effekt

because of the Jack Kerouac book that bears its name.

i live in Japan. as a foreigner, it’s a place where you go to be deconstructed entirely and put back together. that process can be rather exhausting, therefore Thailand is but a hop and a skip away to simultaneously speed and deliciously slow the reconstruction process.

Mongolia has never been a place i really contemplated going to, but i’ve recently made a new friend who spent almost a year teaching English there. the way she talks about it, it seems completely different from the perception i’ve always had, i.e. tents and yaks. i’m intrigued.

because i’d been living in Japan for a year beforehand. i’m from the northeastern US originally, but only made it out west on a ski trip to Colorado and a week in San Francisco. but to go to the place that kind of represents an idyllic America and the way it’s portrayed in westerns around the world—after living abroad! that was sort of weird and mindblowing at once.

born in Atlanta, raised in Buffalo NY, and educated in PA. my loyalty will always be with NY, but i have a soft spot for my college years in Western Pennsylvania. it’s not the most exciting place around, but the hiking was fantastic, the people were… “interesting,” and i couldn’t have asked for a better place to be bored and edumacated.

to a “hmmm, i wonder if i could live here” trip. i might get a new job in the Kanto region (general Tokyo area) next year, and i wanted to see what it’s really all about—beyond Shinjuku, Roppongi, and Harajuku. i stayed with my friend in a gaijin house on the outskirts of town, and explored a lot of residential areas. the first day was rainy and crappy and miserable, and rent is horrendously expensive, but…

yeah. i think i want to live there. :)

...was absolutely the best 5 months of my life. i have such magical memories that i could never actually live there. i’d prefer to keep it frozen in my memory. i’d love to visit the country again though.