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. 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I ate everything in Okinawa I could find, including stewed pork cubes, pig\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s feet udon, dried pig\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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. 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re geographically close to you but to seek out excellent people. Do what you want to do and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s schedule means you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to miss many.\u00c2\u00a0 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 \u00e6\u00b7\u00b7\u00e6\u00b2\u0152, pronounced Konton; http:\/\/barkonton.exblog.jp\/<\/a>), 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.<\/p>\n 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only Satanism, goth, and occult store, Territory (http:\/\/www.territory-d.com\/<\/a>), which was the first discovery that opened me up to searching out eeeeeverything neat and wondrous in Japan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Regrets<\/strong><\/p>\n I never made it to Yakushima. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Present Shinanigans<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m no stranger to throwing myself into difficult situations, once having lost 40 pounds in 5 months on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have money for food\u00e2\u20ac\u009d diet in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I spent 2 and a half months working at a tech company as an office manager, and now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty much using the insane \u00e2\u20ac\u0153what looks neat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d research skills I honed in Japan to keep myself busy while waiting for a new job to appear. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m fairly firm in the belief that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s silly to not have as much fun as you can in the time you have.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beer is still terrible, even after you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t had it in a while after leaving Japan. <\/p>\n Ryan Hertel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":5610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false},"categories":[442,126],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/RHertelColorRun.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5647"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFavorite JET memory<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"RHertelMonkeyPark\"](\"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/RHertelMonkeyPark.jpg\")
<\/a>Most valuable thing<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0learned<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nRecommendations for current JETs<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/a>Contact info<\/strong>rmation:<\/strong> Drop a line if you have questions or want to share any wicked pasta recipes\/maps to buried treasure: ryan.r.hertel@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n