This is the first of many entries to this GeoBlog that will serve as a kind of journal for my adventures in Japan!

I have been studying Penn State for four years now (starting my 5th one this fall) and I have been studying Japanese for the last two of those years along with Telecommunications as my second major. I started out with the summer intensive sessions for my Japanese classes so I’ve actually taken three years worth Japanese. Hopefully it will be enough to make settling into Japan and making friends relatively smooth.

I will be studying at Ibaraki University in Mito city (which is located in the Ibaraki Prefecture, map below). My program begins on October 1, 2012 and ends on August 08, 2013. So I will be in Japan for about 10 months. I expect to fly over there at the end of September, but in the meantime I have been studying the rest of the Tobira textbook and working part-time jobs to save up money.

My goal for studying abroad is to, of course, practice Japanese as much as I can and move closer to becoming fluent in it. I also want to get a better understanding of the culture and expand my knowledge of the world as a whole. Studying in Japan is my first step towards this knowledge. I will see new things and meet new people and experience a part of the world that I have not had the chance to before. For someone like me who has never been out of my own country before, it will be an amazing adventure.

I am very much looking forward to going to Japan and I really can’t wait to fly out. I have been looking forward to this ever since I began college and making this happen is like a dream come true. Hopefully I will have plenty of pictures and hopefully even more videos to post come October!