True Stories of Life in Japan, pt 10: All Good Things

[coriolinus]

My contract in Japan specified that I would stay one year at that company, and that nine months into the process both the head office and I would determine whether the contract was worth renewal. If we both decided that I should stay, I would get a raise of about $1000 annually and an automatic visa renewal. Otherwise, I was free to do whatever I

Comments

Challenge

[anonymous]

Now write 10 essays on the surprising oddities of living home for 9 months.

Re: Challenge

[coriolinus]

Sure, one sentence each:

1. The first thing I did upon getting to the US was take a vacation.
2. It was pretty awesome!
3. I went to visit my sister in Seattle, then spent a week at the beach of NC with a good friend of mine from college.
4. I figured I'd stay with my parents while waiting to finalize the Warrant Officer application process.
5. The recruiters had told me that process might take a month or two.
6. Actually, it took until the following May.
7. My parents are nice people, but they didn't want me just hanging around indefinitely, so they charged rent for the room and board.
8. This necessitated my getting whatever jobs I could scrounge under the constraint that I might only be there a month or two.
9. Note my error: I trusted the recruiters.
10. I wasn't the only guy glad to be in basic training just to be out of my parents' house, but I was the only one in my class who had previously lived overseas on my own.

Army for You?

[pnolan]

I read your essays about living and Japan and related to them heavily. You put some of my experiences into words so well!

What I don't understand is why an educated, sensitive person like you would want to go into the armed forces at this point in time!

Am I the only one who thinks this is weird behavior for an intelligent person?!

Don't you realize that you will probably be in Iraq or Afghanistan before you can say "what?!" Or do you really think those wars are defensible?

However you feel about the politics, don't you think you might just be throwing your life away?

Re: Army for You?

[coriolinus]

What it comes down to is that for me, flight has been a dream since I was tiny. The Army was offering a path through which they would pay me a decent salary, while learning to fly, and then guaranteeing a few years of experience at it. It was pretty much an unbeatable deal. Consider any childhood dream: maybe you wanted to be an astronaut, or maybe a combined stuntcar driver/fireman/baseball player. Now, imagine discovering that the Army will pay you to do exactly that job, with their only requirement being that you do it for them for six years. Could you honestly say you'd turn it down

[silversliver]

This has been a really neat series of essays. Thanks for sharing them!

[coriolinus]

You're welcome! I'm glad you liked them!

[margokennedy]

hey, thanks for posting these~ i think they're all very reflective and interesting. good luck in the military.

[coriolinus]

Thanks. They were fun to write!