Oh, wait, I finished college!

Ah, that sentimental moment has arrived. The fireworks are over, the celebrations dead, and everyone has left town and scattered in their various directions.

I'm left in limbo before it's off to Japan. It's a pretty lonely limbo since my A-town friends are working and in school, my Austin friends are working or scattered around the world, my JA family is mostly in Tokyo, and my sleep schedule is out of whack so I can't even talk to most people.

I'd love to sum up 4 years of my life with lots of tidy little paragraphs about the experiences I had, the places I went, the friends I've had and all that, but really, I spent the last 4 years doing just that on this site. I covered my personal growth, my identity crises, my major relationships, all that sort of stuff.

But I neglected to mention the little things - the things I shouldn't forget but ultimately will. The things that become habit, that become the source of inside jokes. Maybe somewhere out of that some other reader can draw some conclusions about who I've been and who I've become, but the rest of this entry is mostly for my own records. I've learned over the last 4 years, above all else, that my brain has filled its information capacity. Back when I was 16 I could interview a guy like Angel Munoz and transcribe the entire thing from my own memory - no tape recorders, nothing. Now I can't remember the chapter of Catch-22 I re-read last night. I will, like a slowed-down Alzheimer's patient, eventually forget everything and I only hope that my own writing will jog my memory.

The list of little things that owned:
-Being on a Halo team with Mikey, Adam, Tim and Patrick. And other guys from our dorm, for a while. While we're at it:
-Friday Night Halo in the dorms
-and the late-night Wan Fu runs that inevitably followed
-Getting a BMW and driving it thoroughly through the beautiful scenery of Austin. I'll never get enough of it.
-Being on stage at the Texas Revue (UT's talent show)
-Unlimited free cookies in the Plan II office
-Having a cute girlfriend on occasion (I miss that)
-Coming home to nights and nights in a-town of Starbucks and Thomas's house
-Coffee date with Monica - I know you're reading this Mo, it meant a bunch. :)
-JA meetings: walking into a room full of welcoming people who know you - that's the best.
-Learning to eat sushi - from that icky first bite that I choked down, with An Lee looking on laughing, to trying to impress girl-of-the-moment Charlene by trying 'scary' things like urchin, to teaching people proper technique two years later. I'm used to the food by now - hell, it was something of a comfort in Tokyo - but the experience of going to a sushi place is still as exciting as ever.
-JA club parties - I love the clubs, I love being surrounded by my friends, I love being in charge, and I loved being around the girls who came to our parties.
-Austin's restaurants. Oh man, so much goodness that I'll miss so much.
-Walking to class. Not taking a bus to class, not driving to class, walking. I've gained weight since school's been over. And when I lived in Spain and had to walk 45 minutes to school in the morning? Lost a ton o' weight. That was the best shape I'd been in in a long, long, long time.
-My workout regimen: DDR at Einstein's for 50c/4 songs.
-Having a roommate who was as much of an internet geek as I was - the many nights of Adult Swim and forum surfing was well-appreciated, Tim.
-The times I surprised people by speaking a foreign language.
-The advent of Facebook - I would be mildly socially retarded without the ability to keep track of people.
-I really liked tabling for organizations - you know, manning a table and handing out flyers. Sounds stupid, but I liked the quick little bites of interaction with lots of different kinds of people.
-Downing a Starbucks Doubleshot to stay on top of my game in my law class as a junior. That class rocked.
-Hook-ups. Girls I hooked up with, you rule.
-Drunken hijinks with Adam, Patrick and Mikey. You guys rule even more.
-Hans Mark.
-Stopping by the office of my 'godfather,' one Professor Jose Luis Montiel, only to stay for hours on end. And temporarily work as his secretary. And get him coffee. And talk with him. He wound up being the one who really truly landed me my JET position. On top of that, he was my mentor in Spain. He tried to teach me much in the ways of the value of people and of hard work and faith, but all I really got from him what is the value of a person can be. And in all quantities immeasurable, Montiel is the richest man I've ever known.
-The House of Guys - Plan II had its own house, and it was host to an unbelievable amount of "oh, that's college for you" moments. I still kept my shirt from the Graffiti Party.

-Saying "Hi, I'm Blake" to every friend I've made at this place - all 483 of you. Thanks a bunch. :D

Next stop: Kawamoto, Shimane, Japan (or, my JET placement)

I'm going to be in the middle of nowhere. More specifically, Shimane Prefecture, the second-least-populated prefecture in all of Japan.

prefecture (n.) - a province that's small in size, roughly the size of a larger Texan county.

Within that prefecture I'll live and teach in the city of Kawamoto, with a humble, cheerful population of 4,500. Amazingly, the prefecture and the city have Wikipedia pages, so if you're curious there's more to read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimane_Prefecture

There's plenty of good news about living in a small place. First and foremost, it'll be great Japanese practice - they chose to send me out there because I speak Japanese well enough to survive. Also, being one of the very few foreigners that's ever been in this part of Japan, I'll likely be a curious thing to the townspeople. This equates to me being popular by default, which I'm OK with. This particular small place is also good because it's near the beach and the mountains, so I get beach weather in summer and skiing in winter.

I'm far from Tokyo (the single greatest city on Earth - all the excitement of NYC without the dirt, crime or rudeness) - probably over 6 hours by bullet train - but roughly 3 to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are probably the biggest real cities nearby. It's remote enough that the highway infrastructure isn't exactly finished yet - and yet, many foreigners in my area buy cars. Expect to see pictures of me with a cute, tiny, box-shaped Japanese car and driving on the right in just a few months.

I just took a break from writing this to look up my city in my Lonely Planet guidebook. It's not there.

Fortunately, I've found over the last few days that my prefecture has an active Internet community for JET teachers. I signed up and was about to introduce myself in the 'new JETs' subforum when I saw this gem of a post:

'Michael Blake Errison / Emmison, are u out there?'
So through some sneaky investigations of a certain German ALT in Kawamoto we have found out that Michael Blake Errison or Emmison is coming to Kawamoto BOE or might be coming not totally sure. So Michael you out there?

After a couple days of digging around, I came into contact with Lena, an English teacher from Ireland who wrote that post. Apparently the 'certain German ALT' is the person I'm replacing, and while I'm trying to get in contact with her personally, Lena was able to fill me in on a lot about my town. I'm just over an hour from Hiroshima, there will be 3 JETs in my town including myself and Lena, there *is* broadband Internet access, and here's the real kicker:

Kawamoto BOE (Board of Education, the guys who actually employ me) are very good to their JETs. Assuming I inherit everything that the German is leaving behind, I'll be coming into a nice big house in the center of town and a car! Supposedly the BOE owns most all the possessions in the house, which means I can't abuse them (for instance, can't take the car on road trips), but it does mean I have very little initial expenses, which is very good news.

As for my teaching, it's not set in stone, but the German currently teaches junior high, so I'll probably do the same. Should be a whole lot of fun.

Whoa, I just had an awesome game idea.

The next step beyond the Wii is a mo-cap controller. I think you could pull it off with 14 sensors, if they were cheap. They'd go on:

hand
elbow
shoulder
hip
knee
heel
toes

And there'd be two on each side, making for 14 in all. And honestly, since people are willing to buy peripherals as evidenced by Guitar Hero, you might even be able to pull it off on the current Wii platform.

Now if we did this, we could make a real dancing game. Forget DDR and that clown dancing bullshit. (but mad respect to the guys who can freestyle at that game and make it look easy) No no, this game would actually teach you to be a badass breakdancer. The game would come with 50 songs like DDR, all taken from various kinds of electronic and hip-hop music. Each song would have a routine that you'd be scored on, but you'd unlock the ability to freestyle each song.

I think it'd be badass.

I'm done with college.

Yesterday was my last final exam ever.

I get a week's vacation until graduation.

Then I get two months' vacation before I'm off to Japan. I might get my assignment (for where in Japan I'm teaching) in the next couple weeks.

I have way, way more free time than I've been used to in a long time.