But, this being me, the story doesn't start there. For those of you that know me personally, you know that nothing I do happens without backstory...
In this case, the seeds for this particular jump were planted almost ten years ago (yeah, these roots go deep). Stick with me, this is a good one:
During the summer of 1999, I spent a lovely summer in Berkeley, California. I was interning at an environmental organization, working at a movie theater, and generally having a good time. When the summer ended, my friends in the Bay Area tried to convince me to stay. Although sorely tempted, I knew that if I didn't return to the east coast, I would probably never finish my undergraduate degree.
With heavy heart, I returned to Baltimore to complete the measly 12 credits and silly prerequisites I was missing (I was already on-track to graduate a semester early... if I had pushed it a little harder, I actually could have graduated college in three years... oh well...). Knowing that school wasn't going to be enough to hold my interest, I attended a Volunteer Fair on campus shortly after the semester began. As I perused the tables, I was drawn to Baltimore Reads: yes, because I love to read, but mostly because the two women staffing the table were really cute.
...and so my educational career began.
When they asked me to be a reading tutor once a week for an hour, I found it hard to say no.
The program I volunteered for matched students from my college with one particular inner-city Baltimore elementary school. I was a tutor in a 1st grade classroom... and I loved it. I loved the days when I could relieve the teacher by being the second set of eyes in the class. I loved it even more when I was handed a student to work with one-on-one. Little kids are just so... honest. As I came to discover, I like 1st grade the best: the kids have learned how to sit at a desk and hold a pencil, but they are still enthusiastic and wildly creative. Within short order, I found that my hour of tutoring was what I was looking forward to most during my week.
I finished college in December, and I suddenly had lots of empty time between the new year and graduation in May. I had already applied for the Peace Corps, and knew I'd be leaving sometime over the summer, but the span in between was a big question mark.
Well, the Volunteer Coordinator for my tutoring gig was an AmeriCorps volunteer, and she wasn't happy with how her contract was panning out. As we had become friends, I knew she was thinking of quitting. I asked her to put in my name to replace her when she tendered her resignation. She did, and I got her job. Until the end of the school year, I was in charge of scheduling the volunteers and dealing with any issues that cropped up. I also took the opportunity to expand my own tutoring: since I wanted to be useful on-site, I started tutoring in a different class each day: pre-K through 3rd grade. It still stands as the most enjoyable job I have ever had.
It's a good thing that I had that job, because when I opened my assignment envelope from the Peace Corps in April, it said "Teacher Trainer - South Africa". My jaw dropped. Now, until my tutoring gig, I hadn't set foot in an elementary school since I myself had been an elementary school student myself! I have no background in education: my degree is in Psychology, with a minor in Communications. When I had applied for Peace Corps, my recruiter had recommended me for a job building latrines. I had come to terms with two years of digging holes, now I suddenly had to get my head around trying to rehabilitate an educational system destroyed and warped by fifty years of apartheid.
I was scared to death. If I hadn't had such recent experience in a school, I might have fainted.
But, off to South Africa I went, experience be damned! I taught seminars at three elementary schools and a high school. I put together an HIV/AIDS conference. I got engaged... all sorts of things I never saw myself doing. Was it as good as my tutoring gig? No. Was it a good experience? Hard to explain it in those terms. It undoubtedly made me a stronger person. I'm not really scared of anything now.
I was in South Africa from June 2000 - October 2001. I returned to the US with a fiancée and a desire to stick with education. I ended up getting a job for the remainder of that school year as a 7th and 8th grade math and science teacher at an inner city Cleveland junior high. It was tough, stressful work, in many ways more difficult even than my time in South Africa, but I completed that year still thinking I wanted to be an educator of some kind.
That summer, I got married and almost immediately, my wife and I took a disastrous job in Maui. We returned to the mainland in January 2003, disappointed, down to our last $50, and directionless. Luckily, a pair of friends of mine from college were sharing a house in Baltimore, and invited my wife and me to stay with them until we were back on our feet. Since my wife had a teaching degree, soon she was substitute teaching. As for me? I was at a loss.
One of those two friends had been an art major, and was working as the art department assistant on a major Hollywood film. She called me from the car one day:
"Are you still looking for work?"
"Yes."
"You're good at math, right?"
"Well, I was a math teacher..."
"The accounting department is looking for a clerk. Fax in your resume. They don't have anyone else. I'm sure they'll hire you."
Hire me they did.
The job was scheduled to last about six months... a perfect stretch to get me through until the end of the school year. I could then look for a teaching gig over the summer, and be back in education with the start of the new school year.
I learned a ton on that first film. When that one ended, and I got a call to work on a John Waters film. As he is one of my cinematic heroes, I couldn't turn it down. On that film, I learned how to do payroll... So, when I was offered a job as a payroll accountant on a film with Mos Def and Alan Rickman (I'm big fans of both) at a salary double what I was making on my first film (less than a year prior), I couldn't turn it down.
Suddenly, my six months in the film industry turned into more than six years...
What does any of this have to do with Japan? Excellent question.
That "short detour" was never supposed to grow into a career. I don't regret it at all, as it afforded me a house, it got me through my divorce, I met some wonderful friends, it gave me the opportunity to give my brother his start in the film industry, it allowed me to travel extensively, and it funded my ability to take huge chunks of time off to write screenplays. But I could never shake the feeling that I was heading further and further down the wrong road.
In November 2007, my grandfather was hospitalized in Florida. I went down to visit him, and he passed away while I was there. What was supposed to be a quick "get well" visit had suddenly become the first major death in my family in a decade.
The funeral was going to be in New York. I was living in New Mexico at the time. I didn't know what to do. Stay in Florida? Too sad... Go home to New Mexico? A waste of time. Fly up to New Jersey and spend time with my family before the funeral? Too much: my grandfather was a very polarizing figure, and his death had uncovered all sorts of simmering issues. I needed a breather before diving into that whirlpool.
My solution was to fly to Chicago for a few days to visit my only remaining friend from my Peace Corps days. On one of my long, pensive walks, I picked up a copy of Chicago's alternative paper and I saw this ad:
"No teaching experience or knowledge of Japanese required!!"
I had been adrift for some time, and watching my grandfather die, all I could think about was the brevity of life... I was wasting my time writing screenplays that would never sell, and spending my working days paying rich people for a living (which is about as fulfilling as it sounds)... This looked like a perfect opportunity to get back into teaching, especially considering that my most recent teaching credential was more than five years old by this point.
The drawback? The deadline was December 3rd and it was a few days before Thanksgiving. The recruitment process was similar to getting into college: recommendations, transcripts, all sorts of things I couldn't get together in less than two weeks. So, I scrawled the note on the bottom to apply the following year...
...which I did, sending off my application in time for the November 2008 deadline. I was in the UK during January 2009 when I found out that I had scored an interview. I returned to the US and left the interview in mid-February, sure that I had landed the job.
In the meantime, the movie business came calling again, and, against my better judgement, I ended up taking a gig on a TV series. But, I was broke and needed the money, and it was filming in Portland, OR (my adopted home that I had abandoned for Los Angeles the previous spring)... I took the job on the condition that I might be leaving for Japan. My boss agreed.
The reply date arrived in April... and I was waitlisted. Not only that, but they told me that a slot could open for me immediately... or at any point all the way through DECEMBER. Another eight months seemed like a long time to put my life on-hold. Since the accepted applicants were leaving on July 25th, I told myself that if they didn't offer me a job by early July, I would move on with my life.
The months rolled by, and July 4th weekend came and went. I procrastinated a bit, but I started to look for an apartment. On July 25th, when the accepted applicants were boarding a plane for Tokyo, I signed a lease on a studio apartment in Portland.
The following Wednesday, July 29th, the program called and offered me a position.
"Are you kidding?" I said "You couldn't have called me a week ago... before I signed a lease? What? Did someone quit already?"
No, it turns out someone had forged a diploma. Whoops.
Did I want the job or not? the program wondered. It was mid-afternoon. They wanted an answer by the following morning, or they'd offer my slot to the next person on the list.
I called my future landlord that night and broke my lease. I called my parents and told them I was leaving the country for a year... maybe longer (I was on a 1-year contract, but expandable on a year-to-year basis for up to 5 years). I walked into work the next day and gave my two weeks' notice. As I had been talking about the possibility of Japan for months, and everyone knew how disappointed I was to be waitlisted, no one was surprised or upset. As I was midway through the season of a TV show, I had to work like a maniac to have everything tied up within two weeks.
I had to be even more of a maniac as I spent my final two weeks in the US flying around the country visiting as many loved ones as possible before my departure. I still feel bad that I had to leave people out, but I still managed to squeeze in five states in all four continental US timezones in that span!!
On August 29th, I packed my few things against the wall of my friend's garage. On the 30th, I took a train up to Seattle and crashed with a friend for my final two nights in America.
On August 31st, I took a deep breath, looked around Seattle, and wondered "How did I end up here... and am I really moving to Japan?"
The next morning, I got on a plane and everything changed...
