Justin-Klein.com – Life of a Traveling Programmer – Page 118

Coming to America

Apr 162006

The first picture I ever took with my Canon Powershot S2 IS in Den Den Town, Osaka.

In response to my post on Kagoshima, Alanna commented that she’d experienced a total lack of motivation to keep up her blog after returning to the US. Dylan seems to have followed a similar path, his posts growing much less frequent since his return to Oklahoma. And no matter how many times I’ve tried to tell myself that I’d keep this site interesting, I just don’t have the passion to write that I did two short months ago.

I can only hope that I’ll somehow make it back to Japan, and my creativity – both in writing and photography – will reawaken.

In the US, I’m not a celebrity. But in Japan…

Many of you may be wondering what I’ve been doing with myself since returning to the US this February. Well, it’s been a very interesting time in my life to say the least. First, there’s been the emotional rollercoaster. I generally consider myself to be a very motivated, positive-thinking individual. Whatever I choose to undertake I do so to the absolute best of my abilities – be it studying, programming, traveling, and yes, even partying. But during the first month or so after returning from Japan, I found it really difficult to be passionate about anything.
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This is the end…My only friend, the end.

Japan, Public 11 Responses »

Apr 032006

Kyoto cherry blossoms in the springtime.

The title of my first ever Japan blog post came from a song, so I felt that it would only be appropriate to end in the same way. Out of all of the entries I’ve had to rewrite since my computer’s hard drive crashed, this is the one I’ve been looking the least forward to…not just because I’d rather not relive the sadness of leaving Kyoto, but also because now that a month and a half have passed since my departure I don’t really think there’s any way to communicate quite how it felt. But here goes my best shot.

Yasaka Shrine on the evening that I bought my first tripod. Maybe the loss of my “photos to post” folder isn’t such a bad thing after all – I’m rediscovering all of these great photos that I haven’t seen or thought about in months.

As you might imagine, the last few days before leaving Kyoto were mostly composed of a mad dash to shut down as many aspects of my life as possible – cell phone, health insurance, bank accounts, gas, electric, apartment contract, etc, etc, etc. Thankfully, I was able to get all of this done relatively smoothly – that is, except for the furniture…
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Dinner with Yano

Japan, Public 5 Responses »

Mar 292006

Kyoto…I miss you already.

I chose my February 15th return date to the US for two reasons. First, it’s exactly halfway through the month, meaning that I’d be able to pay a prorated 50% rent for my Kyoto apartment in February. Second, it would leave me three weeks from the completion ceremony at Ritsumeikan University during which I planned to sell my furniture, pack everything I own, move out of my apartment, and say goodbye to my friends, Kyoto, and Japan.

Yano Dokuta, the most awesomest Japanese Salaryman ever.

But along came opportunities to travel to Korea and Kyushu, so before long I found myself sitting in a fully furnished apartment on February 12th wondering how in the world I was going to handle everything in three days. And what did I do about my little problem?

I went over to my good buddy Yano’s house for a sukiyaki dinner!
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Dean’s Trip, Part 4: Saitobaru Burial Mounds

Japan, Public 4 Responses »

Mar 262006

Dean, Higashi-san, and the two helpers from City Hall dragging their fancy radar equipment over some suspected burial chambers in Miyazaki Prefecture.

Alright, now that I’ve been back in America for over a month let’s see if I can ever get these Japan posts finished.

Actually, part of the reason it’s been taking so long (aside from all of the general business I’ve been trying to take care of since getting back) is due to a tragic, tragic loss I suffered a couple of weeks ago.

I am indeed the one working that $20,000 piece of radar equipment. Whoop whoop.

For whatever reason, I’ve been having really bad Hard Drive luck lately. You may recall a tough day last November during which I suffered a severe crash. Well, since then I’ve become much more careful about constantly backing up my data…but somehow I was taught yet another lesson in carelessness. See, even though I was now backing everything up weekly, the one thing that I’d been leaving out was my folder of pre-written blog posts. My (flawed) logic at the time was that these posts are merely temporary data, and would be online soon enough, so I didn’t have to worry about backing them up with all of the more long-term data. D’oh.
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Dean’s Trip, Part 3: Kirishima to Miyazaki

Japan, Public 3 Responses »

Mar 242006

The little mountain town of Kirishima

I was a bit bummed when I opened my eyes at 10am on February 8th to one of the bluest skies I’d seen in weeks. I was so certain that I’d be waking up to a blizzard that I didn’t even bother to set my alarm clock before going to bed, and as a result I overslept on a seemingly perfect day for a nice high-altitude volcano climb.

Seemingly.

The same bridge as in the previous picture, leading up to Kirishima Jinja (shrine)

But then I headed downstairs to take my morning shower. The instant I opened the sliding wooden patio door to my ryokan’s garden any remorse about having overslept was quickly whisked away, along with the pair of clean underwear I had in my hand. As it turned out the blizzard wasn’t even close to gone, it had just been out to lunch for the brief moment that I stopped to look out my window.
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