Sons of Loki

Things have been pretty quiet lately. Everyone’s gone home for Christmas; I have been hanging around working on my dissertation, which is moving along at a fair old clip. It’s changed quite a lot from my original intention, which was a big unfocused grab-bag of topics about the future of Japan.

Instead I narrowed it down to the future of youth in Japan – the big question being whether freeterism (flitting from temporary job to temporary job in your 20s and 30s, not settling into a career path) and NEETism (basically giving up on life and living in your parents’ house) has a viable future. But then I kinda got lost on that, so it changed again to the causes of this crisis in Youth Employment. This is important, because it’s what’s gonna happen here in a year when all the jobs are gone and I can’t get on the career ladder, although thankfully the UK is a little different to Japan.

Anyway, stick a conclusion on that, get it ring-bound, and that’s that done. In the meantime, I’ve been doing a few articles on HubPages to get my writing out there and hopefully earn a few bob from advertising. It would probably make more sense to write on this blog more, but I’ll try this in the meantime and linking here helps with the old SEO:

Best of Seoul: top places to go in the heart of Korea
Top places to go in sunny Seville
Hangover from hell: Climbing Mt Fuji
Malaga: Where to go in the Andalusian City of Culture
Top European spas: three of the best
Buying a title: can anyone become a Baron or Lady?
Tokyo on a Budget: Top tips to survive in Tokyo on the cheap

Anyway, Christmas is coming and I’m back at home. I’m writing my first play, although I don’t know anything about drama beyond a couple of Alan Bennett plays I’ve been reading. My plan is to join the theatre soc in the new year, become an accomplished AC-TOR! and then move on to playwright. Also, to keep on with this Beatles tribute band I’m in. And get a job. And pass third year.

Been thinking about my future lately. I’ve still got 17 months until I graduate, but it’s been weighing on my mind since I attended this careers expo on Wednesday where they had two very good guest panels on Creative Writing and Publishing careers and the increasingly crisitunity world of Media and Journalism. The Creative Writing panel confirmed my fears that writing a novel does not make you a megastar overnight and that there are no parties and no million-dollar film deals, at least until you crank out more books, the foreign deals come in, and you can begin to make a modest living out of it. The average writer makes £8,000 a year – yer man Steve Mosby said he got £12,000 for his first two-book deal, then another £12,000 for the next two books, before getting a modest success with his third book and raking in £30,000 from international sales. So the other piece of advice was: stick to your day job, at least for a while.

Carter. I can't wait for the day he's throwing me out of a thirtieth-story window.

So what’s my day job gonna be? It’s slightly embarrassing because I know nothing is like the movies, but I think I can trace my interests in magazine journalism back to How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (Vanity Fair) and The Devil Wears Prada (Vogue). And I read an interview with Graydon Carter where he came across as … an interesting guy, and then I bought two issues of GQ and decided that I was definitely going to write for them some day, falling in love with the exciting cardigan-wearing jet-setting New York restaurant-dining world of the moderately wealthy. (“I always keep an overnight bag with me at all times in case I have to leave for New York unexpectedly” kind of people.) Unfortunately I have no fashion sense and no money, but I guess I can work a keyboard, and surely that’s good enough?

The Media panel was mostly about news and TV journalism, from which I brought away that in this madass age it’s important to be multiskilled – a writer one minute, a cameraman the next, then a presenter and an editor. I guess I could be good at that. My other dream is to work for the BBC in Japan or something, or Kyodo News, so it might be important to get involved with the student TV network here at Leeds if I can.

Excitedly, I asked John Sutton from the Liverpool Echo how I should get into magazine journalism, and there was an embarrassing silence when he asked me what sort of magazines I wanted to write for, and I realised I had no idea. But then he suggested lifestyle, and I decided yes, that was what I wanted to do, and he said just find out names, find a specialism, shadow editors and writers and relentlessly badger people until you get an internship and an ‘in’. Ins are important, I gathered. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, which is a shame because I’m shit at networking. But who knows? I might just email every single magazine in the UK next spring and see if I can do an internship over the summer. Top goal would be something like Wired UK – if nothing else, I guess I know about tech, and there’s always room for ‘weird shit from Japan’ in geek mags, right?

Meanwhile, life continues unabated. I’ve started research for my dissertation, and I’m starting to think I might actually write it after all. I’ve got not one but two language partners and I can feel my Japanese speaking confidence slowly building. Everything in my life feels just barely under control, like a clown juggling chainsaws on a tightrope, but for the time being he’s catching the chainsaws the right way up. Which I guess is all he can ask for, right?

We land on a cloud and I hop off his back, realising in mid-air that I’m jumping onto something entirely insubstantial, and yet I land on a soft, solid surface. I run through it, and it’s like running through fallen autumn leaves, a sense of wonderful, childish joy. He sits catching his breath, watching me run. I feel a little silly, but it’s absolutely incredible. I run and scream my head off, jumping without fear into the soft white fluff, spinning around with abandon in sheer awe at the unscaleable dome of blue sky that hangs in every direction. I run back to him, grab his hand, and we stand on top of the world, on a white meadow, in a perfectly silent world.

NaNoWriMo is back! I’ve come to look forward to November – first my birthday, then NaNoWriMo (3rd time this year), and finally my first Movember (feel free to donate to my ‘tache here).

Back at home for the weekend. Regular readers of my blog will know I very seriously considered giving up Japanese last spring, but somehow I pulled through the exams and started back at Leeds for the third year of this degree. But it feels like a Pyrrhic victory; sure, I passed, but I didn’t pass very well, and it may have been better to just bite the bullet back then and come to terms with the fact that I’m not really that into Japanese.

It occurred to me, the week before last, when I had to write this English essay. It was pretty complex and I didn’t really have any idea of what I was doing, but I happily hunkered down in the library for ten hours with a stack of books and crafted a deeply imperfect, but ultimately finished essay. I realised I really enjoy that kind of work – essay writing and such – because it’s creative work. I find creating something – a story, an essay, something in a computer game, a piece of art, a blog post – to be a wonderfully rewarding experience.

The thing is, I get none of that buzz from learning Japanese because it’s mainly passive learning. I know you create conversations and write compositions, but it’s really not the same thing at all, for me.

Anyway, my real point is, I really don’t think I necessarily need to be doing Japanese any more. The big problem is that I can’t drop it. I investigated, and was a little taken aback on Thursday to be told that I’m two weeks too late to drop the necessary credits to have room to take up English modules for next semester.

So I’m stuck. But! There is a plan C: abort this year entirely, get a job until August 2011, then start again at Level 2 next academic year doing Single Honours English. This would mean I graduate in 2013, not 2012. The job would earn me a nice bit of extra cash (and I certainly need all I can get) and I believe that since I’d still be registered as a student, I wouldn’t have to pay council tax.

This is kind of scary and exciting all at the same time. But then, it might be just what I need to do. There’s that great Talking Heads song, “Found a Job”¹, with the line “if work isn’t what you love / Then something isn’t right” and I’ve always thought I’ll never be one of those people trapped in a boring job they hate just because they’re too scared of things changing. But, to shamelessly quote another song, for me I’m more afraid of things staying the same². So I guess I should perhaps go for this. It certainly beats being bored and miserable in Japanese class all day.

¹: Byrne, David. “Found a Job” in More Songs About Buildings and Food. Talking Heads, CD, Sire Records (1978).
²: Cave, Nick, et al, “Jesus of the Moon” in Dig Lazarus Dig. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, CD, Mute Records (2009).

I’ve been back a long time! After the initial week of sorting out all the immediate concerns, life has sort of settled into a hikikomori-ish fugue where I translate manga, to try to maintain a doggy-paddle in the sea of Japanese; pretend to be writing a novel, which will solve all my money concerns; and worry about money.

I am broke, and then some. I sent off an article to a magazine that hasn’t got back to me yet, and in the meantime applied for a few jobs. The only place that got back to me is Sainsbury’s in Leeds, but as I’m not up there yet I couldn’t go to one of their interviews. I suppose I’ll just have to try next month. In the meantime, I have pretty much nowhere to turn, unless I follow millionaire David Willett’s advice and do some volunteering. Thanks, Education Minister. That’s really useful.

Yesterday I spent the last of my money catching the coach (most cheap option, and not bloody National Express rail, but it’s National Express coach so it’s ultimately a futile gesture, but then isn’t everything in our brutish lives) to London to see my “homeslices” and many of them there were: Rob, Kanako (in London for a few weeks only so I won’t see her again until I get back to Japan, which is sad), Jameses E and B, Hugo and Emily, Kazuya (now at Sheffield for the year! fantastic) and even Ed. We went to Mitsukoshi, a Japanese department store in the heart of London, which provided the surreal experience of being a thousand miles away in Tokyo and a month ago in July as we were welcomed with いっらしゃいませぇぇぇ～～～ and browsed their bookstore. It was full of Japanese tourists – imagine coming all the way to London and then visiting a Japanese department store! – but then that’s what we did. We ate at a really expensive (by our standards) Japanese restaurant, which served up some tasty-looking katsu kare, but then I had the shoyu ramen which was … disappointing. Really, disappointing. I thought a bad bowl of ramen was impossible, but this was just … not at all what I’m used to.

“What I’m used to.” Pfft. Anyway, most of my money went on day travelcards, because the tube is ridiculously expensive if you don’t have Oyster. I kept seeing adverts on the tube for the next big novel – marketed fiction, fiction which says “You’ve read Stieg Larsson, now read this!” as if mentioning a popular novellist you may have enjoyed is enough to convince you that this other entirely unrelated novel might be a decent read. You may as well have adverts that say “You’ve enjoyed foie gras, now try cat food!”

I hesitate to take the piss out of published authors and of books I haven’t read, but there was a ad for a book so unrelentingly generic that I had trouble finding it on the web. The ad reads: “THEY STOLE MY LIFE. I WANT IT BACK. I WON’T GET MAD, I’LL GET” and then in red letters, separated from that seeming non sequiter, “EVEN” which is the title of the book, by Andrew Grant. Like I say, I haven’t read the book so I can’t comment on a novel which is about a secret agent racing against time and which has 3.5 stars on Amazon. All I’m saying is, read that strapline over again and decide if you really want to read that book. Is that the best a copywriter could come up with? They stole his life. He wants it back. I’ll hazard a guess and say that it’s rogue elements in the government or secret services that stole his life, and that he had a perfect wife and a perfect son (it’s never a daughter, is it?) and now they’re dead, I’ll postulate, and there will be a shootout and a car chase, I humbly hypothesise, and that there will be tender moments when he picks through the fragments that remain of his old life, I’ll put forward, and finally there won’t be closure, just a set-up for the next novel, but there will be a satisfying death of a minor villain, I will cautiously submit.

Like I say, I don’t like to snark, and I know airport fiction will always be this way, but I think I might have heard this plot two or three or sixty times before.

Anyway, we had a wander around Camden Town, then went back up to Rob’s where we a) ate lots of Chinese food b) played Super Street Fighter IV and Tekken 6 and Soul Calibur 4 c) watched Family Guy d) slept. We woke up. I had a scotch egg. Uh, that’s about it.

So yeah, London! It Wasn’t As Bad As Last Time. How’s that for a strapline?

One of Japan's ubiquitous white trucks, Kichijoji.

I feel – off, a little. After the doldrums of mid-March and the frantic-but-exciting exam cramming of the first week of May, I’m back to normal life, and…

It’s kind of dull. Which isn’t right. It’s very, very wrong. I’m in Tokyo. I should be doing ten exciting things before breakfast. And yet, when you’re a student repeating the last semester, stuck in a small room with not much money in the suburbs of Tokyo, it’s somehow …

empty.

And as my remaining days dwindle to insignificance, it becomes harder and harder to begin anything new. No point joining a club now; no point finding the cool bars, no point getting a job. I want to do so much with my time here. I wanted to do so much.

What am I?
What am I?
What am I in my own dear eyes?

It’s frustrating. It’s like I want to achieve so much, but I’m stuck with giant lobster claws for hands, and if I try to build a house or paint a self-portrait my giant lobster claws flounder uselessly and it’s hard enough just getting dressed and making breakfast in the morning when you have giant lobster claws, so I tend not to try to do too much. Which sucks.

Signed up for next year’s modules. Aside from the compulsory Japanese language modules, I’m taking an English Language module on the Language of Power, which I assume is about writing to persuade and influence, which sounds interesting enough. And, because I thought I’d better do some literature, a module on Civil War and Restoration literature. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but the only other options were Medieval lit (what I done last year) and Renaissance lit (which is basically Shakespeare, innit?).

None of the Japanese studies modules really appealed to me, so I decided to take a module on China since 1979 and also, in the first semester, a Short Dissertation. I’m not really sure what I should make it about, but I’ll have a good think.

I think most of my problems in life stem from being a determinist at heart. I’m not completely sure free will exists. I feel like innate personality (determined by biological and external social factors) determines your actions, not your consciousness and not free will.

This raises big, scary questions. Like, is it fair to punish criminals if they had no control over their actions anyway? Can a leopard truly change its spots? If I simply put my mind to something, can I do it?

More specifically, if I decide to work hard at Japanese, would I get better? Yes, but can I actually decide to work hard at Japanese? It’s like sleep paralysis; you’re awake and fully conscious and trying so desperately to move your legs, feeling like you’re suffocating, but it’s impossible. It’s physically impossible. I sit down to study Japanese, I get bored and do something else.

Is this an error on my part? Should I try really, really, really hard instead of merely quite hard? Or is it blind deterministic mechanics, that I am a product of my upbringing, that I will always pick the easy path, that I have no patience, that I get easily distracted?

I don’t know. It’s a philosophical question, anyway. The main thing is, do I want to keep doing Japanese?

I don’t know!

I think my honest feelings are: I’d like to do Japanese if I could just coast through like I always do, turning up to most lessons and doing enough of the homework and doing sorta okay. But it’s a damned hard degree, and I apparently just won’t do all the work that’s necessary to pass.

I think my honest feelings are: I don’t want to do Japanese. I know enough to get by, and I basically only took this degree because I wanted to live here for a year for free. I can read Yotsuba-to and that’s enough for me. I’d much rather do English or Graphic Design or something like that. I don’t really have any desire to learn the language.

I think my honest feelings are: I love Japanese. I want to become impeccably fluent. I want to watch films and read books and talk to interesting people. I want to learn all the kanji and all the words. It’s just the teaching style here I can’t get on with. When I think about it, I really miss the Leeds department. Somehow everything was easier there, more fun.

Indecision. What’s made my day is that I emailed Leeds to let them know of my possible intentions, and I just got a reply to say that I can put a request in to the English department in May if I want to switch to Single Honours, and they’ll decide in June by the earliest. Meanwhile, I get to finish my year here whatever happens.

That’s the best news I could get. (Well, realistically winning the lottery isn’t going to happen, especially since I don’t play.) I’d hate so much to go home early, to encounter enormous visa and financial wrangles, to possibly have to pay back all my JASSO (god that would ruin me) and generally ruin my year. I get to stay.

Kinda makes me want to start studying again…

In other news, I’ve put up the teaser page for Yoshida, my work-in-progress visual novel salaryman simulator. Demo someday. I worry I made the titular Yoshida rather too stylish, rather than the chubby sweaty salaryman I envisioned him as.