Somehow, you’ve found yourself at my digital doorstep. There you are, on the Internet, the knowledge of the world at your fingertips, and you’ve instead chosen to forgo anything remotely productive and ended up here. With me.
Awesome. We’re gonna be friends, I can tell.
But enough about your poor life choices, on into the meat of things! The delicious, juicy meat of things. My name’s Sam, and I’m going to be spending my next year of college in Japan. I started this blog to try and chronicle my experiences there, as well as attempt to impart some of the cultural oddities and knowledge I stumble upon while abroad back to the uncouth savages I know in America.
I’ve always been pretty interested in the culture and people of Japan and other Asian nations, so I’d like to mainly focus on aspects different from those of my home country. That said, I’ve been reading several other blogs about westerners in Japan in the months leading up to my trip, and too many of them touch on the same topics. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first bastard in line to read about how weird Japanese toilets and vending machines are, but those topics have already been covered by other people on other blogs, so I see no point in touching on them in depth. People will always be the most interesting thing in the world to me, so they’re what I’m going to try and predominantly focus on. Luckily, my university offers a homestay option where I get to live with a Japanese family during my trip, so I should be able to at least get a glimpse of what the fuck goes on in the everyday life of some people of a different walk of life than I.
What other reasons do I have for going abroad? Mainly to learn a foreign language. I’ve studied Japanese for a couple semesters in college, and though I thoroughly suck shit at it, it’s pretty fun. Every sentence is like a puzzle I can’t hope to solve, but I’m slowly inching my way toward comprehension. I’m also really looking forward to the knee-you-in-the-crotch shock of being away from everything and everyone I know for a long period of time. I get the chance to trade in my whole world for another, and I’m not thinking twice. I can’t wait.
I’ve already bought plane tickets and sorted out most of the logistical crap with my school, so now all I really have to do is wait for my visa application to get processed and shove off in late August. Until then, I plan on continuing to grow the most gut wrenchingly disgusting facial hair the galaxy has ever seen.
Zantetsuken! 