August 6, 2008
Birthday Tales
Another birthday, another year. I guess this is what happens when you get older. Far from a dreaded event, I still like birthdays when they come, but they're not as important as they used to be. My girlfriend and I went shopping on Sunday in Kobe for some odds and ends in the apartment (at Costco no less!), and we celebrated our second anniversary by having dinner at my place. As we just got back from a four-day/three night trip to Beijing not too long ago, I'm glad things are going at a slower pace. Not only does it help my budget, but it's nice to sit back and relax.
I still have plenty of time to do just that. Vacation will continue until the beginning of next month, and since I still have salary coming in things won't come to a crisis. Two big ticket items this month are clamping down on my budget pretty heavily: a plane ticket back to the States for winter vacation and the quarterly city tax bill. The way the local taxes are set up is that you pay for the previous year's income the following year. As I did halfway decent in terms of salary before changing jobs, I am paying the price for that now. So be it, I have the savings to cope. It still isn't pleasant to deal with though.
For what's left of vacation, i will try to make as much use of it as possible without breaking the bank. I have a few part-time positions lined up which provide work every now and then, which have been helpful before and are even more so this year. In addition, I'm now undertaking the mammoth task of creating grammar flashcards (about 600+ of them) for that wonderful Japanese exam. The kanji drill work I've done before has been good, as that's an area I'm not worried about as much anymore. If only studying grammar were as addictive. If only.
In the gallery, pictures are up from both Beijing and Thailand, but only a certain amount. I'll put the rest up on my Facebook account, though I believe I selected my best ones to be uploaded. From now on I might consider deleting a lot of the old pictures on the server, if only to free up space. I'm debating on how much I want to continue this blog, as it has become a lot more difficult to maintain. Not only for the question of content, but also for the question of readership (for those of you still around.)
Things are going well here. They aren't nearly as exciting right now, but as I said before, it is by design, so I have no complaints. If anything this will be a time to focus my efforts on study, and do something that I haven't managed to do for the last three years. Pass that exam once and for all. I can only hope. I can only hope.
P.S. Thanks for all the birthday comments, calls, and mails from everyone! You know who are, so thanks!
Posted by paul.koehler at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2008
Yakitori over Fireworks
Summer vacation began in earnest on July 12th, and it has been punctuated by periods of either travel or idling at home while studying and cleaning. Truth be told, it's been pretty productive and I've been pretty happy with the way things have gone for the most part. Yesterday I went with my girlfriend and met several old coworkers at the Nagoya Port Fireworks Festival, an annual event which is a lot of fun; albeit crowded. In fact, it was so crowded that while we went to get some chicken (aka yakitori), we waited in line so long that the fireworks started. Not my first choice of things to do in a festival, but it was a nice escape nonetheless. I got to trade stories with my old coworkers about our respective lives.
While they seem to be doing well, I felt a little more validated in my decision to change jobs earlier. The vacation is a definite bonus, and I'm feeling the benefits of it now. The thing that I told them that stood out the most was that I actually enjoy working now, unlike my last year or so at the old company. It helped to put things in perspective.
I also was in Tokyo and Yokohama for about 4 days and 3 nights last week, mainly visiting Mike, an old website coworker who is now a foreign exchange student in the Tokyo metropolitan area. We didn't do much sightseeing per se (this was visit #8 for me to that area so I didn't have any place in particular that I wanted to visit), but I tagged along with him for a bit to see what his campus life was like. Afterwards, I stopped over in Yokohama to meet my old camp coworker Andy, who I hadn't met in person for over 2 years. That was a fun stopover; Andy has been one of the main people encouraging me with Japanese study, and we had a great time talking about how our lives had changed over the last 4 years. I think I can say it's been for the best.
I will lay low for now until Friday morning, where Mike will come here and we will make a two-day run around the Kansai region, hitting up Nara, Himeji, Osaka, and Kyoto. This is all thanks to that wonderful discount train ticket that I've spoken so much about, the Seishun Juhachi Kippu. Following that I am off to Beijing for four days and three nights with my girlfriend, which will be an interesting adventure in its own right. I just got my tourist visa from the Chinese consulate so aside from packing luggage all the preparation is ready to go.
It's certainly not a boring month. August will pale in comparison, but that's fine with me. I'd much rather be spending my time and money traveling with friends rather than drinking non-stop, so at least this is time well spent. And, during the down-time I have (like today) I still get in study so in a sense the time is hardly wasted. We'll see where things go from here.
Posted by paul.koehler at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2008
Cost of Living
Hello again. One huge difference between my current job versus the last one is that is more representative of a typical Japanese workplace. At least it's typical in the sense that I spend more time at work but less time actually working. Ironically, I do have Internet access at work and am able to post but for the most part I keep myself busy during time that I'm not actually teaching classes, which I think has made most of the teachers happy. Despite the incident that I mentioned in the last post things have gone fairly well. For a multitude of reasons teaching is not a career for me, but at the same time I enjoy what I'm doing right now and I've been able to improve my Japanese (in terms of speaking, listening, reading, and writing...somewhat) much more than my previous job. On top of all of that, today is the first day of my summer vacation! This is double what I had before, so I'm looking forward to a long break.
One thing that has been a pain since starting this new job is the cost factor. The salary I took on was less than what I was earning before, and while I have taken steps to deal with it, current events haven't helped much. Living costs have gone up this year in Japan, as they have everywhere else in the world. While I am lucky in that the gasoline price spikes don't affect me directly, the cost of food has gone up, and that has affected everyone. In fact, if I compare myself to about 6 months ago, I am working more, spending more, and earning less than what I used to.
When I think about it that way it makes me wonder why I went to the trouble to change jobs in the first place. The one thing that keeps me going is what I mentioned above about Japanese usage. In a broader sense, it means that I'm able to develop skills that will be more useful in the future. A few years ago for Christmas I received a financial advice book from my mother which was fairly popular at the time. I don't particularly recommend the book to anyone (which is why I'm not going to mention the name of the book here), but one thing the book did point out that I agree with wholeheartedly is that in the end, skills are more important than job security or seniority.
As a foreigner in Japan, I am arguably one of the more disposable commodities around. Not the most disposable (English ability is still a very valuable skill and I milk it for what it's worth), but I hardly enjoy the job security that the teachers at my school have. So with that in mind, I do the most to make the best of my situation and improve my lot in life. For the time being, that means studying Japanese. If I have any hope of doing proofreading or translating work in the near future, this is a must.
Posted by paul.koehler at 1:40 AM | Comments (0)