A few weeks ago, I started helping out at a local library, six hours a day, for four days a week until the end of March. Affixing labels to old books is fun. I'm not being sarcastic. Seriously. You might remember that I like papercraft and in December, made some (60) mini origami balls to give to the teachers at school and the office. Each ball uses 12 pieces of paper. You can do the math. That's a lot of folding.

Sure, the work is fun for me. The old books are interesting, too. But I like meeting new people the best. There are a lot of former students from my company's English school, so we usually communicate in a mix of Japanese and English (mostly Japanese with some English thrown in). I went to this amazing little bakery called SURIPU for lunch on Friday with a couple of my new friends.

And by the way, I already got good news regarding the next contract for Nagoya. I go back to work in May!

I hate the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" but I think it's a good place to start a journey of self-rediscovery.

Let's see....

I started music and dance lessons when I was three. I enjoyed performing and I was content to continue doing so for the rest of my life.

In the fifth grade my LAE class built rockets, created a hypothetical colony on Mars called Mars City Alpha, and went to Space Camp in California. I wanted to be an astronaut until I realized I was afraid of heights.

When I was 16, I had a summer job at my old junior high school. I began to explore the possibility of teaching music as a career.

Of all the subjects I studied in high school, chemistry was by far the most interesting. I graduated thinking pharmacy was for me.

At the end of my first year at Whitman, I opted out of organic chemistry and decided to pursue a degree in Asian Studies. Sure, this threw my original career plans out the window, but it was a challenge I was willing to face.

Playing music was never high on my list of career plans, especially after fulfilling "a musician's dream" at Carnegie in 2005, but playing in the Walla Walla symphony was a great experience I never expected to have. The Whitman string professors expressed confidence in my playing ability and encouraged me to study more demanding solos.

Studying abroad was a nice change of pace. I studied architecture and photography, took cello and shamisen lessons, and learned to speak Japanese at a level I never thought achievable.

My senior year was filled with drama and stress, but it was all worth it. After graduation I returned to Hawaii with the intent of becoming an elementary school teacher. It wasn't a year before I became discontent with post-grad life working as a secretary and found myself on a plane back to Japan.

I NEVER had plans to teach English in a foreign country. But here I am.

As opposed as I was to becoming an AET/ALT, I love what I'm doing now and I can't imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't packed my bags and come to Nagoya almost two years ago. But I have this tendency to get comfortable...and I don't just want to settle for what I have now.

For example, passing the JLPT N1 could open doors I've never even dreamed of. That's my biggest goal right now. Afterwards I could do some more research and further develop the ideas I wrote about in my senior thesis, seeing as they are increasingly relevant to my current career path. I'd also like to get involved in music again, maybe find some opportunities to play chamber or orchestra music. Sure these are pretty insignificant, but for me, these small aspirations represent a dream of sorts. One that isn't so different from the dreams of my past.

I may not know what I want to be now, but I do know where I want to go.

For now, that's good enough.

I've lived in Japan for almost two years now. I love it. I don't complain about it like some foreigners do...probably because the only real thing that makes me different from everyone else is my name and nationality. Being shy, I appreciate the fact that I blend into the rest of society without trying. I never get stares or offered English menus. My Japanese still needs work and I swear people thought I was retarded when I studied in Kyoto, but that improves over time. I'm lucky that the only time I feel profiled is at work, where my appearance defies the norm for a native speaker of English.

Usually, this only raises curiosity. Sometimes students or other teachers will ask if I'm half-Japanese or some other kind of Asian. This doesn't bother me in the least. The students ask if I speak Japanese and often test me to see if I know more than I let on, and that's fine. It's kind of fun. What I don't appreciate is a student who blatantly disrespects me in my language and his own.

It's clear that this student doesn't like me; I actually couldn't care less. It was funny at first, ignoring the occasional errant "fuck" or "get away" behind my back. After I ignored his rude gestures during class, he moved on to being whiny and disrespectful in Japanese. Today he had the nerve to tell me to move away from his bag "because I'm American" and accuse me of being disrespectful of the presenters when in fact I was paying attention more than he was, all while being extremely rude and condescending. I wanted to beat the crap out of this kid. I was fuming and nearly in tears by the end of class. He constantly goads me, bitching that I'm in Japan so I should speak Japanese. I've never been so insulted or angry in my life. This brat needs to learn some respect but honestly, I don't think that's going to happen anytime in the near future.

Sure, racism is bad and this kid deserves a painful smack upside the head. But all harsh feelings aside, is being politically correct any better? Growing up in Hawaii, I'm so used to racism that stuff like this usually rolls off of me, but it hurts regardless. People all over the world need to be more tolerant of different cultures and learn to laugh at their own, instead of disrespecting others. Laughter is the best medicine for anger.

Here's my favorite lighthearted racist joke:

How do you keep a Portagee (Portugese) busy?
- Put him in a round room and tell him there's a hundred dollars in the corner.

If you're offended, think about it this way.

It would be funny if we changed "Portagee" to "blond," right? :D

I like having a blog. I only post every once in a while, but It's nice to have a place to write and share pictures with family and friends.

In the past I've used geocities, livejournal, wordpress, goo, and ameblog, in addition to socializing on xanga, myspace, facebook, and mixi. For various reasons I'm down to posterous and twitter, both of which I'd like to use more than during short bursts coinciding with school vacations.

I've always wanted to do more online...but I could never think of what to "sell."

That, I suppose, has more to do with who I am rather than just a lack of motivation. I'm indecisive. I resist trying new things while they're "new" (case in point, I rock at Super Mario Kart and just started playing FFX two weeks ago). The worst is caring too much about what other people think. Instead of just thriving on praise and appreciation, I function poorly without it and thus actively seek it out, much to the annoyance of a certain someone. Not to mention I'm more than just a little sensitive when it comes to criticism but at the same time often criticized for being oversensitive...story of my life.

You'd think that I'd have more self-confidence, especially with a background in performing. Although I tend to shy away from public speaking (and am quite adverse towards acting), I'm pretty confident when it comes to improvising speeches and discussion participation on the fly. I always get nervous before going on any stage, but the incapacitating feeling doesn't usually linger for long, if at all. Performing, regardless of the medium, is all about conveying emotion to the audience. But success in the business is dependent on how well that emotion is received and at some point in my life, knowledge of that fact took over who I was. I stopped trying to become my own person and instead sought to be accepted by others.

So I became a puzzle piece. I was fairly active, academic, and artsy, capable yet not outstanding. I wanted to be more but never could be, taking into account my lousy response to constructive criticism. The only area I excelled in was music, but then I had an especially hard time accepting that there would always be someone better...

Suddenly I was In my final year at Whitman. Sure, there was drama...but for once in my life I did what I wanted to do. And to my surprise, there was validation, too. My participation in the concerto contest was supposed to be for the experience and nothing more. Applying for honors was merely because I had the grades. Who knew that sixty pages later, I would have the first A- on a paper that I never thought was possible? If only I could believe in myself now as much as I did that year. If only I had the drive. I don't think I'll get the chance to perform again, but maybe someday I could get something published or even open a school....

Online, I've never been confident enough in myself to commit to an image and put it out there. The people I follow on twitter are so inspired. Each has his/her own little niche. What I wouldn't give to find mine, too.

It all boils down to my fear of judgment and unwillingness to take chances. With speaking, I always interrupt myself mid-sentence. Translating that habit to writing, computers should be my best friend, but they make it much too easy to give up completely and start fresh. Maybe I need to make the entire process more efficient. Editing-as-I-go certainly isn't. Blogs get deleted after a working title or an unfinished first line, thought prematurely to be trivial, or just not good enough. More than half the tweets I start never get tweeted. At this rate, I'm never going to get anywhere.

I'll be 25 this year and it's about time I got back on track. Maybe somewhere along the way, I'll finally be able to define who I am online and more importantly, in real life.

These are pictures I meant to post a few days ago but never got around to doing so. This year Zen and I had toshikoshi-soba on New Year's Eve and Grandma Daisy's ozouni with green tea on New Year's Day. The ozouni wasn't quite the same as hers, but I'll keep trying :)

I bought 2m of this fabric during the Dragons (Chunichi's baseball team) sale at Tokyu Hands a month or two ago, thinking that I could finally make use of that sewing machine I bought in March. Since Zen was working yesterday, I spent two hours wandering around the giant four-floor craft store, Otsukaya in the Chikusa Ward. After searching and searching for a complimentary fabric to line the bag and pocket with, I decided to go with black. (I forgot to look for an ironing board, but a towel on the floor works.)

Zen went out with his coworkers so I annexed the dining nook for my sewing project. On top of the fabric cutting disaster (I will invest in a rotary cutter and mat before my next project), I had to figure out how to use the sewing machine. Getting a 30,000yen machine for 10,000yen was definitely worth it, it was just difficult a bit adjusting to the differences between my mother's machine and mine.

A hour later, fabric cut and machine in working order, I finally started sewing. I'm pretty proud of my little masterpiece, even though it's misaligned in some places and my attempts at making French seams were foiled by lack of planning. Whatever. It holds an 'I Spy' book and has a pocket.

Look forward to more craft projects in 2012!

For those just tuning in, I have decided to test the probability of successfully keeping my soon to be made New Year's resolution(s). The experiment? Giving up nail-biting over the course of one month.

Here it is, day 17, and I am thrilled to report that more than two weeks into the test period, I have successfully trimmed, filed, and painted my nails without relapsing! I still catch myself thinking about biting now and again out of boredom, but I'm definitely on my way :)

Yay!

I woke up to sunlight, nearly two hours after I was supposed to. Can you imagine the distress I felt when it registered that I still needed to put Christmas music on my iPad (a three-step process with all of my music still on my 12" PowerBook), dress formally for a business lesson this evening, pack my iPod dock and related chargers, and somehow still leave the house in 15 minutes? With a lot of help from Zen, I made it out the door in twenty, ran to the station (in heels, no less) and caught my usual train at 7:42. As soon as I arrived at school, I couldn't slow down because I still needed to prepare everything for my third-year Christmas lessons, which thankfully went off without a hitch. I was so worried that I would have to fill the time with talking! They made their own 12 Days of Christmas as a class and we also listened to "Mele Kalikimaka."

Here's to hoping that the rest of today will go just as well and that the day will end better than it started.