Some background

On the fourth of July, 2008, I leave for Japan. This will be the beginning of a life long goal: going to Japan. I've wanted to go to this unique and fascinating country since I was 8 years old. That's a long time. The preparations have been at times herculean and I am far from done, but I do believe the worst is over. I'm going to Japan to study Japanese at Yamasa Institute, near Nagoya. Studying gives me an excuse to stay much longer than I would have been able to, had I gone as a tourist. Studying there gives me a community, housing, and something to do while I observe the culture and people. As a language teacher it was a natural path to take.

In order to go to school there, I had a number of hoops to jump through. I needed to have a year off so I decided to apply for a sabbatical from my school.

I spent a great deal of energy rewriting my sabbatical application trying to make it as appealing to the administration at my school as possible, as I had already been told that they weren’t thrilled with my plans for Japan. Later I was then told that I was not getting a sabbatical, the assistant Superintendent claimed that they were short of funds this year and she should have let me know before I went to all the work of putting the proposal together. But she hadn’t.

I requested a leave of absence which was granted but the now I was busy getting the final version of the extensive application for a student visa ready for Yamasa Institute. The application was 6 pages long, and had to include a copy of every page of my passport, the original diploma for my last degree, an official transcript, a list of ever school I had attended from 1st grade thought graduate school with dates, 6 passport sized pictures, bank statements showing I had enough money to pay for the courses, two pages of essays about why I want to study in Japan, etc. etc, etc. I had to FedEx the package to Japan and then wait to see if it met with approval. Soon I was informed that there were problems. I needed new pictures because the proportions were not correct. I needed a new bank statement because I had sent them one from a bank I go paperless with and had downloaded the statement. That was not good enough. And thirdly, the estimated years of the elementary schools I had attended was not good enough. Even if I had to make up the dates, I needed to send months and years for each school. As you can imagine that was quite a list with all the places I lived and went to school as a kid. I totally skipped the one month here or three months there done in the US between posts. Deadlines loomed. I wired funds to Japan from my bank but had no way of know at what exchange rate it would be received. All my communication with the school has been via email, which is fairly speedy but still there were days that I waited to hear back. Finally the application seemed to be complete and now only buying a plane ticket remains, but even that is a challenge as my return date in 2009 means I can’t purchase the ticket until early May. Each day the prices seem to go up and the dollar to yen ratio goes down.

Now that it really seems to be happening I have been very busy getting things set up for while I’m gone. Who will pay what? How will I pay bills that come in months after I leave? Somehow forwarding my mail to Japan doesn’t seem a viable solution. I’ve set a Skype account. The list goes on of things that need to be done. I will update that once I'm done. Stay posted for future updates. I haven't figured out how often I will be able to post to this blog, but I plan to keep it pretty current once I get to Japan.
Jaa mata. (Well, later)