Now what have you found yourself reading?

If you're reading this chances are you have found yourself looking at this blog and either wanted to see it from the start or to find out what exactly what it was you stumbled across. Therefor you went to beginning.  A logical step, to bad for you that it probably wont make understanding who is writing this any easier.  At most I suspect it will give you a cliff-notes rundown of who I am, a rough idea of what I will be ranting about, and maybe (if you are lucky) a chronological timeline to follow.  Hopefully that's enough for you to get by!  If not... I keep a supply of helmets in back, just in case.

Now, with that out of the way lets have a look at some of your questions shall we?

"What am I reading?"
       A blog!  That was easy enough.

"Who are you?"
       My name is Samuel A. Ledebuhr.  Officially I am a University Student.  Majoring in Physics with a Duel Minor in Mathmatics and Japanese Language.  Unofficially, I am most likely a nutcase who's love of physics and Japan lead him to the desire to be a multilingual private researcher or teacher some day down the road.   Said road currently has me headed to Japan; to Rikkyo University in Tokyo to study the language in an immersion scenario.  This student exchange will have me living in Tokyo for a full academic year studying the language first hand.

"What did you do before this Trip to Japan?"
     Bunches of stuff, some of it rather standard, most of it not.  Standard part, 4.0 High School student growing up in Rural Michigan.  Played sports, was pretty good at it (swimming particularly). I graduated High School in 2005, went to a tech school (MTU) for 2.5 years before transferring to my current school (WMU) which I have been at since before being accepted to this study abroad program. Blah Blah...

The non-standard is that said Rural Michigan was the Upper Peninsula (or U.P. for short) which is usually recognized around the world for being that one part of America that everyone mistakes for being Canada.  It means I grew up in forests, the biggest city Marquette has a population of just above 20,000, and the nearest anything is an 8 hour drive "that-a-way".  All in all though, it was a great place to live, but I suspect has me unprepared for the rigors of one of the largest Megalopolises the world has ever seen.  Additionally in the summer months for the last 10 years I have worked at a Boyscout Camp.  One of the best jobs I will probably ever have but has defiantly left a mark of insanity right next to my Eagle Badge.

"You got any interesting Hobbies we should know about?"
       Well, aside from my love and understanding of Physics and this insatiable love of Japan...  I enjoy writing, although never completed anything officially I have a few projects on the way and always enjoy sharing.  I also took to cartooning a while back.  I don't do it much anymore but I still enjoy it enough that if I have my way this blog may start to contain crude illustrations.  And sports wise, since it will defiantly be of worthy note in the coming months, last year I took to practicing the Traditional Japanese Martial Art of Kendo.  At the time of writing this I have yet to finish a full year, but I have a great Sensei(Master) and collection of Senpai(Honored Students above me) and have been at it diligently practicing.  If you are wondering if I am any good at it, don't.  I'm not.  I still have a lot to learn.  I've done martial arts before but never have I enjoyed it like this, so naturally I want to continue practicing it in the place of it's origin. 

"Okay, what about you and Japan?"
       I've been in love with Japan since I was 10.  Where I literally, one day stood in a book store while staring at the travel section, told myself, "Hey, you love Japan.  Go buy a book about it."   There could have been some other factors involved that I can't put an exact qualification of significance on.  One of my aunts owned a Traditional Japanese Tea house and Shinto Shrine in Columbus Ohio and ran it as a park/museum; a few of my cousin's from that family went to Japan as kids as well.  My mother was a Navy Brat, and my grandfather was stationed at Yokosuka when she was a young girl.  She told me stories and my grandparents had all kinds of traditional Japanese art and statues displayed in their houses when I was growing up.  But it wasn't like I used one of those things, I just one day went ... "I love Japan." when I was ten and that was about it.

I studied the language using self teaching tapes and kits and hosted a summer exchange program with a young boy my age from Mito in Ibaraki Prefecture.  A fun experience, which was supposed to conclude with the sending of myself over to Japan for three months.  At the last moment I chickened out.  I usually don't tally these kinds of things, but this is defiantly one of the few things I would think as being "the worst mistake of my life".  Still, as time went on, although my Japanese language skills faded, my love still scraped at the back of my mind.

Now you need to understand that this is a pretty non-traditional way for a kid to fall in love with Japan.  I know when I started finding other kids interested in Japan it 11 out of 10 times started with, "Oh My God I LOVE Anime!" which was the exact opposite of me since I read up on Japan as I kid I was under the impression from all the warnings in the travel books and the internet (snicker) that all Japanese cartoons were porn.  Not to say I didn't eventually come to enjoy Japanese Manga and Anime or Japanese Martial Arts but I think it's relevant to point out that I came to enjoy them after becoming fixated on Japan, instead of vice-versa.

It's also important to state right here that I never in growing up or otherwise looked at Japan as some kind of Shangri la or escape.  Some home I was always needing to go to.  To me home is where the heart is (which could have some ramifications on said home).  But for the most part, although I have always known I needed to go to Japan, it wasn't because I felt like I would belong there.  In fact, I have always known it was the opposite.  I wont make a list but I know there are a lot of personal beliefs and qualities in myself that I appreciate that don't mesh well in Japanese society.  "Nails hammered down" and all that.  I'm sure most, if not all, of these will become apparent as time goes on in this travel log.

Suffice it all to say that I have, for most of my life, known I needed to go to Japan.  Which leads us to the big question...

"So you made it to Japan... now what?"
   Exactly. 

Enough friends, family, co-workers, teachers, and so on have expressed enough interest in this question that I have decided to write it down in a blog.  I usually refrain from this kind of activity, but for the first time I think I will have something genuinely interesting to write about and share; even if it ends up being a collection of Study Abroad horror stories from the land of the Rising Sun. (And Hello Kitty, and Godzilla, and everything CRAZY that has cropped up in pop culture and other for the last ... oh... 70 years as far as the Western World is concerned.)


But that's it in a nutshell, background, general info.  Everything else I suspect I will cover in the next year.  At the very least I know nothing else other then the fact that this will be as interesting as the experience is exhilarating... or frightening... I really can't decide the right word.

To those of you yet un-phased, read on!  For those of you still confused, read on!  For that select few who now find themselves genuinely interested, read on!


Congratulations Sam, you're on your way.  Now what?