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A couple weeks back, my mom's father, my last grandparent, passed away at the age of 83.

This had been a long time coming, as the poor guy had been senile beyond comprehension for several years, but it naturally took a pretty heavy toll on my mom anyway. We headed off to Oklahoma for funeral arrangements and to say goodbye.

Personally, I wound up saying 'hello' to some family members I had never met before. Mom and I were welcomed with open arms into a lovely home and found ourselves comfortable: me, with the lovely patio on which to watch Monday Night Football; Mom with her favorite family members who she hadn't seen in dunno-how-long-but-it's-been-too-long.

And just when I started to feel truly comfortable, I had some Red State talk dropped on me: talk about "the gun safe" and a "black problem" my mom's tiny hometown had some years back. Maybe it was the couple of Modelos I had thrown back by then, but I found it easier than before to shrug it off. These were genuinely good people who just happened to be living the Oklahoma lifestyle as they knew it. If they didn't live and talk the way they did, they'd be seen as outcasts, as weirdos.

For his part, I have no knowledge of my grandfather taking part in any such Red Statery. Telling by my mom's description of him, he was too simple a man for politics or the anger that arises from its modern incarnation.

Like my knowledge of the rest of my family, I barely knew the guy. My only real memories of him involved my youthful video game habits. He'd clamor for a turn on my Super NES, grabbing my controller and saying "it's mah time" in a way that only an Oklahoman grandfather could. That, and he dispensed more money in my direction than an ATM when it came time to go to Putt-Putt. We'd play some mini-golf and then he'd sit around while I played arcade games for hours.

That generosity, I learned at his funeral, was his trademark. Distant cousins of mine, my mom's childhood friends, experienced the same generosity at the bowling alley and the movie theater.

He was a simple man. He only left his corner of the earth once - to fight in the Pacific. Like my paternal grandfather, he fought the Japanese so that I could one day befriend them.

He was a simple man. He worked at one company his whole career - the phone company, back when it was the phone company. He started there after returning home in 1946, and he worked there until the day of his retirement in 1990.

He survived on that retirement - built on what became Verizon stock - for 18 years. He didn't buy much of anything. He lived peacefully.

When my paternal grandparents died, they left me - not my father - an inheritance. I used a portion of it to leave the country, study in Spain, explore Japan. I'm more proud of those things than virtually anything else I've ever done.

This time, the inheritance goes to my mom. I couldn't be happier. She hasn't worked out the numbers - and I wouldn't write about them even if she did - but there's an inkling that my grandfather may have given his daughter something that her whole career, with its VP status and stock options and car allowance and big city hustle-and-bustle, may never have let her buy: her retirement.

Well, in all fairness I've been back for two weeks. This weekend marks 4 weeks of being done with my JET work and moving on to new stuff. Two of those were a fantastic vacation all across Japan, with friends American and Japanese, culminating in a last night here, and I've spent the last two reacclimating to life in the States.

I've already gained a little bit of weight - thanks a lot, American food - but I've also gained a lot more.

My big "reverse culture shock" moment came and went while I was still on a layover in LAX. Creepy greasy-haired LA motherfucker posing as a missionary tried to get me to follow him out the airport, when I had an inkling feeling I was very near my connecting gate. I was. Rip-off exchange rates mean I'm still carrying $90 in yen. The pizza was horrible, but pizza has since redeemed itself with my taste buds.

I've moved into 'home' - that is, mom's house. And honestly, it feels fantastic. Mom and I are two highly symbiotic creatures, moreso now that she's quit her job and gone into semi-retirement. She's getting more relaxed by the day, and she's quickly gotten used to having me around again.

I'm also working from home! This is the big part. I'm the newest writer at Shacknews.com, one of the big video game news sites. It's a great gig for all of these reasons:

-I work from home
-I semi-set my own hours: I work 11am to 7pm right now
-No dress code (my hair already has some fireball red streaks in it)
-Shacknews is a community I was already part of anyway; it's good to contribute to it
-It's a salaried, regular job - no freelance pitching, regular paychecks, and many other things that make other writers jealous
-Air-conditioned workplace (last place didn't have that..)
-Co-workers that speak techie, know games, and can take some smack talk

And above all:
-I'm doing what I've always wanted to do - I write for a living, and I'm in the video games industry.

Usually, I'm humble when it comes to things like achievement, but I've been way too happy with myself to be humble on this one. This really is what I've wanted to do for a very, very long time, and to achieve that goal is intensely satisfying.

I got the offer a little over a week ago (yes, 5 days after getting home), and I've now worked a week at the job. It's a little tiring to sit at the desk all day, but other than that it's everything I've wanted from a job and I certainly don't see myself wanting to leave anytime soon.

As soon as I got the offer, I caved, rushed out, and got myself an iPhone. As a techie, it's the only phone worth taking seriously. No, really. (Tip: add yourself on your family's plan and pay $40 a month instead of $70.) I've got a new phone number, so I hope you visit my Facebook profile and add me and all that good stuff.

More importantly, I've also gained a new appreciation for my family. I'm off to visit my brother (and my new niece!) this weekend, and I've already been in contact with a couple other relatives. And obviously, it's nice to have my mother's sanity return.

And next week is a 4-day work week! From here I'm working on visits to Dallas proper (I'm way out in the burbs) and Austin (of course). Here's to seeing you soon!

Last weekend was my goodbye party with all my friends living in Tokyo. A handful of UT students were in the crowd, and it was as nice a feeling as it had been almost 2 years ago when I first came to Tokyo, only to run around all night with the same friends I had back in Austin. It was much more exhilarating, though, to come halfway around the world and find that you still belong to something. It's something most tourists don't have.

It's been that feeling - only on occasion - for the last year. Anytime I took a break from my province, I hightailed it to Tokyo and called up everyone in the crew. In retrospect, those times were the ones where I was the happiest.

I've spent the last week in such a fashion. With nothing to do other than wait for a flight, I shacked up with various members of the Tokyo crew and got very adjusted to sleeping on solid floors. At night, the crew comes out to play and I get egged into another Red Bull, another can of coffee. And I wind up awake until the sun comes up. It's of great comfort to know that the Tokyo Crew will live on and just might be here the next time I come back.

Tonight's my last night in Tokyo, and I'm honestly a little relieved to be alone. Maybe it was the constant action and poor sleep of the last week, or maybe it's the peace and quiet of staying in a decent hotel for my last night. I'm acting like an old man - slouched on some bed or couch or other, hitting the spa for the relaxation, ordering room service, the whole deal.

It's a good chance to contemplate the closing of the 'Japan' chapter of my life. The first time I left Japan, I wasn't sad at all - I could feel that I'd be back before long. Sure enough, 5 months later, I had a contract in hand to spend anywhere from 1-5 years over here. But now that the contract is up and my bags are packed, it's hard to reminisce over the last year. Honestly, it's been utterly refreshing to get out of Shimane Prefecture, to the point where I'm quickly putting most of my life there out of mind. I'm too excited to get to the new thing. I could be reverse culture-shocked, but I'm too excited to see my friends. Too excited to start my new projects. Too excited to seek out a significant other that speaks my language to the point where you start inventing new words and meanings just to keep the communication on the same page.

Still, I'm ever-so-slightly nervous about leaving Tokyo. I love this city too much. This time, I feel like I'll be back - but it'll be a while. And when I get back, I've got a whole list full of people who will get calls the instant I land.

Right now, I can see the Tokyo skyline from my hotel room. It's gone from breathtaking (2 years ago) to feeling natural, feeling like home. With any luck, I'll see Mt. Fuji in the morning for the very first time.

The end has finally come. My one year on JET is all but done, and last Friday I formally said farewell to my little school.

I wrote a speech that I thought was splendiferous. I translated "all good things must come to an end" into Japanese and told the kids that my own dream at their age had been to come to Japan, so they could reach out and go for their dreams too. I also mentioned in passing that it was harder than I had expected to say goodbye to a bunch of rambunctious junior high kids.

At the time, it was a lie. A pleasantry. Japanese public speaking is nothing but lies and pleasantry, so I was doing my part to fit in.

But as the day wore on, it came to be true. Girls came into the teacher's room bawling their eyes out, crying things to the effect of "I can't believe he's leaving!" One of my poorest students, yet most enthusiastic, stuck by my side at every available opportunity. Then the letters started coming. A couple students came by to give me goodbye letters, and I had happened to write a letter to one of them, because she was one of The Special Ones.

The cat was out of the bag, so now the rest of the Special Letters had to get passed out. I had written letters to my 6 best students - not necessarily grade-wise, though they were all excellent students - but to the 6 who had really gone to the effort to communicate, to befriend me, to teach me as much as I had taught them. I told them just how talented they were and implored them to keep up their English with the ultimate end of getting out of Kawamoto. "The world is a wonderful place," I told all of them, "and America would love to meet you!"

Thereafter, the letters started to pour in. One student would be seen giving me a letter and the rest scrambled to write quick notes on their cute stationery notepads saying 'thanks' and 'come visit us!' But a few had gone to some extra effort. Of the Special Six, three were boys, so they didn't write anything. But of the remaining three, two had prepared small gifts for me in advance. One was a simple 'Thank You' done in traditional calligraphy style, and another was a note accompanied by a little Beijing 2008 Olympics mascot keyring - very cute, considering the student was ethnically Chinese.

None of the boys wrote me letters, save the lone special ed student. But I received many hugs and repeated "Dont go!" cries from the boys of my best class. I was honestly pretty floored by the love and support I was receiving. I had tried to be a teacher by personality for the last year, a role model in the same sense that my older brother was for me when I was a munchkin.

On the last day, I learned that it had worked.

Lunchtime came, and I had gotten an ego boost, but the "it's hard to say goodbye to kids" line was still a lie. Lunchtime went, and it had come time to really consider saying my last sayonara for good and getting out of school. After I left, Japanese formality would dictate that I was not to come back to the school again. Delaying it, I went on one last run around the school, checking into band practice, volleyball practice, baseball practice.

It did get really hard to say goodbye right at the end. It hit me that I did have an impact here and I nearly became overwhelmed by the guilt of leaving these kids behind after just one year of having that impact. But it was the hardest when I hit the band practice room.

Rika [name changed], my absolute best student, the best of the Special Six, was in the band room, but she wasn't tuning up. She sat on the floor in a corner, her elbows propped on her knees, her face covered in her towel. While other girls had bawled all morning, she had been strong and kept her wits. But the ultimate moment of sayonara, that was too much for her to handle. She was clearly crying underneath her towel, and she was doing her absolute best to hide it.

As I left the room, I managed to stare at her intently enough to get her attention. The towel came down, revealing a tear-filled face, and I mouthed a 'sayonara' across the room directly at her as the very last thing I did before stepping out.

And that was when it became incredibly hard for me to say goodbye. The amount of power one wields as a teacher really can be unbelievable at times. I could tell I had a good effect on little Rika, especially embracing her interest in English, but the one thing that brought me to tears all day was her tears. That I could cause that much pain was something I hadn't expected even on my most self-confident of days.

From there, it was all downhill. When it came time to shake teachers' hands and say 'sayonara' to them, I really did get clouded up by the tears. It wasn't like any other time I had teared up before in my life. It was somehow less... voluntary.

The end came and went before I even knew it. It was an end that I had looked forward to for at least 6 months. And my last two weeks of work had been a nightmare of Japanese passive-aggression and boredom. But seeing my own departure through my kids' eyes, I thought (and still think) how could I have looked forward to this?

I know that I have a lot to look forward to - I have fun travels ahead, followed by the promise of taking a great risk at an incredible job, not to mention rejoining the civilized world and eating Mexican food. I can only hope that one (or more) of my kids follows suit, because the matter is now unfortuately out of my hands.

OK, here's the truth behind why I learned Japanese, majored in it, and came to Japan:

Games.

I've usually said that's my reason for studying the language, but I'd try to mute it by saying it was my dream 10 years ago, when I was a pre-teen reading gaming magazines about Japanese design luminaries, and thinking I'd like to someday pick the language up, as if on a whim.

Truth is, that dream never faded. Not for a second. Games were my encouragement when Japanese studies got difficult. They were my primary motivation to come to Japan in the first place.

Over the last year, I've gotten to live the dream. And I don't mean by buying tons of games as if I were an anime collector fresh off the train to Akihabara. My dream from 10 years ago was to play a Shigeru Miyamoto game in its original form.

If you don't know that name, you certainly know his work. He's the guy behind Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, the Wiimote, and most of the other Nintendo classics.

A little over 6 months ago, the dream had become reality: I picked up a Wii and Super Mario Galaxy. And today, I finished it.

In those several months, I learned a lot about that dream and what it meant. The game's Japanese certainly gave me a few chuckles, but I learned that over the last 10 years game translation has come a long way. Whether you're playing Mario, Gran Turismo, or Metal Gear, English ain't all that bad. I'm holding off another month on this year's big game - Metal Gear Solid 4 - for that exact reason.

And sometimes, the Nintendo magic just ain't what it used to be. Super Mario Galaxy is a wonderful game, but it's a solid 9 out of 10 that should have been a perfect 10.

It may sound like 'so far, so jaded,' but today there was a big, big upswing. The credit roll.

As soon as I got that 60th star, killed Bowser, saved Peach, and saw the game's plot resolution with those cute little star characters, the credits came down the screen.

For the first time in my life, in Japanese.

The first name in the list: under Design Director, Shigeru Miyamoto. The guy who started it all for me. The inspiration to me, countless gamers, and even a few legendary modern designers.

But when it came across the screen, it read:

宮本　茂

and that's a good thing. That name may be hieroglyphics to you. Hell, this entire post may be Greek to you. But to tell you the truth, I'm getting an ever-increasing grin at the knowledge that today I accomplished one of my life's greatest dreams.