Game plan: 1,2 out 1 in

Not my collection exactly, but you get the idea.

I am in trouble. Between my $50/yr Playstation Plus and $50/yr Xbox Gold memberships, I have a flood of games. I'm reaching the 200-game mark of free games for both systems, and there are still attractive games out there that I want to buy. Also, with summer hitting, my dedication to the hobby is going to drop. My plan to keep my collection from spiraling out of control is to beat-and-delete 2 downloaded free games, and then finish-and-sell 1 disc-based game before I pay for a new game, of course avoiding the full 59.99 at all costs (<-- see what I did there?). Techbargains.com is a great place to make sure not to pay full price for games. There are 2 titles I'm looking forward to: Final Fantasy XV and Rainbow Six.

Choosing 6 games from my expanding library is no problem, but this leads me to minimizing collections. I've moved in and out of the USA to Korea, Thailand and Japan, in addition to 4 addresses in Washington. Every time, my collections become more of a burden, and loses both financial and sentimental value. 7 years ago, before Thailand, I threw away 150 DVD cases and almost 100 game cases, reducing it to two DVD binders. In the 10 years I've pinged around Asia and Washington, I've never had the bookshelf to proudly display my library of titles. I am glad I made the decision to ditch the two boxes of plastic. DVDs were replaced by BluRays, and now it's all digital; you can use that space to hang photos, or art that you traded with a friend, or drawings from loved ones!

Impressive collection, but let's calm the fuzz down, here...

Games are much more time-consuming than movies, so it's incredibly unlikely that you'll have time to go back through your old favorites with 10- to 100-hour stories. If you're keeping it as a collector's item: more power to ya! But, there is a dearth of free-or-near-free games out there, through the console subscription services, and also emulation. So before you buy another bookshelf or storage bin for that musty collection of games or movies, get some loved ones together and reminisce over your favorite scenes and moments, and then sell/donate those puppies!! Your investment in a collection makes you want to build it more and more: when do you stop?

At this point, I've made my case for movie and game collections; I still have an art collection of stuff I purchased overseas. These two plastic bins have been cumbersome to move, leave with friends, and otherwise store, and I've never had a chance to display most of it. This is my own hypocrisy and burden I refuse to part with.

However, you may still find another collection to minimize with my 3 out, 1 in policy. What's your collection?

Changing tactics for late students

My classroom stress has dramatically dropped off, since I only teach a few hours per week. I am allowed the luxury of not having to commit to students for long periods of time, so I may as well make that short time pleasant for all of us. One constant obstacle is absences and tardies.

coming to class 4/5ths of the time
is all we ask...

Attendance is a big issue for international students because our governments expect students to go to school. If students don't meet these expectations, they are expelled, and sometimes deported. This puts everyone in an awkward position. After arriving a few days before class begins, our students have a really short time to figure out their new schedule and lifestyle. At the same time, teachers have to deal with constant interruptions, and the staff have to issue warning after warning to notify students of their attendance percentages. As a teacher, it is really easy to show you're annoyed at late/absent students for the stress of getting them caught up, but I think the real detriment is that the class misses out on their input.

American classrooms rely on students' comments and ideas, and I don't know how many of our international guests know this. That's right, we don't just need your money; we need you! The easy choice might be to hope that the laggards are kicked out so that the attentive hard workers can go on undisturbed. This is my biggest struggle as a teacher of ten years. There have been countless times when I wished all the losers would melt away and leave me with the winners. But, that's not only unfair, it's also lazy of me.

People need time to figure out expectations. I need to be a better communicator in making students feel their active presence is important, rather than simply shaking my finger and warning them about the dire consequences. This, with my teaching and other entertaining skills, will give my students a  much sweeter experience. 

New position, and I ain't talking yoga!

Just when I started to feel bad about going back to the safe choice of teaching, my director approached me with the marketing opportunity I thought I'd missed! Turns out the place I returned to teach also needed someone to save the drowning student activities program.

However, we all know that new roles mean new stress! I'm getting through this by dialing up my pupil and aural cavities to maximum: observing like a mofo.

My first task was to submit an event calendar of both suggested and chaperoned events at my school. I've learned that modifying said calendar is a daily occurrence, but what ultimately matters is the face-time of announcing the week's events to students: a lot of them have a one-week sense of time, so my clandestine manipulations stayed unnoticed in shadow.

A regular part of the position is classroom announcements. By popping into 25 classrooms, I introduced myself to 350 people in one day! I think I get through the reluctance to talk in front of groups of people with two pieces of advice. The first is that no one really wants to laugh at a speaker for making a mistake; there's always empathy, considering that public speech is super high on the list of phobias. The second is, in the case that people do want to laugh at a public speaker, you gotta beat them to the punch and make them laugh.

Another long-term perk is that I also get to spend lots of hours with the desk staff instead of teacher time. I get to glean an occasional facet of being a student from another country. They're not magically dumped into a classroom, after all. There are visa concerns, scholarships, home stays, agents, other schools, and the occasional discipline problems, and my school has a person for each of those worries. Each student needs to be handled by 3-5 people, just at school!

*cackles maniacally* If ONLY...

Unfortunately, countless hours of manpower are wasted in calculating student attendance. The amount of admin work an absence creates is almost as much as being present and under care of a teacher! I'm shocked by how acceptable students think it is to miss class just to ask about their attendance. Luckily, my only part in that is haranguing students to cut their 30-minute smoke breaks short. Yes, they take 30-minute smoke breaks. No, I am not kidding.

My next goals are to plan a skit competition, get some student clubs properly up and running, and get our website and Facebook page updated on time. The best part about the latter two tasks is that I can apply this back to my own budding interest, Grammar Pimps.

I'm glad that I have the opportunity to do something new, while also seeing a new aspect of students. I wish I could say I've put the observations into meaningful action and gotten better at things, but that's a challenge on its way. 

Games in 2015: Spring

Dat Northwest climate. It's in the low 60s, half the days are grey, and every other day is rainy. Perfect gaming weather to balance out the sunny get-out-and-do-something days. I've been adjusting to living in suburban Seattle, but I haven't stopped gaming. We're going to list these by time invested.

April

ABSO-gorgeous

This month's star feature is Child of Light for the Xbox One, free via Gold membership . This game is a sidescrolling adventure game with turn-based combat, to use technical terms. In other words, it plays like a freeflowing Metroid, and the battles are like Most Japanese RPGs. There's a twist, though. During combat, your friend and source of rhyme maintenance, Ignicius, is controlled to gove realtime battle effects. He can heal characters, slow enemies, and collect items, among things.

Also, the game looks and sounds classy. The graphics look hand-painted, characters join the party at a quick rate and bring their different abilities and quirks to their party. Did I mention the entire game is spoken in rhyme? This creates some interesting grammar choices, but blends with the game's presentation wonderfully. Also, the score to Child of Light is top-tier. Most music leads you around by piano, until certain times call for a larger orchestra sound. The different battle and boss tracks cause me to venture into more--avoidable, by the way--enemy encounters. 

Aww...c'mon, now. Why you gotta...:(

Also in the cards is Legend of Zelda, which I won through a giveaway on Reddit. This game is 27 years old, and still fun as hell. One thing this series always did was present itself very cinematically, even in it's first iterations. The very first sword you grab is in a dark room, lit by candles, with an old man telling you to take it. The last boss reveals himself to his own short theme and then shifts around the dark room. If you haven't played this game, it's on just about every Nintendo console available, so there are no excuses! There's even a master quest mode, which is one more playthrough with completely different levels and puzzles! This is the game that got me into video games.

Other ventures are more Titanfall, #IDARB, Smash Brothers, Zoo Tycoon and Cyber Defense, which I'll get to next update. Ohh, and Mortal Kombat.

Update: May

This month was the looming dark cloud of all that involves finishing Final Fantasy X2. At 107 hours, I completed fighting every monster in the game, beating the story and replaying a section with different choices, and beat a 100-floor dungeon TWICE. On the night that I finished the story, I had a realization.

Mortal Kombat X - *shakes head*

The Getoverhere Spear. Double-ice backfire! Gotcha Grab. The acid spit. Klassic spelling initial c-words with a K. What a hell of a franchise! The latest MK game is a masterpiece. The original kreators have their hands deep in this, and only now do we know just how a graphically-realized peek at imaginative violence looks like, and it's gross. The newest systems have enough power to give the always-realistic kombatants the final anatomical details underneath the skin, which you'll see more often than you think. The...handful (potential pun intended) of fatalities that I've seen are enough for a horrified chuckle. Johnny Cage's default first fatality is one of those.

Then, there's the disgusting stuff, like how Liu Kang rips out his opponent's trachea, and then his LOWER JAW! This is over the top, but you also get to hear the gasping and blood bubbles, which adds a visceral layer to the shock. I'd equate the violence to Game of Thrones, and this might be the first time I've recommended vendors sticking to an M-rating.

As with the kurrent generation of fighters, you have an in-game profile that tracks your stats, and gains experience to show off your prowess. You also join one of 5 factions that come with their own fatalities.

The story mode is awesome. A few minutes of sharp-looking kutscenes that seamlessly blend with gameplay. For easily 10 years, developers have dropped fully-rendered kutscenes in exchange for more efficient ingame ones and no one ever told them that they looked shitty. A few games got away with this, like Uncharted and Last of Us...the majority of games lost their cinematic touch. Remember the FMVs from FFVII compared to the ingame graphics? Yeah. Well, the processing power is high enough that the gap in quality has rapidly shrunken, but Mortal Kombat has something to boast about. It is truly perfect. 90% of the seamless fight the CPU got the first hit because I was expecting loading time or the announcer to say, "FIGHT!"

Kharacter variations and costumes - how klever!

While this is the first game that has actually shocked me in its gruesomeness, the kreators have kicked ass in making MK a legitimate fighting game. The kombat has been tweaked over the last 3 generations, keeping the kharacters' multiple fighting stances, which I thought they would have done away with. I'm glad they stuck with it. The result is a fast-paced game with a deep, polished system, with fully-kustomizeable kontrols in case you don't like the default layout.

Mortal Kombat X, like the two games before it, is the absolute best that Netherrealm Studios has to offer and you should get it...just be ready to kuddle something fuzzy or find something beautiful between sessions.

Update: this game has one of the best presentations I've ever seen. Kharacter kostumes are introduced in kontext of the story, and most things are presented with enough justification that makes me wonder: how long was this game in production? Also, as a note, one of the female kharacters aims for overt sex appeal, and even that's used ironically. Mileena was kreated as a failed hybrid/klone who kept most of Princess Kitana's looks, which she likes to flaunt every once in a while. However, the rest of the femmes are hardkore, grim, humorous and tough as their male kounterparts. I'm trying to say that the writers weren't going to unnecessarily perpetuate female troupes. Good on them!

Finding an apartment in Japan

If you are flying into Japan on a contract you signed back at home, you've probably been offered an apartment. It's nice to have the peace of mind that you'll have a place to stay upon arrival, but a little knowledge about your options will have more of that paycheck going to what you want to do. 

 Your first option is to stay in a guesthouse. When I first heard the term, I pictured a lodge or hostel. They're generally more laid out like dorms, and the units may or may not have a bathroom attached. The two big companies I know of are Oakhouse and Sakura House. These are probably the best options for a few months in Nippon. There is a nonrefundable management fee if you don't catch one of their (ad) campaigns, your base rent, and then a packaged utility fee. The utility fee is usually the only overpriced component of this, but your unit is furnished. Your internet connection, however, may be strictly limited. This means that certain ports may be blocked, preventing your favorite apps and downloads. 

Oak Mansion in Futamatagawa, Yokohama - 65,000

 The total difference for me was still roughly 20,000 yen ($195). Obviously, this depends on your region and distance from the train station. I paid 65,000 ($630) for a tiny room, with a single-element burner, fridge, microwave and bathroom, utilities included. However, it was a 15 minute walk to the station, then 10 minutes away from the main hub by train. 

 It is worth noting that most Japanese companies pay your transportation costs, so if you don't mind standing or bringing a book, you have better control over rent.

Programmable bath with reheat/temp/water level/timer

 Option 2: Urban Renaissance. The name is epic, but this is a service by the Japanese government that tosses the traditional Japanese apartment experience out the window. With UR, you can enter and leave your unit with 2 weeks’ notice, there's no gift money, no required guarantor, and the deposit is only 3 months. 

6jo (6 tatami-mat room) - roughly 12' x 9'

 You may or may not have heard that the regular process for an apartment is gift money (you basically give a month's worth of rent to the manager as a thank you,) key money (up to 6x rent, refundable), and a deposit. Basically, you'll need up to 8x the advertised monthly rent to do it the Japanese way. PLUS a guarantor, which a lot of schools don't actually do. UR cuts that down to 4 months, all refundable, minus a chunk of your deposit (less than 5% in my experience).

Separate toilet room...if you've never, you should.

UR helps both Japanese citizens and foreigners, though getting an agent that speaks English is tricky, even in the second largest city of Yokohama. All of the emergency information, maintenance, comes in Japanese/English manuals, though. You'll need to set up your internet, power, water and gas in Japanese.

Kitchens, hallways - 1LDK was 85,000

What is the tradeoff? UR is the absolute most flexible and cheapest, but your unit is bare, often without even an AC/heater or bedroom ceiling light. The furniture problem is best solved by scanning craigslist for both free furniture and 10,000-20,000 ($100-195) moving truck services. Another choice is to join the Yahoo Group [tokyofreecycle]. You’ll get lists of who is getting rid of what, and where they are giving it away.  It's stressful, but if you're planning to stay in Japan longer than half a year (most contracts are a year), then this is the way to go.

Back home: now what?

As of writing, I have been back in lovely Seattle for 4 whole days. Yokohama was still pretty cold and rainy, and Seattle has had 2 sunnier, warmer days. Dat Northwest climate, dho...the summer will be warm and sometimes breezy, the beach barbecues and camping trips, and some quality bike trails. Yokohama has all of this, but now I know people who drive and, more importantly, eat as much as I do! What's on my plate now, though? Probably the priorities of any person returning home: find a place to live, find a job, see loved ones again. Sounds pretty standard, right?

This house! Almost 10 years ago, with Aaron and Jaaron

Place found! I'm lucky enough to have beds around the world where I am welcome to stay. Teaching English for as long as I have, I've made connections with students and traveling friends; a "couch passport," if you will. The latest was meeting a co-worker's family the night before I left Japan. She has a large family, and, although none of the parents, two sisters or brother speaks English, I wasn't the only non-Japanese person at that table. I've been hosted by families before, but this impromptu party and welcoming into their family was one of the best experiences in Japan, and happened at the end of my 2.5 years there. Timing is interesting.

This time, however, my roost is with my second family that's down the street from where I spent my childhood. This is where I've spent 3 of the last 4 Christmases, and it was the hangout house during high school and university. I'll be here for at least a month until I get that first paycheck. The next goal is to move within biking distance of work.

My last day 3 years ago. Now I'm coming back for the sequel!

Job potentially found! In a few days, I'll be meeting a hiring manager at my previous school to see how I can help! From Japan, I had made a goal of working for Amazon, in some kind of Japan-US liaising position, which eventually turned into general marketing. I had the idea that a) I needed a break from teaching, b) I didn't want to lose the salary, c) I want to transfer my personal skills into something new. However, one of the benefits of staying in the same career is knowing the right people and making interviews formalities rather than evaluative tests. Good friends and fellow teachers have referred me for my last 3 jobs in the last 5 years, and I am thankful for that. Even if I still go for Amazon or Nintendo, no one can diss me for applying from a safe (read: employed) position.

Loved ones have been contacted or called, and everything is more or less the same. People around me are moving upward!

Other to-dos are maintaining a frugal lifestyle without too much help from my families, selling and downsizing my 10 boxes of possessions, getting comfortable with my bike in a different setting, and lowering my carb intake. I'd like to think these are realistic, attainable goals for the near future. What are your living, working, and relationship goals? Is there anything I missed?