The Circle Opens

At the risk of getting carried away, I thought I'd get on-board with setting this up now so that I can jot down some pre-Japan thoughts as the exact details of my year away start to crystallise! /Finals are only three weeks away and I'm looking for any excuse to procrastinate.  As it stands at the moment, I've been offered my place on JET as an Assistant Language Teacher, but have NO IDEA where I'm going to be posted to in Japan. I put down "no preference" for the kind of locale which I wanted to teach in (big city, rural village, etc), since I figure I'd leave it up to pure chance, but that means I really could end up anywhere! My instincts tell me that I should be a little bit scared at the prospect, but, I can't lie, that's just being overriden by my ridiculous excitement! I mean, homesickness has never really been something I've majorly suffered from - yeah I love my family and will definitely miss them, but being at home just makes me, well, restless. I love just going out, trying new things and meeting new people. That's why I've loved being a student so much, even in a small town like Cambridge. It's just the exictement of the unforeseeable. Like, you never quite know what's round the corner or what you'll miss out on by staying in. There have been so many nights when I've come back in and thought, "Wow! Imagine I hadn't gone out tonight, I wouldn't have met X or experienced Y!". And that's just in Cambridge. I guess that's why I tire of home so easily: it never changes. I guess that's good when you're craving a bit of stability, but for where I'm at right now, I just want a bit of change. What's more, the two months I was lucky enough to spend in South Korea were literally amongst the best of my whole life, so the thought that I could do something similar for a full year is, quite frankly, amazing.

So, why Japan? There's nothing particularly profound about my answer, I'm afraid. It's just always been a country that I've been dying to visit. I grew up as that kid who was into anime, manga and J-Pop, and my interest in everything Japanese kind of just spiralled from there. Who knew when I was running around as a kid in the playground pretending to be Goku from Dragonball Z that I'd end up emigrating there for a year? Haha. Crazy.

Anyway, you get the picture - take this as my introduction. Here's to a happy blog...!