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I spent last weekend in Osaka with 'the boys' from my prefecture - 3 fellow guys who I regularly play Airsoft games with. We went to Osaka with the express purpose of playing at one of Japan's rare indoor Airsoft arenas. As promised, it was awesome, but this isn't a gun geek post. This post is about the break I took one afternoon to head to Kyoto.

Kyoto is only 30 minutes from Osaka by train, so I had no excuse not to go to my friend Eri's piano contest happening on Saturday afternoon. The world of piano is a funny thing, it seems.

As this was a contest, I saw a rapid succession of several players, mostly girls, dressed mostly in black with the occasional white, who each played for 6 minutes before a small bell rang, the players stopped mid-note, and quietly walked off stage. No applause was allowed.

The players were obviously talented, but you could hear a wide disparity in skill. The less talented (or more nervous) players paused before notes that were big steps across the keyboard. Most aspired to what seemed to me to be the current fashion in piano playing: schizophrenia. I turn my TV onto the NHK Education channel pretty often at night (I only have 5 channels) and more often than not it's classical music, and there's usually a special place, front and center, for a fat pianist with an impossibly long Eastern European last name and a penchant for overacting as he plays: tender baby Jesus facial expressions for legato segments, Furious Anger for the forte. It strikes me as lame every time. Yes, I know that piano comes from pianoforte, which means 'soft' and 'strong' at once. But Mr. Nagaheekamapouliskov seems to have forgotten everything that comes in between. And yet this guy's on-off-switch style of playing is all the rage, telling by what I see on TV. And it's ugly.

But then in stepped Eri. I knew she was playing Debussy, a composer known for his expressions of smoothness and grace, but that was all I knew. She arrived for her 6 minutes dressed in a gorgeous pink dress, a pearl necklace, and meticulously done-up hair. Honestly, she'll be hard-pressed to look that classy on her own wedding day.

And it was everything I could have hoped for. With the weaker players, you could see the fear in their eyes, the fear that the piano might somehow betray them and PLONK out the wrong note. Eri didn't show a hint of it. She looked as she should: the piano was her tool, her instrument to control. And she played like it too. Weaker pianists play with their fingers. She played with her whole arms, her wrists smoothly but firmly commanding the piano to do her bidding. The resultant sound was beautiful: a full dynamic range, a smoothness that any player should aspire to play with, a sound that Debussy himself may have thought of when composing. She was the only one who didn't sound like Mr. Nagaheekamapouliskov, and that was a good thing.

Except I was wrong. The performance was a train-wreck. She spent 15 minutes being let into by her piano teacher before she could even talk to me or her own mom and sister who had come to watch. That teeny flower bouquet I brought along in the interest of tradition could wait. She had blown it.

As she finally stepped outside to talk to us, apparently she had known it all along. She had "given up right after [she] started." Wait, what? This performance that I had concluded was awesome was in fact her not cranking it to 11. It was her choking. She was too jittered to carry a regular conversation, so she sent the family and me off to have coffee together without her while she stuck around to await her 'miserable' result.

The result, according to a text the next morning, was a 'miserable' 5th out of 14 players. The top 4 were set to advance on to some other competition. For Eri, the score was some minor solace - she still did well despite totally blowing it. For me, the score made perfect sense: beautiful performance, but not what The Piano-Playing Establishment is looking for.

Eri, by the way, just accepted a job at Yamaha as an in-house piano instructor. I still don't understand why Yamaha employs them, but more importantly she's now technically a professional pianist. Take that, Establishment.

Consider this the antithesis to the stressed-out, burned-out, depressed note I wrote a few months back. I still get messages about that post every now and again, and I'm happy to report that things have changed for the better.

The light at the end of the tunnel is now very, very bright. With only a month and a half left on my contract, it's gotten easy to stop worrying about small stuff and it's become more important to use this month and a half as best I can - it probably won't be my last time in Japan, but it could be the last for a few years.

At school, I've taken an "I don't care" approach to teaching. If the kids are acting up, let 'em. If I'm 5 minutes late, I'm still 10 minutes early for the morning meeting and here 5 minutes before the principal anyway. This approach lets me sleep better, and strangely, it's more effective in the classroom. My new motto is "What are they gonna do, send me back to America?" I don't equate this to slacking off at school - I'm still productive - but it's eliminated 99% of the stress from my daily schedule.

My generally-improving health leaves me less exhausted, so I sleep less heavily than I used to. This means I have more free time, so I play more at night and see people more.

I'm setting a travel schedule for my last bit here. Next weekend I'll be headed to Osaka to play indoor, close-quarters Airsoft with my 3 JET Airsoft buddies. It'll be a gentleman's weekend, and a fun one at that. Imagine playing Counter-Strike in real life, and that's what I'll be doing next weekend. Yeah, we're nerds, and we're paid good money for it too. After that is a weekend-long beach party with a beach bar and famous Japanese DJs, and after that my Eikaiwa class is taking me to Miyajima (known as one of Japan's 3 most beautiful places) for my last hurrah with them.

My last hurrah with my best friend out here will be a trip to Seoul at the start of August. After that, I'll be going to the places I wanted to go - Nagasaki, Nagoya, Kyoto one more time, and of course one last hurrah in Tokyo - before I catch a flight home.

Update: I'll be flying back to Texas before August 15th, and I'll take an immediate connection from Houston to DFW.

Also, a quick bit of love goes out to Mom, who has finally elected to quit her giant-stressball job, so I no longer have to worry about her mental health. If you see her, congratulate her.

Lastly, I've found a *really* good reason to come home. It's, well, me.

It's only been recently that I've realized that I've been given more than most JET people. I've got a lovely home to go to. I've got a small but awesome and stable family. Living at home doesn't even phase me, considering how symbiotically my mom and I can live. Whether or not I live at home, I've got my material needs basically covered, thanks to this year's savings. I've got an awesome, awesome, awesome network of friends who 'get' me more than I ever realized. I have a community that I belong to that shares a common interest.

I'd truly have to be insane to throw all that away.

It's been an interesting 10 months on JET, to say the least. But the most interesting day was easily the first one. I still remember my first night 'on the job' in Houston the day before departing with the crew that would be leaving from the Houston consulate.

John, a guy from the UT Japanese program, was a die-hard Simpsons fan and *had* to see the newly-released Simpsons movie before we left. The movie had come out that day. He led an expedition from the hotel, by taxi, to Houston's Movie Tavern, where about 5 of us guys had a few drinks and were the first to see The Simpsons Movie. The already funny movie was made absolutely hilarious by the sheer escapism of it all - all 5 of us were enjoying the last night of Life As We Knew It. The next 365 days - or 730, or 3, 4, or 5 years' worth of days - could prove to be completely transformative for our lives. What if we never came back? It's a question that you at least have to acknowledge before you leave, if not confront.

Then JET turned out to be life as promised. One day after another in rural Japan, in a place you slowly but surely make into your own. I bought a big futon, tons of video games, and spent a ton of money on Hiroshima booze to feel comfortable.

Now I have to start reversing that process - shipping winter clothes to the States, trying to figure out the logistics of getting multiple suitcases home, trying to sell off all those video games and still having something to do in my last couple weeks here. Not to mention saying goodbyes - my wonderful night class is taking me to Hiroshima for a last hurrah. And I'll have to say my own goodbyes in a way that gives me closure.

And my last night here is over two months away, but I can tell you exactly what the experience will be - am I done here? I've found that I love Japan just as much as I thought I would, and the thought of not coming back is pretty hard to swallow. It's been 3 years since I did this whole thing in Spain and I haven't been back there. Did I accomplish everything I wanted to? Did I see everything I wanted? Have I learned what I came here to learn?

Long story short, the first night and the last night are the most significant of one's entire JET experience. They're the only two days where you can see the 'big picture' of your life and how the JET chapter fits into it. And the last night is equally terrifying as the first. On the way out of the country, you're paralyzed with wonder over how your life will change. On the way back, I'm going to panic with fear that I've missed something.

In a couple days I'll be informing my supervisor of my intended flight home. If that goes according to plan, I'll be arriving in Houston on August 4th and reaching Dallas between there and the 6th.

If you see me, please have a drink with me, or failing that say 'hi.' I'll be seriously in need of reminders why I left Japan - that is, reminders why I came home.

This weekend, I resolved to leave Japan at the end of my contract and come home. Here's the rationale, as I wrote to my old friend (and designer of this site) Emily:

Long story short, "the life" in Tokyo proper is for the rich, or for the people who work themselves to death enough to be rich. The average Joe in Tokyo actually lives in the distant suburbs. And for me, it'd prove to be only slightly less lonely than life out here in rural Japan. I'm still separated from my friends by lots of geographical distance, too much Internet distance to play most games together, and too great a time difference to be able to communicate with most of my friends save for messaging and email. And the girls I come in contact with are basically whores for foreign dudes, and the fun of that quickly wears off and leaves you longing for actual companionship in the times you're sober.

The job thing also became a major factor. I'm REALLY sick of teaching English and while I'm technically qualified to be a translator, my Japanese isn't where it should be to be any good at it. Meanwhile, back in the States I've got a vision for a marketing boutique firm I want to launch, and I've got a little experience to get on the road to making that happen (speaking of, I'm looking to get hands-on marketing experience in someone else's house first, so if you know anyone looking for an intern let me know :3 ). In the end, the prospect of a fun job and being nearer to my friends won out. If my career takes a different turn or if my biz miraculously turns profitable, then great, I can take a vacay to live The Life in Tokyo that I still want to some degree. And if I'm broke and miserable, then I'll come back here.

Honestly, I think I just needed more time to work things out. It's hilarious when people ask me "well why didn't you apply for a job-type change?" (meaning, I could keep my awesome salary and benefits and switch to being a translator.) And I always end up yelling at them for asking me, because the deadline for that was back in like January, and it's ridiculous to think I'd have that stuff figured out after 6 months on my first job.

I was in Tokyo this weekend. On Sunday morning, I was chilling out on a second-floor Starbucks balcony overlooking a city street lined with cherry blossoms in full bloom. In Japan, this is a rare treat, and the kind of picture that makes wall calendars. Even still, in my happiest of happy places, I had no problem calling home to Mom and saying "OK, I'm coming home."

I apologize, dear snagger.org. I've left you feeling lonely for far too long. As one other teacher in my town put it, "It's a long winter."

Of course, he said that in reference to his womanizing advice on how to "keep warm" in multiple senses of the word. Truth is, at the root of it, it has been a long winter here. And the 10 weeks or so that filled up the bulk of winter damn near drove me insane.

As it happens, my region of Japan is split into two smaller areas: the San-In (san-een) and San-Yo coasts. In both cases, San means 'mountain.' They're different in that 'in' means 'darkness' and 'yo' means 'sunlight.' Guess which one I live in?

Hint: I admit I'm a bit of a hypochondriac at times, but I definitely had a basis for dianosing myself with Seasonal Affective Disorder by the end of February.

Spring is slowly coming to my area, which means the permanent dull grey of winter has been replaced with mere haze through which the sun still barely shines. But before spring fully springs, I had to be taught a small lesson about where I live:

There was a TV special a few days ago about Shimane prefecture (where I live) being the worst in Japan. And there's plenty of reasons why: lowest population density, no youth, no money, an agricultural economy, widespread poverty, the aforementioned 'darkness,' and the list truly went on.

By the time I saw this special, I had made up my mind: I was coming home. I spent the month of February in a panic about what to do next - where to live, what jobs to go after, what to pursue next. I'm the planning type, and the uncertainty caused enough stress to give me an ulcer. No, really, an ulcer.

So, as it stands, I'll be moving home at the start of August, with a teaching position closer to Tokyo as a fallback in case I can't get myself a job stateside. See you kids in summer - and I'll do everything I can to write again before then.