June 19, 2016: Today Is My Tenth Anniversary of Moving Back to Asia

It has been an entire decade since I arrived in Incheon Airport, South Korea. I'm working on Homework 3 right now for my CMIS 420 class and don't have much time to post, but will post these photos, which I have never released on my website before. Two of the photos are photos of me from when I was 19 years old, taken 6/17/2016 (the day before I left for Korea) in the local park back in Fairfax. I also took the third picture in the park—a turtle laying its eggs on the same day. The fourth picture is of my C-3 visa, which formed the foundation for my legal residence in Korea from 2006 to 2007 (thanks to having the C-3 visa instead of just a landing permit, I was able to upgrade to a D-4 student visa from within Korea). The fifth picture is of some of my Fairfax County Public School Adult Education Korean textbooks from 2005-2006, taken against a red backdrop (my 7-Eleven uniform—I worked at 7-Eleven from 2004 to 2006). One decade in Asia as an adult is now finished, and I'm now starting my second decade as an adult here; combined with the time from when I was a kid, that's 15 years in Asia (I'm 29 years old, so that's the majority). Expect a fuller update tomorrow.

May 30, 2016: More Good News in CMIS 420

I just finished my Homework 2 for CMIS 420 (my last course towards my Computer & Information Science second bachelor's degree) and got the grade back very, very promptly. I have a 100% average in the class (13.76/13.76 points so far). I need an average of 88.36% on future assignments to get an A, and if I can accomplish that, I'll graduate with a 4.0 GPA.

The professor (Professor Florin Catalin Tudose) seems quite good, and is a breath of fresh air after some of the crappy professors I've had at UMUC. He basically tutored me one-on-one early this morning for over an hour—it was supposed to be a group chat open to the whole class, but only this guy named Francois and I showed up, and Francois had barely any questions, so it was basically just a dialog between the professor and I for about an hour. That's what higher education is supposed to be like! He grades assignments freakishly promptly (like, when it isn't even 6:00 AM in the US yet, so either he's an early bird or he's not in the US). His rating on http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ reflects what I have just mentioned; he has 4.1/5. Maybe his class will be a way to end my UMUC Computer & Information Science curriculum on a high note.

May 18, 2016: Small Bit of Good News in CMIS 420

I just got back Homework 1 in CMIS 420, which I submitted less than 24 hours ago (the professor was a fast grader and I submitted the assignment four days early). I got 100%. CMIS 420 is my final course towards my Bachelor of Science in Computer & Information Science degree, so this small victory right at the beginning is great news for me, and puts me in a good mood after having to withdraw from the previous course that was supposed to be the last one. Maybe I really can finish this degree! The assignment was to carry out 55 steps in Oracle SQL*Plus on the RedHat Linux server remotely via SSH and save the results to a SPOOL file. I feel like the study I did before this course officially started, from PHP & MySQL FOR DUMMIES, including feeding the MySQL commands into Anki, has really paid off in helping me adapt to Oracle SQL*Plus, which is very similar, quickly.

May 9, 2016: CMIS 420 (Advanced Relational Databases) Opened Today, and I Have 90 Days Left Before I Can Move to Tokyo

My last course at UMUC (University of Maryland University College) Asia for my Computer & Information Science degree opened today. It does not officially start for another week, but I can go ahead and look at it and start doing the readings, discussion board posts, and assignments, I think.

I need to really think hard about the near future, because many things are going to happen soon, notably:

1. JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) N1: July 3, 2016
2. Finishing at UMUC: July 11, 2016 at 1:00 PM
3. Finishing at Windmill English Centre: August 6, 2016 at 5:30 PM
4. Moving to Tokyo: by August 13, 2016 at latest (preferably earlier)
5. My self-imposed deadline to find a new job: October 23, 2016 at 11:59 PM
6. Turning 30: October 24, 2016 at midnight
7. Time by which I want to be completely physically fit and academically well-rounded: August 24, 2017

Until July 11, aside from work, this is what I'm going to do:

1. May 9-May 16: Finish Part II: MySQL Database in PHP & MySQL FOR DUMMIES and review as much of my CMIS 320 notes as possible. Get a start on CMIS 420. Keep up on Anki and try to reduce the backlog a little bit. Listen to an hour or more of Japanese radio or watch an hour or more of Japanese TV per day for my listening comprehension and keep up with my Japanese class at AWIA (Aizu-Wakamatsu International Association).
2. May 16-July 11: CMIS 420, keeping up with Anki, an hour a day of listening comprehension practice, and keeping up with the AWIA lessons courtesy of Aoyama Sensei
3. July 11~: Worry about that, then. I think it might be impossible to meet all my goals that I had wanted to accomplish before the job hunt starts. On July 11, when this course finishes, I'll just do the best I can.

April 24, 2016: My Sixth Visa Renewal Is Tomorrow

I just got a postcard from the immigration office on April 19. My renewal, which I applied for 20 days ago, is ready.

Here's the postcard and revenue stamp (shūnyū inshi for ¥4,000). I'm not really sure what the verdict will be. Possibilities include non-renewal (a total disaster, I'd have to leave Japan), a three-month extension (a serious disaster), a one-year extension (the minimum that I need to execute my plans for the next year), a three-year extension (this would be cause for celebration and would make my future in Japan much easier and more stable), or a five-year extension (extremely unlikely, but that would be nothing short of awesome). I'd estimate that the probabilities for those are: no extension: 1%, three-month extension: 9%, one-year extension: 70%, three-year extension: 29%, and five-year extension: 1%. In other words, I'm pretty sure they'll stick me with another somewhat insulting-but-good-enough-for-now one-year extension.

Today is the first day of my 16-day vacation from WEC. In order of importance, here are the goals for this break:

1. Review relational databases so that I can survive in CMIS 420 (Advanced Relational Databases Concepts & Applications). To do this, I plan to finish reading PHP & MySQL FOR DUMMIES, write notes about it, and add all the MySQL commands (within reason) to Anki. Then I plan to re-read all my notes from CMIS 320 (Relational Database Concepts & Applications). Then I plan to go through a tutorial for ORACLE iSQL*Plus. This should make me more or less ready for CMIS 420. My bachelor's degree in Computer & Information Science depends on passing this class, so all of this is the priority.
2. Eliminate my Anki backlog
3. Make serious progress on my UMUC backlog.
4. Continue to attend those Japanese classes at the Keikōdō (I'm in a class with a Vietnamese guy named Tain; this class is for people who have passed N2) and study what we learn in them assiduously.

April 18, 2016: Hanami Party Yesterday

Yesterday, WEC had its Hanami Party (Flower Viewing Party). We went to Monden Exercise Park and had this extremely small party from 10:00~2:00. As in only one student showed up who was not a family member of the boss or the staff. :-)

Pink Sakura

This is the side of a hill with concrete. It looks like a Mesoamerican pyramid, in my opinion.

It was very difficult to photograph the koi because they surfaced only for a brief amount of time and moved very quickly. We threw them breadcrumbs. The white dots on the water are fallen cherry blossom petals. There were also ducks in the pond, which we also fed, and during all this, I did a lap around the pond.

Wildflowers

White Sakura (Cherry Blossoms)

We had a potluck lunch. I cooked Norwegian pancakes. Ian cooked Madeleines in his oven. Satoe made ham sandwiches and egg salad sandwiches. Someone brought a cake that resembled a moss-covered brick. And some people just bought things at the convenience store and/or supermarket.

A Nice Landscape with Some Trees, a Graveyard, and the Mountains in the Background

Another Nice Landscape

Today is the two-month countdown until the 10th anniversary of me moving back to Asia. It is also the 28-day countdown until CMIS 420 starts. Time to get cracking!

March 11, 2016: Five-Year Retrospective (five years in Japan, five years since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami)

Five years ago today, Japan was hit by an earthquake and tsunami that killed over 15,000 people and possibly as many as 18,000+. I was here when it happened, but was safe in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, which was barely hit at all. I didn't have this website back then (only my Korea, Programming, and Taiwan websites) because I'd just arrived in Japan four days before (from Taiwan) and hadn't even found a job yet and wasn't even sure if I was going to live here, yet.

When the earthquake hit, I was taking a nap—and didn't even wake up. When I woke up naturally from my nap, I checked Facebook and my Korean friend in Tokyo, Bona, had sent me a message: "ㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷ"—"D-D-D-D-D" in English, which I guess was the noise she thought the vibrations of the earthquake made. Tokyo soon had a food shortage, and she and her friends Gabi and Nina evacuated to my gaijin house, called "Banana House," in Sakai City. They showed me camera phone pictures of empty supermarket shelves. The night they arrived, Nicole Ross interviewed us for Radio Volta, which played over the Philadelphia airwaves. In Sakai City, there was also a food shortage (especially rice), but it was very minor compared to the food shortages in Tokyo.

The earthquake and tsunami had no major negative impact on me. When I look back, as terrible as it is to say this, it actually helped me—the hyper-competitive Japanese English teaching job market became less competitive as English teachers either fled or decided not to come to Japan.

In 2013, when I arrived in Utsunomiya (in Tochigi Prefecture, which borders Fukushima, a hard-hit prefecture) and toured the school where I would end up being an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) for a year, the man giving me the tour showed me the gym, which had been rebuilt after it had collapsed when the earthquake hit. I asked him "Was anyone hurt?" He just replied with "Yes." The next year, at that same school, we observed a moment of silence on the third anniversary of the natural disaster. While living in Utsunomiya, I also had one adult student who told me he had been pinned down by rubble during the earthquake.

This year, I'm working at an eikaiwa (English conversation) school in Fukushima Prefecture. Fukushima Prefecture, for those of you who've been living under a rock, has a melted down nuclear reactor (its meltdown was caused by it being hit by the tsunami). I live in Aizu-Wakamatsu City. The population of this city has swollen since the 3/11/2011 natural disaster because many people living here are evacuees.

At the start of today, I told myself "I'm not going to bring up the earthquake in class today." However, I ended up bringing it up anyway with my pre-intermediate students (mostly high school with one junior high school student) because it seemed like the elephant in the room. I mean, considering that it's all over the news and there are moments of silence and everything, it's pretty hard to say "March 11" without at least mentioning it, and once I did that, the discussion flowed organically from there. I didn't bring it up in the subsequent class, but one of my students did. Therefore, we ended up discussing it in two of my classes. I'm still not sure whether bringing it up in the first class was a good idea or a bad idea. On one hand, I got lots of firsthand accounts from people, including one boy whose family evacuated Futaba (the town with the nuclear reactor), and none of the students lost any family members. However, on the other hand, that boy whose family had moved looked very sad during the whole conversation and I realized that maybe I shouldn't have even mentioned the earthquake.

I won't disclose any of the students' names, just using first initials instead. R. is an 8th grader who was in 3rd grade (elementary school) back then. He said that he was in school when it hit and that the "roads were broken." His school sent the students home. His family eventually had to evacuate their now-irradiated hometown and resettle here in Aizu-Wakamatsu.

Then there was M., a high school 10th grader, who was in 5th grade of elementary school when the earthquake and tsunami hit. She was far away from the coast and was therefore safe from the tsunami, but the earthquake rocked her classroom and their TV fell on the floor. She told me of various shortages—people bought all the toilet paper, "petrol" (she has been learning British English), etc. When the earthquake hit, her school sent the students home, but there was nobody home at her house, so she went to a friend's house and watched the news on TV.

Then there was M-2, another high school student, this one also in 10th grade. She told me that the "wall [of her house] was a little broke." I corrected her, telling her that "broke" means 「破産」 ("bankrupt") and that she should use "broken" instead.

In the subsequent junior high school class, R-2 brought up the earthquake, not me (I had learned my lesson about bringing it up after R.'s sad reaction—he didn't cry or go silent or anything but I could tell by looking at his face that these weren't pleasant memories). Since R-2 brought it up and not me, I did ask them a few questions. There were water shortages and the cell phone network went down. R-2 and his family evacuated to Niigata for a month to stay with relatives. None of these students were evacuees, unlike the first class. Of course people remembered exactly where they had been; one student had been in math class when it happened; one student had been in homeroom when it happened; another student was changing his clothes.

I hope I didn't cause R. too much pain by asking these questions, and that I don't get in trouble for asking them those questions. I think I treated the subject matter seriously, injecting my own anecdotes about living in Virginia when the Pentagon (which is in Virginia close to my family's house) was hit by a plane during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and how shocked I felt and how I'll always remember where I was when I first heard the announcement (geometry class)—not the same thing, but analogous—a shocking event killing thousands of people happening close to home that ends up all over international news, which is burned into one's memory.

As for other news, on March 7, I reached five years in Japan. This is a major milestone for me. If I wanted to, I could now, at this point, apply to become a Japanese national (the requirement for that is five years' continuous residency [which I have], Japanese language ability [which I have], the ability to support myself [which I have], and a clean criminal record [which I have]). However, I'd have to give up my US citizenship—in other words, forget it, unless Japan suddenly allows dual citizenship or something. I'll just wait another nearly five years until I'm eligible for permanent residence, which doesn't require me to give up my US citizenship. In five years here, I've been an English teacher the whole time (four years as an eikaiwa teacher, one year as an ALT), done translations and proofreading part-time for a year, banked over ¥2,000,000 (my personal net worth was negative when I reached Japan and I've been paying for all my courses, so that's not so bad), knocked out 30 credit hours at UMUC, 16 through NOVA, and 6 through DSST tests, and as a result of these, finished an AS in IT from NOVA and two Career Studies Certificates from there (Business IT and Application Programming), passed JLPT N4, N3, and N2, passed Kanji Kentei 7-kyū, 5-kyū, and 4-kyū, and finished the CTEYL English teaching certification. In other words, I've accomplished approximately seven or eight years' worth of stuff in just five years, so I'm kind of proud.

I hope that my second five-year stint in Japan will be more peaceful and balanced and less of a race to the finish line. I think that various changes will occur slightly before my 30th birthday that will allow this to happen; the biggest two were JLPT N2 (which I got, officially-speaking, in January) and my BS in Computer & Information Science (which I'll probably get officially in May).

January 26, 2016: I'VE PASSED JLPT N2!

Long time no see, blog readers, and my apologies for the long period of time that has passed since my last update. At just after 12:00 AM today, I was able to log into MyJLPT, and saw the following, for the JLPT that I took on 12/6/2015:

This means the following:

• I now have access to more jobs. Many jobs require N2. For example, CIRs (Coordinators of International Relations) with the JET Programme require N2.
• I can now enter Japanese schools up to a two-year college, as a Japanese student would. JLPT N2 is the level required to enter a Japanese high school or some two-year colleges. Four-year universities and up, though, are still off-limits (unless I take the courses in English or Korean) because they generally require either JLPT N1 or high EJU scores.
• It's relatively prestigious. I've never worked with any gaijin English teacher who had higher than N2 (I worked with one English teacher back in Mie who had it and one of my co-workers now has it, but I don't know even one with N1).
• It might have immigration benefits. Cynically-speaking, I doubt it, because this immigration system only seems to care about whether one has Japanese blood, is married to someone with Japanese blood, or the size of one's organization (which is why JETs get three years), but it'll make a stronger application than the time I applied for a three- or five-year extension with only N3 and was turned down. Considering that when I extend my Status of Residence, I'll have been here for over five years, been at the same job for over a year, and have N2 and KanKen 4-kyū now, this will be my strongest case ever for a three- or five-year instead of a one-year one.

Now that N2 is out of the way, there's only one level left before I'm "done"—N1. N1 is a hard, hard test that will require learning approximately 4,000 words beyond what I had to know for the N2. Therefore, this is going to be my new Japanese study plan:

• Don't worry about studying for N1 for at least another year or two.
• However, start taking N1 in July and December, just so I can get an objective measure of whether my Japanese has improved or degraded, and by how much. And who knows—one of these times, I might get lucky and pass it.
  
  This might seem to contradict the above bullet point, but it doesn't. I plan to take it regularly, but not focus on studying for it—at least for now, no memorization from JLPT N1 word lists or kanji lists, for example.
• From now until my job hunt in August, work on the following:
  • Work on IT/high-tech Japanese (such as programming terms). I can do this, for example, by teaching myself JavaScript from a Japanese JavaScript book. These terms will be invaluable during job interviews and hopefully, my future job.
  • Work on "real Japanese" (Japanese as it is actually spoken and not sanitized test Japanese), especially listening comprehension.