What I Did

Just wrote the following email to someone I haven't seen since I was in Japan. I think it sums up my life:

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fucking hell, so much shit has happened!

so lisa got married! you both look lovely in the photo. goddamn, it seems like such a long time ago since i saw you both. yowsers! i really hope she's happy.

i think i left tajimi before the other lot came along, and the only other guy i recognise is alistair. totally by accident, i bumped into him last year in a cinema queue in london. we exchange numbers, but somehow failed to stay in touch. must try to look him up again! katsumi the gardener! how is he? i remember peter (remember him?) used to call him the gay gardener. blimey. i'm getting a headrush from all these memories.

yeah, i was in ichinomiya for a bit (in matt's bosom, remember him? tall ozzy guy, quite friendly). i always liked teaching the students, but not the other nova crap. finally i left end of 2006 (didn't want to be a nova teacher all my life), then went backpacking around asia a couple of months, then back to the uk.

was weird when i first went back to uk. bummed around for 6 months, trying to find a job, and wondered if leaving japan was really the best thing to do. i expect you felt a bit of this, but i felt like a gaijin in england! weird feeling, like reverse homesickness. didn't know how to act down the pub and had to stop bowing at waiters and shit.

my aunt then convinced me to do a journalism course. she read my blog too and said i should try it. it was a post grad diploma course, passed and got my first job on medical journal in london. job was shit and spent most of my time shuffling paper and not writing (grrr). was also really badly paid, and i was earning less than i was back in nagoya.

quickly got out into my current job, which i love as get to travel for work. only been there 8 months and been to athens, barcelona, beijing, toronto and montreal. feel really quite lucky.

i still miss japan and always feel a draw to go back. i still might. i think my dream job is to be a foreign correspondent for a national paper in tokyo. best thing i learnt from nova is how to get people to talk. very handy when interviewing people (especially people whose english isn't their first language). also, my current company has its fair share of screwy bureaucracy but after the shift swap, holiday request crap of nova, i feel nothing like that can phase me.

fuck man, i'm still buzzing from the memories... wild times....
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nb. slightly edited.