The Intro

All this happened, more or less...

I'm a teacher, sort of. Don't get me wrong -- by "sort of," I don't mean I'm that weirdo teacher you had for American history with the gigantic pink lips who pronounced Illinois "ill a noise." I'm a good teacher. And I'm frickin' hip.

I'm just not a lifer. This is one of many adventures I'm passing through.

My last adventure was to pack a bag after my college graduation and move to Japan. Lots of people from home acted like this was special, but if you do a quick blog search for something like "teaching in Japan" or "foreigner in Japan" or I''m a gaijin," you'll see that practically everybody and his red-headed cousin has lived in Japan. This is a good thing. I love Japan and I'm down with anybody who wants to live there or visit there or sit at home and have a vicarious gaijin experience through his red-headed cousin's blog.


However, what's unique about my experience is that... well, it's over. And now I'm back home trying to re-acclimate to the U.S. of A. I thought this would be a fairly quick and comfortable transition, like sliding back into bed after a shivery midnight jaunt to the toire. Turns out, it's more like crawling back into the womb. I'll let you think about that analogy for second...

The web is well supplied with blogs about living abroad. This is a blog about trying to come home.

Kansai at dusk