In Which Our Hero Discusses Japanese Monetary Customs With a Junior Teller at Wells Fargo

Japanese 2000 yen notes (worth about $20 US), featuring the Shureimon gate (front) and Lady Murasaki Shikibu with a scene from The Tale of Genji (back).

INT. BANK LOBBY – DAY

IAN is buying Japanese yen from a young TELLER behind the counter of a bank lobby whose ceiling is exorbitantly high. The TELLER counts out the notes, which IAN then considers.

IAN: Do you mind if I trade in some of these two-thousand notes for a few five-thousands? Japanese people don't really use them, so they'd peg me as a tourist.

TELLER (surprised): Uh, I didn't know that. (checks computer) Sorry, we don't have any other yen here.

IAN: That's fine. It'll just be like I started using two-dollar bills everywhere.

TELLER (oblivious): Oh. (Pause, after which he begins to speak from a clearly rehearsed script.) Now, will you be using your debit card in Japan?

IAN (tilting his head in the Japanese manner of not wanting to correct someone): Not this time—Japanese businesses don't really take cards. They're still a cash society.

TELLER (wide-eyed): Wow, I didn't know that. I take it you've been to Japan before?

IAN: Yeah, a little bit.

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Time to take a trip—my first time back in Japan in almost five years. Feels good to be doing something exciting again, to be going to a place where daily life will be just a little bit more challenging.  That's the kind of thing that makes you sharper.

Lots of changes coming for 2016. I finished a novel last year, finished grad school, and started doing more things that matter. Blogging also still matters—putting things out there in a form more substantial than a Facebook post or tweet keeps me sharp, and keeps the ideas flowing.

Been working on a better place to do that than Blogspot, though, which has become the blogging equivalent of AOL Instant Messenger (out of fashion, but technically still around). Stay tuned.

Low-Stakes Fun

I think a lot about writing purely for low-stakes fun (e.g. this blog) and how I don't do it as often as I'd like anymore.  I still keep a journal, which fulfills my need for personal reflection, but I miss pursuing more of the random ideas that spark into something more worthwhile than a Facebook message, but less tangible than a short story.  The things this blog used to be full of.

A big part of this has to do with my being in graduate school (where I've been for over a year), where such writing is hardly encouraged (long story), and social pressures tend to favor a more professional discourse of literary fiction (if such a term even has meaning anymore) published in magazines of note (or those that purport to be of note) to build one's CV (which, unlike a one-page employment resume, concerns itself chiefly with length).  Before graduate school, before work on the novel even, I made more time for this blog and for other low-stakes writing that kept the ideas flowing, kept me writing actively.  I spend more time writing now than I did then, though most of what I do now is novel- or larger project-related work, which in many ways I find disappointing.

Does this shift represent a maturing move toward more important endeavors, or a dwindling of my creative energy in favor of a more regimented structure?  To even phrase the problem in this way disgusts me.  Why can't I continue to work on a myriad of projects, fitting each one into its proper place on a smaller or larger scale that suits that individual idea?

Time, mostly.  There's never enough time.

Have to keep trying, though.

Last Entry from Japan

Today is my last day at the eikaiwa where I work, whose name I shall not mention.

It has come to my attention that my attitude toward Japan recently, both in general and in this blog, has become an increasingly negative expression of my inner frustrations with this country through two years of exposure to Japanese culture from the perspective of a chain-school eikaiwa teacher. Though understanding the horrific aspects of Japan is important to understanding life here, it's dangerous to focus too entirely on the negative, because there are good things about living here, and there are people who can overcome the pressures of Japanese society enough to make their lives work.

There is still hope for Japan; it is only a question of whether the country can pull itself from the muck of bureaucracy and groupthink and create a better environment for the people who live here, Japanese and gaijin alike.

I'll be back in New Hampshire in mid-March. At that time, I hope to write about Japan with a viewpoint less inhibited by the daily stresses of living and working here. Look for my final tale from the Japanese workplace sometime next month. Look for a novel sometime after that.

Sayonara.

First Post of 2011

Today, after much deliberating and procrastination, in fulfillment of the New Years Resolution I'd conceived after a week's wandering in the Tohoku region, I began writing the opening paragraphs of what, with a little luck, will ultimately become a novel. Am I crazy? Perhaps. Or, maybe just determined to capture something that's been kicking around my head for a long time, and I've finally realized that it's better to be actively working on it than dreaming about it.

More on this later.