Windows Live Writer Experiment

 

I am now experimenting with Windows Live Writer and will try to write a new post soon!

First Post - R.C.S.

This will be the first entry of my very first blog, yeah. And unlike some of the projects of mine that I've started and then abandoned a blog won't collect dust and take room in my closet...just in cyberspace. Although I have no intentions of abandonment but as my first blog it will be a dip of my toe in the water.

What I mean by R.C.S. is Reverse Culture Shock, I don't know if that has been turned into an acronym yet so I decided to do anyway--it was bound to happen. I just came back from Japan after completing a year of school studying abroad. While they are many great people out there in the interwebs blogging about Japan and posting videos on Youtube, I wasn't one of those as I was too busy doing the whole exchange student thing. For some great blogs on living in Japan and Japan itself check out some of the these: TokyoCooney on Youtube, HopelessRomantic, JapanProbe, What Japan Thinks, Tofugu. So since I have a little time on my hand now not being an exchange student I'm going do dive into the Web2.0 Bloggosphere (last time I use that word I promise).

My reinitiation back into the culture I call home started when I landed at the sprawling LAX airport. It took me about twenty minutes of passing through customs before I met someone who I identfied from among the friendly and not so friendly airport staff someone who was born in the country whose borders they were protecting. The first face on still technically international soil probably coudn't check through immigration himself so they just offered him a job telling the beleagured passengers which line to go in; or so I reasoned in my sleepy brain as I shuffled passed him, then my brain jumped to a sequel of the The Terminal with Tom Hanks but rewritten to star this man who seemed to be from the subcontinent of India (it could even be done Bollywood style!). This was a striking contrast to my last year in Japan where the non-Japanese rate registers at about 98% or so (countrywide). Tokyo, where I was, had a higher foreign population but not much. The only men I met who were from the Asian subcontinental region works at curry shops. In the same way, each population from abroad filled in to their little niches. The ones who gained the most widespread diffusion were Korean and Chinese, some of whom were even born in Japan but still carry a semi-immigrant status. But most of the international cuisine oriented restaurants I visited carried a very natural and very Japanese ring of Irasshaimase! (Welcome, come in!).

R.C.S can also, not so elegantly, be made to stand for Researching my future Career and Schooling which is the next chapter of my life I'm about to open up. As I do so, some of my adventures there may also be posted.