Arrival in Kyoto

Being in Japan again is almost indescribably wonderful for me; this whole country is like my holy land, a place so richly filled with new words and experiences that every walk down the street is like a university course - in a half mile on Friday I learned ten new words, discovered the Japanese Communist Party and learned how tatami are made. I am a man floating in an endless ocean, filled with the insatiable compulsion to drink.

Thursday, things got even better when I finally had the opportunity to return to Kyoto, the place where I first got to know this remarkable country. From March 2003 to March 2004 I was an exchange student at the Kyoto University of Foreign Languages, where I did all of the wonderful and foolish things that exchange students do. I visited amazing landmarks, met fantastic people from around the world, drank ridiculous amounts of alcohol, fell in love once or twice*. And in my spare time, I even studied a bit.

Ever since I began planning my trip to Chiba I've been eagerly anticipating my chance to go back to Kyoto, to revisit the scenes of so many happy memories. I was only able to stay three days on this trip, but they were as wonderful as I could have hoped for.

Over the next day or two, I'll post the story of my trip to Kyoto. As I transition from the newsletter format to documenting my adventures in a blog, I intend to write shorter entries that document a single scene or idea rather than writing up the events of a month in a single narrative. That way, you can just read one scene and then come back later instead of having to read several pages at one go.

In addition to this blog, I have created a Flickr account to upload my photos to. You can cause your computer monitor to produce graphic representations of my recent adventures by clicking here.


* With my wife, for example.