Month: May 2015

A Day in the Life

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Next to the very handsome guy is a clock made from tiny water fountains. Every minute the little fountains change to show the new time. That’s technology!

Here’s what my life is like in Japan.

The morning started with a Skype call with my niece. It’s 8:30am on Tuesday my time. 6:30 pm Monday hers. We practiced speaking in Japanese and then made plans for her upcoming trip to Japan. I don’t know which is cooler – that she wants to learn Japanese, or that she’s scratching an item off her bucket list before she finished high school.

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Debrief of the Italy Mission

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That title sounds so spy-like. Debrief of the Italy Mission. I bet debriefings are incredibly boring – listening to someone drone on about all the mundane details of hours stuck in the surveillance van with bad takeout food and…wait, do my blog posts sound like that?

Here are the results of three months in Italy in a surveillance van

  1. I can impress a taxi driver
  2. I wish I’d started school earlier
  3. I slacked off
  4. I earned an art history degree

Impressing a taxi driver

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I chalk up taxi fares to the “language practice” budget.

Everyone knows that the best judge of language level is a taxi driver. And I passed with flying colors. He couldn’t believe I’d only been studying for two months. We talked about my year of travel, the Italian economy, and how to learn a language. I sounded confident, my accent was good, and most of the words came naturally.

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First Impressions of Japan

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“He’s back!”

Japan. I can’t believe I’m here. Until now you were just the land of samurais, sake, and sushi. Godzilla and earthquakes. Walkmans, and six-sigma. Capitalist invaders (Rising Sun) who succumbed to a lost decade. Robot toilets.

You’re known for being disdainful of foreigners (gaijin), but you’ve been completely nice to me. You have TGI Friday’s, Starbucks, and Legends sports bar. Your toilets don’t make sense.

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