6 months down...

...and 6 months to go.

It's unfortunate that I'm counting down my time until the end of my contract, but I'm finding this particular part of rural Japan a bit short on the culture, fellowship, and all the wonderful things that are usually associated with the JET Program experience.

Such things happen; nobody's really at fault. It's just the place where I live.

So I occupy lots of time by thinking about what I'll do at the end of my time. Stuff I'm tossing around in my head right now:

1. Work at Google. I applied to two positions at Google, one in Tokyo and one in Santa Monica. I'd love either, but I'm partial to Tokyo. I still find myself very comfortable in Tokyo and I'm really pretty sure I want to live there. The things that I'd miss, if I left Japan, can all be found in Tokyo, and it's lots of small things like the stuff you see waiting for a train, or going to really obscure, hidden restaurants with your friends after work.

2. Teach English in Tokyo. I've got a connection for this, so I could do the same work I do now but, say, inside an hour of central Tokyo. I'd get to live in Tokyo like I want, but I'd take a massive pay cut to get there. I'd say it's worth it, but it'd be a pain.

3. Go back to Texas and start a business playing video games for a living. Basically it'd be gaming events outsourcing - the kind of stuff I did as prez of the Texas Gaming Association, but this time for a living. And I'd have a warehouse full of gaming hardware :D

What do you amigos think?

I miss people, and sometimes I think about how nice it'd be to come home and get a new car and an iPhone and be with my friends again. But I just feel like I'd constantly miss the buzz of being in Japan, and especially in Tokyo. I want to look for a serious girlfriend, and my odds are better when I'm in a country of fluent English speakers (it's hard, and tiring, to have serious relationship discussions in a foreign language). But I'd get to play games with Americans, which means I could play PC games again and I could play online games with my friends instead of people who are all up all night in the States and thus awake when I play. This back-and-forth could go on forever.

A long-overdue post on the state of things

I turn 23 in a couple days. And as if the timing were intended, I'm listening to the new Jimmy Eat World album for the first time. It sounds like more of Futures, and that's a good thing - it's made me feel like I'm in college again. (It's also the first time I've so strongly referred to college in the past-tense, and that's on a level so tragic I haven't come to understand it yet.) Following established habit, I had a rough night playing Halo, I'm IMing old friends past bedtime, I drank a few stiff Jack and Cokes, and I'm still on Facebook harassing everyone I can.

Here's what's new with me since I've last been here:
-We're 4 months into my year-long JET contract. 1/3rd done, for better and worse.

-I'm torn every day on where to live for the next while - Japan, or the US? As a country, I think I like Japan more - even in my super-poor town there's not really 'poverty,' and I'm not incredibly jaded with the people, the culture, the pop culture, or the women. I'm bored with being American - but being an American in Japan is incredibly exciting and empowering. Whether or not I can give up this power and sudden allure I have is a really difficult question.

-I'm definitely not staying where I live now. I turned down the option to renew my contract in Kawamoto and I don't feel any regret about it - at least, not yet. I'll likely miss my kids more than I do now, and maybe I'll miss others as well, but as of right now I won't have *too* many problems getting the hell out of this town.

-I've noticed that my Japanese life contains a noticeable lack of humor - I haven't laughed my ass off since summer. The closest I've come is the excellence that is Season 2 of The Boondocks. This, above all else, makes me miss my college-age friends and roommates.

-I just might write a book! My supervisors from my video game thesis highly recommended I seek publication, and because I'm an idiot it took me a full 6 months to realize my cousin has worked in the book-writing business. So I'm getting her advice and getting my stuff together to write a book about video games and start looking for an agent and a publisher.

-At the same time, I'm going to apply to Google Japan for a bilingual copy writer position. For most people living in Japan, Tokyo quickly loses its charm. Hasn't happened for me. I honestly think of the place as one of the happiest places on earth.

-I worry about my mom's state of mind entirely too often.

-I also miss the "special" people - the ones that give me a small buzz just by having a tiny "long time, no see, I miss you" conversation with them. So hello to Vicki, Sayaka, Monica, everyone from a-town, and above all my college roomies. I miss all of you guys way too much.

-I occasionally smoke, but I'm mindful not to really pick it up, as a) I don't want to have to quit and b) I have a niece! As of this writing, I think she's 3 days old if I'm counting the time lag right. Her name's Karoline and she's still in the "ugly baby" phase, but I'm excited to meet her upon my return to the States.

-Whether temporary or permanent, I'll be making that US trip in August of next year.

-Amazing still it seems - I'll be 23.

Mos Def on being done with college

About 2 months ago it was early May and I felt that I'd have a really, really hard time leaving Austin. The whole tearing-up-on-the-way-out-of-town thing was a pretty sure thing in my future. There'd be thousands of words to write on my recollections and where they'll take me and all the ways they'd stay with me.

Now it's the week where I leave Austin for a very long time, if not forever, and I don't feel quite so bad about it. In fact, it's almost a relief.

When Mos Def referred to it as 'the thrilling beginning, the quiet finale' he was singing (yes, singing) about 'lifetime' - not the rape-survivor-movie channel, but the idea of a lifetime. Yet, the last 4 years of mine form a sort of self-contained lifetime of their own.

I was definitely thrilled to be starting it. UT Orientation meant new friends, infinite possibilities, and a chance to reshape myself. The thrill left me sleeping 2-3 hours a night and running all day on pure adrenaline, no problem. You could feel the excitement in my writing from June 2003.

Now the mere thought of anything less than 8 hours of sleep is horrifying. My heartrate picks up a couple beats with the memory of the stress that came along with the sleep deprivation I suffered my senior year. It's quickly becoming apparent to me that I have a pretty serious problem with caffeine, too - I have pretty hardcore withdrawals and if I'm given a glass of iced tea at a restaurant I'll just chug it, unsweetened, racking up 7 or 8 free refills. Please, my heart begs the rest of my body, give me some peace and quiet without all these caffeinated fuckers coming along and spicing up my day.

And dear lord, save me the thought of drinking with Adam and Mikey and Patrick anytime soon. Not that I don't love my former roomies - but drinking another 12 gin & juices in a night just doesn't sound as exciting when I could be in the New York Bar drinking one glass of awesome Scotch for the same price. I'll miss the hilarity of those guys, but I won't miss the cheap liquor that cheapens the times I've had with those guys.

That's not to say it's easy to walk away from other people, either, but the process is helped by how gradual it all is. This time around I'll be saying a few final goodbyes to people I hold very near and dear, but I've already bade farewell to most of my 'extended family' at things like P2 graduation and JA's numerous goodbye parties. People have already started scattering, and I'm just one of a million scatterers that everyone knows going through this graduation thing. My Facebook friends list shows 482 friends at UT. I probably knew half of them by the time the first month of school was over. On the way out, I have plans to see roughly 5 people.

Thrilling beginning and quiet finale, indeed.

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