end of the table the type of sound that can only make you think, thank god I didn’t get it on my shoes. Eri reacted instantly covering her eyes into Carmelo’s shoulder, while I saw his jaw slump open and the brightness in his eyes burst to a look of total dissatisfaction. I flashed a look to the lady now slumped over the end of the table with a younger woman patting her back. It didn’t take much to figure out that the reason she’d passed out was now splattered over the floor.

“Man, I just can’t get that out of my head,” Carmelo said as he tried to take another bite from his bulgogi bake. “I was having such a good time, too.”

We scuttled like crabs across the table to the furthest open spot, but the mood was already crushed. As I bit into my pizza I was grateful for having missed all the action, but Carmelo was clearly traumatized. Even the churro couldn’t fix the sweetness of the mood.

The drive back was also affected with cloudier skies and tension worrying if my bags of tortilla chips would make it through this stuffed car ride. By the time we made it close to home, after a couple of pit stops, the strength in our accomplishment was back. However, unpacking all the food in my entryway proved to ask the biggest question: “where am I going to put all this?”

After some creativity it all fit. I cracked open the bag of chips, poured out some salsa, and felt good about not wondering (at least for a couple more months) where the staples in my diet would come from.

Routine

With only a week after speech ending, I’m back on pace for a more relaxing life. Really I’m still not doing anything too exciting, but it’s sometimes mundane that is the most enjoyable. I’ll try not to be vain while I write, but really this is the first time that I’ve had the chance to reflect on everything I’ve done so maybe an ego will peek through here and there.

Thursday last week I finally got the chance to go to the track club. It was something I’d been wanting to do since before I even landed in Japan, but couldn’t join because of the former obligations. It was super hardcore, compared to anything I’d done recently (working on hurdle mobility), and I was so happy to be back in action. For those of you suspicious about why there would be track club in October, don’t think too much of your American timetables. In Japan, most schools make club activities compulsory–in the form of athletic groups, science comps, art clubs–and those clubs go year round. By now, however, most of the third years have ‘retired’ from their groups in order to focus on high school entrance exams. It’s a crazy amount of responsibility, not to mention emotionally heavy perspective on flowing process of life.

So, I’d been practicing with only the first and second year (7th and 8th grade relatively), but was still finding it a bit to keep up. I was coincidentally placed at the school with the best track team in the region. My students are 13 year olds who can run 17:30 5ks, and 8th graders doing 9 minute 3ks. I knew there was a pretty heavy running community in Japan that plenty of people, even Japanese aren’t aware of, but I didn’t think I’d find it so easily.

Joining the practice was one of the better decisions I’ve made so far. There was definitely an urge to just walk home before the sunset, maybe run on my own, or make a quick game and scroll through Last Week Tonight clips on Youtube. I’d just finished Dune (well worth it, but very inconclusive) and started on the next project: A Brief History of Time. Plus, after second practice my legs were not happy with me. It’s being able to recognize students that keeps me going. Getting their names down is becoming easier, but recognizing who they are has been more important. For example, walking to school in the morning, there’s typically one path that everyone takes (meaning me and the students). Yesterday morning, on the turn that converges everyone on the same road with my long legs out pacing everyone else I started noticing things about the people I was passing. The way some of the girls do their hair is completely distinct. And you can always tell a first year boy because his uniform pants and jacket are too long for his limbs. I came by one boy who fit this last description. Out of my periphery I could make out his glasses, and the back of his hair seemed somewhat familiar.

I hesitated between mistaken identity, but decided to call out his name and see what happens. I think the biggest thing against me saying anyone’s name is getting it wrong. Not because I’m embarrassed (although, after two months I wish I could remember everyone), but more because I don’t want them to feel bad about me not knowing their name. Maybe I’m completely wrong, but I get the sense that some of the students will blame their own self esteem for not making a greater impression with me. I’m struggling much with not having favorites already. So, I called out his name, bracing to get it wrong when he turned around and I saw I was correct; it was a first year on the track team.

All the students have a huge test (what I’d compare to school-wide standardized testing) so most of the clubs are on hiatus for the next ten days. We talked about my legs hurting from practice, how he felt about the test, and I encouraged him to keep running in his down time. I think we’ve reached another level on the great teacher ladder.

With ikujyo-bu, track club, cancelled, I was back to running on my own. Walking too and from school everyday, with the nights becoming exponentially colder once the sun sets, is starting to become a hassle, but so far I’ve stayed motivated. I just think of all the wasted time between my steeple injury in May and my beach injury in August to keep me going.

It is becoming the end of the month and I am running lower on funds. I’m thankful now that those types of Silver Week vacations do only come once every five years. I’m already planning a trip to Kyoto, but otherwise I’m going to focus more on saving and doing the things I enjoy that are free. Luckily that includes my biggest hobbies: running, reading, writing. Recently I’ve also been substituting my first favorite expensive past time, Magic the Gathering, with a new faster free MOBA that a fellow teacher recommended to me, League of Legends.

As the days become shorter I’ve been seriously waffling between getting a car. So far, though, there still isn’t a purpose a car would fulfill that I can’t really do on my own. I think I’m done making trips to my favorite store Nitori and soon it’ll be safe enough to buy ice cream from the grocery store and carry it home without fear of it melting. I do really wish I had a bike, but I’m as particular about a bike as a car. The most available thing in Japan are mamachari, which I absolutely refuse to waste money on. It’s pretty difficult to find a decent bike store outside of the city, but if I went to the city I’d be pretty tough to get a bike back. I could make a decent day of it by finding the right bike and cycling the 50km home, but without any training or English map that seems set up for disaster. So it’s just something we’ll keep in the back of our minds.

It hasn’t been much of a problem sleep wise, and I’ve managed a good 8 hours at least while still waking up at 6 in the morning. It’s really absurd that I’ve grown into someone comfortable with this schedule. It’s something a high school me would never allow. But I make a decent breakfast, iron my shirt, try to shave, and even get in a pod cast to pass the time (right now I’ve been keen on the New Yorker Fiction and The Moth). By 7 o’clock I’m out the door with toast and jam in one hand and a book in the other. Back in college I mastered the technique of reading while walking, and it’s come in handy on the way to work. Even the dreaded gaijin traps don’t scare me now. I basically conquered Dune this way and it’s how I’ve gotten halfway through A Brief History of Time (which are pretty ironic books to read back to back).

Weeks ago I wrote about how reading almost seemed a necessity, but I wasn’t quite sure why I felt compelled to read. Emotionally it’s done enough to get my brain thinking and active, but I think even more it’s helped stimulate my own writing. I can think back long ago, to the second grade perhaps before, when my first dream job was to be a writer. Since then I’ve added plenty of tags to that dream, but writer has always been attached and something I’ve always had an affair with. During my last job I had a lot of time working on my own where I could just think. I’d come up with systems to keep track of what I was screen printing by applying characters and plot lines to each process. In my head I’ve got so many different worlds, some that stand out with such defined arcs that I’ve been eager to get them onto paper. It’s been good to set apart some time to actually get that work in, and with NaNoWriMo just around the corner maybe something tangible will come to fruition sooner than planned.

Apart from buying food and cooking it, which I plan on covering at a different time, I’d say the last part of my routine is watching the sunset (if I’m lucky enough to be home by then). When it comes to my apartment I still battle with the layout, not having a permanent bed, distinguished places to eat, relax, and sleep. There are other places in the complex bigger by an entire room that I can see are vacant. But every night (now around 5:30) I stop and stare and am always amazed at the extent of nature’s beauty. There’s no way I’m giving up this room for something without that view.

Akiba

I could’ve spent another night in Tokyo, but knew I had to save money and energy for the remained month, so after we woke up and cleaned off in the capsule hotel, I knew that to Carmelo’s chagrin I’d be going home. But with the shinkansen running until nine o’clock, I didn’t see any rush. We started that day with a conbini breakfast and walking a complex route to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku to go to their observation deck. At 243 meters tall they’re a whopping 391 meters shorter than Tokyo Sky try, but they get the job done and best of all it’s free.

You can actually see Sky Tree off in the distance there, so some might consider this view even better. For me the view of Tokyo, especially during the day, is not considerably beautiful. It’s hardly even inspiring or enjoyable. Mostly I like to see it to be reminded of the extent of humankind’s dominance and destruction, and the fact that my presence in the history of the earth is (yet) hardly impact. For anyone who’s seen the top of (the skyscraper formely known as) the Sears Tower or the Empire State Building there’s a certain clarity there that Tokyo doesn’t offer. With American skyscrapers you can look down the grids of highways and streets to realize that even at large scales there is still some order in the world. When looking at Tokyo, for once, Japan is a sprawling chaos.

We basically spent the entire day in Akihabara venturing further than I had ever been before. If Harajuku is for twenty something girls, Akiba is for twenty something guys. They have so many otaku artifacts, often perverted, for the most obscure of animes and video games. They have objects like keychains, mugs, towels, mousepads, flags, pens, fans, pillows, lunchboxes, folders, hats, costumes, clocks, chopsticks, much more, and on top of all of that perhaps double in the amount of figurines. It’s maybe the best place in Japan to buy computer electronics. For this I suffered as my college laptop is reaching its sixth year and my fears of it dying reach their limit I’ve been in the market for buying parts to build another computer. Alas, reason won out and I was able to keep my hands off the skylake processors and the discount graphics cards.

We ended up going to a curry restaurant for early dinner, something I’d been craving for a while. After that I was on my own and could use up as much of the next four hours as I wanted before deciding to go back. At this point I really was getting sick of the city, or at least had a longing to be back in the mountainside of Fukui. But I did roam around a little bit longer, hoping to score on the location of being in Tokyo. I wound up at a used English book store, knowing that Dune wouldn’t last me forever and the remaining books I hoped to finish by the end of the year. Of course, though, it was still a holiday and I got to the store ten minutes before it’s early closing time.

It ended up being close to Tokyo station where I needed to pick up the Shinkansen home, so it wasn’t much of a detour and I saved some money anyway. Especially since the ticket home was another $120, a price I stubbornly resigned myself to pay.

Overall, the weekend was pretty much the first type of holiday travel I’ve done in my post grad adult life so on that I’ll claim it as a success. It was expensive, fueled by my ‘wing it’ attitude, so I can see why people can’t do it all the time even if they can afford it. But it seems like I’ll often have a long weekend or time for travelling in the future, so hopefully it is something that I can start saving up for. My location is pretty ideal in the grand scheme of geography. I’m nearby four major Japanese cities: Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Nagoya, and a score of well known traditional sightseeing and modern activity resorts. So here’s hoping for no more cut open foots and trips to the hospital and more getting around and trips to castles.

Silver

It’s been a plain while since I’ve last had a vacation. You might consider my initial landing here a brief vacation, but if my posts say anything, being in a hotel Tokyo wasn’t really being in Tokyo, and it wasn’t all together enjoyable. I think the most recent case for me having a vacation would be the first time I went to New York a month for school nearly two years ago. Then I was in a new place, old enough to drink, a credit card limit that was way to high for what I deserved, with work that consisted of touring museums and visiting studios. Yes, it was a required daily itinerary, but it was full of things I wanted to do anyway. But I think that is still the biggest cause of it not being a vacation. It was an extended stay (a New York winter) with some freedom, though, still with financial and time restrictions. A summer before that I went to Thailand for a week with the best person in the world, and I think that was probably the last thing I would actually consider a vacation. I took time off of my summer research (an oblivious foreshadowing of designing a virtual Japanese language classroom and games) hopped on a plane and traveled around Bangkok and one of the Kohs. Sure, I’ve done road trips and gone camping since then, but I think there’s a sense of luxury the idea of a vacation has to meet and an island beach bungalow in the Pacific only barely meets those standards.

Anyway, now I had a treat. A rare aligning of three Japanese holidays that gave me three extra workdays free. In the spring there’s a whole week Japanese people refer to as Golden Week, so this occurance (the next of which happens in sixteen years) is aptly dubbed Silver Week. A couple weeks ago, Carmelo, my friendly neighborhood rascal, informed me that he was taking this time to go to Tokyo to attend a three day rave concert, Ultra Japan. The few who know my true interests are aware that, deep deep down maybe even under all the Led Zeppelin, I live for the trance and raucous beat of step and electronic music. It’s been like that ever since I was a child and that genre was barely discernible from Rob Zombie. I remember listening to early Basement Jaxx tracks and having that be my hardcore. When I discovered that noise like Sleigh Bells actually existed I understood there was an actual purpose in life. The end of my college senior year could be practically mapped out by Rusko. At the top of this discovery–as it was for most people–reigned Skrillex, a musician, DJ, performer, and seemingly great guy from California. It’s been a while for me since Skrillex was what I preferred to listen to, and I’d given up on seeing him in concert years ago. But recently he partnered with probably the greatest DJ/producer since early 2000s Daft Punk, Diplo, and came out with an album which I think you’ve heard of, and it’s quite literally (due to the broken hard drive) one of the only things I have left to listen to. Basically, he’s made some of my favorite music (yes, you can call that music) and was headlining the concert on Sunday night, and now I could finally see him, and there was no reason for me not to, because hey, I’m not getting any younger.

Wow, that’s a lot to add to an already long post, but good to know my devotion is strong.

Anyway, with Carmelo’s plane ticket booked and tickets sold out weeks before, it seemed I’d missed my chance. And good thing, too, since even a one day pass was quite expensive. The next day as I mulled over what I would actually do for Silver Week–go nowhere and buy a couch instead–Carmelo sent me a message saying that they’d have a final run of tickets that night at 10 o’clock. It seemed, as they say, too good to be true. I didn’t even have to make a decision. I was given a chance to go and I took it.

Surprisingly, a couple of people who lived around us also got tickets and in the end there were four of us going. Carmelo was taking a plane, and another guy was going by bus, so in the end we got there by planes, trains, and automobiles (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

The unfortunate thing in getting there separately, though, was having no direct overlap where we could all meet up. Carmelo spent the first day with his girlfriend, and after lack of planning on our part, our other friend made his own itinerary for the weekend. And if you recall, I decided to ‘wing it’.

I woke up on Saturday before six o’clock, and after stuffing my backpack half full of t-shirts, a rain jacket, and the other half with my camera, Dune, and food for the day I was out the door by seven. I don’t think I asked anyone for a ride, but since everyone was already on their own trips I don’t think it would’ve done me any good, so I was on my own to walk to the train station. My neighbor and former college classmate, who’d also be going to Tokyo, told me the night before to take the train to a regional town where I could then be resigned to the shinkansen. It was at first something I wanted to avoid, but with a couple cuts to my materialistic budget, I think the convenience and experience is worth it.

After all, I got on the first train at 8:00, and after switching, arrived at Tokyo some fifty pages into Dune, not sleep deprived, and around 11:00 making less than half the time of a bus ride at less than double the price. I didn’t know quite what to do first, and if you’ve never been dropped off at Tokyo station let me tell you it’s a trip. It felt like the part in a Hollywood sci-fi where the crew of a space ship has to evacuate before something self-destructs, so everyone is running all over the place and the fluorescent lights and signs are all in some alien language. Eventually, I decided to go to the place I knew would require the shortest amount of time: Harajuku.

If you were a teenager in the 2000s you almost certainly remember when Gwen Stefani hit her prime and went crazy about Bananas. Well, a lot of her influence during that time also came from Japan and specifically the unique trends from Harajuku’s Takeshita street. It is a pretty sweet spot especially if you’re a young Japanese girl ready to spend a lot of money, but seeing as I’m hardly any of the above, I knew it wouldn’t take long for me to pass through. I really just had almost a wistful longing to go there as it’s a decent vibe of Tokyo on a whole.

It’s hard to believe that across from the street, literally on the other side of the train tracks, the city shops evaporate into almost two hundred acres of forest that make up the Meiji shrine, a park and temple dedicated to their emperor of their restorative period. It’s sort of like being in New York City, and then happening upon Central Park, but only if the entirety of Central Park was like a huge memorial to George Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, and Reagan complete with cherry blossoms and air force ones. It’s a neat break while you’re staying in the city.

After that I cruised over to, well, the outskirts of Tokyo, over a half hour train ride, to go to the acclaimed Tokyo Game Show. This was one of many annual events that were being held over the weekend, and supposedly an event that should wow and please.

I’d hate to say it was an overall flop, but it at least lacked a form of bravado. I think I was still on the thrill of the E3 announcements, and expected some more previews to come out of Japan. Alas, it was mainly promotion of smaller games and studios, plenty of mobile trials, and hardly anything blockbuster. Especially as a foreigner I hardly knew many of the Japanese based brands, and had little money to spend on the elitist gear they were shipping out. I guess it was fun to see Star Wars Battlefront being played, and I tested out the newest revamp of one of my favorite series, Need for Speed, but otherwise the next best thing was Final Fantasy Online, and with so many previews already of games that are supposed to coming out next year (FF15, KH3, Fallout, Mirror’s Edge, Uncharted) I was hoping for a bit more.

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Getting there, walking around, having lunch, and winning a free shirt still took up the afternoon, and by the time I reached the station I realized that I was actually in a pretty fantastic place. The whole convention center is beyond the normal sightseeing trip in Tokyo, so in order to entice people to stay in the city they’ve ingeniously placed a whole outdoor outlet mall right outside the station. As the nights have been getting darker and darker around six o’clock when I get home from school, I’ve been wanting to find a store where I could get some bright clothes to run around in. I hit the Nike store first, and since I was there decided to rummage around the Gap, Vans, Bathing Apes, Northface, et cetera. In the end I did only buy one flourescent yellow singlet and matching shirt, but I also recognized that no matter where I am, shopping is such a soothing hobby for me.

I wound up drifting around Tokyo for the remainder of the night, heading around Akihabara, Shibuya, and finally landing in Shinjuku. Both places I’d hoped to stay fell through and I resigned to put down the extra cash to stay at a capsule hotel. Like the shinkansen, though, I felt the money was worth the experience. I ended up wandering over a mile through the city going to three different hotels before I found one with an open bed, deviously placed on the road in between Kabukicho and Nichome. It cost ￥3,200 which for a night in one of the world most expensive cities isn’t the worst deal. Once I made it past the cross dresser in the stairway I found the corridor for my capsule and was glad to note everything was clean and quiet. They even had razors and pre-pasted toothbrushes in the washroom. I plugged in my phone flitting at 1% battery, and read a bit of Dune (a seemingly cliched but so far terrific sci-fi epic), finally feeling content. I was more than enervated by the day that I felt alone and wasted. I knew I was exaggerating these feelings in my mind, but I really felt like I just wanted to call it a holiday and go home the next day–like that spaceship that I was on in Tokyo station really did explode, and my escape pod could only contain one person and now I was drifting seeing the wonders of the universe without really being able to interact with it. I made more of a plan as I laid to sleep, knowing exactly where I’d start my day, and deciding to tackle it with a much more positive attitude.

Books

For the past nine, almost ten months, I’ve been living without internet. Now that’s not to say I’ve been totally devoid of internet, I think this website makes that obvious, but as far as in the place that I’m living I’ve gone without. Perhaps you’ve noticed by the sporadic way I post here. And until recently, I was enjoying not having internet. Due to the fact I had other things to fill my time: I had a college of friends to hang out with; I had a TV and plenty of movies; I had enough art supplies to make due; I had a bike (a near perfect orange and pearl 80s Peugeot) to take me places–mostly the library–where I could use the internet for free, but then, even better, when I left the library I could take something with me: books. Since arriving in Japan I’ve purchased many books–mostly manga–at irresistibly low prices (I once bought 20 volumes of Air Gear at a Book-Off for ￥600), but in the end pretty much exaggerated the amount of kanji I thought I would remember. I suppose I knew when buying it that it’d be an investment, maybe even motivation, for something I’d be able to read in two or three months. Still, all of that means that I’m left without one of my favorite activities: reading. Not to mention that since about two weeks ago my external hard drive crashed(/was dropped on the floor) and I’ve basically lost access to all music, TV shows, and movies. (No more binge watching Friends episodes.)

Basically, I’ve had cabin fever which is why, as I prepare for my trip to Tokyo, receiving a package of books is one of the best things that could happen to me. I recently read an article the announced digital book sales were waning and printed books were back on the rise. I can very much see why. When I first popped over here, I decided not to pack any books due to the weight and size they would take in luggage, and I figured with an iPad I’d be able to download anything I really wanted to read. I used to criticize the cynics who bashed digital reading for not having the “right feel of a book.” Especially since some incredible percentage of our media is consumed digitally, I always figured words are words no matter where they’re placed. I guess I still believe in that last part, but I’m closer to the ‘real thing’ band wagon than I am to liking digital. I think it’s most due to the habit of me reading at night and the science behind staring at screens before you go to sleep. Although, maybe it’s the same reason I favor compact phones over smart phones; you can bash them around as much as you’d like and never worry about it breaking.

Anyway, I found this fantastic book cafe based out of Tokyo (www.infinitybooksjapan.com) which sells used books online for amazing value. After opening what could add to a billion tabs on my phone I finally narrowed it down to a diverse selection of renowned books that I wanted but had never gotten a chance to read. I think they’ll soon be getting a lot of my service, and it’s just another place for me to checkout this weekend.

As far as the trip goes, I think winging it will be the easiest. I have yet to pack, nor do I think I’ll need anything more than a shirt and pants, I think I can rely on people I know living there for a place to stay, and I’m not quite sure how to get there apart from going to the train station. The fact that I get paid on Friday kind of helps this process, being that if I do land in deep udon than I’ll at least be able to pay for my way back, get any extra clothes, or at least afford a hotel. But at least if anything, I’ll have a book to read along the way.

Functional

This week was pretty unremarkable in the long run, and it’s actually to the point where I can’t remember what I did for the first half of it. On Monday I finally got my refrigerator from a second hand shop, a bit sketchy a bit wonky–and that’s after spending almost a month without one–but it didn’t smell and after plugging it in and slapping it a couple times it doesn’t make too much noise either. Alas, I don’t really have an efficient way of hauling groceries around yet. I’m in the market for one of those collapsible rolling carts that I’d always see elderly women use to haul groceries around when I was working in New York, but even those seem a rarity at the most basic daizo. Instead, I’ve been relying on the kindness of my neighbors and trying to make my trips to the grocery store line up with theirs. Everyone likes to carpool right?

Needless to say I’m finally in the market for a car. I can’t really afford it with all the credit card debt I charged getting over here, and the continual student loans I’ll be paying off (for the rest of my life), but I think I’ll be able to save up enough by the time snow falls and I really want one. The thing about Japanese cars is they’re dirt cheap on a whole. The thing about those kei cars, is that they’re made out of cellophane and dirt bike motors. It doesn’t help that I’ve got dreams of grandeur and a lust for the Fast & Furious franchise, meaning I’m only in the market for something that will boost my pride. Luckily enough, without a car I’m not going to be going out and spending money as much, and my salary has enough of a contingency where I think I can set enough aside for multiple savings.

One thing I did learn this week was how to send money over to my American bank account. Because of the aforementioned loans (and probably heavily on the fact that Japan is a cash based economy so my cash card is almost entirely limited to ATMs) I still have to keep my bank account open in America. Unfortunately, through living alone, paying off loans, and making the move to Japan, I wasn’t able to save… well, let’s just say I did the opposite of saving and now that American bank account is pretty low. Thus, I have to send over money from my salary every month to keep up with those payments. Really, it’s something I could have fixed with a little more planning ahead (i.e. starting a savings back in November when I first applied), but alas is still a habit that I haven’t quite figured out yet. Thankfully I’m great at making a budget, and have only recently started becoming good at adhering to it. Anyway, enough of the Pity Party.

The point of the above story, is that I tried to figure out how to send money home. The easiest and cheapest (although by cheap I mean ￥2500) way to send money home I’ve found is through the post office. In the grand scheme (now that I’ve done it) it really isn’t too hard, but being I went to the post office alone twice (to get the form, and return it) my confusion rate got double the dosage. Eventually I figured it out–with some help from my advisor–but really it’s starting to wear me out. It’s the same thing that happened when I was in the hospital getting stitches. Then I was lost when they were asking me if I had any allergies, and here at the post when I was sending ￥80,000* (a meager $572 due to an American economy that just doesn’t want to give in to a crumbling China) I was running in and out of understanding if I could confirm my bank account number. Between my health and wealth, a small misunderstanding could have really screwed me over and I think it’s really the best motivation for me to start studying Japanese.

(*back in 2012 when I first visited the exchange rate would’ve put that at $912…)

And that’s actually what I’ve started doing. I almost lost sleep over it, one night not being able to fall asleep, scanning Amazon,jp for the books that I used in college, and almost walking to the nearest conbini to pick up a gift card so I could order them by the end of the week. Ironically, after finally making the debate to ignore the impulse buy I randomly found that I had a complete set of my first and second year textbooks and workbooks downloaded onto my hard drive. Thank goodness, I’ll only be spending my Amazon points on hedonistic materialism.

Speaking of which, perhaps the highlight of my week was not getting a refrigerator, nor was it spending another hour at Nitori (my second favorite place in Japan), or even making my plans for the end of September holiday to go to Tokyo. No, the actual highlight of my week was Wednesday evening and the arrival of my Amazon wishlist. I think I mentioned before how (along with peanut butter) I’ve been longing for some emotional stability through playing high quality music loud. Well, wishes fulfilled as I unwrapped: audio technica headphones (because I left my last ones at home, not even near my suitcase), a bluetooth speaker, and among other things, a desk clock, an iPhone wall charger (previously left at the airport), and unbelievably itchy scalp relieving shampoo.

The first thing I did was put on the headphones and cook dinner from dry goods. They stayed on the rest of the night and I could physically feel my dopamine levels increase.