Yep, it's me. At first glance I look like your average, ordinary middle-class American Joe White Guy coffee-guzzling office worker. Nothing outwardly exceptional about me in any way. Which is a public persona I work hard at preserving, because where I live the locals have a saying: the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Hard.

So I keep my head down, do what I'm told, don't brag about my accomplishments or possessions, keep socializing to a minimum, and concentrate on not standing out. You might think that sounds boring, but it does make life comfortable. I've never been in a fight, never had anything stolen from me, never had to worry about jealous co-workers / friends / neighbors (I don't even know what my neighbors look like) / etc. In short, I'm a bit of a neurotic obsessive-compulsive recluse, and I like it that way.

Given all that, you'd be forgiven for thinking that's all there is to me, that my life really is as bland as I'd have you believe. But that's only my public persona, the mask I wear to get along with society. As with most things in this world, to get at the truth you have to dig a little deeper, see a little clearer. And Steemit presents the perfect platform to give you all a window into that secret truth, draped in the comfort of grand pseudonymous style.

I'm from a little city called Issaquah in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, but I usually tell people I'm from Seattle because nobody in the wider world has ever heard of Issaquah, but everybody knows Seattle (Issaquah is only half an hour east of Seattle nestled against the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, so that's not stretching the truth too much). It was a great place to grow up, surrounded by beautiful greenery, plenty of parks, hiking & biking trails, good swimming during summer, and skiing in the winter. I enjoyed the suburban lifestyle, far enough from the big city to be relaxing and peaceful, yet close enough for all those essential modern conveniences.

The Expat

Graduation Day 2003. Here I am surrounded by friends & family on one of the proudest days of my life. I'm 4th from the left. Three of the people in this picture, my grandparents at far right, have since passed on.

I graduated from the University of Washington in June 2003 with a B.S. in computer science and a minor in mathematics (which is pretty much the most useless minor ever, but looks good as an extra bullet point on my resume). Since childhood I had been dedicated to pursuing a career as a computer programmer (or software engineer, as we like to call ourselves, because any title with the word "engineer" in it sounds more impressive), but I was feeling mentally burned out after college and wanted a break. Many of my friends had been bitten by the travel bug, and I too wanted to get out and see the world.

Asians are a large minority group in the Seattle area, and Japanese culture is especially popular. At the time, Ichiro Suzuki was one of the star players for the Seattle Mariners baseball team. In school I was a member of the anime club, and my roommate & I went through most of the club's subtitled stock of Japanese import videos (we deemed Studio Ghibli to be of far superior quality compared with the embarrassing drivel Disney kept pumping out). Also I had visited Fukuoka in northern Kyushu a couple years earlier representing the UW computer science department in a robotics competition. So when considering a post-graduation travel destination, Japan seemed like the logical choice.

I said goodbye to my family and moved to Tokyo in September 2003. Originally, the plan was to take a break from computers and teach English for a year, then head back to the States and get my career started. But things didn't quite work out that way (life never works out the way you expect, no matter how meticulously you plan it). Instead, I met a girl, feel in love with both her and the convenience of life in Tokyo, got married, made a baby, and just sort of ended up staying. Here it is, the summer of 2016, almost 13 years later, and I'm still here, living it up in the thriving heart of Japan.

My new wife & I relax in a ryokan, a kind of traditional Japanese inn.

My daughter when she was younger, getting ready for a summertime festival.

A more recent pic of the three of us, about to enjoy a dinner outside in the Korea-town district of Shinjuku.

Will I ever go back to the land of my birth? Sometimes, I think about it. But then I remember how hard it was in the beginning, building up a life from scratch after coming to Japan. I've got no desire to uproot myself and go through that all over again. After so long in Tokyo, I suspect I'd suffer a sort of reverse-culture shock if I ever went back: what would I do without a vending machine on every street corner? No trains within walking distance of my home? And tipping in restaurants for deplorable customer service? Ick. And then there's my daughter: although she looks Western, she grew up attending the same schools as ordinary Japanese kids and is much more Japanese than American.

The English Teacher

To improve as an individual, you have to face your weaknesses head on by going outside your comfort zone repeatedly until it expands and whatever activity that used to make you uncomfortable becomes routine. One major weakness in my younger years was public speaking. I hated the thought of it. My naturally shy, introverted personality made me much more at home with computers & books than my fellow human beings. So when I realized that English teaching was an easy ticket to a Japanese visa, I jumped at the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I learned almost as much about social interaction from my students as I ended up teaching them about my native language.

I had many great adventures as an English teacher in Tokyo. Too many to relate here in this introductory post (in fact the subject deserves a full blog post of its own, so stay tuned if you're curious, and I'd be happy to tell some amusing anecdotes by request in the comments section). Suffice it to say that eventually I settled into an easy, relaxed daily routine that would continue for the next 4 years, and public speaking actually became a strength that would serve me well later on. But the job wasn't exactly demanding, and I fell into the trap of becoming lazy and unambitious, my computer skills growing rusty from disuse. Ironic considering I took the job in the first place to expand my horizons.

My co-workers check the day's class schedule in the teacher's room.

I might have stayed an English teacher forever, unable to climb out of the rut I'd let myself fall into, if not for my company going bankrupt in October 2007. The bankruptcy of Nova, one of the biggest chains of English conversation schools in Japan, rocked the industry to its core. In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. Nova's business practices were on the shady side, to say the least, but I'd always personally been treated well so mostly turned a blind eye to the various rumors and grumbles of dissatisfaction from other staff.

After that October paycheck never came, I was forced to open my eyes and start thinking about what kind of future I wanted to have. Was this as good as it gets? Being what amounted to an unskilled, migrant worker in a foreign country, earning less than a third of what my old college friends were making back in the States, living in a one-room dump eating my dinner on a suitcase-sized fold out plastic table every night? Clearly my situation had become unsustainable.

My cluttered one-room apartment back in the good old Nova days.

Most of my fellow teachers soon returned to their home countries. They had no savings to speak of, and no means to remain in Japan while searching for a new job. But I was stubborn; I couldn't stand the thought of limping home to my parents with my tail between my legs, worse off than when I'd graduated from university, and I had my fledgling family to think about.

So I maxed out my credit cards with cash advances, liquidated all the stocks I'd been holding as retirement savings, and applied for a small unemployment benefit from the Japanese government. All told, I was able to scrape together enough cash to survive for a few months while hunting desperately for a new job. I didn't even tell my parents about Nova's bankruptcy, fearing they would apply pressure on me to return home which would be difficult to resist. Thankfully my visa had a couple years left before expiration, so at least there were no worries about being kicked out of the country.

Nova's biggest English school before the bankruptcy, located just a short way from Shinjuku Station in central Tokyo. My initial training upon arrival in Japan took place here.

Nova's history and details of its collapse are laid out in great length on this Wikipedia page

I'll stop here for now to let my story thus far sink in, and so that you, dear reader, don't tire of my verbosity. In part 2, to be published later today or tomorrow, I'll tell you how I recovered from this low point in my life by returning to my true love, computer programming, and how I plan to escape the rat race altogether through the amazing world of cryptocurrency investing (if you've ever dreamed of doing the same, I'll discuss some ideas & strategies in future blog posts; maybe we can realize that dream together!).

Stay tuned my fellow Steemians, and if you've enjoyed reading about my life, please follow me so you can easily find part 2 in your feed once it's ready.

EDIT: Part 2 is now published . Enjoy!