Today marks one month of me being in Japan. Just a month ago I was staggering out of a 13-ish hour flight and onto the streets of Nagoya. It's been pretty spectacular in a lot of ways. Very much a learning experience, both with the language and otherwise.

I put a little video together of my experiences a little while ago, so it's not 100% up-to-date, but it's pretty interesting. Is there any way to post video to these things? I'd love for some folks to be able to see it. 

My parents are here this week, which is kind of surreal, in some ways. I've been running a relative solo act for so long, it's strange to have someone I know so well be in the area. My parents, my host father, and I all went to this little town in Nagano prefecture yesterday, and I had to play the translator the whole time, so that was a hell of a job in and of itself. When you're just trying to communicate with the Japanese family, sometimes you can just throw out an "Aa, soo desu ka" and pretend you understand. But when somebody is following up with "What did he just say?", it gets a little chancy. Probably a good learning experience tho'. Gotta work on that positivity thing.

I hope everyone is doing alright back home. For everyone who I have talked to, you know I miss you dearly, and to those who I haven't and/or those who know people back home, pass the word along.

I'll try and start putting more media here soon. Someone please educate me on how to do so!

So I decided to make one of these.

I'll be writing (read: typing) down all of my little strings of thought whenever I feel so inclined on this journal.

Things I have discovered since hitting Japan:

1. It's not the Japan I was initially fascinated by.
That Japan still exists, but only in some places. Kyoto, for example. In some places it really feels like the kind of history and culture that grabbed my attention. Back in the real world, things are a bit different.

2. Japanese is hard.
So I kind of knew this one already. But it was actually relevant once I arrived here, i.e. once the language became near to my only means of communication.

3. I have a lot of stuff to figure out.
This whole trip has kind of turned me inward, since I can't always talk to people (not comprehensibly at least). It made me think about a lot of things, which I'm still working on, but that I don't feel like going into at this point. Basically what I'm saying is that as of now, I'm doing just fine, but every so often I get bad pockets, where I'll think too much about stupid stuff, like classes or just random off-topic concerns. That's something I hope to (at least partially) aid in solving with this little outlet. So, hopefully you're not bored of my ramblings already. There's plenty more in the works.
Enjoy.