Thoughts

I am almost 25 years old. That is about one third of my expected life span. I am no spring chicken. Yet, I look at my friends around me getting engaged, getting married, and I think – what? Marriage? That’s such a grown up thing! Why are you doing that?

It makes sense. After college we enter into adulthood. At least, that is the course many follow. I mean adulthood as a sociological function. Entering into the community of adults as a full-fledged member, with common goals and behaviors. Where else is there to go but to get a job and get married? Now I am not being cynical. I have never experienced the strong love that people do, so, assuming it is out there for me, I have been missing out. However, in the place of a warm love, I can take intellectual comfort in a life that is hard and jagged, a warm, fluffy life is antithetical to me. I don’t want to live an ascetic life, and from all the monetary assistance I receive from my parents I don’t, not materialistically. Yet, at a time when I am more comfortable and happy than ever, I find myself thrusting out into the great unknown, in search of some purpose. I am willing this great chapter in my life to end, knowing that it will be one of the regrets of my later days, along with not perfecting Japanese. If only I could be a person who could be content, I should likely stay in Japan. And, in the sense that I believe it is in my nature to never be satisfied, and to flee from happiness, I can take intellectual solace that to do such requires a certain strength of will, which I apparently have.

Around my age, people start to become adults. I have one friend a year or two younger than me, who is married already. Good for her. Me? I have not yet been ready to do such a thing. I remember one Wednesday night I got drunk in my room alone because I could, I had nothing better to do, and it was a national holiday the next day. I emailed my brother, bragging of my fortune. He put it succinctly, “ enjoy slackerdom for as long as you can. ”

I don’t know when this life gets old, but judging by my friends, it can last a long time. When I go to my local bar, on any given day I can expect to see some friends. Weekdays and weekends blur past distinction. You drink until one or two, walk home, wake up at seven, hit the snooze button until seven-thirty, go to work, and start the cycle all over again. GOCers have some concept of right and wrong, propriety, that doesn’t enable them to go out drinking on the weekdays like we do over here. Recently someone told me they dreaded Mondays, and I thought, suck it up, be prepared for five hours of sleep, and every day can me the same. The thought of dreading Mondays fills me with dread, actually. Would I stay in Japan, I could look forward to years more of easy living; I am still young. As it turns out, most of my friends are late twenties, early thirties.

Perhaps in your twenties, one starts to crave stability. You love someone, they make you happy, you decide, why not make this permanent? Why not stop running and, to use the wonderfully meaning-infused phrase “settle down ”? This logical progression crosses borders, as here in Japan people seem to get married after college in their twenties as well. College is such a gruel that who can blame someone for wanting to take a permanent break. Life is so much easier with stability, and especially with a partner. Now, I have generally always been a loner. In high school I had a group of friends called the Fantastic Five, but this was somewhat artificial. I sat with people at lunch, and was friends with most, but they were not all friends with each other. In college, I had a wide range of friends, but never really fell into any one group. In fact, I resisted it. It seemed too staid to limit oneself to one set of friends. However, now as I approach 25, I find myself in a social circle like never before, and I quite like it. It isn’t a group of friends, per-say. We don’t all go out and get dinner. But we all go to the same bar, we all go to the same rock shows, we are all friends or friendly, and if, after a rock show, you go to dinner, you can invite your friend, who invites her friend, who invites her friend, and miraculously, everyone already knows each other and is on friend-like terms. This sort of dynamic is new to me, but it is very appealing. Kobe is such a small city, this would be hard to replicate in other places. Physicists are generally such nerds, that I wouldn’t be seeking out something like this with my classmates next year. Similarly as other people find a satisfying comfort in a loved one around my age, I have found satisfying comfort being part of a community. Ahhhhhh… the rub is, as weeks go on, I become better and better friends with the people in this group, but I only have weeks left in Japan. Then, I leave.

There are many aspects of Japanese culture that resonate with me. I can name them better than when I first arrived. I hesitate to do so, at the risk of otherizing the place in which I live. But since this is a blog about my life in Japan, I may be able to get away with it. Or one, there is a lack of guilt in Japanese society. You don’t see someone feel bad for drinking on a Tuesday night, and for better or worse, cheating on your significant seems rampant. While I don’t support cheating, seeing almost everyone engage in it has made me realize just how many of our Western values we put on self-evident pedestals. (Hey, everyone does it, and if they don’t find out, who does it hurt?) You don’t have to explain yourself like you do in the GOC. You are an autonomous being and are presumed to have made the correct decision yourself, end of story. There is less ruffling of peacock feathers over here, fewer loud drunken males, fewer people hurling epithets at each other, and much more safety. There is a premium placed on kindness! When in groups, people act as members of a group, instead of an aggregate of individuals. Also, last but not least, I would say that if the average GOC girl rates in at a 6/10 on the looks scale, the Japanese rates in at a 7/10. I am sorry, but Japanese girls are in better shape, wear more womanly clothes, better make up, etc.

To contrast with the negative aspects of the GOC, well, gluttony – ordering for one and discovering the portions are big enough for two, loudness – shouting matches are the way to win conversations (why are conversations competitions anyways?,) directness – which is a trait that only GOCers find self-evidently good, a lack of safety, people in your face and assuming that they have a right to know your business, going somewhere in a group and each person deciding to do whatever it is they want to. This is a vague general list. I get depressed thinking about going back.

But I must. I have decided to pursue physics and will. Pursuing physics ascribes to my life something greater than teaching English. It is the triumph of the will over the heart. Will I come back? I kind of hope so. I realize there are negative things about life here that I did not touch upon (people’s indecisiveness, long work hours, a pressure to maintain appearances,) but the general refined subtlety of Japan appeals to me more than the blunt, hurtling train of the GOC. Perhaps it is Kobe, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have just found a magical city to live in. If I lived in Tokyo, perhaps my feelings would be different. I fear losing my Japanese abilities and friends. If I came back, I hope I can regain both. When I am older, if I have the opportunity to do physics in Japan, will I have the ability to resist the sirens’ call of stability and move once again?

At UCR. Visiting UCSD and UH next week.

Hey, I'm at the computer lab of UC Riverside right now. Its a nice campus. Reminds me of UMass + 20 degrees. However, as far as I can tell, the town of Riverside is nowhere near as nice as Amherst. Anyways, interesting developments on the grad school front. I talked to some people yesterday. Didn't get a chance to talk to probably the most interesting professor of all, although his research is in a field I never thought I would go into. (talked to him a little bit.) anyways, the interesting thing i found out is how high energy experimental particle physics works. apparently, everyone who is involved in experimental HEP as it is known live near CERN in Geneva for either half the year or the whole year! I never expected this, I thought once you gained seniority as a grad student you might be lucky to be sent over there for a month or two. No, apparently, after my first year, depending on which professor I choose as my advisor, I shipped on out over there!

Now of course, being a part of history at the heart of the largest and one of the most important physics experiments ever would be very exciting. And some of you, especially Dad, would say living in Switzerland or France would be great. But I don't want to live in boring old Geneva! I want to live in sunny southern California, (or perhaps Hawaii.) 5 years in Geneva would be tough, as well as moving back and forth between Geneva and Cally ever six months.

(Nice aside, though, one professor whom I didn't request to speak to requested to speak with me, and seemed very eager to get me to be her graduate student. However, this probably is partially due to the fact that she will have no more grad students at cern and thus will lose continuity/funding unless she gets someone asap. ad the way this Prof does is, is you go to Geneva for the whole year, not 6 month stints)

So this adds another dimension to the graduate decision. Along with this comes the realization that if I am just gonna go work on a huge particle accelerator, a place where your research questions are limited to a set of about 6 or 7, why not do that under the brand name of the best school possible? After all CERN (well, the LHC more specifically,) is the LHC, and that will be on my resume no matter UCSD or UCR, so as for the degree, why not go for the best brand-name?

As far as Hawaii goes, they have connections to neutrino experiments in Japan. While the neutrino is the most fascinating particle to me, I am afraid that there are less research opportunities with it. It is so hard to see, and so much stuff that can be done on it has already been done before. I will have to scope out the sitch when I go to Hawaii and perhaps UCSD. However, if Hawaii like UCR ships off its experimental physics grad students to the actual experiments, then I could look forward to being shipped off to Japan; I am sure you know my preferences of living between Geneva and Japan. However, it is Tsukuba Japan, so I am not sure how boring that area is, would have to look that up. Kind of wished I had visited there, but really, I never expected grad students to just be shipped off to experiments. Heck, maybe that is just UCR.

As far as theory goes, well, ya, I do prefer theory, and I could do theory and stay in Cally or Hawaii, but a) the neutrino theorist at UCR named Ma seems like an Old Dog with not much bark left, plus he says there is no more theory left to do on the neutrino, and b) i heard a couple horror stories about grads going from theory postdoc to theory postdoc until they couldn't handle the ruthless treadmill and quit. experiment seems better job security. if i did theory at ucr, itd probably be with a guy named Wudka, he seems like he'd be a good advisor.

oh well, that is all for now. the thick has definitely plottened with the understanding that exp HEP grads go to the experiment they are working on. good or bad? both? gonna have to think about this.