one for the road.

3 months have gone by pretty quickly. And I've made a few quick decisions.

I'm going to leave Japan on December 15th. I'm going to board a jet in Osaka, fly to San Francisco, and then make my way to Boston. It's a 1 way ticket. It's the first one way ticket I've bought in my entire life. I feel like that's significant, even it it's a 1 way ticket back to Swampscott.

Swampscott is going to be a 5 month layover. Well, not exactly. I plan on taking calculus, statistics, and an accounting class at the local college. I'll also spend a few months applying to schools and hoping that they accept me. I may volunteer somewhere. I really have no idea. I'll keep busy, but it won't be long before the suburbs starts to break me down.

I'm going to apply to 5-6 different finance programs. 3 of them are in the Boston area, one of them is in Denver, one of them is in SF, and another is in Portland, OR. I may also apply to KU (they accept people up until June, all the other schools have admission cuts in March and April). We'll see how that goes. I would be happy at any one of them. Each city is filled with old friends and new experiences.

I'm worried about standardized tests. I'm worried about essays. It's going to be hard to convince the admissions people that an English teacher could // should do their program. Hopefully I'll get some good marks early on in the classes... I might be able to submit that information to the schools. I'm confident that my letters of recommendation will be good... but the GMAT... that's the monster lurking around the corner.

I guess my main argument is going to be that given my past, there was no indicator that I'd be successful in Japan. I'd never been abroad, I knew nothing about Japan, and I couldn't speak a word of the language in a useful, communicative fashion. Three years later, I'm leaving the country because I didn't want to take the plunge and become an immigrant. My classmates are off to college or trade school in Japan (something I could have done, but didn't want to). And even though I can't pass those stupid JLPT tests, I'm reading books and watching movies, understanding things, and nothing using an English dictionary.

If I don't get accepted, I'm not really sure what I'll do. I may just start the CFA correspondence course. If I pass level one, I may be able to start looking for jobs in December. And it would certainly help me with admissions the second time around.

If I get rejected, I'll call everyone that rejected me, ask why, and hope they give me some constructive criticism. Nobody will say “you don't have what it takes.” They'll all say things like “this is what you lack. If you go out and get it, you'll have a better chance the second time around.”

Enough of that.

The reason I'm leaving Japan? I'm not willing to commit my life to it. I'm no longer happy with being an English teacher (though teaching was a blast). I mean, for a while I was thinking about it. I was thinking about going to school in Japan (in Japanese) for a year and then doing a proper job search... but I just don't see a good model of success. The most successful foreign people in Japan, as far as I can tell, are people that leverage their foreignness for fame. “Hey, look at me, I'm the wacky foreign guy!”

I don't mind being an entertainer, but I don't want to be a clown. They're the saddest part of the circus.

The happiest guys seem to be the ones working in the bar or working in the restaurants. I could do that, but I don't think I'd be happy there, and I don't think I'd leave with much more than I started. I left Portland and moved to Japan to avoid that lifestyle. Doing it in a foreign country is no better than doing it in the city of roses.

I'm going to keep studying Japanese. I still want to get better, and I still want to have a relationship with the country and it's people, but I'll never be able to live in Japan unless I can find another job.

Then again, maybe everything changes when I'm back in America. People change all the time.

Because I have a ton of time, I'm going to experiment with a new style of learning languages. Basically, the idea is that if you don't listen and experience a language before you start to study it, you'll never get to a high level. The number a few schools have thrown around is 2,000 hours.

For the first 800 hours, you just listen, watch and guess. If it's at a school, you interact with the teachers. If it's at home, you watch something accessible to children. Sesame street, for example, is a great resource. It's visual, it's simple, and it's intended for people with a weak command of the language. Anyway, for the first 800 hours you just listen, listen, listen. No notes. No books. No dictionaries. Just absorbing the language. The key is that you have to guess what things mean. You can't just stare blankly, you need to try and watch the show as if it were your native language. Subtitles are fine, but only if they're in the native language. Basically, you're a baby. And you need to act like a baby.

Once you've done this, you can start worrying about production. Reading and speaking first, with writing happening around 1400 hours of study. At no point do you use a dictionary, unless it' a target language dictionary (French to French, English to English, Thai to Thai, etc).

I'm going to give it a shot. I'm planning on watching movies, TV shows, etc., for around 800 hours. Since I'm unemployed, this shouldn't be too hard. Right now, the only difficult part is trying to decide which language to do it in. Probably Spanish because I'll have the greatest access to free resources at the library (though Chinese is very, very tempting). The only thing I'll need to buy is a stop watch.

Oh, today I ran for the first time in years. The frisbee team is having a reunion late January, and I'm not going to be the slow, fat one. I'd never hear the end of it from Shane. It may have only been a 15 minute jog, but if history is any indicator, i'll be running around 45-60 a day by the end of January. Little by little.

So I guess I've got plans and things. Just nothing set in stone. No path laid out before me.

And that's not so bad. There are worse places to be.

Next weekend I'm going to see Boyz Noise at a small club in Osaka. Then I'll spend the next 2-3 weeks studying for the JLPT. Following that, I'll spend 3-4 days in Tokyo, return to Osaka, have one last weekend with my friends, and then hit the road. All that time is going to fly by, and then I'll fly away.