Inaugural Post

To Whomever It May Concern,

You have either stumbled upon this blog by wondering what someone named Chris is doing, or I contacted you and let you know that I now have a site set up for updates on my soon-to-be life in Japan. I graduated from Lafayette College in 2008 with a double major in English and Asian Studies. I was accepted for the position of an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) for the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program. I will be leaving on July 26th and will move into an apartment in Kawanabe, a small rural town in Kagoshima Prefecture, an area at the southern end of Japan's southernmost main island, Kyushu. That said, I would like to lay out a rubric of what I intend this blog to be. If you have ever read a blog before, you are likely aware that they often end up to be outlets for pent up emotion and venting. Instead, I intend this blog to be entirely for you.
I will be living in Japan. Each day is likely to provide me with interesting anecdotes that I can share with you. Even more interesting, however, are the little things that I won't even think about that you may wonder about (e.g. "Is this true or a stereotype?" or "Are heated toilet seats creepy?"). So I will post text, pictures, and videos as I see fit to give little glimpses into what Chris is doing. Moreover, I want to hear from you. If you've lived in Japan and want to know what I'm doing for Golden Week or if you met me once because I wrote an impromptu poem about you at a W.O.R.D.S. performance and want to know what raw horse tastes like, go. Ask. I will be busy with a full-time job and who knows how many other activities, but I will try to be vigilant in providing everyone with any information they'd like. I will be living without a number of the everyday distractions that made my college life so memorable but also, in all honesty, less productive than it could have been. Though I try to have no expectations of my life there until it begins, I feel that starting almost completely anew (with hardly any familiar belongings and not one familiar face) will allow me to build a new schedule. And part of that belongs here. It sounds ambitious and maybe a little unrealistically so, but I will do my best. In the end, I want to keep communicating. So let's do that.