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| Given my pathetic ability + repeated failures to even just catch up on reading updates on facebook, I think this is it - my friends - I'm not going to keep my entries up-to-date on this site anymore.
Interested parties - just drop by my blogspot site - http://myshaw.blogspot.com
That it, migration for good!
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| I love traveling in Japan, and I especially love traveling on the train. As the rice paddies fast fly by and the faint figure of oneself vaguely reflected from the window pan emerges quietly on top of the sceneries outside, a perfect moment of contemplation is born, naturally and unobtrusively.
Took mom to Izu the past two days. A typical onsen trip at a nice, serene, Japanese-style onsen ryokan somewhere in the middle of nowhere and some full-day sightseeing the next day. 修善寺 is quite nice and well earns its reputation for being the 小京都 of Izu. Walking down the 桂川 and the bamboo forest, I became so deeply nostalgic of Kyoto and the good old days spent on trekking through the ins and outs of that lovely city that once so warmly hosted me for a school year.
I've almost forgotten what it is like to be a lone traveler on the road who depends upon nothing but a guidebook (no Lonely Planet, thank you), some last-minute planning scrambled together on the train ride over, basic human instincts, and most of all, a curious mind, a relentless heart, and an adventurous spirit that are fearless of the unknown and unexpected.
Perhaps it's about time to take on a journey of self-REdiscovery. Part of it has to do with having just finished reading "Eat, Pray, and Love" but part of it is I really need some quietude of the heart and mind to listen better to the voice of the Almighty and the voice of my own. Whether they stand in conflict with one another or in accordance - perhaps a trip as such could help me figure that out better.
And then to deal with the rest of life with much more wisdom and calm.
Chinese like to use the word 閉關, but I'd much rather seek a 閉關 state of mind via the means of a lonesome journey.
If only I could find a creative way of making such a trip happening within my packed schedule.
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| Any taker? To teach me about how to find some balance in life?
4 months ago I was so desperate about getting myself out of the lonesome daily routine of commuting *on foot* b/t school and home or Shibuya's cafe to home via school that I was sharing with my small group folks that I want to establish another dimension in life where there's more than just the tiny academia bubble.
Like an answered prayer, 4 months later fast forwarding to now, my schedule is packed with part-time teaching and commuting b/t clients' offices from one corner of Tokyo to another far corner that I wanna reclaim a sense of balance in life and preserve enough room for purely intellectual - even if useless - activities.
Drained.
But grateful.
Esp. when summer is fast approaching. Really really love the warm sun and spotless blue sky in Tokyo these days.
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| On podcast I came across an interview with the writer of a recently published book, Relentless Pursuit, that documents the story of Teach for America program via the stories of 4 participants. Pros and cons and doubts and debates were raised in the interview, and issues concerning the program as well as the even more loaded issue with inner city school programs surfaced evidently throughout the interview.
However, despite the fact that more than 50% of the new teachers who join Teach for America end up leaving by the end of the 5-year mark, in the meantime statistics show that many of the Teach for America alums go on to pursue a career that creatively, partially, if not fully touches upon the issues of educational and school reforms. Many of them take the lessons that they've learned from the program to their heart - for many of those are lessons of sheer, cruel reality that one simply can't forget once having experienced them - and really allow them to transform their mindset about society and views on the lives of the underprivileged and transform their actions into ones dedicated to the serving of the underserved.
So in a way, Teach for America has achieved one of its two major goals - to raise up future generation of leaders who would seek to improve and transform the current educational system for the better - despite the fact that they continue to have trouble retaining young graduates from high-profile universities for lifelong services.
It's just like taking upon a missions trip or committing oneself to a short-term missions or peace corps or whichever kind of NGO/relief services commitment that ranges from a year to two to three for the freshly graduated young adults (before they dive right back to law school or MBA or what not). Whereas most of them don't turn out to be full-time missionaries or lifelong peace corps members, they continue to be missionaries/NGO workers/ in mind and in spirit , seeking to make an impact - hopefully in some level a greater one - wherever they are or whatever job post they occupy.
Lately snapshots of my fresh, post-graduate days in China sneak in and out of my consciousness, and almost every other few days I get this little itchy nudge in my heart or somewhere deep down in my body, reminding me the presence of those memories. I find myself wanting to long for more for those days yet constantly holding myself back with relishing the good days in the meantime. It's as if I'm standing right by the edge of a deep, wide valley with a sense of insurmountable fear yet excitement at the same time shaking my whole body around. If I look ahead, a simple spring over the valley doesn't seem all that impossible, and once over, it's all (at least it seems like) green pasture awaiting me to embrace. Yet if I look down, the impenetrable darkness extends its shadows over me, seemingly about to snatch me away, deep deep down into that dark void in which the bottom cannot be seen.
At the end of the day, perhaps the green pasture across the valley isn't all that green as it seems, and the darkness right underneath my feet isn't necessarily a bottomless void. However, the worse thing would be trying to take a leap across the valley yet with half-hearted effort that I end up losing the momentum and tumbling down the valley in the most bitter, ugly manner.
That, would be the worse nightmare yet to come.
"Relentless pursuit." A title that excites yet frightens me at the same time.
But relentless it has to be.
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| My Suika (like the refillable Charlie card in Boston or Metro Card in NYC) runs out so easily. On a busy teaching day that starts from 8 am to 7 pm (or sometimes 9 pm), 2000 yen or more runs out in a single day. The 45-min commute on a round-trip JR train fare for one of the classes that I teach is 1220 yen, and running from one corner of the city to another end corner within just 3 hours has become commonplace these days. Thanks to the train-route/time-table navigation system accessible on my cell phone with a few simple clicks, I can precisely estimate my commute time and aim for the exact departure/arrival time right on the dot.
The beauty of Japanese train systems that all countries in the world should vow to learn from.
However, mankind wisdom like that of the Japanese can't really beat the spontaneous mankind decision to jump off the platform in the middle of rush hours - a.k.a. the 人身事故 incidents. It's strange how on the plasma screen TV's on many of the train compartments here only note the term, "人身事故" - while really should have been translated as "suicide attempt" - as "Accident" in its English translation. Whether it's the product of overall bad Japanese English or an deliberate attempt not to scare off the foreigners I'm not quite sure. But what I do know is - the longer I stay in Tokyo, the more and more I've gotten used to the occurrence of suicide attempts. To me and most other passengers out there, 人身事故 has become nothing more than a term that somehow stalls the train system for half an hour or delays the express trains. Last night when I was barely breathing in a jam-packed train home at 9:30 pm b/c of a suicide attempt occurred earlier in the evening, I even resented a little for without 人身事故, I would not need to stand like a mushed tuna with multiple humans' backs, shoulders, arms, and hair touching me, I thought.
But that's just really really awful, isn't it? In the very moment when a life - a human life - is lost, all I can think of is my own inconvenience and extra commute time back home?
This is an entirely overworked society here. I have a student who would take the last train home at 12:49 am and then get on the train at 7:06 am on the same day (obviously) in order to make it to my 8 am class to study English in a half-awake state b/c the company tells him so. Mind you, the commute itself takes 1 hour, which is completely normal if not mild given the Tokyo standards. I have another student who spends 3 hours on the train each day commuting - as if her 12-hour shift as a psychiatric nurse dealing with schizophrenic patients isn't draining enough.
I also know friends who would join a 合コン party (similar to the idea of a group blind-date event), drink till the wee hours of the evening, get sent home on a taxi paid by the male counterparts at the party on something close to 10,000 yen (=$100) taxi fare, then wake up just a few hours later to commute and work again.
So then one day, when age 47 hits and your boss has just given you yet another relentless reprimand at work that crushes you down like a worthless human being, on the way home or perhaps on your last trip to see your client, you decide that why not seek an alternative route to freedom by jumping off track.
One jump, then worries free.
Perhaps one's very last - if not first - protest in life. Using one's body as the very embodiment of protest.
Being a foreigner when oftentimes not everything is crystal clear or when the other party's facial expression simply isn't enough for me to get a sense of whether s/he is sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, or simply indifferent, I too begin to adopt this style of hiding - hiding my own feelings and hiding from the fact that I really do want to know more about how and what the other person is thinking but am just too afraid of asking. But all such inability to utter one's true voice - is that just the first step towards choosing a form of protest in body action years down the road?
And I too feel like I am a bit overworked. Either that, or just the Japanese ganbatte mentality has been catching up on me.
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