In a few days, I'm going to be leaving for Japan for about a year of study abroad.

Originally I'd intended to start some kind of bigger-deal collaborative blog with a few other people, but the more I got to thinking about it the more it seemed like it'd be too much overhead to deal with while abroad and the more I research the Americans-studying-Japan blog community the more I think the signal-to-noise ratio is kind of skewed -- so rather than go for something higher-profile I figured I'd just keep a personal blog and pass it along to friends.

I don't know what my Internet access is going to be like in Japan and I've been told by several friends of mine who've studied abroad that it's quite difficult to force yourself to write while you're over there, but I'm going to try to keep this thing going even if it means keeping a handwritten journal and uploading entries when I just happen to have the time and the means -- we'll see how it works out.

I'm spending my first two-and-a-half months in Nagano prefecture where I'll be studying puppetry and possibly shamisen, then I have a few weeks to kill before my academic year program starts in Shiga prefecture, where I'll basically be studying the Japanese language like crazy.

Since some of you don't know me that well (and since this is the Internet and the way these things work it's possible some stranger will stumble across this and make it most of the way through the first entry), let me tell you a little about how I got into studying Japan.

First off, I'll get it out of the way since this is the white guy in Japan stereotype, yes I was crazy about anime in high school and early in college and no I'm not really into it these days. Yes I play video games, although I really only do arcade fighting games (especially Guilty Gear) and retro stuff, like from before 1996. So yes, I'm a nerd and yes, that had something to do with it.

As for how I actually got interested in studying Japan beyond a superficial level, when I was a freshman it was actually notoriously difficult to get into Japanese at my school; there were only twenty seats and more often than not they got taken up by juniors and seniors who were trying to finish off their language study requirements. The school had just hired a new Japanese teacher who taught a class on Japanese literature in translation, so I figured if I couldn't get into the language I could give that a try at the very least.

I actually had no particular interest in literature at this point and wasn't expecting much out of myself in this class, but I actually ended up enjoying it a lot; some of the works either weren't that good or went over my head, but some of them really fascinated me -- Tanizaki Jun'ichiro in particular at the time, although he's not really my favorite these days. Even though I could have done better in this class (this was the one where when I tried to give my presentation in class I started seeing things in my peripheral vision and lost my ability to read my notes, so I couldn't even do it) the teacher must have seen that I was interested enough and allowed me into the first semester of Japanese language the following semester.

I'd been having a hard time in college until this point and I was starting to think maybe it wasn't for me at all, but it turned out cultural and language studies could hold my interest pretty easily and Japanese became my first A (and it single-handedly pulled me out of academic probation since it was six credit hours by itself) and maybe the first class I never deliberately skipped. Aside from a short crisis of faith when my first teacher had left and before our most recent teacher arrived, I've been able to keep at it. Ultimately after I graduate -- whenever that happens -- I'd like to translate Japanese literature, so to that end I enrolled in what seemed to be the hardest study abroad program available to me.

Anyway, you know my life story now. If you've got any questions, suggestions for things to do in Japan, writers I should look into or anything else, comment here or email me at ottersransom@gmail.com.