As a child, I was fascinated with Japan. It was a growing, successful country with a rich history that was very different from what I grew up with in Canada. I took several Japanese language electives in my first three years of undergrad, and in the fall of 1994 I learned that I had been accepted into the Co-op Japan program.
I would be working for NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) in one of their research labs, investigating potential high bandwidth consumer applications for video databases.
In May 1995 I went to Vancouver for a month of near immersive Japanese language training and acculturation, and in early June 1995 I arrived in Japan. I started writing emails to friends and family (after convincing several family members to get an email address, something many of them saw no need for at the time) shortly after my arrival (this was before the era of travel blogs).
Several years ago, I found that the CD on which I had backed up these emails was corrupted. I asked everyone I was still in contact with if any of them still had copies. I posted on Facebook. Unsurprisingly, no one still had email archives that stretched back nearly thirty years.
Then, last week, an old friend from high school contacted me. She's moving back to Canada so was going through boxes she hadn't opened in decades, and in them found printed copies of my Japan Journals. She scanned them, and (after correcting the (many!) errors made by Acrobat's image->text feature) I now have my Japan Journals again.
I will start publishing them on this blog, unedited and in full, starting on Sunday, with a new Journal coming out every two weeks.
It's been a blast rereading these after all these years. I hope you enjoy.
Leslie
