Overall today was pretty normal but it was fun. Started off the day going to I Love Pizza with Brian for the lunch tabehoudai. Hadn’t been there in a long time. I think this is by far the best pizza I’ve had in Japan, ever. It’s even good by American standards, but it’s hard to compare anything to the great St. Louis style thin crust. Anyway, we destroyed a medium and 2 large pizzas while they played some terrible movie on the iMac. I think it was like Badnews Bears Part 2: The Bears Go To Japan and Fight the Yakuza. Something like that. It was awful, but I only turned my head to glance a few times as I ate inhuman amounts of pizza.

After that did some weekend private lesson action at Denny’s. Then checked out Tsutaya and Book Off over near there, followed by Game City Monopoly. I hadn’t played that in a while either, so it was fun. Hit a pretty decent jackpot so have some medals in the bank. Had a Goi school party later at night, so that was fun. I was assigned to buy flowers for a teacher who is leaving, so I found a florist over near Skylark. I was pretty amazed at how many flower shops there are on the straight ride from my apartment to the station. I never really paid attention to them before, but there are at least 3, and they were open past 7PM. Strange.

The party was at Kim-chan, which has awesome chijimi and yakiniku. Note to self: do not go to a sweet Korean restaurant less than 6 hours after decimating a pizza tabehoudai. You will not be able to eat much. Oh well, it was still fun. It’s also kind of nice to know that I did a good job at something, and was able to make some kind of an impression. I won’t go into detail but apparently some students at my old school still think fairly highly of me. That’s good right? Had a conversation about staying in Japan and stuff, which reflected pretty well on my current situation. I think I want to stay here, but I don’t exactly know why. If I can find a good job here, then I’ll stay, but if not, should I head back home? I think I’d be happy either here or the US. Originally one of the main reasons I came to Japan instead of moving immediately into an office cubicle was to see more interesting stuff, live a bit more. I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job at that. Not sure what I’m doing to do from here though. Is it selfish of me to be holding out for a job I actually enjoy at my age?

I also had a student recently tell me the difference between Japanese people and another foreigner he knew was that the other guy has fun with his job, and most Japanese people don’t. I didn’t push too much of my own opinion on the student, but why in the world should you be doing a job if you don’t enjoy it? I can see sometimes that of course you have to work to live, but if you have some cushion and the time and resources to look for a new job, why wouldn’t you try to do something you actually like? At this point as I search for a new job, the absolute most important requirement is that it should be something I think I’ll like. Salary and hours don’t matter so much if you enjoy what you’re doing, because you’d probably be willing to do it for free (not that money’s not an incentive). So I see tons of BS job postings for assistant teachers, headhunter, executive search consultant (exact same as headhunter), etc here in Japan, and think those would only be a far last resort. I’m fairly confident I can find something more interesting, it just might take a bit of time. It’s really easy to find a job, but it’s extremely difficult to find a job you actually want to do.

That was my deep rant for the night. I need to sleep.