Everett Man to Fly Across Pacific in Possible Attempt at, "Finding Himselft."

As I have only eleven days left with which to write as an American living in the United States I better fire some posts off quick,then, later we can return to these early posts and contrast them with what will surely be more interesting, and possibly more singularly clear and concise, future posts. To those of you who are confused by the last sentence because of its implications rather than its longwindedness, let me explain.

I am moving to Japan to be an Assistant Language Teacher (or ALT) in public schools through a company called Interac. My contract is for one year after which I can decide to extend it if I wish. As you can infer from the address of the blog, I will be living in a city called Kakegawa and more than likely I will also be broke. We have only to wait and see.

As of today my expectations are as follows:

1) Being a farily tall, white, and blue-eyed American fellow-I will stand out

2) There will be many foods I am not familiar with, some of which may seem like things that were not meant to be eaten-I would be a fool not to eat all of these things and to eat them with gusto.

3) I run here, I will run there-which may add to expectation one.

4) The Japanese culture is different than mine and despite my research and training I will surely screw up, in fact I should probablly steel myself to the probability that at least the first few weeks will be almost a continuous string of cultural screw-ups.

5) Things in Japan are smaller, for instance apartments. (for which I am surprisingly excited)

6) Japan is pretty, in ways that here is not-or at least in ways that will occur to me because of my unfamiliarity with them.

7) I really don't have that many expectations.