A year in review.

It's been a while since I've posted, and if you've been reading my blog for a while, you know I usually do these review things.

So where am I now? How's life for me in Japan?

Back, almost 2 years ago, when I first started the ball rolling on my JET application, it was in response to an epiphany I had a year and a half previous to that. Then, I had stood in front of the ashes of my ancestors, having come to the realization that I wanted to live in Japan. My acceptance into JET was the first step towards that dream, and a year ago when I was at the park overlooking that temple where my ancestors lay, I felt a great sense of...accomplishment? Satisfaction? I felt I had come full circle.

So what then? Well, circle of course is a closed circuit, and so there is something to be said about the symbolism of a circle as a fixed track, and thus a poor (however appropriate) it is in describing someone's life. I guess the real question is, do I see my life as that symbolic circle?

Well, in one way I suppose it is an appropriate metaphor. My daily life is as ever routine. I go to work, do my lessons, come home, watch some TV, and read before I go to sleep. It's a comfortable, if somewhat boring existence. But then again, I've always been a bit of a stick in the mud.

But then again, I've added exercise to my routine (I've joined the cult of Billy Blanks), watch what I eat, and in general taken a genuine interest in developing my teaching skills. Its a bit of a revelation that the stuff they teach you at monthly meetings and seminars has a definite practical use in the classroom. I feel over the last few months, and especially over the summer, I've become a better ALT.

So then if it's a circle, lets instead think of it as a coil. A continuous ring, that takes me in cycles to some eventual goal. Heady stuff...or a silly metaphor depending on your point of view.

Indulge me the metaphor. What's the goal? I think, as always, it remains to live in Japan. This is something I am accomplishing, and as it stands, I don't see a real end. I don't know for sure if I will commit to the entire five years I can on the JET Programme. After all, things will eventually get old. And it also has the negative side-effect of prolonging any real decision as to what I will do with my life, something which I really shouldn't be keeping off at my age.

In the end, I think, I'll just keep on keepin on. It's what I do the best, and thinks always seem to work out anyway.