WATN: Ryan Hertel (Hyogo, 2012-2015)

 

Where and When

I spent 3 years (2012-2015) in Minamiawaji-shi, Awajishima, Hyogo-ken. It was actually the sister city of my (since disowned) hometown of Celina, OH, so it was nice to get to live in the same town I visited 12 years earlier as a middle schooler.
Favorite JET memory

Runners up are exploring every nook and cranny of Hiroshima and Fukuoka, spending 11 days in Korea, spending 5 or so days in Taiwan, and seeing countless shows from various punk, metal, and noise groups from all over the world throughout Japan. However, my favorite memory is probably spending a few days in Okinawa with this pretty lady I know.

 

I ate everything in Okinawa I could find, including stewed pork cubes, pig’s feet udon, dried pig’s face, taco rice, donut balls topped with taco ingredients, raw beef sushi, raw goat, tiny salty fish on cubes of tofu, snake wine, fermented smelly tofu, and all of the sea grapes I could find. Pretty lady and I also did a crazy, awesome stamp rally at Shuri Castle that was most definitely designed for kids but we were better at. Renting a car to check out the Peace Memorial, the aquarium, and King Taco was a fantastic decision too. Loved me some Okinawa aside from the loud, drunken American marines that tended to pop up and cause a scene.
Most valuable thing learned

Beware of the know-it-alls. As many JETs come straight out of college or never grew up beyond then, many of them tend to still be in the pretty, pretty princess zone where they think they’re infallible and brilliant. Spoiler Alert: Many of them are unspectacular idiots from unspectacular places such as Port Washington, New York or Cleveland, Ohio who go back to those places to waste space, create more space wasters, and remain a drain on precious resources, like oxygen. This certainly doesn’t apply to everyone, but it can definitely be a theme among many JET communities that continues throughout anywhere you go. I’ve learned to be a better judge of character and to seek out the truly spectacular, potential-filled individuals that you can find anywhere if you look hard enough. For the most part, I learned not to just trust someone because they’re geographically close to you but to seek out excellent people.
Recommendations for current JETs

Do what you want to do and don’t wait for others to go along or give you permission. There are so many opportunities available to you, both in Japan and everywhere else that you just need to hop at. Waiting around for a group or trying to plan for everyone’s schedule means you’ll have to miss many.  Learn to talk to strangers, eat their delicious candy, and get out and experience things (and stuff). If I waited for others to plan things for me, I never would have found my favorite punk rock basement bar (Bar 混沌, pronounced Konton; http://barkonton.exblog.jp/), visited an animatronic Kappa statue in Fukusaki, Hyogo, or seen Tokyo noise legend Merzbow live in the SuperDeluxe basement with 200 very intensely focused fans and one childish jerkbag who tried to ruin it for them, which in its own right was a great story.

Go to as many random places as you can! Find new bars, stores, museums, restaurants, and strange little temples just by wandering into weird paths and dimly lit basements. Wandering into one creepy basement led me to Osaka’s only Satanism, goth, and occult store, Territory (http://www.territory-d.com/), which was the first discovery that opened me up to searching out eeeeeverything neat and wondrous in Japan.

 

Regrets

I never made it to Yakushima. It’s the awesome, forested island that was the inspiration for Princess Mononoke. While I was in Japan, I got really into hiking through nature, including climbing up Mt. Yuzuruha in Minamiawaji a few times in an attempt to commune with the deer and monkeys. Yakushima would have been an excellent cap on my nature exploration/attempt to build a bloodthirsty deer-monkey hybrid army. Everyone should go to Yakushima and send me souvenirs.

 

Present Shinanigans

I’m in San Francisco having the time of my life with my buddy Wesley, who I brought back with me from Japan. A few people tried to talk me out of moving here, since it is currently the most expensive city to live in the US. However, I’m no stranger to throwing myself into difficult situations, once having lost 40 pounds in 5 months on the “I don’t have money for food” diet in Los Angeles.

 

I spent 2 and a half months working at a tech company as an office manager, and now I’m making the most of my funemployment time to hike every wooded area, see every museum and silly tourist attraction, attend every wrestling or music show, and eat every bit of awesome food. I’m pretty much using the insane “what looks neat” research skills I honed in Japan to keep myself busy while waiting for a new job to appear. I’ve also made a ton of friends by joining a WWE/Wrestling watching club, hanging out at a silly bar called Kozy Kar, and starting to volunteer for Maximum Rock n Roll magazine. I may be nearing 30, but I refuse to slow down or compromise what I want to do. I’m fairly firm in the belief that it’s silly to not have as much fun as you can in the time you have.

 

Also, a new Japanese ramen place, Mensho Tokyo, just opened a block from my house. The ramen is insanely amazing, but, for the record, Premium Malt’s beer is still terrible, even after you haven’t had it in a while after leaving Japan.
Contact information: Drop a line if you have questions or want to share any wicked pasta recipes/maps to buried treasure: ryan.r.hertel@gmail.com

 

Ryan Hertel