Foreword:

Wow, it certainly has been a hot minute since I posted on here! What can I say, I've been busy. Life happens. But, I did start a podcast, so there's that. I decided I might as well link the transcripts here, for a few reasons, but mainly because I teach English, and this could be one hell of an English teaching resource. I may post translations in Japanese later for my students! Stay tuned. Thanks for stopping by, too! 

HellotoLucas: A Bio (brief history, education, career, interests, goals with the podcast, life                                             goals, yadda yadda.)

…and away we go! So of course, when kicking off any podcast, it’s basically obligatory to give a bit of a self-introduction, unless you happen to be famous, and I very much am not. I suppose you could say I’m big in Japan, but mostly in the sense that I’m just taller than everyone here. I have been doing a very public-facing job for most of my adult life, namely teaching English in Japan, and I have done a lot of blogging which I will link to somewhere, but until now I generally have tried to maintain my privacy for the most part. This has a lot to do with the nature of the world in which we’re currently living, where we have become data points for major tech companies to mine for personal information. Right now though, the creative urge, and the urge to connect with people around meaningful issues is more of a powerful motivator for me.

To those of you who have never heard of me, (most of you), my name is Lucas, but you guys can call me Luke. I don’t actually have a preference. Fun fact: my mother was pregnant with me when my parents saw the first Star Wars, and after seeing it they sort of said to themselves: “Huh…Luke…George Lucas…I like that.” So my name is inspired by science-fiction, which is perfect, because I totally am too. Appropriately enough, I am a huge Star Wars fan, and have studied a number of martial arts, so I could maybe even hold my own in a light saber duel. I studied Psychology too, so who knows, maybe I have a few Jedi mind tricks up my sleeve. This is the podcast you’ve been looking for.

I’m Canadian, and perhaps typical of your average Canadian in that I am fond of poutine, crepes with maple syrup, and have, several times, almost collided with moose while driving. Atypically, I know nothing about hockey, and I think winter sucks…winter sports, snow, going outside in winter…pretty much the whole thing. I’m from Kingston, Ontario, which (fun fact) was the original capital of Canada, way back in the 1840s. It’s a beautiful city, known for classic limestone architecture, a picturesque waterfront, a good night life, and…prisons. Many, many prisons. Both myself and several family members have worked in them from time to time over the years, and it was not entirely uncommon when we were growing up to hear that there were some escaped convicts hiding out somewhere around town. At least that made it easier for adults to teach kids about “stranger danger”. Aside from that it’s a university town, popular with tourists, and pretty close to the Thousand Islands, a spectacularly beautiful area that you should totally visit, or at least Google.

I’ve also lived in Ottawa, where I did my degree at Ottawa U, and in Toronto, so basically the Southern Ontario Trifecta, where something like 80% of the population lives. In brief, Ottawa was great in the summer, but the winter was like living in a deep freeze. I think the winters in Ottawa finally pushed me to say “You know, I have to get out of this country for a while, because I’m tired of living in a place where the air hurts my face.” Toronto was interesting because there was more to do, but it was just…a lot. The traffic, the noise, the crowds, the cost of living, the pollution…Toronto made me realize that I’m perfectly happy with any smaller town, so long as it can sustain a good pizzeria and a sushi place. And preferably a circle of people to play board games with. The people in both Ottawa and Toronto though, were A-plus, absolutely fantastic, the best people, great people on both sides. I made some amazing friends that I was sad to leave behind when I came to Japan.

As I write this, I’m in Japan teaching English for the second time, and I’m currently in my tenth year of doing so, if you can believe that. The first time was from 2005-2008, and then I came back again in 2013 after going home and working in Canada for a few years. I have bounced around a bit here, starting in Oita prefecture in a little town called Beppu, then moving to Oita city, then to Okinawa for 5 years, on a small island called Miyakojima. Okinawa was 100% as awesome as you might expect it to be, and I would go back in a hot minute. See what I did there? Hot? Yeah, Okinawa is like living on the sun. At the moment, however, I’m in Fukuoka prefecture, pretty close to where it all began so many years ago in Beppu. Initially I did this through the JET Programme, run by the government of Japan, which places foreign teachers in public schools, and taught mostly junior and senior high school students, with some special needs classes thrown in there. Japanese kids, I have to say, are awesome, wonderful to teach, and completely adorable. If I ever someday decide to adopt I would totally adopt one. They’re like little anime characters.

Some people might wonder why I do what I do. The short answer is, I like doing it, and sorry to be immodest, but I’m really good at it. It’s not really a “career” in the traditional sense, but it’s a decent living, and having tried other things, it’s the best match for my skill set I’ve come across so far. I like children, I like English, I like teaching, I love to travel, and this job allows me to tick all of those boxes. Also, there are relatively few other jobs where you get applause when you enter a room, so there’s that. I also get a chance to meet an amazing collection of people from around the world, and I am convinced that this has enriched my life immensely. I now have friends in the UK, Ireland, America, South Africa, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the UAE, Spain, Portugal, and of course, all over Japan. I get posts on my Facebook feed in at least five languages. Mind you I can’t read most of them, but it is cool.

In Canada, I did do my share of desk work as well. When I went back from 2008-2013, I worked as a contractor in a bunch of government jobs doing administrative stuff, human resources stuff, labour relations stuff, career counseling stuff, accounting stuff, volunteer coordination stuff, but ultimately, I got the itch to travel again. I also admittedly handicapped myself a bit by looking for work in Ottawa, where half the good jobs require French. My French could only be described as embarrassingly bad. If you don’t know, in Canada we study it in school for eight years, plus my father’s family is all French, and I even had a couple of French-speaking roommates in university, but it just never…rubbed…off. At this point my Japanese has far surpassed my French, and my Japanese is still probably what you’d call “intermediate”.

Anyway, my job search in Canada was also horrendously timed to coincide with the Great Recession, so I finally said “ENOUGH” and did what very few people do; I applied to JET a second time. Some people do reapply, but in my Tokyo orientation, they asked for a show of hands of second-time JETs, and in a room with maybe two thousand teachers, myself and about four other people raised their hands. The technical term for us, I believe, is “unicorns”. Typically, it’s a job overwhelmingly done by recent university graduates, and you’re capped at 5 years, after which you have to wait 5 years to apply again. I happened to be getting tired of the grind in Ottawa just as that reapplication window opened up, and long story short, a few months later, I was off to Okinawa.

I ended up staying the full five years in Okinawa because it was AWESOME, easily the best 5 years of my life post-university, and I’ll totally talk about it more eventually. When my time with JET was up, however, I wasn’t quite ready to leave. I looked for private work, but unfortunately nothing presented itself in Okinawa, so I had to come here to Fukuoka, where I’ve been teaching privately since. When I left Okinawa, I had been seeing someone for three years, which played a large part in my wanting to stay, but that ended last year, making my next steps sort of an open question.

To be totally honest, the private teaching has been a bit of a let-down. I came to Fukuoka to teach at an English conversation school, or Eikaiwa, but their teaching style just didn’t gel very well with mine. After so many years, I had a lot of ideas to bring to the table, but the owners were quite set in their own way of doing things. I get that they had a formula that worked, and I understand their reasoning for not wanting to change it, but very few of my ideas were ever really given any consideration. Ultimately it became unsatisfying, and we mutually decided it was best to part ways. After that, I was keen to stay in Fukuoka, so I got a job at what’s called a dispatch company, which hires out teachers to work in public schools. This was not my first choice, and let’s just say the compensation and benefits leave a lot to be desired. I feel like I’m better than ever at my job, but I’m getting paid less than before. Like, way less. If you’re curious about the job market for teachers in Japan and want to hear more about it, that’s another topic I’ll definitely be touching on down the road.

So, at the moment I‘m exploring my options. The podcast is one, and it may or may not gain popularity, but ultimately it’s a means to flex my creative muscles and to connect with more interesting new friends around the world. I would describe myself as someone with a lot of interests, and I need a medium through which to share them, especially now that we’re in full pandemic mode. As I mentioned, I kept a blog in Okinawa, and was lead editor for an Okinawa-wide JET newsletter, but it’s been a while, and I don’t want to get rusty, so here we are. Some of the things I’d love to explore here are psychology and sociology, which I studied in university, how they tie into politics and culture, which I follow closely, relationships, personal growth, the ex-pat experience, teaching, Japan in general, health and fitness (because in addition to the martial arts, I’m a runner and I do yoga), food (because who doesn’t like food, and cooking is a hobby of mine), gaming (of both the computer and board varieties), science, environmentalism, science fiction, futurism…and of course, I’m open to your ideas too, so please share them. I have opinions on just about everything, and I’m always up for a good debate. Eventually I’d love to get people on here to have an actual conversation with, and not just because the pandemic has made me long for human interaction, but because I believe that conversation is one of the most powerful tools we have in making our society better. To quote Sam Harris (who also has a podcast I would definitely recommend) we ultimately have the choice in society between conversation, or violence. I choose conversation.

Another reason I want to do this is that I find it really disturbing just how badly our information space has become cluttered by complete nonsense and idiocy lately. The best way I can think of to combat this is to create a forum where common sense is the foundation for any conversation, adding one more voice of reason to the chorus. While I’m open to new ideas and will gladly chat with people who don’t necessarily agree with me, the number of conspiracy theories gaining ground out there on the internet and even in mainstream media right now is like nothing I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. At a certain point, we have to be clear about what we know and what we don’t, or we start losing touch with reality. Yes, we went to the moon. No, the Earth is not flat. No, there are no Jewish space lasers. Yes, vaccines save lives and no, they do not cause autism. Enough with this stuff, please. It is utterly crucial to the future of our society that we get back to trusting science, and become more skeptical of Joe Schmo on the internet. Everyone is entitled their opinion, but if your opinion runs completely counter to what 95% of the experts in a field of study have to say, your opinion is very probably nonsense. Any meaningful conversation has to start with an understanding of the basic facts, and here, that is exactly where I plan to start, whatever topic is up for discussion.

So, my plan is to link this both in audio and in print on my website, with new podcasts on a weekly or semi-weekly basis. I’d also like to start making videos on Youtube eventually, although my experience in video production is pretty limited, and I’m hesitant to add to the ever-expanding pile of utterly unwatchable Youtube videos out there. It’s early days, so I’m still figuring all this out, but it will be interesting to see how I can improve at this as time goes on. I’m also keen to pick up editing and voice acting engagements, so feel free to contact me about that. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you get your questions, ideas, comments, anything. If you like the concept of the podcast and you’d like to hear more, I would sincerely love you if you helped out on my Patreon, everything helps. Until next time, stay awesome my friends.

Lucas

PS: here's the link to my Podcast:

https://www.patreon.com/Hellotolucas