around

I've been waiting to find something here that I don't like. Some little detail that's out of place, something that jars me out of my enchantment with Japan and makes me long for my familial home because I like it the American way better . Something that's not exciting, or cute, or interesting. Something that makes me think, "It'll be nice to have/do such-and-such again when I go back to the States." Except that's not what's happening. Everything I do, everywhere I go, I keep having other thoughts. I keep making plans for a future in Japan. At the grocery store today, I thought, "I should learn to de-bone and clean a fish so I can find markets to buy fresh, cheaper fish from." I thought, "When I learn enough Japanese, I should see if I can join one of those community farms to get fresh vegetables." At home, I thought, "It'd be nice to have a little chair in that corner there. Well, I'll save up and buy one lat...

For the second morning in a row, I went for a jog along the side streets of my neighborhood. The first morning, I went in a straight line, following the road as far as it went. When I arrived at a park, and a sharp turn, I turned around and jogged back. This morning, I turned left, and at the next intersection, right again, now following a new road as far as I felt I was willing to jog. I passed more houses, more little plots of land growing rice and vegetables, and what I think might have been a Shinto shrine on a wide expanse of cleared land. Both times, although I passed people and the occasional car, I was mostly on my own along the roads. Last night I remember lying in the dark before I fell asleep and thinking, "It's so quiet." No distant din of traffic, no undertone buzz of electricity, no nearby growl of a scooter engine, no occasional shout or yell from somewhere in the streets. Last night, I fell asleep to the silence of suburbia. It's a marked differ...

So. Here ends my first week in Japan. I arrived last Thursday, and now here I am, seven days later, officially moved into my apartment. I have things to say about Japan. Good things, even. Happy, loving, fantastic things. But right now, however, I'm just ridiculously tired. Because from day one, I've been on the move. Not physically, you understand, but mentally. The night my Interac group arrived at the hotel, we were shepherded into a room for a brief and unexpected hotel etiquette orientation (that, in my opinion, was way too full of smiles and long explanations for being given to people who'd just gotten finished sitting on a plane for 11 hours and hadn't eaten yet), plus paperwork. The next morning, at 8:30am, we had another orientation. Then, we went to join our individual branches and branch managers for company training. This training lasted 8 hours a day for the next four days, and it was, to say the least, intensive. Good, helpful, and necessary, but int...

I have arrived in Japan. And I have to say, the culture shock element has been... surprisingly anti-climactic, so far. I've only been at the hotel and up the road a little bit to visit 7-Eleven. But, because Japan uses Chinese characters in its written language, a lot of signs have characters that are, while not immediately recognizable to me, familiar to my brain. The background noise of Japanese isn't strange because of all the Japanese music I've listened to and the anime I've watched. The food is, while not Taiwanese, definitely still similarly Asian, enough that even the layout of foods in bento boxes isn't a new sight. I haven't been into any Japanese cities or towns away from the airport, so there's still plenty that could culture-shock me. But the way things are going, I think it may not. I think my brain may be okay. I may have psyched myself out for nothing, but then, I figured my brain had reversed back into full American-mode and it would t...

I'm nearly finished packing for Japan right now, and part of me is distressed about it. The last time I left the country, I was heading into the unknown. Not just geographically, but emotionally. I didn't yet know how the culture shock would feel, or how acutely I'd miss my family and the familiarity of the States. This time, I know exactly what I'm walking into, and even though I'm finally making my dream a reality... part of me is just ridiculously sad. Because I know it may be six months before I get to hug any of my family or friends again, and knowing that... it hurts. Last time I left the country, I didn't think about that. Now, sometimes, it's all I can feel. Moving to Japan is literally an endeavor that has been two years in the making. I got my TEFL certification in March 2012, and now finally I'm moving to Japan in March 2014. The money I used to get to Taiwan I'd been saving for months, and the whole time I was in Taiwan I saved every ...

Dear Readers, Sometimes I look at my stats. Usually I don't. But I see you guys reading these entries. I see the pageview numbers and it makes me happy, not so much for the count but to see that the experience is being shared. I haven't been writing much while I've been in the States. Not many exciting experiences to be shared, or maybe it's just that I've been around friends and family who share the experiences with me, so I don't feel the need to write them out. At any rate, I'll be heading back into Asia in about three weeks, and although I already know I'll be meeting some fantastic expats to go on adventures with, I look forward to again having daily adventures that inspire me to write. So now, suddenly, I find myself wondering: Is there anything my readers would like to hear about once I'm in Japan? What do you want to know about? Grocery shopping? Train etiquette? Driving? (I'll be doing that, so you'll hear about that. Lots of ...