I’ve been expecting to start to feel overwhelmed or frustrated with living in a strange place in which I don’t understand the language, etc., but that feeling hasn’t come yet. I feel so at home already. I’m able to spend all my time (outside of talking with my fellow students) without using a word of English and still be understood.

Granted, it’s not all easy. For example, I spent about ten minutes outside of a restaurant tonight trying to memorize the name of one or two items on the menu so I could order with confidence, but I decided not to go into it, because I think I looked silly standing there for ten minutes. No problem,I just found another place that had a little simpler item I could easily remember. It was this “Otsumami Nagoya setto” which was just a little plate of beef stew type stuff, a wooden skewer with a breaded meat, another two with some chicken wing stuff, both glazed in a delicious sauce covered with sesame seeds, and a couple of warm rice and egg sushi like things wrapped in seaweed and a tube of plastic. It was absolutely delicious, and I’m kicking myself for not taking a picture of it.

Our classroom overlooks Central Nagoya station, and we had the window open listening to the train announcements all day. During the breaks we could just look down and watch the 500 and 700 series shinkansen pulling in and out of the station on a sunny but snowy day. It’s pretty much heavenly. I’ll let you all know when I start to get a little frustrated as soon as it comes.

We got the day off today to do some exploring, so I took a few more pictures. The weather was just my style: gray and on and off rainy, but a nice pleasant temperature. There was a marathon going on today, and I saw the fantastic bus station with something called Space Station Aqua, basically a giant floating fountain. I don’t think I’ll be able to do updates as often as I have today, but still, I’ll try to do my best.

OK, I still haven’t gone to sleep yet, I’m working on about 2 hours of sleep in the last, oh 60 or so. Anyway, besides being so tired I can hardly see straight, I feel fantastic! I feel like I’ve come home, even though I’ve never been here before. Everything just feels so…right. Well, now I really am off to bed.

I’m the second most tired I’ve ever been in my life. But happy to have made it! I’ll post a bunch more once I finally get some sleep.

For the past few months I’ve been checking up on the weather in Nagoya, and it had always been about 10F colder than San Francisco. Today, it’s 9F warmer!

Well here I am sitting at SFO, my flight leaves in an hour and a half. I apologize for not writing anything in the last couple months. I’ve been busy, I guess, but most especially, FRAZZLED over the last two days. I’m going to try to update it a lot though once I cross the ocean. People seem to be asking for that.

It didn’t hit me that I’m leaving for Japan until I was waiting at the ticket counter. It was just a big overwhelming rush of emotion. I’m starting a brand new life in Japan in just a few hours. It was the perfect antidote to the insanity that I had been feeling over the last few days. I still put everything off until the last minute, but everything always works out in the end. First of all, I’d like to make a tip of the hat to craigslist. They saved my ass last night. At about 5:30pm, I put a couple of ads saying I was giving away all this stuff. Most of it I got rid of within an hour and a half. I was amazed. Someone even picked up that big old computer desk of mine that’s such a bitch to take apart and put back together three times. Took only ten minutes this time. And this one woman just came in and started pointing at any old thing and I just said, “It’s yours”. Got maybe two hours of sleep last night because I was so busy doing shit. Thinking in fragments. This terminal is all Japanese today, it’s as if I’m already there. OK, I need to relax or something. More later.

私は日本語の日記を始めました。日本語でしか書きません。

Congratulations!

So I just found out about this _other_ site about burritos in the Bay Area, Burritobot, which in some ways looks very much like BurritoEater. Not sure whom to root for (or “barrack”, if you’re Australian).

Then, the other thing is that I found the greatest Firefox extension of all time: Moji. It’s basically a Japanese-English and Kanji dictionary integrated into the browser. It’s probably the most brilliant thing ever created in the 21st century, I think.

This video demonstrates another important reason I like Japan so much, and want to move there.