About Me

I'm Phil! American living in Japan. Teacher. Ex-independent professional wrestler. Student of Japanese. Traveler. Article writer for Mythic Scribes. Also written four manga, novels, and various short stories and poems. For my fantasy-related blog, check out http://www.philipoverbyfantasy.blogspot.jp/.

Categories

Drill Bits: random thoughts, bloggy stuff
Japan Hammer: topics about Japan
Story Time: stories I felt like posting

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Books I'm Reading and Japan Redo

Since most of my stuff somehow all directs back to Facebook now, I will post my blogs here and then link them to Facebook to see if anyone has any thoughts on them. So here it goes.

I've been having an up and down time here since I've returned home. I still hope to return to Japan, and I'm being really impatient about it. I've only had 2 interviews since I started officially applying in March, and both jobs I didn't get. One was because I didn't speak enough Japanese and the other was...well, I have no idea why. Anyway, the more I think about it, the happier I am I didn't get that specific job. It felt like it would be really high pressure and it was non-salary as well. But I liked the flexibility of it and the fact that it was only private lessons. So I jumped back into the job search anew.

On the book reading front, I'm reading several things right now. Just think to give some immediate thoughts about each one that's on my "main reading roster" now.

1. Perdido Street Station: I got this as a Christmas gift from a special friend, so the book reminds me of that friend when I read it. My first thoughts about it in the first several chapters is that China Mieville is an extremely creative person. The stuff he dreams up for his Bas-Lag world is incredibly complex, yet still seems eerily familiar. I've written stuff similar to what he has before, but he owns his world, where I oftentimes get mired in my worlds. Mieville is probably the weirdest writer I've read, yet it still feels lucid. Altogether, I'm loving this one so far. I'm hoping some of his uber-strangeness will rub off on me.

2. Deadhouse Gates: I've been reading this book for over 2 years now. I really just want to finish it. But it's killing me. Steven Erikson is another writer like Mieville in that he writes incredibly original fantasy with bizarre characters and scenes. The problem with Erikson I think is that it seems like there is no direction sometimes. I have no idea what is going on half the time. I really loved the first book in the series, Gardens of the Moon, but this 2nd one is just dragging for me. I hope to finally finish this one so I can move on to the 3rd one, which I hear the series picks up again at.

3. Japanese Language books (various): I've been constantly reading Japanese stuff since I've been back. There was a point when I was living in Japan, when my now-girlfriend Kumi took care of most of the Japanese speaking for me. Anywhere we went, she did the talking. So I became lazy with learning Japanese. Now my interest has renewed. I really want to be able to be a translator one day. I've found I love to translate text. It's challenging and interesting for me. Keeps me thinking and keeps my brain clicking. One day I hope to be able to write at an advanced level of Japanese and maybe get something published in Japan. That would be AWESOME!

Well that's it for now. I'm having good and bad days recently. My Japanese Coach for the DS and Dragon Age for Xbox360 has been keeping me sane during all this down time. The part time jobs are calling now. I started doing Mechanical Turk for Amazon recently. So far my balance is $2.00. "Virtual sweatshop" indeed.