Howdy do, folks.  Sorry for the complete and utter lack of updates and posts over the past couple of weeks, work’s been busier for reasons that I don’t really want to get into, I’ve gone through a weird bit of soul-searching and all that jazz, and honestly I haven’t really found there to be anything that I really have wanted to write about for a while.

It’s been a cold year.  On Friday, I went down to Tokyo to meet up with some friends (more specifically the founders and operators) from my days working at SCOA and promptly got snowed on.  According to the news, this is a once in thirty year thing since the middle of March is typically spring flower blossom viewing season.  With temperatures that usually go below freezing at night, I’m fairly certain that the Japanese climate just hates me and wants me to leave.  Feh.  Good luck with that, buddy.

Life’s been good here in Japan.  Aside from an unfortunate apartment key incident (something that I will go into in greater detail at a later date), it’s been relatively smooth sailing.  Sure there’s no Mexican food here and my utility bills are astronomical but when those are your biggest issues in life, you really have no room to complain.

Anyways, life’s been good to me so far but that doesn’t ever really stop someone from striving for something more.  I like my job (aside from the hours and the typical stuff that comes up in one of these contract English instructor jobs) but I don’t really want to be doing this forever.  So I’ve been looking at other avenues.  I’m a performer, a storyteller… okay, maybe just an attention whore, at heart.  I love entertaining people.  I also like being weird.  And maybe that’s about as deep into the subject as I’m going to get for now.  Maybe I missed all the deadlines this year but 2015 lies ahead.  There’s no use in never trying.  Things may end up being more uncomfortable for me but weird hours, corporate teaching, and 250,000 yen a month (minus pension, health insurance costs [Thanks Japanese Obama], and company union fees, so really 200,00 yen a month) isn’t my ultimate end goal.

Everything I do from now on is going to be in anticipation of the next year.  I need to improve my Japanese speaking ability (I’m good enough to talk to a locksmith but I want more), I need to stop relying on my dictionary for every other kanji I don’t know how to read.  I need to improve my sleep schedule.  And most of all, I need to starting being a creator once again.

Sorry if this is all sounding a bit cryptic but one never knows who might be reading these things.

Now that I’m all settled into my life in Japan, complacency must be avoided at all costs.  I think I have  a goal now, just gotta start running the race.

Anyways, find me on all the usual avenues: Twitter, Youtube, Japanese Twitter, Japanese Youtube, Instagram, all that jazz.  I’m pretty bored at work most of the time so I’ll probably reverse stalk you in return.

-Stephen