Not a Thanksgiving Post: Thoughts After Visiting Japan for the First Time in 6 Years

It's just before 7am on Thanksgiving Day. I've got a big [cooking] day ahead of me. Woke up early, scrolled through Instagram, and this popped up:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jewel Poudyal (@jewel_0620)

 And now here I am, tapping away.

Throwback Sunday: That Time I Went on an Apartment Hunt and Caught an Earthquake

So by now, most of you know that I used to live in Japan. One of the pains-slash-joys of the moving process is of course house hunting. Back in the summer of 2008, I was having fun, touring this decked-out new construction apartment, when a (non) disaster struck. See it for yourself (Warning - explicit language):

A Bit About Me and Japan

You might have noticed quite a bit of stuff on my blog relating to Japan. I wanted to give an explanation of why.

Me in Tokyo for the first time 1997. Yes, I was a fat kid.

For those of you who don't know me personally, I'm Chinese but also speak Japanese. I started taking classes during freshman year of college, and continued to study it for all four years. After spending part of every college summer in Japan, I also lived and worked in Tokyo for my first job out of school (eerily, I worked in one of the buildings you see in the background of the photo above). Thanks to the country's outrageously generous subsidy for foreigners via the national rail pass, I have now have visited more places in Japan than most Japanese people.

This is a short story of how I got started, and what it means to me today.