We Apologize For The Brief Delay
Okay, I'm back. It turns out I have longer things to write again, and I still have this LJ account, so I guess I'll use this for long-form writing, Tumblr for the photography, Twitter for smart-aleck remarks, and Facebook for whatever it is that Facebook does.
I've been feeling the need to write Japan stories lately, partly out of nostalgia, but also because I'm now on track to get back there. I'm studying Japanese at the college level now, which is something I really wanted to do the first time I was in college. The college I'm attending here has transfer arrangements with Ritsumeikan APU and Temple U Japan, so if I can keep my grades up I'm pretty sure to get into one or the other.
Also, I've been writing more for school, which has kind of reawakened my writing muscles.
Now, what sort of Japan stories will I be writing? Pretty much whatever stories I feel like telling, really. I've been there on vacation several times and lived there for about five years, so there are lots of stories. But I think the problem I ran into when trying to tell these stories before was in trying to tell the whole tale in some sort of chronological order.
That's too limiting. I think I'm going to just write about whatever sort of Japan thing I feel like writing about, with my usual run-on sentences, bizarre parenthetical asides, and general lack of editing or any sort of coherent narrative structure.
The stories will basically take place in one of several periods. Here are some loose definitions.
First Trip was just that; a three week trip I took to Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and Hiroshima at the end of 2000. I was working for a company in Seattle and living on Bainbridge Island, and had just come off a fairly stressful year.
Then in early 2003 I moved to Kyoto; I got a job working for a place which I referred to as "Hollywood Upstairs English School." This was the largest employer of foreign nationals in Japan at that time, with schools all over Japan. There were three periods to my living there.
First, I lived in a smallish dorm. I had my own room, but a shared Japanese-style toilet and shared kitchen. I worked in Kyoto Station, first on the tenth floor of a department store, then we moved to one of the basement levels of the station.
After about a year, I moved into a really nice little townhouse with Yoshimi. (More about her later. Or perhaps not.) We lived there for a year and a half, until she moved to Canada to study English and I couldn't afford the rent. During this time, I mostly worked at a school in Nagaoka Tenjin, a suburb of Kyoto on the way to Osaka.
Finally, I moved into a cool little apartment right on the river in an old building called Eirakuso. I worked a deal where I cut back my hours but still kept the same pay, and also got transferred to a school in Kitaoji, only about a fifteen-minute walk or a five-minute bike ride from school.
So I guess we'll call those the "Dorm," "House," and "Eirakuso" periods.
I came back to America and started driving a big rig, and went back to Japan two more times.
I went to Tokyo and Kyoto with my best friend Martial in March 2010. We stayed in the dorm where I used to live and generally had a pretty great time.
We'll call that Second Trip.
Third Trip took place in September of 2011. I was just coming off a really horrible, I don't know, relationship, I guess, so I took a couple of weeks and hid out in my friend Beni's guest house in Kyoto. I played a couple of gigs and wandered around and mostly recovered from things. I also spent about seven hundred dollars on clothes at UNIQLO.
So, that's where it stands for now. I'm starting to think about another trip, but I need to get the money thing sorted first. Maybe this will hold me for the time being.
I've been feeling the need to write Japan stories lately, partly out of nostalgia, but also because I'm now on track to get back there. I'm studying Japanese at the college level now, which is something I really wanted to do the first time I was in college. The college I'm attending here has transfer arrangements with Ritsumeikan APU and Temple U Japan, so if I can keep my grades up I'm pretty sure to get into one or the other.
Also, I've been writing more for school, which has kind of reawakened my writing muscles.
Now, what sort of Japan stories will I be writing? Pretty much whatever stories I feel like telling, really. I've been there on vacation several times and lived there for about five years, so there are lots of stories. But I think the problem I ran into when trying to tell these stories before was in trying to tell the whole tale in some sort of chronological order.
That's too limiting. I think I'm going to just write about whatever sort of Japan thing I feel like writing about, with my usual run-on sentences, bizarre parenthetical asides, and general lack of editing or any sort of coherent narrative structure.
The stories will basically take place in one of several periods. Here are some loose definitions.
First Trip was just that; a three week trip I took to Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and Hiroshima at the end of 2000. I was working for a company in Seattle and living on Bainbridge Island, and had just come off a fairly stressful year.
Then in early 2003 I moved to Kyoto; I got a job working for a place which I referred to as "Hollywood Upstairs English School." This was the largest employer of foreign nationals in Japan at that time, with schools all over Japan. There were three periods to my living there.
First, I lived in a smallish dorm. I had my own room, but a shared Japanese-style toilet and shared kitchen. I worked in Kyoto Station, first on the tenth floor of a department store, then we moved to one of the basement levels of the station.
After about a year, I moved into a really nice little townhouse with Yoshimi. (More about her later. Or perhaps not.) We lived there for a year and a half, until she moved to Canada to study English and I couldn't afford the rent. During this time, I mostly worked at a school in Nagaoka Tenjin, a suburb of Kyoto on the way to Osaka.
Finally, I moved into a cool little apartment right on the river in an old building called Eirakuso. I worked a deal where I cut back my hours but still kept the same pay, and also got transferred to a school in Kitaoji, only about a fifteen-minute walk or a five-minute bike ride from school.
So I guess we'll call those the "Dorm," "House," and "Eirakuso" periods.
I came back to America and started driving a big rig, and went back to Japan two more times.
I went to Tokyo and Kyoto with my best friend Martial in March 2010. We stayed in the dorm where I used to live and generally had a pretty great time.
We'll call that Second Trip.
Third Trip took place in September of 2011. I was just coming off a really horrible, I don't know, relationship, I guess, so I took a couple of weeks and hid out in my friend Beni's guest house in Kyoto. I played a couple of gigs and wandered around and mostly recovered from things. I also spent about seven hundred dollars on clothes at UNIQLO.
So, that's where it stands for now. I'm starting to think about another trip, but I need to get the money thing sorted first. Maybe this will hold me for the time being.