Nipponese wanderings

Tomorrow (Friday) I am setting out for Japan. Therefore, for the next 25 days this weblog will truly live up to its name: posts will indeed appear from the other side of the ocean.

I am traveling in an odd manner: I’m going across the Atlantic. Don’t ask. I sometimes do things for reasons discernible only to me and my dog. Let’s just say for now that it has a little to do with days number 23 and 24. WAIT AND READ!

But this convoluted flying mode does make for a very very long trip, especially given that my first destination is Sapporo. I will use a combination of buses, flights and trains to get there and I wont arrive until late Sunday (meaning late Sunday for me: I will now always be 14 hours ahead of everyone on Central Time, 13 on Eastern). Consequently, this blog will be without posts for the next 2-3 days. After that, I should be able to post regularly. I am traveling with my computer, and I will make good use of business centers when my connections fail.

I promise NOT to make this a travel journal. There will be no educational overtones to the posts – the reader will learn nothing about the Tokugawa rule (1600-1868) or the Taisho era (1912-1926), nor about the hot political topics confronting Japan (unless they become so overwhelmingly important that they threaten to ruin my very existence!). What will it be then? WAIT AND READ!

True, not everyone wants to get into this Japan stuff. I understand that. I myself would not be fascinated if someone were to post daily updates from Antarctica. Too cold down there and the food can’t be good. Oh, maybe I’d check in on the blog anyway, just to see if there was any mention of seals and polar bears, but I wouldn’t rush to it. So, too, blog readers may not want to hear of things Japan-related. To honor their preferences, and to make life easy for the countless confused others who read 827 blogs each day and can’t remember who is doing what and from where, I will precede each post title with the word: JAPAN. If it’s there, I must be in Japan. You don’t like Japan? You’re forewarned: move on.

For the occasional new reader – what can I say, they’ll think me to be Japan-based, or Japan-obsessed, or Japan something. Logging onto a weblog in mid-sentence always has the potential to unsettle and mislead. For instance, I continue to wonder what readers who do not know me must think if they jump into the middle here and start noticing my obsessive Poland-related posts, which, these days, are no longer explained or justified.

One last comment. Why am I IN Japan to begin with? Work: I am collecting information on the evolving legal interventions into families in crisis. Thus I have a number of interviews scheduled in different parts of the country (plus a number of guest lectures thrown in for the fun of it, yes, sure, for the fun of it). What is my itinerary? WAIT AND READ (hint: I will NOT be in Tokyo)! This is my fourth trip to Japan which at once seems like a lot and not anything at all, since I truly do not understand so much about this endlessly fascinating country. Most of the destinations will be repeat-visits, but I guarantee that I will feel lost and confused and out of my element (a version of Bill Murray I guess). I always do.

I hate to sound trite, but I do think that in wanderings of this nature, it is essential to keep an open mind and to start each day afresh.