5 posts tagged “japanese”

Just as I'm getting ready to leave to go back to Richmond I read my friend Sarah's post about what you would do if you were offered the opportunity to just get away.

I'd leave.

I think since coming back to America I've had a load of stress -- readjusting to my job hasn't been easy. Being absent a few days puts you at a disadvantage when it comes to practice. I feel like I'm still forgetting little housekeeping things that I would've otherwise taken care of usually and I've been feeling slightly guilty about it lately. I've also been missing life there, mostly the food though -- I'm constantly getting sick from all the grease and lack of movement here, so much that it's driving me mad. But I think what I miss the most is the feeling that I'm having an adventure.

As an adult, I feel like I'd lost that in the months that I became depressed. Finally taking that vacation was a real eye-opener and reminder of the person that I used to be and the person that I can become. In the spirit of it, I decided to continue to forward my plans for applying to graduate school and also maybe accept the challenge of changing occupations to learn Japanese better.

Recently, in spite of all the grad school preparation, I've found that financing a study abroad (particularly in Japan) is very, very difficult. There aren't loan programs that will easily lend to institutions without large populations of Americans attending. Because of this I'm kind of stuck in this rut of filling out the applications but scared of trying to figure out how I'm going to self-finance a $17,000/year tuition and living costs through graduate school. In the end I might have to take up a private loan from a bank just like my friends and just bite the bullet in terms of trying to pay that off after I graduate. Who knows.

I've applied for a job with an English-language teaching program in Japan through an eikawa called Geos. To be honest, I kind of did it on a whim. If I don't make it into graduate school (which, at this point seems like a likely circumstance considering I have little work experience) I'd like to spend the time working in Japan and learning Japanese better in the meantime. It'd mean giving up nursing, but I'd be chasing a dream and living an adventure.

Perhaps a better question is -- if you were given the chance to live another life, would you?

I guess we'll see in a few weeks.

I've recently decided to take up juggling a busy schedule.

Things at my new job are still going great and I'm learning quite a lot, so much in fact, that I now have a voracious appetite for more information. I've taken re-certification classes in intraaortic balloon pump counterpulsation therapy and in the continuous renal replacement therapy, but the opportunity hasn't yet come up for me to utilize the skills. Though our patients are acutely ill, I've noticed that CRRT is rarely used (even though we see a higher degree of kidney dysfunction), but that CRRT when used at my current institution is more of a nurse driven therapy than it is by medicine.

Anyway, I won't get into all that complicated crap in this entry.

I'm actually writing after spending the past three hours making phone calls to Japan in hopes of making research contacts for a scholarship that I'm applying for. The Fulbright is a scholarship geared towards promoting international research, sending scholars from the United States around the world to study different topics of interest relating the host countries to home. The process of applying for this scholarship however, is long and painstaking -- it takes about a year just to develop the contacts and write up the paperwork and then another year to go through the selection process. The applicant pool is competitive and you're competing against the best and brightest at not only your university, but in the United States. The reward is great though -- a year-long study in your country of choice, all expenses paid. Everything from tuition, to living costs, and transportation are all covered under the full grant scholarship.

So far, I've been working on writing the narrative curriculum vitae and the project statement as well as making contacts and increasing my work and volunteer experience while I'm still here in the United States. Part of the reason I've been so busy lately and have "fallen off the face of the earth" is because I've been juggling beginning volunteering for two organizations, tutoring two students, working, writing the Fulbright, learning Japanese, calling around and socializing to make research contacts, and studying for some nursing specialty exams (the CCRN and the CMC). While it looks and sounds kind of crazy -- I've really enjoyed it.

The hardest part has really been making the research contacts though. I can't tell you how difficult it is to make a phone call to another country and speak in another language well enough to try to ask about nursing research or even getting an organization to listen to you long enough to help you. I feel kind of smarmy constantly socializing for the sake of my research interests, but I guess this is what it's like to pimp a cause (how educated did I just sound there...?).

Either way, it's 4am EST and I still have three e-mails with project statements and curriculum vitaes to send out. So I'm out for now. More interesting posts later this week.

My Japanese is coming along in baby steps. Though I'm able to type and recognize characters as the "right" ones when I'm typing, it'd be another thing if I actually had to write them on paper. Reading and speaking seem to be coming along well -- I think watching a lot of Japanese tv lately has helped this out. Somehow it seems to be easier for me to learn a language when I'm inundated by it. The sum of my feelings is still pretty much "watashi wa nihongo ga wakarimasen." (the title of this post which translates to -- "I don't understand Japanese.")

Right now, I'm watching a tv show called 華麗なる一族 which translates to the Great Clan or something-or-other. I've never so intensely watched a show in my life! It's not a show I'd even particularly like. Usually, when I watch Japanese TV, I watch the family comedies like ヒミツの花園 and just kind of laugh my way through them. But this was one I just started watching on a crapshoot. The show is intense, much too intense for a one hour time slot, but it'd probably be  even more overwhelming if it were a movie. I (traditionally) avoid Japanese period dramas for this reason... And somehow, even though this show isn't something I'd normally sit through, I'm still going to watch it because I put a gross amount of mind boggling effort into viewing its first episode. I figure, I might as well watch the other 9 episodes and finish my brain off.

Should you feel compelled to see what I'm talking about you can download a torrent for all of the episodes here. But beware, it really is intense.

Today I had made plans with Eric and Matt (the good Matt -- Matt L.) to go out for lunch at this reportedly 'extremely ethnic' Japanese restaurant in Rockville called Temari. It's off of Rockville Pike in a small shopping center on the first floor.

We didn't know what exactly 'too authentic' meant in the description we had read on Tyler Cowen's ethnic dining guide, but me and the guys are pretty brave when it comes to eating most ethnic foods. When we popped in through the door we were delightfully surprised with how many Japanese people were around. All the reviews we'd read about the atmosphere were on-par with what we saw. It's a cutesy cafe that's patronized mainly by Japanese and the staff is mostly Japanese that speak English 'ok'. The food on the menu is mainly composed of Japanese 'comfort' food like katsu-kare, katsu-don, and hambagu-raisu. It's not Japanese food for beginners, and if you're looking for teriyaki -- you've arrived at the wrong place. It's also a place that has sushi, but it isn't the main focus. I generally don't like Japanese restaurants here in the U.S. for the reason that most of them usually only serve sushi or hibachi items (and usually things like udon/donburi). At this restaurant they had most all of those things, but they even had my favorite onigiri on the menu (which I didn't order because I opted for more standard shumai). Most of the things on the menu were things I'd never heard of, but whose descriptions sounded delicious. The sushi appears on a separate menu that's written on a chalkboard at the bar. I got the feeling though that most people don't order the sushi when they go there.

We shared some broiled fish (I can't remember what kind of fish it was exactly) and shumai to start off with and followed up with different entrees. Matt ordered some pork-yaki, Eric went with a standard katsu-don, and I went with katsu curry. We pecked off of each others' food and every entree tasted great. We had the balls to even try desert. Matt and I went with something that began with a 'Z'; while we both ordered the same thing, I opted for the kind with ice cream in it -- dairy always makes things taste better. The dessert had red beans and mochi balls in a sweet sauce. It was wonderfully sweet and subtle. Eric went with a snowball -- which was crushed ice with a milky sauce served over top; he went with a green-tea flavor which was wonderful.

Everything was reasonably priced (most entrees were $12+) and we walked away with a very satisfied feeling wanting to come back again. I have a feeling the next time I'm in the area, I'll be heading there again :) It was worth the beltway battling and trip across the border to eat that food! This place has got my recommendation; A++.