Introduction

I thought of blogging again because I will be in a unique situation for the next 6 weeks. 

• I will be living and working in Japan for the first time since March 2001.  
• I will also be the furthest away I've ever been from my wife and daughter. 
• I will be teaching English as a Second Language for the first time in 2 years.
• I will be doing a lot of preliminary research for my dissertation.
• I will be reflecting on my marriage since we just celebrated our 10th anniversary.

I predict a great deal of this blog will be about my readjustment to Japan.  I won't be too far from where I lived and worked, just on the other side of Tanigawa-dake, 10 years ago.  Since this topic is similar to my dissertation, it will be good practice to write thick descriptions of my own experience.

I'm starting this blog at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where I departed for Japan for the first time in October 1998, from the same gate actually.  This gate is also the same where my sister arrived from South Korea when she was adopted by my parents.  My emotional state is similar to October 1998 in that I was somewhat reflective on my past however my level of excitement this time is greatly dampened by the sadness of not seeing my wife and daughter for 6 weeks.  I can't imagine how much my daughter will grow; she has grown so much within the last 6 weeks.

In October 1998, I was incredibly excited to go abroad for my first full-time job.  I was about to enter a new country and a new profession.  I was leaving behind my childhood and my immediate family, which was on the verge of a major crisis.  Now I have a family of my own and have become established in the career I started when I last left.  There is a good chance that this job will be the last one I have before my comprehensive exams, when I transition from PhD student to PhD candidate.  In fact, my next non-leisure trip abroad may be for the purpose of data collection and analysis for my dissertation.

Although I'm feeling quite retrospective, introspective, and reflective, I don't feel very articulate.  That's because I didn't sleep well last night and I had to wake up at 4:45am to catch the 6:45am flight from Eastern Iowa Airport to MSP.  I'm stopped over here for 6 hours before I get on an 11-hour flight to Narita.  Then it's another 2 hours on train to get to my destination, the International University of Japan.