Would you like to continue teaching in Japan indefinitely?
Japan is a great place to visit, but after a couple years the stress from little things builds up. For example, not being able to get the kind of food one wants--it's really amazing the effect food can have on one's mood. Not being able to drive a car. Not having a clue what one's friends from home are talking about when they drop references to the latest hit commercial/TV series/song. Being constantly complimented on ridiculously simple things like the ability to use chopsticks, which reinforces how much one is seen as an outsider. It's generally nothing huge, nothing that one can really point to and say "that's unbearable," but small frustrations accumulate.
That said, I can't be completely satisfied living in the States either, because the reverse conditions apply and I start to miss things that I could acquire or do very easily in Japan. Being able to step into the nearest bookstore and pick up the latest Kayata Sunako novel on the day it's published, for example. Kirin milk tea. The convenience of riding a shinkansen. Being in a country where people never leave shopping carts in the parking lot. The eight-story Animate in Ikebukuro. Thus, I wind up spending a great deal of money ordering things online and being jealous of my friends who live close enough to a big city to shop at Kinokuniya.
What are your future plans?
My *ideal* future, I think, would be to have my novel accepted by Cobalt or one of the other publishers and being taken on as a full-time writer. I don't know what my chances of that are, though I know for a fact I'm a better writer than some of the authors they're publishing. In any case, I would most likely live in the US and come back to visit Japan occasionally.
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Japan is a great place to visit, but after a couple years the stress from little things builds up. For example, not being able to get the kind of food one wants--it's really amazing the effect food can have on one's mood. Not being able to drive a car. Not having a clue what one's friends from home are talking about when they drop references to the latest hit commercial/TV series/song. Being constantly complimented on ridiculously simple things like the ability to use chopsticks, which reinforces how much one is seen as an outsider. It's generally nothing huge, nothing that one can really point to and say "that's unbearable," but small frustrations accumulate.
That said, I can't be completely satisfied living in the States either, because the reverse conditions apply and I start to miss things that I could acquire or do very easily in Japan. Being able to step into the nearest bookstore and pick up the latest Kayata Sunako novel on the day it's published, for example. Kirin milk tea. The convenience of riding a shinkansen. Being in a country where people never leave shopping carts in the parking lot. The eight-story Animate in Ikebukuro. Thus, I wind up spending a great deal of money ordering things online and being jealous of my friends who live close enough to a big city to shop at Kinokuniya.
What are your future plans?
My *ideal* future, I think, would be to have my novel accepted by Cobalt or one of the other publishers and being taken on as a full-time writer. I don't know what my chances of that are, though I know for a fact I'm a better writer than some of the authors they're publishing. In any case, I would most likely live in the US and come back to visit Japan occasionally.