Comfort Food

Happy Birthday Colonel Sanders!

KFC, or "Kentucky" as the Japanese call it, has become a place of refuge for me. It is familiar. It reminds me of home. No matter how Japanese influenced some of the food may be (I am talking about you, biscuit imposter), a bucket of Original Recipe chicken tastes like the real thing. I know I have told a few of you how I have been a little homesick lately (and I want you to know it is getting better by the day).  I feel like no matter my mood, I will always find the Colonel's friendly face and delicious chicken at Kentucky and that makes me happy.

Bad Hair Day

If you spoke with me prior to our moving overseas, you may know that my greatest fear about moving to Japan was finding someone to cut my hair.  

Hair Studio Billy in Kobe was recommended on a website with information for foreign teachers living in Hyogo. I found them on the web where they boasted having international experience and even spoke English.  I made a reservation for the very next day!  

I should have known something was up by the way
 that President Billy wouldn't look me in the eyes.

The interior was funky and western inspired.  The stylist was a young, hip girl with black rimmed glasses, and her English was perfect.  I was feeling confident I chose the right place.  However, halfway through the haircut, she asked if she could use thinning shears.  Um... ok?  10 minutes later she was still thinning and thinning.  She even thinned my bangs!  With no end in sight, my heart started beating fast.  I blurted out, “I think that’s enough of the thinning shears!” She seemed a bit surprised, like I had interrupted her masterpiece, but she finished up with the cut and dusted off my neck.  We paid and left.  I felt tricked.  

I went home that night and washed and dried my hair hoping for the best.  Then, I cried.  My hair is so wispy that it sticks out when I don’t use a straightener.  The humidity only makes it worse.  It is my greatest fear realized; the worst hair cut that I have ever had!

But here is what I have learned in just a week’s time.  People around me do not care if my hair isn’t perfect.  In fact, I am not sure that any of my Japanese coworkers even noticed that I cut my hair at all.  My husband still finds me attractive.  So, that leaves me.  I was very upset on the day of the bad hair cut.  No woman wants to feel like their hair isn’t pretty.  But, the truth is my hair is not what people love about me.  It isn’t what they judge me by and it isn’t what they will remember me for.  A bad hair cut is just that, bad, but there are worse things.  And it will grow.   

The 4 Stages of Culture Shock

13 hours of flying, watching Jane Eyre, Ceder Rapids, and an entire season of Dexter, a 2 hour bus ride, getting a bit lost in the neighborhood around our hotel, a horrible nights sleep, a small earthquake, and a whole day of opening ceremony, workshops, and presentations later... here I am sitting at a Japanese computer trying to figure out how I ever survived pre-cell phone days.  Not to seem as if I am not having a fantastic time (because trust me I am), but I seem to have recognized that while some start out in the 1st stage of culture shock, Euphoria, I have started in the 2nd which is having an overwhelming sense of not knowing what the hell is going on!  I know that there are two more stages which I will ultimately come to... hoping that I will skip past stage 3, Irritation and Hostility, onto stage 4, Adaptation and Biculturism, and maybe backtrack to stage 1.  Because come on, Japanese Euphoria sounds amazing!  Gimme some of that!

The last few days have been confusing because jetlag has hit me like a ton of bricks, yet I have to function in order to participate in these workshops and put on a good face to meet my colleagues.  I will admit while I have been pretty spaced out, I have learned a lot about what will be expected of me, and I have met lots of great, like-minded people.  I am more excited than ever to be part of this group of people, joining the likes of my husband (whom I have a greater sense of unity with knowing that he sat in this same seat just a few years ago).  Looking forward to seeing where this will take me, us, and the day when I can use the toilet, speak to the cashier of the conbini (convenience store), and order Subway with confidence!

Third Time's the Charm

In a couple of weeks, I will be moving to Japan for the third time. The JET Program brought me to Japan in 2005, when I taught English there for two years. I returned to the States for a year before taking a job doing international business development for a Japanese company in 2008. Upon taking that job, I had planned to live in Japan for around five years. Part of that didn't happen because the world's economy tanked, and my boss's plans to expand into the USA kind of fizzled. So I ended up doing that job for only one year.

It was during that year, that I met my wife, Becky, over the Internet. My plans to try to stay in Japan long term quickly changed as I pinned after a girl in Oklahoma. Becky had been to Japan for a short trip as a child, and from the very beginning there was talk of living in Japan together. Becky had also always been interested in ESL and teaching English. I don't really remember at what point she decided she wanted to apply for the JET Program, but here we are a year or so later and ready to make the move.

This move will be very different from the last two as I am not alone, I will not arrive with a work visa, and we have a whole house full of stuff we are dealing with. The biggest issue will be that work visa. I will receive a dependent visa, meaning I am dependent on someone (Becky) who has received a work visa. I will be a house-husband in the eyes of the Japanese government, and therefore should be supported by my spouse. But because house-husbands get bored, the Japanese government will let me work for 28 hours per week if I can secure a work permit. If I find a full-time job, I can also go through the process of changing my visa to a work visa.

Until then, I will look for anything to do immediately, including possibly doing some work for my old boss from the Japanese company. I'm going to take advantage of my free time first by working to make our new home as comfortable as possible. Then I will begin aggressively improving my Japanese ability, especially my reading and writing. Being able to speak Japanese fairly well impresses many Japanese people, but being able to call myself "bilingual" is what will get me good jobs in the future.

Lastly, I am going to aggressively pursue my long-time desire to become a professional screenwriter. In the past year, I finished the first major revision of my first screenplay. It was an emotional, challenging, messy process! The end result was not something that I will sell for six figures next week, but it is something I want to come back to in the future. More importantly, I learned a ton from the process, and I feel more confident than ever that the next screenplay will be easier to write and a better finished product. I also picked up another screenwriting mentor in the process, so I'm hopping he can help me achieve success in the future. For many years, it has been the desire of my heart to live in Japan as a professional Hollywood screenwriter while at the same time being able to do Christian ministry. Perhaps the third time's the charm.