And POOF I’m in Japan!

Sunset among the mountains near my town

If someone had told young, naive fresher me that 4 years from now I would be living in Japan, teaching, I would have laughed in their face! But, Oh how things change! That’s right, me who years prior swore I’d never want to teach, has not only started teaching...but teaching half way across the world and hey, guess what, I am loving every minute of it!

I have always wanted to explore other cultures and experience life beyond England so I guess it was inevitable that I would end up living abroad. And Japan ended up the epitome of what I wanted, bursting at the seams with culture, tradition and adventure. The desire to venture far outside my comfort soon began whilst in my third year of university, where I had started to toy with the idea of working abroad. I was at a time in my life where I was growing tired of the clichéd student routine: eat-study-party-repeat, and was looking for more of an adventure, (little did I know the adventure I craved existed 6000 miles away!) 

On my hunt for adventure I knew I wanted to travel somewhere in East Asia- different aspects of life from the UK with potential for many new experiences. But it was almost overnight that my search stopped to just Japan. The thought process went somewhat like this: …Japan- beautiful landscape, nice weather (for the most part), friendly people, high tech cities that contrast tranquil rural towns, values and tradition that differ so very much from the west, pleeeenty of room for adventure and lest we forget the amazing food (I mean if I’m living somewhere for a long period of time it’s a must that I love the food!) And there we are, country wise my choice was made. It took a few months for my plan of moving abroad to become concrete, but once my mind was set there was no looking back. From then I applied, interviewed, accepted the job, hopped on a plane from Heathrow to Kansai and poof, just like that, I was in Japan… (Obviously in reality it was a lot more complicated than that, but no need to bore with unnecessary details).

So, fast forward to now and I’ve been living in this wonderful country for 3 months (the age old saying “time flies” has never rung truer), I’ve already travelled to 3 prefectures- Osaka, Kyoto, Nara- whilst residing in Wakayama, have nicely settled into a routine of teaching and am constantly experiencing the exhilarating “Wow, this is new!” feeling!

I’ve never been more excited for what the future may bring than I am now and I will be documenting my adventures via the modern useful tool of blogging (in a post quite similar to this one in fact). 

For now though, I’ll leave it at this:

Japan = BEST.DECISION.EVER.