Gravity Release Me

So things are finally starting to sink in. The idiocy of my spontaneous decision to run away to a faraway land is finally catching up with me.

The stable well paying job – gone.

I’ll be apart from the lovely girlfriend.

The roof above my head substituted with a $30 a night Weekly Inn.

The familiarity, ability to converse, and cultural understandings I have of Australia replaced with the bumbling awkwardness of a gaijin (foreigner).

In exactly 2 weeks I will be stripped down to nothing. I will have little clothing. Little money. Little ability to find my way. All my skills, knowledge and talents in Game Development thrown out of the window due to my lack of ability to communicate. I’ll be standing at Hirakata station with 2 backpacks – that is all.

But that’s where it begins. It’s like being born again, except I’ll have to accomplish what took 24 years in only a matter of weeks or months.

There are things I must do in Japan. There are reasons why I’m doing this and I guess this post is a reminder of those reasons. I need to:

1. Better my Japanese language ability
2. Better my understanding of the Japanese people and their culture
3. Better my Game Development skills

I’ve devised a few plans to accomplish these goals:

To better my Japanese I will only speak Japanese whilst I am outside my home – even with my friends. If I can’t communicate something, then I can’t do it. I’ll have to accept it, awkwardly excuse myself or whatever. English will not be a fallback. There is no backup plan. Most importantly, I’ll have to accept the outcomes of this decision – frustration, or perhaps I’ll lose a few friends as I could see this being frustrating for them. But I’d like to find a non-invasive way of taking notes on words or grammar structures that I’ve failed to use (either due to lack of practice or just because I don’t know them) so I can study up on these at home.

Another plan for bettering my Japanese is to obviously study at home. I’ll be working my way through podcasts and textbooks and working on my flash cards every day.

I plan on bettering my understanding of the Japanese people and culture by actively searching for social groups, meetings and events. I’d like to meet people and make new friends (who will be able to tolerate my sucky Japanese!). I’ll have to remember not to get down when I attempt to approach people and get rejected. It’s bound to happen – let’s be real here guys. Not everyone has time to put up with an awkward foreigner – it’s a harsh reality but it’s true and I also respect and understand the people who feel this way.

Needless to say, working part time on a Working Holiday Visa should give me quite a bit of free time to work on my own Game Dev projects and work on some new technologies etc. Time to do this has eluded me here in Australia – I mean I find time to do it, but not nearly as much time as I’d want. There are times where I just want to read text books and program prototypes all day!

This is scary. Scarier than anything I’d ever done before. Oh well, I guess this is where my insatiable urge for adventure will take me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 27th, 2011 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Japan, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.