Blast Off!

In about ten hours, I'll be traveling to Japan. Honestly, I still can't believe it. I bought these tickets back in May. September 20th seemed like ages away. It's been kind of a bumpy road to this day, but I survived, and everything ended up okay in the end, anyway.

My last full day in my hometown started with me with Novocaine numbing my mouth as part of a routine procedure to take care of something insignificant. Not how I'd expect my last full day to go. After that, I pretty much spent most of the day packing and finding out that my parents are going to have to mail me quite a bit of clothes. I also emptied my wallet of things like Borders and Best Buy and Boloco Burrito rewards cards, as well as a metric ton of receipts and coupons ranging over the past year. Luckily, my old Suica card can remain standing.

After watching the Jets beat the Patriots, I had the last meal with my family at a Mexican restaurant. In the past, the night before I left the country, I'd often eat with my family at an American restaurant to eat a giant cheeseburger or something. But this year, I decided, "Hey, Japan at least has restaurants serving American food, but one thing they don't have AT ALL are Mexican restaurants." The two times I've gone to Japan before, I can't recall seeing any places that serve burritos. Which is a damn shame because I LOVE BURRITOS. If anyone reading out there knows of any place in Japan that serves burritos, please let me know in the comments below.

Anyway, I'm ready for this trip tomorrow, I've loaded my Philips GoGear Spark with Weezer, Pavement and Local H. I've packed John Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" for reading material. I even brought a few DVDs along for my laptop. All that's left to do is... Blast Off!

ブログの友達

Last night, I included links to the blogs of good friends of mine from my Japanese class. They're studying abroad in the Kansai region at the other school in Japan my school offers. I mostly added them so I can remember to easily check them.

Rob (Let's Rock This) I've actually known since my Japanese 101 class from two years ago. We ended up in the same 201 class and made a really kick ass video together with some other people (one of which will be joining me in Tokyo soon).

Elyse (Plus-Size Kimono) was in the rival video group in our 201 class, but I've been in every class with this one teacher with her. She also likes Batman a lot. And we used to make witty remarks about the examples in our Japanese textbook together. So, she's pretty awesome.

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you already knew them. If not, check them out anyway. When we finally all meet up, our blogosphere will explode.

Also, while I don't personally know these people, I've added links to Gaijin Chronicles (formerly "I Am A Japanese School Teacher" and Gaijin Smash) and TokyoCooney's YouTube channel. Mostly because I've been reading/watching these guys forever, and I trust/enjoy their opinion when it comes to things about Japan. So check them out if you didn't know about them already. Especially check out the "I Am A Japanese School Teacher" archives. That stuff is GOLD.

Fears

"I've got a number of irrational fears / That I'd like to share with you."
from the song "Falling For You" by Weezer

The weather is getting cooler and the leaves are beginning to change signaling that fall is coming. Meaning that in most places, school has started. I, on the other hand, am still waiting for school to start, but fall did cue one thing; it's getting closer to my departure to Japan. One week from Monday, I'll be spending the day in airports and in planes, and one week from Tuesday... I'll be in Japan.

As it does get closer, I've been busy with getting everything set. I got a bunch of yen last week. I'll be spending the weekend cleaning my room. Probably going to get a bigger carry-on bag this weekend. etc. etc. Of course, as it does get closer, there is one question that is asked by people more than anything else. Nearly everyone asks this question, from the teller at the bank, to the people I work with.... everyone. What is that question?

"Are you nervous?"

Honestly, at the risk of sounding too arrogant, I always answer this with a "No." I mean, I've been to Japan twice before, most of my friends are Japanese, I know a fair bit about Japanese culture. While, I'm sure, no doubt I will experience culture shock, I'm not nervous in the traditional sense of being nervous for a study abroad.

But... as the quote from the awesome Weezer song at the start of this entry suggests, I have a couple of irrational fears that go beyond the duty of simple "study abroad nervousness." Both of them related to my overall goals in Japan.

The first is related to the second most asked question by people:

"So, you probably know a bit of Japanese, huh?"

The answer to this is: "I guess." I'm nowhere near fluent, but I've had conversations in only Japanese with people. And I can probably read enough kanji to get by on the streets. Also, I've known enough Japanese people/watched enough Japanese dramas when I was younger to get the correct accent and such. So, even if I don't know what I'm talking about, I can usually fake Japanese pretty well.

But my fear is that I'll never become fluent in Japanese. My skill will just plateau off, and I'll never improve. Partially, this is because in my Japanese class last year, I was in an unusual position of understanding everything we were going over, studying hard and getting abysmal grades on my tests. Now, as the people in my Japanese class know this is partially due to how the tests were graded and such, which I won't really get into and only say that it didn't fit my learning style or whatever at all. But still, this leaves a lingering fear in the back of my head that it's because I just can't learn Japanese. Of course, when I went to talk to my teacher about my grade, she gave me the (not very helpful) advice of "you need to go to Japan to improve." So that's promising, I think... but regardless it's something I'm afraid of.

The second of my fears is that I won't be able to get a job teaching English. When I tell people my plans here, lots of people have told me "that'll be hard" or "you can't do that so you should do _____ instead, then you'll get there one day." This fear comes from the fact that I've known people who are much much smarter than me who couldn't find a job in Japan. Much to my father's dismay, I've made it my goal that I won't return to America to visit until I find a job. But still, there's the possibility that I won't find a job teaching high school, and instead will pick up some job working at something like Nova and I'll never be able to move out of it before becoming so frustrated that I'll move back to America and go back to school or something.

But with both of these fears, the only way to quell them is to think the opposite. Like, learning Japanese will be much easier in Japan because Japanese is all around me. And I've known people who are much dumber than me and had worse personalities (in my opinion anyway) and they've gotten jobs teaching English in high schools in Japan, so why can't I? I have to keep thinking these positive thoughts to get the negative ones out.

One thing is for sure... I'm never giving up these dreams and I'm never giving in to my fears.