Further further plans

Sorry that I once again went a huge span of time without posting anything. In my defense, there haven't been a whole lot of noteworthy events happening since my last post. Well, except one I guess.

I've pretty much decided that I'm not staying here past my contract. I know in my last few posts it seemed like the possibility of staying was pretty strong, but that was when I was only considering the job satisfaction and my financial position. I hadn't given any thought to how much I would enjoy the stuff outside work, which is signficantly more time. I can't really give a concise answer that really does a good job of explaining why I feel like I'd be better off in America, and when I tried writing a drawn-out explanation, it kind of wandered and the reasons sounded pitiful. So the best thing I've come up with is that it's a million small reasons and one major one. The million small things are just too minor to mention individually, but they kind of all add up to one big irritation.

Of course, the major thing is not being able to speak or read Japanese enough to really communicate beyond really basic stuff. I started writing yet another long exposition on this, but just another summary: the last few months of Japanese study were pretty mind-numbing, and thinking about going back into it, which I would almost certainly need to if I wanted to stay a whole extra year, is not appealing to me at all.

Actually another reason is that staying here is just delaying my career for another year. Sure, I'd have a lot of money in my pocket when I hit America in 2008, but if you consider the fact that I'd essentially be subtracting a year of work in my American job--which is certainly going to pay more than this one--in the long term I'd be losing money the longer I stay.

So anyway, I'm definitely enjoying my stay here, and I most certainly have not regretted coming here, but I am quite sure at this point that I'll be heading out after my contract's over, probably after a week or two of final sightseeing.

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I also went to the John Lennon Museum in the city next to this one. It was pretty nice, and had quite a few items from his personal things, like several guitars that he owned and quite a few drawings that he made with Yoko Ono. The more interesting items were (might want to skip all this if you don't care about the Beatles, because none of it will make any sense or be interesting at all): some of his elementary school diaries and school projects; some costumes worn for the Sgt. Pepper cover photo; the circus poster that inspired the song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite"; the sleeveless "New York City" shirt that he wore in a pretty famous photograph; the piano that he composed "Imagine" on (and played in the music video); a door from the mansion that said music video was filmed in (huh?); and a ton of handwritten drafts of lyrics--I can't remember all the songs, but there had to be at least 20, and all of them were hits or at least recognizable.

Of course, I would be able to show you high-resolution pictures of all these and more, but some ridiculous reason they didn't allow cameras anywhere past the lobby! I've never heard of a museum that didn't allow photography. I probably could have gotten away with the "Dumb Foreigner" act if I wanted to, but they did hand me a thing written in perfect English saying that photography was not allowed, so...But yeah, that pissed me off a lot. Other than that, it was really nice.

Kind of funny note: there was a dedicated Yoko Ono section about 70% of the way through. I saw maybe two or three people in the museum the whole time before reaching that point, where I saw easily 12 intensely studying all of her items. Guess they wished the museum would get rid of all that boring John Lennon crap and just replace it with her art, huh? Actually one of her art pieces was pretty awesome. It was an old-style rotary telephone in a little open recessed cabinet thing, and you could pick up the handle and everything. The sign underneath said that she had it installed on a phone line separate from the rest of the building, and that she occasionally calls that phone and talks with whatever visitor happens to pick it up. I was hoping a little that it would ring while I was standing there so that I could brag to everyone about how I talked to Yoko Ono on the phone, to which they would reply, "...So?"

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And finally, I have probably twice as many pics to process and post as are actually up on my picture website. This Friday is my last day of work until January 9th, so I'll be going through all those (along with whatever ones I take during winter sightseeing) during the holidays.