This past year I have been working my butt off to save enough cash return to Japan and continue my studies there. I finally had the money and timing to return in June of 2009 and have been living in Tokyo. Currently I'm living in a small town called "Hakuba". I'm surrounded by ski resorts and beautiful mountians and it is quite an interesting little town.
I'm planning to return in February to Tokyo and make a trip over to Italy with my girlfriend and some friends for a week or so. Then I'll be back in Tokyo looking for work, preferrably some CAD design or controls programming. Although I'll most likely end up teaching English.
My first 6 months here I studied Japanese intensely; school in the morning for about 3 hours and then self study basically after school until I went to bed. I was aiming to take a Japanese proficiency test in December, which if I pass, would increase my chances of finding some decent employment here. Alas, I don't think I will pass - I'll know in February.
The hardest thing about living here is trying to keep up with the Work and being consistent with diet and meditation. It's a great place to practice discipline and learning a new language and culture brings all kinds of interesting challenges.
One of the interesting things about the language is that lots of is subtext and most of the real meaning is in what is not said. I remember reading this article where the author made a comparison between how Westerners are taught kanji and how Japanese are taught to picture the kanji. For example, the kanji for tree (木) we are told to think of a Christmas tree or its branches. The Japanese are taught to picture the roots of the tree - the part you don't actually see. There are also a million ways to say "no" without actually saying it. Also there are many ways to 'indirectly' tell someone to do something. Or to never actually tell someone that something has to be done, just a 'suggestion' that it might be better to do something a certain way.
The cost living post I think seems to be pretty spot on, except the Yen was pretty strong against the Canadian dollar so I lost some money when doing conversions - quite a bit actually so that's why I came out to Hakuba to hopefully make some extra cash as well as get some Japanese practice with the locals.
I do think that all the intensive studying is paying off - slowly :P. I still have trouble speaking and understanding what is said to me sometimes but I do know that I know way more than when I first came here, I think.
In Japan people are generally pretty polite to each other but they can also be quite indifferent. If someone forgot or dropped their wallet on the train, no-one would probably even touch it. If they saw you drop it, it's unlikely that they would chase after you to give it to you. Conversely, if you forget 1 cent at the convenience store they clerk will run after you and try to give it back.
As I mentioned in at the start, I'm living in a resort town. There are quiet a lot of foreigners here but I noticed many Japanese are pretty cool with speaking in Japanese too if I try and speak as well (normally if they see you are not Japanese they'll will speak as much English as they can). Even though I don't speak well, I enjoy trying to. Hopefully one day I'll develop some fluency and get better at reading and writing too.
I'd like to talk a more about Japan but that's pretty much what's happening now - there are some other crazy things that happened at the start of the year but I think I will post it somewhere else once I figure out where it fits since it is a little off tangent to this post and it's also getting a little long ....
I'm planning to return in February to Tokyo and make a trip over to Italy with my girlfriend and some friends for a week or so. Then I'll be back in Tokyo looking for work, preferrably some CAD design or controls programming. Although I'll most likely end up teaching English.
My first 6 months here I studied Japanese intensely; school in the morning for about 3 hours and then self study basically after school until I went to bed. I was aiming to take a Japanese proficiency test in December, which if I pass, would increase my chances of finding some decent employment here. Alas, I don't think I will pass - I'll know in February.
The hardest thing about living here is trying to keep up with the Work and being consistent with diet and meditation. It's a great place to practice discipline and learning a new language and culture brings all kinds of interesting challenges.
One of the interesting things about the language is that lots of is subtext and most of the real meaning is in what is not said. I remember reading this article where the author made a comparison between how Westerners are taught kanji and how Japanese are taught to picture the kanji. For example, the kanji for tree (木) we are told to think of a Christmas tree or its branches. The Japanese are taught to picture the roots of the tree - the part you don't actually see. There are also a million ways to say "no" without actually saying it. Also there are many ways to 'indirectly' tell someone to do something. Or to never actually tell someone that something has to be done, just a 'suggestion' that it might be better to do something a certain way.
The cost living post I think seems to be pretty spot on, except the Yen was pretty strong against the Canadian dollar so I lost some money when doing conversions - quite a bit actually so that's why I came out to Hakuba to hopefully make some extra cash as well as get some Japanese practice with the locals.
I do think that all the intensive studying is paying off - slowly :P. I still have trouble speaking and understanding what is said to me sometimes but I do know that I know way more than when I first came here, I think.
In Japan people are generally pretty polite to each other but they can also be quite indifferent. If someone forgot or dropped their wallet on the train, no-one would probably even touch it. If they saw you drop it, it's unlikely that they would chase after you to give it to you. Conversely, if you forget 1 cent at the convenience store they clerk will run after you and try to give it back.
As I mentioned in at the start, I'm living in a resort town. There are quiet a lot of foreigners here but I noticed many Japanese are pretty cool with speaking in Japanese too if I try and speak as well (normally if they see you are not Japanese they'll will speak as much English as they can). Even though I don't speak well, I enjoy trying to. Hopefully one day I'll develop some fluency and get better at reading and writing too.
I'd like to talk a more about Japan but that's pretty much what's happening now - there are some other crazy things that happened at the start of the year but I think I will post it somewhere else once I figure out where it fits since it is a little off tangent to this post and it's also getting a little long ....