Why am I here?

Sure the culture and the language over here fascinate me and working in the public school system is good for my career but why do I like it here so much? 

Well, there's the food, there's Yuki, there's my friends...  But I would have to say that the greatest stress break for me over here is all of the crazy, quirky things that keep life interesting.  Not just all the crazy English but all the illogical things; from PE teachers that smoke like chimneys to drivers that get mad at pedestrians because they have to stop their cars for a crosswalk (most of them don’t even stop but I had a guy get mad at me on the weekend because I got sick of waiting and made him stop – and yes the law is the same here).

This place is a constant display of contrasts.  A country that has the intelligence to produce trains (currently in the test phase) that levitate on magnets and can travel up to 500 km/hr but has politicians that say things like changing to the daylight savings system will put too many demands on him to accomplish a days work in only 23 hours.  A country where you can see young adult girls with $1000 handbags walking around in $10 “Hello Kitty” bathroom slippers. 

Everyday I have something happen to me that, as Arsenio Hall used to say, “makes me go hmmmm....”

On the weekend I saw this man, he was in his late 50s’/early 60’s, with long straggly grey hair under a bright yellow BMX helmet that matched his shiny new, fancy, metallic red BMX, wearing new black and red checkered pants, skater shoes and a pair of those $400 Oakley sunglasses (he thought I was cool enough to give me a surfer wave and a “Hey!” as I rode past him).  The guy must have been trying to make up for lost time from his childhood which he spent going to a cram school until 9 or 10 at night just to relearn what he should have learned in school so that he could get into that prime high school on his path to that respected university that graduating from got him a high paying, 12 hour a day job with a 2 hour commute everyday.  I see guys like him and I think two things.  One, I am happy that I have been lucky enough to be able to do what I want and come over here and meet people like him.  And two, I think he’s nuts.

Anyways, it is fun over here.  It is not always easy living in a foreign country but it sure isn’t boring.