Happy New Years everybody… I’m happy to say that I’ve landed back in the United States. It feels good to be home.

A lot of stuff has happened between when I left you all and now. For starters, Tink and I went to Meiji Shrine on New Years and then the next day went and saw the Emperor of Japan! What an amazing trip it’s been.

I assume that everybody out there has read the little paragraph a the bottom of this blog…

“The adventure is not about people or places or culture. The adventure is what you make it when you’re in the middle of it. Seize the day and make it your own. This adventure is about me in a world apart of my own. What doesn’t happen is just a part of the adventure as what does happen… Life happens so make the best of it.”

From the day I wrote that, to today I still believe that everyone can have the same adventure as me. However, what of Japan? What of the Japanese? Have I learned any valuable lessons or skills while I was there? The answer is this…

Japan is one of those places that mystifies you with its rich mixture of old tradition and new technology. As soon as you think you’ve witnessed something so magnificent that nothing else could match its “coolness” you’re faced the next day with yet another sight that baffles the mind. I’ve learned that you cannot “do it all” and I have also learned that “you can’t do it all by yourself.” The friends I’ve made along the way have helped me learn just who I am and for that I want to thank them for their companionship.

Japan might seem like the a Far East Asian country that holds it’s secrets deep behind a developed wall of courteously and politeness. In some respects, that is true of them, but it is not who they are. What seems like a system of Honor and Politeness is in fact the result of years of training to be that way no matter what. If one finds a way to peel off that layer they’ll find a group of people much like us who face the same challenges as us and have very similar opinions as us. While it’s easy to call them “Asian” and “Orientals,” after living with them I think that they are more western then we think. In fact, Japan is very “western” and because they are very western (from their clothes to (most) their toilets) it wasn’t hard to adjust.

Like everything else in the world, the concept of “Westernization” is becoming more and more like “Globalization.” Globalization is the common standard of living from one 1^st World country to the next. However, Japan holds on to deeply rooted traditions that make Japan, Japan and not America. As an American I thought I knew just what was American and what wasn’t. I quickly learned that what I thought was uniquely American was really Globalization and what I thought wasn’t American I found out was. For example, upon arrival I searched out a bottle of Skippy’s peanut butter. Skippy’s I thought was so uniquely American that I knew it’d be hard to find, however Skippy’s can be found in most Groceries Stores. There was another case in which I stumbled over some corn dogs. I asked the guy what that was in Japanese and he gave me one of those looks like “are you crazy?” He told me that they call them “American Dogs” and he was convinced that it was an all American food. Things like that are what make up this “culture shock” that is sometimes good and sometimes bad.

Overall, I’ve learned more then a language, I’ve learned a culture. The adventure by far was a success because I kept in mind that, the adventure is what you make it when you’re in the middle of it. Seize the day and make it your own.

~J out

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