Down Time

The time I spent at home was a nice break after all the stress and seclusion in the months prior. I spent most of the time enjoying things I wasn’t able to find in Japan. Unfortunately, we are in the process of trying to sell my car, so I wasn’t able to drive my beloved Matrix, but luckily my mother was able to lend me her car. I don’t think a lot of people in America realize how much they take having a car for granted. When I was limited to where I could go in Japan by the train schedules or the amount of time I was able to spend biking somewhere. Even being able to borrow my mom’s car while I was home was a tremendous amount of freedom comparatively speaking.

One thing I really enjoyed while at home was playing in a card tournament in Charlotte and seeing all my friends who I hadn’t seen for 5 months. That was one of the social activities I really missed while I was in Japan since the language barrier usually segregated me to the sidelines even though I usually did well in any tournament I played in. I did make some good friends while playing cards in Japan, but the language and cultural barriers kept them from being as strong as the friendships I’ve made in my years of playing cards in The States. That said, I still hope I get to see some of my Japanese friends at the bigger tournaments in the near future. While I didn’t do as well as I would have liked in the tournaments in Charlotte (i.e. I didn’t win money), it was still a lot of fun being back around my old friends. One of my teammates also swept the competition, winning 14 straight rounds to take the trophy and $2500. Proving me right when I was telling people he was the best technical player in the tournament. I didn’t get to look at the comic convention that was taking place at the same time as the tournament, but I didn’t really have money to spend on comics anyways, so it all worked out in the end.

As I raced around trying to see friends and visiting people, I think I maybe could have used another week in North Carolina to get more accomplished, but I honestly couldn’t wait any longer to see Christian. Since I’ve gotten to Mexico, it’s felt like all of this past year was just a bad dream that passed in a blink, and I’ve really been enjoying getting used to being in a new culture. While Japan is a different culture at it’s core, on the surface it’s still very much like the US – safe, clean, and sheltered from the rest of the world. Being in Mexico is the opposite. Here it’s very similar at the core, but different on the surface, so while it is easier for me to navigate my way around and understand what people are doing, I’m experiencing tons of new things. Not to mention Spanish is a million times easier than Japanese. After being here a week, I’m occasionally using complete sentences, which is a pretty big accomplishment for a guy who hasn’t been in a Spanish classroom since the 7th grade. I wonder how much better my experience in Japan would have been if I would have been in a real classroom where I had been able to use Japanese whenever possible. I guess that will be one of the great what-if’s of my life. Christian wants to spend time in France teaching eventually, so we might spend time in Japan together as retribution. Only time will tell though. I do miss the students I was close to, and I’m planning on spending the next few days writing e-mails to everyone and catching up with them.

I’ll be back in a day or two with more tales of what I’ve been doing since I got here, but as for now, I just wanted to get everyone up to speed on what I’ve been doing lately.