Life Post: I'm Leaving Japan and Going Back to the US

 I'm kind of dreading writing this post (despite the title already giving you the gist of it) because there's just so much I could say, and at this point, I'm kind of exhausted by repeating it.

But after three and a half years of living in Japan, I'm moving back to the US at the end of January.

This feels like such a long time coming because I actually made the decision to move back last January. The plan then was that I would go back in July. Then the pandemic hit, and I wound up extending my contract twice. I could have extended it again, and in many ways it might have been the smart thing to do, but continually pushing it back was making leaving so much harder. I feel like I need to leave now. Not because I'm unhappy or anything but because it feels like it's the right time. Or, rather, it felt like it was the right time months ago.

I know I'm not unique in the pandemic pushing back plans. It's happened for just about everyone, so I won't go into that too much. But when it comes to why I'm deciding to leave, I really don't have an answer other than it feels like the right time.

When I started working at my school, I had eight coworkers. As of right now, three of those coworkers are still at the school. Our school has two foreign teachers (of which I'm one), and I've worked with three different ones since being here. I've apparently worked here longer than any foreign teacher has at least in a long, long time, and it's been incredibly difficult to tell everyone that I'm leaving.

I haven't mentioned anything online until now because the students didn't know yet. We started telling them the week before last. There are still a few who don't know because they were unable to come to class, but the odds of them finding this before I can tell them are at least very low.

Leaving Tokushima is going to be one of the most difficult things I've ever done, and the fact that it's happening during a pandemic definitely makes it harder. I have a lot of anxiety about something going wrong (especially with my flight), and every day I think about the fact that I have good health care here but don't know if I'll even have health insurance when I get back to the US during a pandemic that's far worse there than there.

But those aren't worries that I want to dwell on in this post. I'm sure I'll right more in the future about how moving back goes, and once I have dealt with the grief of leaving a bit more, I'll hopefully write more about my experiences and emotions about leaving as well.

Now that I can talk about leaving online, you can probably expect to see some mentions of it here from time to time as I've been talking around it quite a bit in the few life posts I've done on here for the past year. But that's if I have time to even write anything. Believe me when I say that I have a to do list a mile long and more stress than I know what to do with over everything I need to do in the next few weeks. I'll just keep my fingers crossed that nothing goes disastrously wrong and that I don't get so stressed out to the point of not being able to enjoy the time I have left.

Book Review: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Published: January 5, 2010
Publisher: The New Press Inc.
Received: purchased
Read from October 31 to November 22, 2020

Summary from Goodreads:

"Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole."

As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

Review:

This book is a decade old, but it is still relevant to the current situation in the United States. Really, it's quite striking how much that is true. The book was published not long after Barack Obama became president, and references to that are made in the book. Now, after another Obama term and a Trump one, this book is as true as ever.

Much of what is covered in this book are things that I've already known from other reading, but that didn't make it any less compelling. Alexander has done a great job of providing data about the current state of incarceration in the United States. I know this saying has become quite cliche, but this book should be required reading. These are things that every American should be aware of, yet too few are.

I highly encourage everyone to pick up this book.

Star Trek: Discovery Review - 2x03 "Point of Light"

Life Post: I Don't Know Anymore

 Life feels like it's back in this realm of a new normal. It's been nearly a month since I last posted, but I don't feel like I have much to say.

The cases here have been so low before that it almost started to feel like coronavirus wasn't affecting us even though it very much was. We were wearing masks, getting our temperature taken at stores, sanitizing everything, etc., but there weren't many cases here, so people mostly felt comfortable even when doing those things. A few weeks ago I went shopping with a friend, and it was the first time I'd actually been shopping for something other than groceries since the pandemic started. It was fun to actually do something (complete with masks, temperature checks, and all of that).

This past week there was a cluster at a local university though, so that made news again. Right now, it seems like that cluster will stay pretty isolated, just like the cases we've had before. Anything could happen though, so only time will tell.

Book Review: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Published: May 19th, 2020
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Received: purchased
Read from June 1st to July 27th, 2020

Summary from Goodreads:

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined -- every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute... and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes. 

Review:

When I learned that there was going to be a Hunger Games prequel about President Snow, I was pretty hesitant and nervous. I didn't want this to be another case of new material that just didn't live up to the original (i.e. Cursed Child), and on top of that, Snow? That was who she was focusing on?

But it was a new Hunger Games book, and I wanted to at least read it for myself to see. I kept my fingers crossed that Collins would do a good job, but I was still quite skeptical going into the book.

People seem pretty divided over whether they enjoyed it or not, and I'm not sure if anyone has loved it per se. At least from what I've seen. Having read it myself, I did like it in a "it makes me think" sense, but at the same time, I completely get why people don't.

The book is told in Coriolanus' point of view. At the time of the book, he's a student, but of course, we know he's going to become Panem's tyrannical president by the time of the original Hunger Games trilogy. I suppose you could look at this book as a villain origin story. That's essentially what it is except Snow is not a supervillain. He is, in fact, a normal person with some messed up morals.

What saved the book for me was the fact that Snow and the other inhabitants of the Capitol were written in a way that made them feel like people within our actual world. When people read the original Hunger Games, they want to identify with the districts instead of the Capitol, but there were numerous parts of the book where it felt like the story wanted you to confront that many aspects of the modern United States are more like the Capitol than the districts. That felt more immediate in this book than the original trilogy though it never felt like it was being shoved in your face.

The downside to all of that, though, is that you do have to put up with Snow for an entire book, and it's quite a long book. He is just...the worst. I think that's a good thing in the end because I had no desire to see him redeemed, but it did make reading his point of view quite a chore at times. I enjoyed certain things the book made me think about, but I wasn't reading it for the main character or his story so much as the story of Panem and how things came to be as they are in the original trilogy.

There were side characters, especially Lucy Gray and Sejanus, who were far more fascinating than Snow. If the story had focused on them instead, I would have found it far more compelling. Though many of Lucy Gray's decisions (namely those involving Snow) made me want to pull my hair out.

All in all, there were many aspects of this story that I appreciated, particularly the way it explored the politics of Panem, but I didn't find Snow's personal story all that interesting. If anything, I wanted the story from Sejanus' point of view instead once I was finished, but I guess there's fanfiction for that.