Background music in Japanese restaurants come in one of two flavors: modern or American. Never both.

I’ve frankly not known what “the kids” have been listening to since my iPod liberated me from the radio in high school, so I’m fine with the musical selection lagging behind a few years. In fact, I can think of nothing I’d rather listen to than music straight out of my nostalgia zone: the late 90′s. I’ll argue that there’s no mood that can’t be elevated further by throwing Oasis’ Don’t Look Back in Anger into the mix. The genre options in this country, however, seem to be strictly limited to pop. In particular, I’ve noticed that eating at my favorite curry restaurant feels like being at a sleepover with Scrunchie-wearing tweens giggling to themselves about Corey and Topanga. Nothing ruins the feeling of romantic mystery about The Orient quite like Aqua’s Barbie Girl.

So when Alphaville’s Forever Young began oozing through the speakers of Yoshinoya, it was hardly beyond the scope of my expectations. What I didn’t expect was to find myself getting emotionally involved in this 80′s pop song. No matter how unaffected one attempts to act, it’s difficult to hear a song like that without getting caught up in an abstract nostalgic haze. It’s like an anthem for last summers, equally celebratory and mocking. The salarymen frown into their rice as the chorus fills the room like a gas, and the teenagers look around soberly. “Forever Young. I want to be forever young.” My own mind goes to a sepia-tinted memory comprised of forests, cars and summer nights. It’s always summer nights in memories! Ah, things were so nice then.

I soon realize that these memories may not have actually been mine, per say, and there was perhaps as much influence from Elvis movies as from my own experience. But then again, what else is nostalgia?

As the short trip through an imaginary youth fades with the synthesizer into the fluorescent-lit restaurant, a sense of urgency rushes to replace it. What exactly is youth, and at what point does it end? Have I, gulp, passed it?

Being part of the class 0f 2010, I’ve already heard my share of “real world” comments. Adults playfully jab at the sudden importance of responsibility and grin sadistically at the impending relevance of insurance premiums, pensions, and other boring words. The graduate understands this, and saw it coming. Perhaps only in the detached way one hears about a natural disaster on the other side of the world, but there is still a recognition that graduation represents the end of something good and the beginning of something worse. And yet, things initially feel so similar. So, the graduate attempts to adapt the world of summer jobs to this purgatorial world of unstimulating workdays that never end. No longer is time measured in semesters, is progress expected and enforced, is performance graded on a universal scale without dire consequences. The world around the graduate becomes vacation photos. All the places recognizable, nothing missing, but a little flatter. Less vibrant.

Nobody ever decides to grow up. You take on more responsibility, but you still expect to be the same person coming out the other side. And besides, as long as you don’t participate in whatever “old person” archetype that resonates the strongest for you, you’re still just a sprightly post grad. But due to whatever factor that you justify to be temporary, the weeks become months, the will to explore your options fade, and suddenly your average job is your career. Your dreams become bitter reminders of a potential unfulfilled, your routine becomes comfortable, and the idea of being “forever young” beings to feel like misguided wistfulness.

I came across the rare opportunity, while riding the subway from Asakusa to Akasaka-mitsuke, to actually take a seat. Since my commute times are close to rush hour, I consider being able to stand with my legs wide enough that I don’t have to hold onto a handle to be a small blessing. The bliss of my plantar warts was soon interrupted by a congregation of old women piling onto my subway car. I did what any decent young person should do, I immediately stood up so they could take a seat, and insistently said dozo, dozo until the prototypically modest women took a seat. As I returned to my book, a voice called out to me. “Seki ga aiteimasu yo!” There’s a seat open. I looked up to see one of the old women motioning me over, gesturing at me and the space as if to say “Look. See? Here it is. Like I said.” With about twelve more stops to go before I could go to work, I obliged and sat down.

One of the first questions she asked is how many years I had been in Japan. People tend to assume that it takes at least three years of full immersion in order to speak at the somewhat-coherent level that I do. “Three days” I respond and the conversation takes off. She asks my age, to which I reply twenty-two. “Mada mada, desu ne!” Still so young! Even in those brief moments where my age is mentioned in this light, there is an antsiness about it. Standing face to face with a human who is actively reflecting on youth, you being a young person staring back, it makes you conscious of the decisions you’re making. Am I doing this right? Will I one day look regretfully on the way I chose to spend my youth? The woman now talks to me with vicarious glee. Have you travelled much? Oh you have? Have you seen this place and this place and this one? Not that one? Well you have to see that one!

She listens to me talk about my time in the language school. What kind of friends did I make? Well, I spent the most time with two Malaysian students and a Chinese. Oh, how nice! Kids from all over the world getting together and becoming friends! The world is alive with possibilities, isn’t it?

The initial response may be to laugh at the naivety of such a comment, but I caught myself. Because by golly it is alive with possibilities. I’m currently spending time in one of the biggest cities in the world because I chose to. I can be there as long as I want and then go wherever I please. I go to work every day and create, then come back home and create some more. And everywhere I go, I carry my camera bag. There are no real barriers, except for in my own mind. The trick is to look out for when routine becomes easy, and stepping out of a comfort zone becomes unnecessary. There will be moments when you can decide to “learn your lesson” and easily prevent undesirable emotions from happening in the future. And you can probably sleep well knowing that your routine is not the result of settling down, but because you’ve experienced a lot and decided on the best thing to do everyday.

This to me, is the antithesis of youth. The role of chance in life is assaulted on all fronts. The expectation of better things diminish. There is only the familiar world and the undesirable world. What you wake up to do every day is no longer a variable that could potentially equal fulfillment, but a necessary evil. You convince yourself that you will pursue passions when you’re not working, but then you come home from the office and collapse in your chair, too tired to do anything more strenuous than check a few websites.

The true value of youth, of life, is in having the audacity to follow dreams and hobbies. In viewing life as a blank piece of paper, on which anything can be drawn. When you are no longer young by default, you must choose to be young as this woman did. Although she had wrinkles too prominent to hide, leaned in when I spoke to aid her bad ears, and needed glasses to read a pamphlet, in talking to a gaijin she did what millions of Japanese people do not do every day: braved a potentially awkward situation because she wanted to speak with someone from another culture. It is I who should be saying “Mada mada, desu ne?” because in my experience the assumption that a western-looking gaijin doesn’t speak very good Japanese is a safe one, and yet here she was grinning from ear to ear while riding on the very symbol of mundane routine — a subway car.

I planned out my life meticulously. I began thinking about my 20s while I was barely a teenager. I did this not to sabotage my youth, but to extend it. I was blessed to understand what I loved doing back in junior high, and the passion has stayed strong no matter how hard I pursued it. For a lot of people, this understanding doesn’t come until the middle of college, sometimes not even then. Without knowing what truly satisfies you at a deep level, you don’t even know how to pursue a lifestyle that keeps you young. But to me, there’s nothing more important then seeking out that idiosyncratic joy in life that can make your heart race with excitement. Design, archeology, performance, missions work. If you can pursue it as a hobby, great. If you can pursue it as a career, even better.

In the long summer before I left, I tried to talk to my friends about their future plans. Someday I will return to my hometown, and as selfishly as I would like my friends to all be where I left them, that’s not what I actually want for them. Because almost all of my close friends hold some sort of goal for their life. In fact, it’s one of the things that attracts me to these people in the first place. The pursuit of these dreams will certainly take them out of Nampa, Idaho, as it did for me, but it is within their grasp; all of them. The last thing I want to do is return home and be confronted with a crowd of adults.

There will be a day when I hear Forever Young and agree that it no longer applies to me. But it is not today. I pay my 530 yen, pick up my camera bag, and walk into the warm summer night.

To the crowd of Japanese youth making their way through the busiest train station in the world, the foreigner wearing two backpacks and peering over the top of a large cardboard box in his arms was just another obstacle. After steering clear of him and being herded past signs and advertisements and gates, the train they would catch would offer no respite from the crowds, it would simply confine them to an even smaller environment. There they would make the most of the little space around them to wave their fans with their wrists, and the brightly lit train cars would experience the rare sound of excited voices. Perhaps some are cursing their luck that their daily commute is forcing them to experience the full brunt of traffic to be expected for an event the magnitude of tonight’s, but most are here voluntarily. They represent the past and present of Japanese fashion — some costumed in traditional summer yukata, but most wear designer clothing, sweaty t-shirts: western clothes, though that distinction is gradually losing its meaning. They are on their way to the Sumida fireworks festival, named for that river in the traditional district of Tokyo where it takes place.

I remembered one year ago, when I walked downstream from this crowd instead of against them. At the time, I was a student at a Japanese language school meeting a fellow student at Asakusa station to view the fireworks. I was in the middle of my first semester at the school, with the remains of the year to enjoy my experience in Japan before I would return to my hometown for Christmas and to finish my last semester of college. There was the carefree feeling that being a student allows, where the most taxing worries involve tests and teachers and crushes. Thinking about life after college is easily postponed thanks to the knowledge that for the foreseeable future there is nothing but time. I had even more luxury because I had already planned out my future, and was resolute on my decision. And though I certainly had friends in my hometown whom I regretted not being able to include in these plans, I assured myself that moving to Japan after college is ultimately an easy decision if rationality were to be applied.

Walking down the streets of Shinjuku, cursing the delivery company at the airport for not being able to ship my computer directly to my guesthouse, and putting my now-sweaty, 45 pound box down for the fifth time since escaping the station, I predictably found myself missing my friends. I scanned the passing crowds, knowing that this traffic would ultimately not bring a single one of them were I to wait all month. The faces were unfriendly, dismissive, judging. Not unlike the faces I saw while beginning college. The task now, like it was then, was to start again. And although the emotional baggage make this clumsy cardboard box seem light as air, I have universal praise and excitement about my decision from friends and family propelling me onward. For now, I have to take their words for it.

Attempting to drag all this luggage through a number of subways would be a terrible experience, even if the subways weren’t uncommonly busy tonight. That was my justification for hailing a taxi after checking in with the Sakura House headquarters and setting off to find my actual room. Peering out the rear window, we passed a number of sights that I remembered seeing when I was a student. The bookstore I frequented while studying for the Japanese proficiency test. The movie theater where I finally caved and decided to see Harry Potter. The subway exit I would come out of every school day. In lieu of being home, at least this area was familiar. But as the taxi sped through the labyrinthine and dark streets of Tokyo, even that familiarity began to fade. I was dropped off on a street that looked like every other street, told the general direction that my guesthouse would be, and watched the taxi pull back into the flow of traffic. I consulted my hastily-folded and soggy map once more, strapped on my backpacks, picked up my box again, and walked into the darkness.

For now, I’ve got some work to do. I fulfilled my major goal that I made during junior high: find a job that I enjoy doing. I’m all too conscious of the harm that a job that one dreads going to every day can do to even the most idealistic person after college, this from my many 20-something friends I kept in contact with on the internet while I was a teenager. But rather than being content with achieving my goal, I recognize that now is the time to create new goals so that the months do not become years and I find myself unintentionally settled down and stagnant. This isn’t a tale of cutthroat ambition, but of creative expression. This blog being one part of a larger plan.

I intend to keep this blog updated with entries, pictures and video to record my experiences. The plan is that if my experiences become boring, than so will this blog. In a way, this is keeping me honest and preventing me from falling into a cycle. I won’t blame readers for losing interest, but will see it as a sign to re-evaluate what I’m doing and to seek out something unfamiliar. I also see this blog as a way of keeping my skills updated. As writing, photography and videography are all integral to what I intend to do in life, by using these skills as the primary medium of this blog I hope the experience will transfer to larger projects, which I also intend to pursue. The flip-side of this plan is that coming across as narcissistic is probably impossible to avoid. After all, anybody who creates a website of his own and constantly broadcasts the events of his own life would not do so unless they felt like their daily going-ons were worth other people’s time to read. Rather than apologize for this after every entry, I’ll just mention that I’m primarily doing this for myself, with the bonus that this blog can double as a convenient way to keep my family and friends updated on my life. So though my entries (which will probably fall into the trap of feeling pompous until I can learn to write more naturally) and video will no doubt be centered on my subjective experience, I hope that some value can still be found in them to those interested in life in Japan or any other themes I may touch on.

I arrived on a Saturday afternoon and work on a Monday morning.

I managed to put a lot of pressure on myself by weighing the value of my entire six months in Japan on the results of my JLPT results. Even though I learned a ton and had a great experience regardless of what I scored, I figured that passing the JLPT would mean that I surpassed my original expectations for what I could accomplish while over there. I originally thought that JLPT 2 was out of my range even while I was under the impression I could test into level 4 at KCP.

So when I got an email from Tanaka-san telling me that my results had come in, I was pretty anxious to see them. He sent them to me as an uncompressed, scanned image that weighed in at about 17 mb. It felt like the longest I’d ever had to wait for a mail attachment to download. Finally, it popped up.

Wow. I normally set high standards for myself, but I surprised myself with this one. The month of November was like a blur, studying for this test every free hour I had, putting in the extra effort at school, buying the right prep books at Kinokuniya. I knew it would be close, but there was just enough hope that I couldn’t take it easy. And I knew that passing the test would mean I fulfilled my promise to myself: to take advantage of the opportunity I was given to work on one skill for six months straight.

For the Japanese, taking huge tests in Japan is a part of the culture. High school entrance exams, college entrance exams, I think there’s a test out there for every skill you can pursue. I’m not used to cramming for tests — we had to take the ACT, but you can’t really study for a test that general. Some people have to take certain tests for their jobs. But I’ve never experienced anything this rigorous.

Coming back to Nampa, things have become just the way they’ve always been. Same intermural basketball team, same school cafeteria, same routine. Sometimes it feels like July through December of 2009 didn’t even happen. But now I’ve got something tangible to prove that it did.

I decided that this would be a blog that just discussed things about Japan, so after coming back I haven’t been updating it. This means that there hasn’t been a post in over a month and there probably won’t be another one in quite a while. But it will come back.

That’s because I accepted the job at Japanesepod101, and I’ll be coming back to Tokyo this summer to work full time. It’s been a tough decision, but no tougher than what any college graduate has to decide. After talking to some people and thinking about it, I decided that rejecting this opportunity wouldn’t make any sense. I can’t imagine a better job for this point my life, it gives me a chance to get back and build on my study abroad experience, and I already have a nice group of support waiting over there. To a college graduate, the whole world feels open, but those doors close quickly. An opportunity like this probably won’t come around again, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be as good.

I’ve got nothing holding me down here, other than a family that is better than I deserve. Most of my hesitance in pulling the trigger was just because I didn’t want to upset the peaceful social order that had been going on for years. Some people aren’t going to be very happy about this. Luckily, a lot of my relatives are supportive if not excited for the opportunity and have wished me luck.

Nothing’s for certain long term. All I can see is the steps I’ve taken and the steps I can take next, and it seems like this is a logical next step. I’m 22, in the prime of my life, and chomping at the bit to get something resembling a life started. As for now, I’ve got to finish up school on a good note and treat my senior projects with the same seriousness I took the JLPT. True, I’ll just wind up getting a paper with some words printed on it for my troubles, but I want to be certain that I made the most of the opportunity that’s been given to me.

Until the summer, see you later.

I’m only a few days away from going home. Most of my family has been reading my blog (they likely made up about 4,000 of my 6,300 total views), but once school starts back up in January, I’m likely to be bombarded with that wonderful question that well-intentioned acquaintances who only realized you were gone when they see you come back tend to ask. “How was it?”

Okay, I understand the mindset behind it. I’ve often been on the opposite end of that question when one of my friends gets back from a study abroad experience. Where do you start? Hey, you’ve been gone for six months, give me an adjective. But it’s so difficult to sum up everything into as concise a package as the asking person would like. Because people who simply ask the question “how was it?” aren’t actually interested in the coin operated showers, or the grading schemes in the classes, or the historical significance of Ginza. If they were, they would begin with, or at least follow up with something more probing. They just want a summary. One or two quick sentences that can give them an idea of how I responded to six months of stimulus.

So let me start by figuring out how the heck I managed to spend six months over here.

July
I arrived on the 4th, met my fellow American students and KCP’s English support staff at the airport. We were taken individually to our places of residence, mine being a dorm room in Shinjuku which had plenty of room for a bed and a desk, and if you squeezed, a person. I took the placement test, where I was very quickly humbled and placed in level 3.

Class began, and I struggled. Being self taught, I had a lot of holes in my education and pretty much all of them were exploited early on. I made friends with a Chinese guy named Encaron. On weekends and after school, I would go wander around by myself. We also had a few culture classes, which were just for the American students and taught in English. The quality of these varied, but were usually enough to make me excited to get up on a Saturday.

About halfway through the month, I visited the offices for the first time. I work at JapanesePod101.com and make videos with two other people. I would later begin working every weekday for four hours after school.

Near the end, I went to see fireworks at Sumida-river with an American (originally from Indonesia) named Trisna, who would later be the person I went with on trips outside of Tokyo. No, we were not dating.

Then finally, we had a speech contest. I was not a contestant, but Encaron was our classes representative and we got to do a cheer for him onstage.

August
The culture classes continued and the summer weather got even more hot. I learned that I had a family that signed up to have me stay at their house, but it fell through. They wanted to try again in the next semester.

Then I took my first trip out of Tokyo, going to Fujiyoshida with Trisna. Fujiyoshida is famous for being very close to Mt. Fuji, but the weather was terrible the entire trip. Mt. Fuji strike one.

KCP held a cooking class, which I attended. I also went to the Ghibli museum for the first time. In less fun news, I had Midterms for the first semester.

In the middle of the month, we had our big culture class outing to Enoshima and Kamakura (pt. 1 | pt. 2). I got to get to know the Americans a little better.

We also had a summer vacation coming up, with an entire week free. Trisna and I planned a three day trip. We first went to Nara, and then Himeji castle. Then we went to Hiroshima and the nearby island Miyajima. I took some of my favorite pictures during this trip.

September
After summer vacation, school got a little more quick paced. We also took a school trip to a nearby park.

In addition to taking many tests in a short period of time, I got a letter from my future host family that got me excited for the prospect of living with them. The Americans who were leaving after the first semester took a special final exam early, and left about the middle of the month. Mine wasn’t until the 25th, but there was a five day break immediately before it. I wound up mostly studying during that break.

I took my final exam, and finished level 3. I had a week of freedom, during which I didn’t attempt anything too strenuous, except for go to the Ghibli museum again, and then it was time to move in with my host family.

October
I moved into my homestay in Minami-senju, and spent the second week doing stuff with them. In the excitement of making a good first impression, I signed up for a 5K race.

I found out that I got an A in level 3, and they asked me to do a sample conversation with one other classmate in front of the next semester’s orientation. The next semester began, and I was feeling a lot more at-home at KCP, being the one-semester veteran.

On the first weekend, the host family and I went over to a friend-of-the-family’s house in Chiba. The husband happened to be a commercial director at TBS (tv studio), and I discovered that the secret behind speaking a language well is finding someone that you really, really want to talk to. I kept in touch after the weekend, and he seemed to like me.

I approached the next semester of school as if I were aiming to get 100 percent on every test. It’s amazing how the difficulty of KCP can beat such optimistic thoughts out of a person. Upset that I had long passed the halfway mark and had yet to see Mt. Fuji, I took another trip by myself to Kawaguchiko, which met a similar rainy fate. Mt. Fuji strike two.

November
Another semester, and another school excursion. This time to a park in Tachikawa for a BBQ.

My host family had long since tired of me, and essentially rented me out to some of their friends for a weekend. It was nice to be around people who were excited to talk to me again. I finally ran the 5K race, got 21st in a group of about 120 people, and felt moderately good about myself. Then came the second midterm.

November was when I started studying hardcore for the upcoming JLPT 2 exam. I would spend entire weekends in the library, and studied in whatever cracks existed in my schedule. As such, the month felt like a blur compared to the lazy summer days.

December
I took the JLPT and I’m fairly confident I passed. After the test, my energy wavered a bit, and I slugged through the last bit of classes. Work got hectic as I had to make sure everything was in place to make the transition from “has Matt” to “no Matt” go smoothly. I got offered a job by my boss for after I graduate, a decision which has yet to be made.

One weekend, I decided to give Mt. Fuji one last shot. I woke up at 5:30, took the 4 hour trip back to Kawaguchiko, and was greeted with a sight I have almost been trained not to expect — Mt. Fuji. I tried to get as many pictures as I could, and got a few that I could be proud of. I stayed there the entire day, until the sun set. Mt. Fuji, homerun. (well, perhaps a triple. It got cloudy again in the evening)

I also went to a party with some co-workers, where we mostly played video games. It sort of reminded me of parties back home.

And today, I went to the Ghibli museum one last time.

Tomorrow is Monday, and my last day of class, and then Tuesday is my final exam. Wednesday, at about 4:30, I’m flying out of here.

Suffice it to say, Japan has been a ton of work and a ton of fun. Not that it was either one or the other, but they both happened at the same time.

So how’s that?