Greetings Fellow Penn CGS Japanese 001 Students
My Japanese teacher and I have invited my fellow students in the introductory Japanese class to read my blog, so they can follow my adventures in Japan next year. I will try to write regularly about my language experiences in particular. I’ll use this post to introduce my family and recap what this trip is all about.
We will be staying in Tokyo for six months – arriving on New Year’s Eve, and staying until the end of June. My wife Maria won an International Affairs Fellowship in Japan from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Maria teaches political science at Villanova. Her research is primarily in the area of Asian political economy – you can see more about her research on her home page. She will be working at the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). Although she is not a native speaker of Japanese, she is close to fluent.
We have two boys: Kai, 5, and Eidan, 1. Kai will attend 1st grade in a Japanese public school, and I will take care of Eidan during the day. My plan is to explore a different part of the city each day with him.
I work at Penn’s School of Medicine Information Services as a project manager. I’m very fortunate to have a boss who is willing to let me switch to part-time status while we’re away, and work remotely from Tokyo.
We will be living in Minato-ku, which is a district in the heart of Tokyo. Pictures of our apartment were posted by the landlord in the summer to advertise its availability, and they’re still up. It’s tiny – about 500 sq ft – but we decided that, for the money, we’d rather have a small place in the city than a big place in the suburbs, as Maria will have a shorter commute, and it’ll encourage us to go out more. We are near the Shinagawa station, which is near the bottom-center of this map.
We already have two vacations planned: we’ll go to the Sapporo Snow Festival in February and we’ll visit a few of the northern islands of Okinawa during Golden Week in late April/early May.
I’ve been to Japan twice before – for a one week visit and for a two week visit. I extensively blogged the latter trip, with lots of photos and cultural observations. (Note there’s a technical glitch with my slideshow viewer – if you use the navigational arrows when in a slide show, you won’t get the right pictures. You need to jump back to the blog entry and click on the next photo).
