An Introduction to a Week in Japan

Looking at the calendar, its hard not to notice that its finally July. Indeed, more than a year has passed since I took my Bachelors of Science for Computer Science and ran away from Kentucky never to return¹. In-fact, in twenty seven days I will have been living and working in Japan for a year.

Recently, someone asked me how quickly time passes for me. The exact phrase was the Japanese equivalent of "Does your time fly?" Although my answer wasn't well thought out at the time ("Well, a little bit because I'm going back home soon." "Ho ho ho. Time doesn't really fly until you turn thirty." "...Oh.") It does seem like time has begun flying for me. This past year in Japan hasn't been entirely made of roses, but at this point I am quickly approaching its terminal.

To celebrate this year--its glory, its frustration, its acquired recently acquired mundanity, and most importantly its ending--I am going to write a handful of Day in Japan entries².

One final vignette before letting you move onto the first day. Several years ago I had a rather odd summer, which involved me being considerably frustrated at times. Towards the end I was finally starting to grow enough to release the frustration and gain some perspective. I shared this metamorphosis with a friend, and their response was "Well, thats nice. Of course you're going to find closure as things end. Thats how these things work."

Ah, damn, that was a deflating comment among deflating comments, and my hard won perspective felt like a pretty limp victory. That said, that is how these things work, and as this year in Japan comes to a close the same caliber of resolution is creeping out of the woodwork.

Its been a long year, but its feeling shorter every day. Its been a difficult year, but most of the challenges are already being forgotten. I think its been a good year for me, and regardless of things that have gone poorly or imagined opportunities passed up, I don't regret spending this year in a small town in a mediocre job. That said, if I had--in a fit of grand self-delusion--signed up to continue for a second year, I might be taking weekend trips to Korea to apply for other jobs³.