A Little History
I began studying Japan late in college, when my then-bf-now-husband told me of his dream to teach English in Kyoto after graduating, simply out of a desire not to be left back in the States, dateless. I took a crash course in Japanese for ten weeks at UC Berkeley, and immersed myself in the early-modern history, too. The culture I had relative headstart on, having been interested to a non-serious degree in anime and manga since I was a kid. The considerable gaps in my East Asian education were filled in by said reason-for-going, an EAS major, nearly fluent in the language (and half-Japanese to boot). Long story and one hemorrhaging national economy later, and our dreams of Nippon were tabled indefinitely. That is, until we received the money to book tickets from my generous in-laws, and took a three-years-belated honeymoon of 18 jam-packed days. These posts, tagged Progress, are the tale of that journey, one that expanded the horizons of this novice traveller and renewed our commitment (now much older and wiser) to a future in Japan.
