It’s a chance to start fresh, with no accumulated dust bunnies.  My previous blog was six years old so I’m looking forward to a clean style sheet, if you will.

So, who am I?  I’m Karla Butler, a 25 year old American getting ready to make the move to Kawasaki, Japan.  I graduated with a double major in Urban Planning and Japanese Studies from the University at Albany, New York, maybe one of the only people to shoehorn those two concentrations together.  Ever since it’s been all Japanese all the time, kicked off by a year of study abroad at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka.  I’m heading to Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in March but hope to one day be a translator and interpreter.

Here expect to find anything and everything Japan-related:  culture, language, news, and plenty of my own adventures.  Part language and part travel, part personal and part professional, I will record my seach for Japanese Me.

What is that, anyway?  They say that when you learn a new language you gain a new personality.  Nothing drastic–picking up some Swedish won’t give you violent tendencies–but each language has different strong points as far as expression goes.  To overgeneralize English is straightforward, making it easy to say stuff like “Nah, I don’t like that” without offending anyone.  In Japanese, however, a similar sentiment comes out as それはちょっと・・・[That's a little...], leaving the mind to fill in the unsavory blank.

It’s not a lot on its own but all these little differences add up to a new form of self-expression and way of thinking, hence, a new self.  This is the journey I’m taking to find this Japanese Me.  I hope you enjoy it.