Hard to believe...

that in just one week, I'll be in Tokyo. It'll be 9:35AM to be exact, and I'll probably be touring the city or fighting robots or something like that, but whichever way you cut it, I'll be far, far away.

Let me first start out by introducing this blog and what purpose it'll serve. Most importantly, it'll serve as a way for all ya'll interested (and uninterested) folks out there to check in on my travels/studies (but more the travels part) while I am studying abroad at Temple University Japan in Tokyo. Basically, it'll be a blog about my life in Japan, chock full of my numerous cultural mishaps, odd/interesting sights that I might come upon, and anything else that I find to be interesting and that you might not but I DON'T CARE ANYWAYS BECAUSE IT'S MY BLOG.

To get the final "logisitics" part of the post out of the way, I will post a few pictures every entry or so. Full albums of my pictures will be available at my Flickr account, whose URL is: www.flikr.com/photos/chickenteriyakiboy. Check 'em out! I got a new camera for my b-day and it's hella nice, so I plan to be carrying it around everywhere I go. I'll try to organize Flikr by a weekly basis. I haven't decided if I will post my pics on Facebook yet to please all you college students sellouts out there (myself included), but I'll see how much time I have and report back to you.

Okay, almost done with the formalities. I will try to keep my entries medium length, because I sure know I hate reading 2 pages of other people's stupid thoughts when I'd rather be finding out just how they got their head stuck in that elephant's ass and not what they had for dinner the night before the incident. Finally, PLEASE COMMENT GUYS! Though I love (read: hate) feedback, most importantly, I want to stay in contact with everyone and see how you are doing. I will be on AIM if all goes well, but my online hours coincide with sleeping hours in U.S. for the most part. Tough luck.

ENOUGH OF THAT BORING CRAP!

To keep to my promise of "keeping entries medium length", I'll just post a few quick things.

I really thinks its mucho importante to set out with a bunch of goals and then go back at the end of the semester and see if I accomplished them, semi-accomplished them, ignored them, or laughed at them altogether. Here are a few of mine:

1. Become really really really good at Japanese. Some people want to learn Japanese to understand Anime. Nerds. Some people want to enrich their cultural knowledge. Elitists. Me? I just want to learn the why the HELL most of the Japanese toilets don't have toilet paper and how I can fix that. I enrolled in a TUJ (Temple University Japan for all you anagram losers out there who can't figure it out) class called Oral Intermediate Japanese II, where I hope to indulge in the smaller idiosyncrasies of the language in order to figure out how to say "The absence of toilet paper in your bathrooms disgusts me and the fact that I had to use that seaweed paper that surrounds sushi made me SICK!".

2. Travel. Travel. Travel. Seriously, traveling is super cool. I mean when am I gonna have this chance ever again, huh? There are a few University sanctioned trips that I'll go on, but I hope to do much more than that. For each city I travel to, I will make sure to post what I call the "How Surprised Were They To See A Tall White Brown Headed Brown-Eyed Jew Meter".

3. Make friends. Awww. Shut up.

4. Challenge myself to go outside my comfort zone. This goal will inevitably be reached because I'll be out of mah "zone" right when I arrive in Japan. The real trick is to realize that I'm uncomfortable and KICK ITS ASS. I've never really been this far from home, let alone by myself, let alone in a country that's as CRAZY as Japan. Most of my entries will probably stem from these "challenging experiences" and hopefully most will have humor involved.

5. Eat any 5 (or more) of the following: eel, octopus, a part of the fish besides the yummy parts, fish eggs, some weird vegetable that I can't pronounce, abelone, natto (fermented soybeans), etc.

I'm sure I have more goals. Suggest some goals if you want! I don't care! Those five are the ones that I could think of on the spot. Go for the gold, Dan, GO FOR IT!

Anyways, that's it! That's the first post! I really hope I haven't bored any of you but BELIEVE YOU ME it'll get a whole hell of a lot more interesting when I'm actually in Japan instead of sitting in my room.

Again, this blog is not just for my sake, but for yours too! I really hope you enjoy reading about my life and travels and I TRULY hope you are jealous of me because I'm in Japan and you're not HA.

Ja mata! (See ya' later!)