Welcome to Japan Hello.


This is my second blog post ever. I don't know how to feel about it.


Let me start here: I attempted to renew my passport today. The phrasing here implies failure, which I met with following the attempt. Present financial constraints have made it impossible at this point to pay the fee. In other words, I'm poor and can't afford it now. Now.


Having utterly failed at this task, I spent quality time at work dithering around the internet looking for inspiration for this blog from well-known, well-respected travel blogs. As I'm neither well-known nor well-respected, it follows that this blog won't be either. Ever. That being the case, I do plan to post lovely pictures from my first trip to Japan, along with some uninspired commentary on such varied topics as Japanese art,  American poetry, Catholicism, and human anatomy.


Regarding this latter topic: my human anatomy instructor, Dr. Y, asked me today if I would learn some specific muscles to point out to my group when we gather around the cadaver on Thursday.


Yippee!


You may be interested to know that there's an inverse relationship between a joint's stability and its mobility: the more mobile a joint is, the less stable it is. Conversely, the less mobile a joint is, the more stable it is. Hence, your shoulder joint is the most mobile but least stable joint in your body. The sutures of your skull are the most stable but least mobile, and I think we should all pause and give thanks for that.


It recently occurred to me, in the last five minutes, that Japanese culture has exerted an influence on me, in one way or another, since childhood. In the third grade, I wrote a haiku about a rabbit, a poem for which the third-grade poetry judges, presaging the quality of my adult accomplishments, awarded me a fourth-runner up ribbon. And just to be clear, that was 7th place out of 7. I think some girl from Taiwan took the crown that day. Or maybe she was a Guatemalan. I don't remember exactly, but my point is, it's my destiny to devote twenty days in 2016 to travel Japan.


Tomorrow, I hope to post some pictures from the first trip I took to Japan in the summer of 1991. I'm saddened that I didn't get a picture of Mr. Ito, the elderly Japanese school official who praised me for a speech I gave in Japanese on our last day in Meguro-Ku, Tokyo. As we smiled at each other in that school auditorium on that cloudless August afternoon, the flash in the elderly Mr. Ito's eyes confirmed what I'm sure every Japanese audience member silently acknowledged to himself: I had butchered that man's mother tongue beyond recognition. Nonetheless, he was very kind. I'm pretty sure he's now one with the earth.


See you soon.