This will be...

As far back as last February or so, when it was pretty certain that I'd be studying abroad, I told people that I'd keep a blog while in Japan. I actually have been writing bloggish entries since I've been here, but to a very limited audience, and usually actually more for myself than others.
But, to share with everyone, I've made this blog which I intend to keep at least until I return to the states.

For anyone who doesn't know, I'm an undergraduate (junior this year) at the University of Michigan, majoring in Political Science (international) and minoring in Japanese. I'm studying at the University of Tokyo, or as I will surely be referring to it, TouDai (short for Toukyou Daigaku - "Tokyo University") for one academic year, which, due to the difference in academic calendar between the two schools, ends up being October 1st, 2009 through approximately the end of July, 2010, about ten months. I'm here via a global exchange program called Abroad In Komaba (AIKOM), which brings 25 students from 21 universities around the world. We take classes with each other as well as well with the Japanese students at TouDai and all live in a dormitory in Mitaka-shi, Tokyo, along with some other international students and a few hundred Japanese students. This year, 2009-2010, is AIKOM 15, that is, the fifteenth year of the program.

I've titled the blog "愛コムの日々", pronounced aikomu no hibi, to mean something like "AIKOM Days." Normally AIKOM is written in Japanese simply using the same Roman characters, "AIKOM." If one had to write it in Japanese kana, it'd be アイコム ("aikomu"). However, I've chosen to copy a plaque made by, presumably, one of the previous years' AIKOMsei (AIKOM students) which writes the "ai" in "aikomu" with the character 愛, meaning love (in a general, not necessarily romantic sense), because AIKOM has been, this first month, truly a place and experience of great love.

To start with I'll paste some of the things I've written in the last month, and from now on I hope to keep up and post at least semi-regularly. This way, not only will I create a more organized and unified document for myself, but the blog can also serve as an easy way to communicate with everyone back at home.

I'm pretty good at dull list-of-events journal entries, so I'll try to keep that under control. I do intend to write some entries that are purely diary, as well as more general reflections and thoughts, and maybe even some of the essays I've been writing so much more the last few months.

So, hooray for the last month, and the next nine to come!
AIKOM, banzai!