Feeling Blue: Climbing Mountains

Tom came to visit, we had a great time
getting drunk under the cherry blossoms.

I spent January crawling in and out of the cave in my room, avoiding the future, and generally feeling sorry for myself. By the end of the month though, I was sick of being blue. It was time to face up to the mountain, and answer the ever-present question: "So what are you gonna do next?"* Somewhere between here and there a plan has sprouted. But it's not the kind of plan I can just come out and say without sounding absolutely insane. It needs a bit of a preamble.
 
Picking Ladders

Working out the next step was a mountain-like-problem for me because of two mainly self-imposed reasons. For one, I had grown complacent out here teaching Japanese, leaving me completely unprepared to go back into the job hunt world. I hadn't updated my CV in 6 years, and Linkedin still felt like Facebook for parents. I had no idea what jobs were out there, let alone whether they'd take someone like me.

Secondly, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I don't know now either, but back then I really didn't. I couldn't even choose a country. Japan? The UK? And everyone who I spoke to added more choices. "Why don't you come live with me in Australia?" "There's a job here in Canada you'd be perfect for."

Even if I was able to settle on a country, what about the career? It felt like I'd reached that point in life where you have to choose a ladder. A ladder I'd spend the rest of my adult life climbing. Except I'd have to pick the ladder blindfolded, and no one could quite tell me where the ladders went, or whether it was really that great up at the top when you got there. I was so inundated with fairly identical looking ladders, that I almost gave up and crawled back in the cave.

Apparently this is a problem that a lot of people out here teaching in Japan face, so much so that the JET programme set up a two day "After JET conference" to help us make up our minds. First day, a bunch of talks on different industries. Day two, a job fair. I went into it excited, full of optimism that I'd find thousands of exciting prospects for the future, and that one of them would catch my imagination.

It was not like that. The people there weren't even speaking my language. I mean sure, they were speaking English. But rather than talking about job satisfaction and meaning and fulfillment, they spoke about advancement, and how to get ahead of the competition, and the money you could make doing so.

Throughout the course of the two days, it slowly dawned on me that I don't really want to get on many of these ladders. Which is lucky, because if I did want to, turns out I'm not qualified to get on most of them. Rather than helping me find new prospects, the conference slowly killed off various different day dreams I'd had about the future. Translation companies want people with better Japanese. The Olympics wants people with event planning experience. Engineering companies want Science graduates. The only people who did want me were English cram schools. A fair profession, but one without much room to make a career of it. Less a ladder and more of a footstool.

Until I had my one on one "career counseling session". I spoke to this absolutely lovely person who taught at a school in Canada. After listening to hundreds of people talking the foreign language of business and finance, I finally found someone who spoke my language. She spoke about job satisfaction and meaning and fulfillment. A breath of fresh air.

I left the conference, resolved to go back to the UK and become a Primary school teacher. That means getting teacher qualified, either on the job or back at Uni. I got home, ready to make it happen, only to find I had missed the application deadline. By a whole 3 months. And the next application period isn't until October, for programmes starting in September 2020. Another plan, dashed before it even began. Now what am I gonna do?

On the brink of existential crisis, I was saved by some wise words, which I have a feeling my mother would prefer not to take credit for considering the result. She told me to see this time as an opportunity, not an obstacle. An opportunity? My life has no meaning or direction! An opportunity to do what? Well, to do whatever I really want to do. Which is nominally the case for everyone every day, but having a whole year free to fill definitely threw it into relief for me.

I took a look at my life, and thought about what I really wanted to do. Which was a bit awkward, because I had just recently done that and landed on being a Primary school teacher

Climbing Mountains

It's hard to track how an idea came to be. A speech about taking time traveling to work out what you want in life. A friend mentioning a guy who cycled in Asia on his way back home. A random Reese Witherspoon movie about solo hiking from southern California to Oregon, sparking the idea of doing a big solo trip like that. Or the boys here in Japan that somehow talked me into buying a road-bike 4 and a bit years ago. Whatever its origins, the idea took root and started to grow.

I should cycle.
Cycle a long way.
All the way home in fact.

I'd hop on the ferry from Osaka to Shanghai, cycle through China, up into Kazakhstan, down to Azerbaijan and Georgia, through Turkey into Europe, then across the Channel from France. 13,000km,  15ish countries, in a little under a year, poetically taking me from my miniature apartment in Japan, all the way back to the green shores of Albion.

The Long Way Home on the Northern Silk Road

Over the last 3 months I have nurtured this idea lovingly in the hope that it blooms and becomes a fully-fledged plan. Every day, I've been reading cycle touring blogs, pouring over "recommended" lists of every type of camping gear, and plotting out routes through China. I've even been studying Chinese. 我叫Richard. 很高兴认识你!

Now, I will be the first to admit that this plan is a tad ambitious. There are a lot of question marks that really can't be answered now and will just have to be dealt with when I get there. I don't know how it will work out, or if I'll even make it past the first hurdle of the cycle down to Osaka, but I'm rearing to give it a real good go.

I'm starting to feel comfortable with the idea of doing this, as I've been cultivating it up there in the back of my head for months, but there remained the tricky proposition of convincing my Mum and Dad it's a good idea. I was so nervous about what they might think that I kept putting it off, and only ended up telling them because I wanted to write this. I figured I should probably tell them directly that I'm planning on being voluntarily homeless for the next 300 days, rather than hear it second-hand from a blog.

Turns out my parents are brilliant people who will cautiously support me whatever stupid thing I decide to do next. At first impression, Dad seems quite excited, Mum mildly panicked. She's mostly concerned that I'm doing it alone, and that I'm gonna get mugged in Kazakhstan which is completely valid. Thankfully though I will have at least one constant companion with me. I bought a new bike and she's an absolute beauty (which is lucky cause we are going a long way together.)

I'm taking her on a long distance 12 day test run over Golden Week.** This is of course to make sure I don't go insane being alone for that long, and that I actually enjoy cycling up hills carrying half my life on the back of my bike. I was thinking of keeping the blog updated every few days or so about my progress. If this goes well, I'll be buying a ferry ticket, and heading out to China sometime mid August.

 So there it is. That's the plan. I'm gonna cycle home from Japan. Then I'm gonna get qualified and teach small children. Everything is gonna be fine.

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*Getting out, and staying out of caves is not always an easy process. I've found maintaining to do lists, keeping a daily schedule, and trying to instigate good habits (without beating myself up so much when they don't stick) has been working pretty nicely. Exercise and proper sleep is also doing wonders.

**Golden week is this glorious time of year where a few public holidays line up to give us five or six days off work. But this year, through some divine stroke of luck, the Emperor is abdicating. There is an extra day off for that, and a day for the start of the new Reiwa era, and because the Emperor is so nice, the extra day in between is being given to us too, making 10 consecutive days off. My teachers are going nuts. A 54-year old English teacher told me yesterday, this is the longest he's had off work since he started.