Hey! My name is Kragen, and I am writing this from my capsule hotel in Kyoto, on my first night in Japan. I still can’t really believe it. Two planes, two busses, a 15 hour time change, and I’m here. I feel like I’m dreaming, in every sense of the word, due in part because I haven’t slept in 45 hours and can feel myself entering a kind of psychosis, and because I really have been dreaming of this for years. I have a few days before classes start, so I think I should talk about my pre-departure experience. But before that, enjoy these pictures of my very cozy hotel.

Prior to leaving, I was quite a mess. Studying abroad is not just an immense feat of planning, but also a massive mental weight. You can prepare for months, but there just isn’t enough time to properly think of everything, to build a plan so perfect that nothing goes wrong. There will always be something you forget, something you didn’t think of — something that surprises you. And it’s not just that. There are dozens of forms to fill out, visas to apply to, hoops to jump through. After getting caught up in trying to prepare perfectly, I recognized, in hindsight, that I should’ve let go of the idea, and spent more of my time saying goodbye and being around the ones I love while I still had them. The night I left, I started realizing all the little things in my life that I took for granted, which I was about to leave behind. It made me appreciate things more. I’m not very good with being present, but on that final day, knowing a chapter was ending, and that another one was about to begin, there was nothing else to think about but the moment. Saying goodbye was hard, but it would’ve been much harder if I hadn’t been getting wined and dined the whole time.

A far less reflective part of traveling is packing, which in itself is a skill. A skill I do not have. Packing was particularly tough because, unlike a vacation, my stay is pretty much permanent. I needed to pick my life up, just as it was, and plop it back down thousands of miles away. I’ve never done that before. Not only that, but I needed to completely oust the life I was living back in America. I’ve heard that housing isn’t very fond of you leaving all your stuff in the dorm all summer. I knew it would be painful, the simultaneous moving-and-packing maneuver, but I still wasn’t prepared for just how much it would suck. Others might not find it as hard, but I had the brilliant idea of buying the largest and most precariously built LEGO set ever made, without ever considering that I would eventually need to move the 5,000 piece hunk of plastic.

Now, finally, all that is behind me, and this new chapter I’ve been blabbing on about has actually begun. I’m here in Japan. I feel extremely jetlagged, like I’m out of place, and like my head is screwed on backwards after all that travel. You know that feeling when there’s something you’re forgetting, but you can’t remember what? That’s been my default since I got here. I think I just need a little time to assimilate. Until next time!