This Day Was Always Coming

The subject link contained the words "Regarding Ms. Olivia Hanson"

The tightening in his stomach was immediate and he suddenly pushed himself away from the desk, his chair rolling to a stop a good half-meter back. He stood up and left the room.

In the kitchen he leaned against the counter waiting for the coffee he'd started minutes earlier to finish brewing while looking down at his feet. Olivia Hanson... Never even changed her name. Still Hasn't, he thought. You don't know anything yet.

But, he knew he wasn't going to read the message until he found the nerve, so he decided not to give it any further thought, at least until the morning coffee had been consumed.

It was the first sunny morning in weeks and the living room was bathed in a beautiful warm glow. He settled comfortably on the sofa and took a sip of coffee while staring blankly out the window. He likely didn't even notice the two squirrels playing under the pine tree in the front yard.

Olivia...

He leaned forward and set the nearly-full cup down on the coffee table in one quick and hard movement. Some of the brown liquid sloshed out and onto the wooden surface. That too likely went unnoticed as he jumped to his feet, then disappeared down the hallway.

He sat down in front of the computer again, grabbed the mouse, and clicked the subject link. The body of the message instantly appeared and he read...

"Hello. You've received this message because your contact information was written in Olivia's address book. If you're already aware of what I'm about to tell you, I apologize. For those of you that aren't, it is with a heavy heart that I must inform you of Olivia Hanson's passing. She left this world on Thursday night. I feel it improper to include details of her death in this message, but if you wish to know them, reply to this and I'll send you more information about it... 

I apologize for the suddenness of this; I just thought that if I didn't make those Olivia had known aware of what happened, some of the people who had mattered to her might never know, and I just couldn't live with such a sad thing being the result of my inaction. I hope you can understand..."

He skipped the rest of the message body and brought his eyes to rest on the name at the bottom. He didn't recognize it at all. A man's name.

Though he already knew the details of her death, he clicked the 'reply' button, typed in a brief message and clicked 'send.'

Back in the living room steam wasn't rising from his coffee anymore. He dropped hard onto the sofa, leaned forward, picked up the cup and sipped...

Cool Biz, Setsuden and All That is Summertime in Japan

Cool Biz in Japan means going necktieless so as not to pass out from heat exhaustion when in the middle of a workday. It also means you shouldn't complain when the air conditioning is set to 28C...

With Setsuden (energy conservation), you may not get any air conditioning at all. After the big earthquake two years ago, lots of electrically powered things like escalators and overhead lights get shut off in the summer to deal with the inevitable surge of demand put on the power grid by people and companies that refuse to go on without internal cooling.

And, well, it's Japan so it's hard to blame people for wanting to stay somewhat comfortable throughout the hot, sweltering dog days of summer...

But, you know what?... I love summertime in Japan. I love drinking ice cold beer on hot, humid nights. I love the way people throw themselves into evening festivities with near-reckless abandon.

And, yes... I love the girls. Lord help me, I do...

Almost 10 Years On...

Having lived in Japan for almost a decade, I often wonder if I'd be happier being an expat elsewhere. Sure, there are plenty of places I'd love to visit and plan to go to at some point, but would it be worth the burden of picking up and starting over?

And, at what age should one finally decide on a permanent home and settle down? Personally, I feel the words 'settle down' are almost as ominous as 'Rest In Peace'...

My first home in Japan was Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture. I was really lucky to live there given its reputation as a tourist destination for Japanese people and its wonderful mix of old and modern. At the time, I taught at a large Eikawa and met so many people over a short period of time, it was almost overwhelming. Being a much-smaller city than any of the major ones in Japan meant the locals took more interest in foreign guests. Oh, the memories... the girls, the nightlife, the hot, lazy summer days off... Was probably the perfect place to have my first experience living in Japan.

My second home was a small town in the countryside about an hour south of Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture. The population of the town was 17,000 and I was one of 2 or 3 foreigners living there. There were no video-rental shops, convenient fast-food places or any of the other establishments you find in abundance in major Japanese cities. I taught at 14 different public schools and had to drive up to 45 minutes one way to get to one of them way up in the mountains, which was no fun in the winter. But, it was an experience that taught me a lot. Not about Japan, its culture or its people, but about myself, and what I was made of. I found out at the end of my contract that I was the first person to last a full year with that company. But, Tokyo called me, and even though they really wanted me to stay, I couldn't.

Unfortunately, the move to Tokyo coincided with my divorce. I'd been married to a Japanese woman the whole time I was in Miyagi, and even though I might not have lasted the year without her company, it was clear the relationship was doomed. Neither one of us were marriage material (I'm still not), and moving far away was about the best thing I could do at the time.

I've worked for only one company my whole time in Tokyo, even though I've quit, come back, moved 4 times and am basically semi-retired. I find Tokyo to be simultaneously an extremely-easy and quite-difficult city to live in. What's good and what's bad about being an expat in Tokyo is pasted throughout the cybersphere, so I won't get into it, but I will say that I feel I've lost a piece of my soul here, though I'm not sure if that's due to living here, age, poor life choices, or some combination of those (and possibly more). So, I often find myself thinking of living somewhere else...

Where do you imagine yourself living, if not right where you are now?