Beginnings and Ends

I'm always amazed at the subjectivity of time, and how time can seem to crawl or pass at the blink of an eye based on the situation a person experiences. I'm a sense, I'm going through a sort of time-crisis myself, as I consider the last 2 years.

On one hand, I feel like I've been in Japan forever. So much so that I can hardly remember my daily life in Toronto. Not of course that I've forgotten my friends and family there, but rather that I've so acclimatized myself to my life in Japan that at this point any other seems...impossible.

This is of course a slippery slope, and such delusions can lead to heartbreak later. Already, I am starting to feel the pressure of the ending of my next contract year, even though it hasn't begun. Where will I be once August rolls around. Will I be recontracted? Will I have a new job, here in Japan? Or will I go home, kicking and screaming, to a country where I have no appreciable job skills? In a very real sense, I cannot rely on JET to recontract me another year. Budgetary concerns have already seen a reduction in the number of high schools with JET ALTs, in many cases to be replaced by Interac ALTs, and while I have high confidence that Genkai will continue to use and request JET ALTs (the JET Programme continues despite reduced capacity), whether I am included in that as a 4th year hopeful is still up in the air.

And so I feel the crunch very acutely, of really thinking about getting my house into order. While I am technically just as unskilled here in Japan as I am in Canada, I have my English ability, but perhaps more important my Japanese ability, to fall back on. That said, I don't know if I want to continue teaching, and a happy ending for me would see me working somewhere where my bilingual skills would be put to use. Still, hoping for an ideal situation to come along is risky at best, so I need to consider making myself more ELT-worthy. Going for my TESOL certification is definitely on my to do list. A company from Canada runs a week-long seminar in Yokohama. Eventually, I might even consider going back to school for a BEd. in foreign language teaching, though that is indeed getting well ahead of myself. I have lived my life according to my own set of rules, that those include not getting overly worked up about my own future. I feel that I have an indomitable optimism with regards to this. Whether this turns out to be true, or simply the fantasies of an idle mind, remains to be seen.

I didn't mean this to be a rant, but the last few substance based posts have had a similar tenor, a sure sign that at least on some subconscious level, I am sufficiently worried. So that's good, I think.

But to return to the main point, while I feel I've been here in Japan forever, I feel that I have not much time remaining before some real action on my part must be taken. But as well as feeling long, my time in Japan has also felt very brief. To this I point to my co-ALT, or rather her departure.

Elaine will be going home, in just over a month. In about 3 weeks, she will stop being my co-ALT and will be replaced by a new girl. There is of course a certain anxiety I feel, as is usual when new co-workers enter the office, but as well a certain sense of excitement, as this new ALT learns the "wonders" of the environment she'll be working in. The gist of it is this: I cannot believe that it's been 2 years already. Where did this time fly? It feels almost like yesterday that I checked into the doctor's clinic on the 27th-or-some-odd floor of the Keio Plaza Hotel with an asthma attack, my first and lasting memory of arriving in Japan on the JET Programme. At the same time, that seems like a lifetime ago. I remember my initial growing irritation with Elaine distinctly, but also how our work relation mended itself until we were partner's par-excellence, a veritable teaching team here at Genkai. This too is both a distinct memory, but as well something which seems to be very much in the past.

Perhaps it is my growing senecense. Perhaps it is a form of culture-shock. Perhaps the early July heat is rotting my brain. Regardless, this dichotomy of time will haunt me for some time...

If you can guess, Current Mood: Contemplative