ブログ開始～！ Let's blogging～！

The story of our infatuation with Japan begins as most stories about infatuations with Japan do: Pokemon.

It was when we were in elementary school that the Pokemon craze first hit the United States -- hard. Almost every single kid on the playground had a stack of trading cards in their pockets and some of the luckier ones returned home to their two-tone Nintendo Gameboys and Pokemon video game cartridges. Lara and I were of no exception.

I remember tearing open packages of Pokemon cards in utter excitement, wondering what kind of rare cards would be inside and what kind of even rarer cards I could possibly trade them for. When you're nine years old and don't have any obligations beyond learning that the moon isn't actually made of cheese, Pokemon is your life.

However, as all good things eventually do, when we moved on to middle school, many of our peers' obsession with Pokemon came to an end. My story would naturally end here as well, if it hadn't been for the pack of Pokemon cards that changed my life. Now, I am quite aware that having a prepubescent epiphany over a pack of Pokemon cards is the most absurd thing. But I have a penchant for the absurd and when my father handed me the shiny package covered in foreign symbols, I was absolutely enthralled. The kana and kanji that swerved and curled about the cards leaped into my heart as I flipped through them; each character of the script was an indecipherable code, one that I just had to find out more about.

I was oblivious at the time but the package of Japanese language Pokemon cards that I held in my hands was the genesis of my thirst for cultural exploration, leading me down the somewhat ignoble path of anime- and manga-obsessed hikikomori and eventually to the doorstep of East Asian Studies. It is this very passion that has driven me to where I am today.

Where I am today, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter, a single link in the chain of events that kicked off with Pokemon and took an unsuspecting turn when I chose to study Mandarin Chinese in college -- not Japanese. Through the incredible people I met on this path, I eventually found the inspiration to study abroad in the beautiful country of Taiwan, where Lara and I have been living for the last six months.

Although we put Japanese on the back burner and immersed ourselves in Chinese, going to Japan and seeing all those things we had previously only seen through the eyes of others had always remained a shared life goal. Thus, Sam, Sara, and Lara, three intrepid explorers donned their Japanese interpretation, travel planning, and photographic skills, respectively, and set off on a glorious thirteen day journey in the Land of the Rising Sun.

This is the story of our adventures in Tokyo (東京), Hakone (箱根), Kyoto (京都), Nara (奈良), Ohara (大原), and Osaka (大阪), one part of our never-ending quest to discover the world.

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We would like to dedicate this blog to Japan and all of its people affected by the the recent natural disasters and nuclear crisis. Our thoughts for safety and recovery are with you every moment. Please be strong!

If you'd like to help the relief efforts through donation, please make sure to research the organizations you are interested in donating to beforehand, so as to not waste your contributions.

みんなが安全でいるように、がんばってください～！