This is a record about the time after I had graduated from Simon Fraser University (SFU), and before I had moved to Japan. The time period is from March to late September 2005. I was 21 years old throughout.

I graduated from SFU in June of 2005. Classes had actually finished in March, and therefore it really felt like I had graduated in March. At this point, it was just me, and the big box electronics store where I worked at. I had the dream of going to Japan to teach for a year. My friends had gone overseas and seen the world in their own way, and I wanted to do that in my way. My way was Japan.

Unfortunately, I lacked initiative to do many things, and I was one to talk of many dreams and do nothing to actually actualize them. I was a 21-year old working at a big box electronics store in Whalley (a poorer area in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey) with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. This was about the time where I started getting really into Jack Kerouac and Hermann Hesse. SFU and other universities in the Lower Mainland (the Vancouver area) had a “U-Pass” where students could ride the bus and SkyTrain for free (all students had to pay about 90 dollars in student fees for this bus pass for the semester). My U-Pass expired at the end of June, and therefore I had time to use it, and use the library at SFU as well. This is where I found my first Hesse and Kerouac novels, which I read on English Bay, in between napping on the grass. I was making good use of my Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology.

I had a friend that lived around Renfrew in Vancouver, and I would often also use the U-Pass to go to his house, and play pool, or video games like Street Fighter II in his garage.

Like the beginning of many changes in my life, one night, perhaps while playing Street Fighter II, I had a sudden epiphany about where my life was heading, and a giant surge of fear that I would fail to do any dream that I ever had. In May, about two months after classes ended, I was still at that big box electronics shop, I still talked about teaching in Japan for year, and I still slept on the grass near English Bay. I figured that something needed to change, and I had learned from my dad that the best way to change something is to give yourself a giant kick in the ass. I have heard that it doesn’t matter who the kick in the ass comes from.

I put in my notice at the big box electronics store. I said I wanted to quit. They understood, or perhaps they were happy. I was soon going to be living at home without a job in my parent’s basement thinking about teaching English in Japan for a year.

SFU had had an “internship” or “co-op” program with a children’s English conversation school called Peppy Kids Club in Japan. Students could take a working holiday visa, and teach at Peppy Kids Club for 6 months. Peppy Kids Club had an office in Vancouver. So I sent an email application to Peppy Kids Club to teach English in Japan for a year. I got an interview. I didn’t have any dress shirts, let alone a suit, so I wore this fancy (for me) V-neck Adidas shirt, and tried to part the mess of a mop on my head in the middle.

The interview was in a building on Seymour Street. I talked with a the interviewer for about 30 minutes. The next day I was offered the job via email. I was a jobless person with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology living in his parent’s basement that had a job offer in Japan for October.

Peppy Kids Club had recommended that new recruits bring $3,000 dollars to bring to Japan. Our first paycheck would be almost two months after arriving, and so we needed to have enough money for that time. I therefore needed a job, and needed to save every cent in order to be able to go to Japan to teach English for a year.

I had a friend who worked at a bar in Whalley. The bar looked fancy from the perspective of an unemployed Sociology graduate who wears Adidas v-neck shirts to dress up. The bar was also by a SkyTrain station. I believe my friend was a sous chef at the bar. He said that they were always looking for dishwashers, and with a smirk on his face that anytime I wanted a job he would get me one. I asked him for a job, and he got me one. At this time my dad’s office was in an office building connected to this bar, and so he could tell his colleagues his son with a Bachelor of Sociology degree living in his basement was washing dishes in the bar downstairs they had lunch at.

I bought a lot of Hesse books at some used bookstore on Main Street in Vancouver, and read them on the bus to and from work. At work I worked the morning shift, which was the shift that the other dishwasher wanted. I washed dishes, peeled onions and potatoes, and smushed potatoes into fry shapes. I was a vegetarian and one of the chefs always made me a really awesome veggie burger. Another guy was into philosophy, but I didn’t talk to him about philosophy much. I don’t think I wanted to talk to my friend at work too much, because he was a hard worker, and I really just wanted to get my work done, get on the bus, read more Hesse and count down the days until I would be going to Japan.

I remembered in September I bought Against Me!’s “Searching for a Former Clarity” and played it in the kitchen, and it didn’t really grab me at the time. I like the album more now. There are some great tracks on it.

I don’t think I saved as much money as I needed, but I saved over $2000 and had bought a plane ticket. My mom gave me some more money, and I think paid for a year of traveller’s insurance for me.

I also liked hiking around this time. I remember two hiking trips especially from the summer of 2005. The first was hiking up to Garibaldi Lake and onto the Black Tusk. This was with a group of men who were outdoorsy, or at least competent at that sort of thing. I was more in love with the mountains in Kerouac’s Dharma Bums while sitting in my boxers talking to people on MSN Messenger after a day of work. We hiked for hours up to Garibaldi Lake, onto the alpine meadows, above the tree line where the path disappeared, and we traversed up on gravel. Eventually we came to the snow, and continued upwards. We finally reached the Black Tusk, which looked like a black tusk sticking out of the top of the mountain, and required people to climb up it for about three to four metres before going through and up its crevasses to reach a sort of summit. I remember getting to the tusk and telling the men in my group to go on up, and that I knew my limits. I saw people sitting at the base of the tusk, which itself was a fairly sharp decline. I imagined falling down from climbing the tusk, and falling down the mountain. In the end, I thought, “fuck it”, and powered through the climbing bits, and made my way to the top. I sadly have lost my photos from this trip. Down the mountain, above the tree line, I remember running down over the snow on the way back. That may have been stupidly dangerous. It was very fun at the time though.

The second hiking trip was with a friend who I had met at university. We had decided we wanted to hike up what I think is called Eagle Ridge along Buntzen Lake. We had also decided that we had wanted to stay overnight on top of the mountain. Again, the Dharma Bums or something probably motivated me to do so, and I believe my friend just liked nature. We took the various buses needed to get to Buntzen Lake (the route did exist), and we hiked. The sleeping bags I bought were not for trekking, they were for camping with a car. They were big, and we had no real good way to carry them, so we constantly had to readjust our bags. The hikes first two hours or so are quite steep and painful, but we had known that. We have reached the top ridge of the mountain, and walked along seeing patches of snow still left on the ground. After walking by small ponds, we found a nice flat area on top of the mountain. The ground felt like moss, and was very soft. We laid down our sleeping bags, and slept under the stars. We weren’t hikers who did this sort of thing often, but naive freshly graduated students who had heard about people doing these sorts of things. We wanted to experience them too. The next day we finished the hike, went along the top of the mountain and back down to another area of the path along Buntzen Lake.

I believe I finished my job as a dishwasher in the middle of September, and that my plane ticket for Japan was on September 29. I had given myself a few weeks to get my shit together.

I have become desensitized how huge the decision to move to Japan for a year felt to me at the time. I think the North American bubble can seem quite huge. I didn’t really know anything about Japan. I didn’t really especially like anything about Japan, except for having my love of video games as a child (I now have the love of video games of a child). With zero expectations, and zero knowledge, it just felt like a step into an unknown. I may have compared it to death.

It was September 29. At the airport, my mom cried, and my friend consoled her. After I had said my goodbyes, probably with a big stupid grin as nothing had set in, I had put Against Me!’s “We did it all for Don” on my Discman, and really took umbrage in the line “we’re going to force ourselves to live”, which perhaps seems a little melodramatic now.

I got on a plane, and I went to Japan.

I forget which movies I watched on the plane.

Eventually I landed in Tokyo, transferred onto a plane to Nagoya, and started my training as a Peppy Kid Club Native Teacher. I would turn 22 in December.