Scrap
I might later elaborate on the project, but one thing I did while in Utah this past week-and-a-half was sort through the boxes of items I had been storing in my parents’ shed since 2004. One item was this scrap of paper that I jotted down in September 2000.
I returned from two years in Japan that month with no plans for education, work, or life. After a day or two back in Utah, I visited a friend I had known in Japan who had returned a few months before me. He told me he had worked over the summer in Las Vegas as a tour guide for Japanese tourists. The job sounded fun. You drove tourists around the Utah national parks and Grand Canyon and ate a lot of steak dinners while being friendly and helpful and telling the guests about the places and repeating the same corny jokes for each new group. Since it was already September, I wasn’t going to be attending any college for at least another semester. I wanted to keep using Japanese. It was perfect.
The scrap of paper is all I had as I drove my Dad’s white Ford Tempo to Las Vegas. I had no friends, job, or place to stay. While still in Utah I had called the number at the top (it still connects to the tour company) to talk to Kurt. He had given my Japanese a cursory test over the phone and deemed it sufficient. So I headed there the next day (or so—memory and records grow murkier each year). I followed the directions to the address. I met Kurt. I was directed to a teriyaki bowl restaurant to meet a guy named Ryan. He directed me to the apartment where their young tour guide dudes lived. No guides were living there, though. Summer was over and they were all back in college. But an amiable mysterious guy named Jim and a six-toed kitten were living there.
The next day I took a $50 check that my grandmother had written for my birthday to the bank. They wouldn’t cash it because I didn’t have an account yet. I took the check to a seedy check-cashing place. They called my very old grandma directly to confirm that it was legitimate. She was confused. I felt alone. Eventually the place gave me 80% of the money. I could live for a week or so. After that I did some work and got paid a bit and got started in life.
The life impact of the scrap of paper blows my mind. Everything about my life now is directly connected with it. The month anfter arriving In Las Vegas, I met my wife, who was going to university there. On the tour guide job, I had guests who influenced me to study Japanese politics and return to Japan. I experienced my first paid interpreting work. I experienced starting from nothing in a new place. Life today all started with it. What a thing.