Metamorphosis

Probably a lot of people who are reading this are wondering how my family ended up in Vancouver. I’ve told a few people directly but haven’t made a public announcement. In short: I was negligent about the border rules and assumed as a Canadian I'd be given the benefit of the doubt. IANAL and I didn’t check in with one.

In more concrete terms, we had lived in the US for almost 8 years, but we never got permanent residency let alone citizenship. I was on the path to getting a PR while at Amazon, but gave it up in order to attend the Anake program in Sept 2017.

I quit my job, and “exchanged” my H-1B work visa for a M-1 student visa. The M-1 was due to expire whenever we decided to leave the US after the program ended in June. I had been planning to make a a short trip to BC to check out a sister nature school in Canada called Wisdom of the Earth, and that’s what we did on June 5, 2018 immediately after graduating from Anake.

My vague thought process was that “hey, my visa expired but as a Canadian, I can always come in as a visitor for 90 days, so I’ll just do that until I can get a new student visa for the 2nd year Anake apprenticeship program”. I had just graduated from Anake, the last three weeks of which are dubbed “The Gauntlet” including a five day survival trip. (I think) I basically felt invincible and US immigration rules were the last thing on my mind. This period of our lives is such a giant blur.

We tried to cross two times, waiting a cumulative 8 hours or so and being ultimatel denied entry both times.

I’m so grateful that being denied entry into the US meant that we got to land in this beautiful city now known as Vancouver on the unceded land of Musqueam peoples.

I’m grateful that I got to do a survival trip in a different context with my family. Unexpectedly in Vancouver with only a car load of camping gear and other essentials.

I’m grateful for the countless friends and neighbors that volunteered their time with moving, packing and hauling stuff out of our home in Seattle to eventually find it’s way to Vancouver, including and especially our cat Lawrence.

I’m grateful that I got connected with Soaring Eagle Nature School and was offered a position as a summer camp instructor, doing exactly what I had planned to do at the WAS camps over the summer, except now getting paid for it.

I’m grateful that my son got to experience summer camp with me and we now share a deep and rich experience of Pacific Spirit Park.

I’m grateful that I get to experience living in The Beehive collective community house with a bunch of fantastic people, a style of living that I’ve wanted to try for many years.

I’m grateful that Vancouver is a bicyclist’s utopia - you can get around by bike and not have to ride in a major traffic 99% of the time.

I’m grateful that recent heatwaves hitting this region are just a mildly uncomfortable 30ªC, and most of us can get on with our days without fear of heat stroke, unlike other areas around the globe.

I’m grateful that I got to live another day in relative peace and abundance.

It's now over 12 years since I lost wrote something in this blog. To tell you the truth, I enjoyed blogging but hated my perfectionist tendencies. I would take hours to write a 300 word post. I'm going to try again and writing more from my heart instead of my brain.

I've renamed the blog. The "Japan" part of "Transformed in Japan" is no longer as relevant. I still have many connections to Japan, most notably my wife and son. I have continued transforming, but in different contexts. I've tentatively named the blog "Metamorphosis"

How do I summarize 12 years of events?

Then: I was 23, I had two academic terms left before graduating with a degree in Computer Science, I had two months to go before meeting my future wife.

Today: I am 50% older, married and with a four year old son and have 10 years of experience in software development.

I quit my job at Amazon in Seattle in August 2017 to attend the 9 month Anake Outdoor School program at Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, Washington. The program finished on June 2, about 3 weeks ago.

I am now in Vancouver with my family and today was my first day of work since quitting last year. I am a youth summer camp instructor at Soaring Eagle Nature School.

I am reminded of the early days of my software dev career. When I would have fun building things and think often to myself: "I get paid for this??" Today at staff training, was very much like those early heady days. I feel young and happy and am startled to think I am getting paid to play games and tell stories with kids.

There are many details to fill in. Slow and steady.

I found a Super Famicom (Super Nintendo in the west) for a measly $3 at a fairly popular used goods shop called Hard-Off (Hard for hardware, there's also a Book-off, among others). $3.00 to own a piece of gaming history, I thought to myself. Of course, the unit comes with none of the accessories needed to play games: controller, AC adaptor or AV cables, or games, of course. Well, after a couple of weeks of hunting around, I've assembled the pieces, a working Super Famicom with Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, ringing in at under $40. So much for the $3 investment huh? It's great though, the best way to study (reading) a foreign language is to do it doing something you enjoy, and playing through a dialog-heavy 60-hr+ RPG is exactly that.

Actually, I have a confession to make. I've bought two other retro gaming systems here, in addition to the "contemporary" DS Lite - an original PlayStation and a Dreamcast and a few games for each. I got good deals on them - the PS for around $15 and the Dreamcast for an insane $8. So the money's not a problem - I've barely made a dent in my wallet, building up the collection. But the whole I'm digging myself in is finding a way to ship this stuff back and the fact that I'm trying to play like 10 games simultaneously. And I'm not even done. At the very least, I must get a slim silver PS2 and Final Fantasy XII before I leave!

On the subject of confessions, I have another one to make. About a month ago, I was wrapping up a project, so my boss told me to do some "jishuu", or self-study, on whatever interested me until they could find me new work. It's now a month later. Time fucking flies. I'm hoping posting this up and making it public will give me the motivation I need to take some initiative and make some work for myself. It's just too easy for me to fall into a "comfort mode" and to waste my days at work "jishuu-ing". Honestly, strictly work-wise, I think I've done less work in these 8 months than I have in any of my five previous 4-month work terms.

I find the drivers in Matsumoto to be fairly good. The roads are so treacherous though, that they really need to be. Almost all the intersections on the minor roads have these blind turns - like a big tree blocking the way so you have to inch forward until you're almost half way into the lane to see if the way is clear. Some intersections actually have these huge mirrors like at the corners of supermarkets for just this purpose, but not all.

Ultimately though, like Jeff, I was struck by a car on a morning commute. This wasn't a blind corner though and it was in broad daylight. The guy just wasn't paying attention enough or didn't belong on the road - he looked kinda old and senile. He tried to make a left turn (right turn back home) to merge into traffic but didn't notice I was passing right in front of him. Anyway, たいした事はなかったよ。Nothing came of it. I fell off my bike and scratched up my knee. I let the guy go and I bought a louder bell.

I'm a streaky person. I tend to latch onto things with great ferocity and intensity, but only for short spurts. I notice this phenomenon with games, anime, books, endeavours into learning certain computer stuff, and of course, this blog. Why did I start this blog? Keep in touch with friends, family. Probably lost sight of the goal at some point. Thanks to all those kept in touch through e-mail. Hopefully this spurt will last me into the home stretch.

Speaking of streaks, another unrelated sort of streak i've noticed is the way in my Japanese skill fluctuates. it's very streaky. I'll have a stretch of days where I'll feel like I don't understand anyone and no one understands me and then another string of days of the exact opposite. On the whole though, when I look at the big picture, it's sort of like a one step back, two steps forward sort of deal.

Another way I've found to gauge your profiency in Japanese is to see how frequently people compliment you on your Japanese skill. When I first got here it seemed like everyone, when they first met you, would praise you for saying the simplest things - "watashi wa lorenzo desu."! It's almost as inevitable as being complimented on your chopstick-wielding skills. I haven't heard anyone compliment my Japanese in months.

I finally got a bike and my life feels so much more complete with it. One of my co-workers lent it to me. I'll buy him a drink before I leave. It's one of those foldable ones. These babies are actually a lot easier to ride than they look. I've been riding for over a month now, to and from work (10 km. one way). Switching to riding on the left-hand side of the road took all of about 2 minutes to get used to. It's just like riding one of those mirror courses in a racing game. After realizing how much of Matsumoto remained undiscovered before biking (essentially, everywhere besides a 1 km radius around each of the four stations), I've made it my new policy to say I don't really know a city until I've biked down its streets.

I was one of the crazy people to get up early on March 2 to line up for a DS Lite. And even take a day off work. For once I felt lucky to be stuck out in the countryside - only around 20 people lined up outside Toys R Us here - and they had plenty more units. People in Tokyo didn't fare so well. Anyway I figured, hey, if I'm in Japan I met as well experience lining up for a console launch. Except, this wasn't even technically new hardware, just a redesign...

Four month anniversary here in Japan just past a couple of days ago. I'll get the compulsory cliche out of the way - it feels like I've been here forever and yet it's flown by so fast. With that, a restropective and some random thoughts.

In four months, out of the four language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking), I'm still the most skilled in reading. Each of the four basic skills has improved substantially, but proportionally, nothing's really changed. I'm still waiting for the day when my conversation skills catch up - for example, reading a newspaper article and then being able to discuss it thoroughly in Japanese. Being able to understand a Japanese television show without the assistance of all those crazy captions popping up all over the screen. I gave myself such a huge head-start in reading it makes me wonder if conversation will ever be able to catch up.

When I first got here I was complaining that everyone was talking with me in English. Now, for sure I understand why. It had less to do with them using me as English sounding-board as it did with the simple fact that their English was better than my Japanese, at the time. When you have two people of different native tongues speaking with each other, the language of choice will invariably and naturally switch to whosever second language stronger than the other's. Yeah, I know it sounds obvious, but I only came to notice this as people began to switch to speaking with me in Japanese as my Japanese surpassed their English.

The big JLPT test is this weekend and this one case where my superior reading skills will come in handy. I did some rough calculations - you need to know about 6000 words for 2級. A rough estimate based on the mock tests I've been writing is I know at least 5000 of those. Assuming I came to Japan with a vocabulary of about 2500 words, that means I learned 2500 words in 4 months, or about 20 per day. It really boggles the mind, because I never put effort into specifically learning vocab - I just learn everything on the fly, as I encouter them in conversation and reading.

Four months, and I think I've stayed here long enough to determine if I want to come back. Short answer: it's a very tough question. I'm living a very satisfying life. A day barely goes by when, during my walk home in the twilight, I don't marvel at the enormous mountains surrounding Matsumoto, take a deep breath in and simply acknowledge how lucky I am to be here. But that begs the question, am I only thankful to be here because it's just so damn hard to get into Japan, in the first place? Do I feel I've invested way too much into learning Japanese that it would be a waste to throw it all away and never come back?

A few firsts experienced in the past month.

Went to my first dance club in Japan. The clubs are as proportionally small as everything else in this country.

Got in "trouble" for the first time. I kind of let the 海外実習者専用厨房 (Kitchen for foreign exchange student use) of my dormitory get a little dirty. As a result, I got my first real taste of the Japanese tendency to mix personal and work issues. Upon noticing the disaster in the kitchen, the dormitory superintendent contacted my office's 課長 (=head honcho) who took 10 minutes out of his schedule to scold Andrew and I.

First date. It was a blind date although no one here seems to know what that is.

First shinkansen ride. Almost feels like an airplane. And nearly as expensive too.

First tea ceremony. The ritual was filled with all sorts of rules like making sure you have the picture on the cup facing you when drinking from it and away when putting it down. I could deal with those. What I couldn't deal with was sitting in the 正座 position for longer than 5 minutes at a time. I'm inflexible enough as it is, but sitting on my ankles introduced me to a whole new level of pain.

I want to introduce a few of the other current Epson co-ops from Waterloo who are also keeping blogs.

• Andrew. Works on the same floor as me and lives two doors down the hall at the dormitory. I seem too much of this guy and as a result we've become good friends. He idiotically (cleverly?) didn't study a single word of Japanese before coming here, but in three months he's studied hard and I think he's probably learned as much as I did in a year studying at Waterloo.
• Jason. Works way over in Hino, Tokyo. We've never actually met, but we've been in contact through e-mail since we started working. Definitely has the best Japanese out of all of us.
• Jeff. Knew him from Konja and Japan 102. Hired by Epson-Avasys, a subsidiary of Epson whose purpose nobody quite knows. He came here about two months after the rest of us did and got a sweet bachelor-style apartment in the heart of Matsumoto, if Matsumoto has such a thing.
• Alex. No blog but I'll give a shout out to him anyway. He's my next-door neighbour at the dorm but works in a separate office. He's the most over-worked out all of us, putting in crazy amounts of overtime which puts him on the same level as your average Japanese worker. He could care less about preparing for the JLPT but when it comes to speaking Kansai-ben or 200 year-old samurai lingo, he's our go-to guy.

Ok, ok I know this is really late, but I finally got on my lazy ass to upload some pictures to Flickr. First batch is my favorite trip in Japan so far, climbing Mount Fuji on August 20 with the old Konja crew, (from left to right) Yosuke, Anthony, Tettoku, Keiko, Mamoru, Amika and Takki. Check out my Flickr for the rest of the photos. Unfortunately, on my second favorite trip, visiting Tokyo last week, I lost my camera. (Tanya, upload your pictures!)

Recently, I've been up to the usual stuff. We found even more volunteer Japanese classes, so that's now up to something like 9 hours a week. For the first time in a long while, I had an entire evening to myself, and it made me realize I miss free time and I'm stretching myself too far with all these extra-curricular activities, so I decided I'm probably going to have to drop karate. Now I can claim to have the dubious distinction of having quit karate twice ;)