Konnichi wa!

I leave for Japan in 15 days! Kobe, here I come!

In honor of my quickly approaching departure, I have decided to get my travel journal website all ready to go! This is the site where I will post all of my stories, pictures, and video diaries detailing my life in Japan as I learn, grow, travel, make new friends, feast on exotic foods, and do any of a myriad of amazing things in this foreign country.

As for the technical things...
The URL of this website is www.spiritedawaytojapan.blogspot.com .
My photos will be on a Picasa Web Album and will be in a slideshow on the side of this page. If you want to access my photo site by itself it can be found here.

For those of you not familiar with Hayao Miyazaki's work, the title of my blog and the picture at the top are in reference to his masterpiece Spirited Away. It is about a young girl, Chihiro (later called Sen), who is literally "spirited away" to the Spirit World populated by strange Japanese legends come to life. There, she makes friends, grows up, and finds her inner strength.
The picture is of Chihiro and her closest friend in the Spirit World, the dragon Haku, as they fly to face Chihiro's final test before she can return home. I thought it was all a pretty good metaphor for what I hope to happen on my travels in Japan. :) The Japanese in the picture is the Japanese title of the movie, 千と千尋の神隠し or Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi. It means "The Spiriting Away of Sen and Chihiro". I slightly modified it to be more fitting with my journey. I replaced the names of the main character with my Japanese-ified name, クリステイ, and tacked on に日本 or "to Japan" at the end. This gave me "Christy's Spiriting Away to Japan". I chose to use the more familiar English title of the movie in the actual title of my journal, thus "Spirited Away...to Japan!"
I highly recommend Spirited Away to those of you who haven't seen it. And even if you have seen it, you should watch it again. It's a pretty amazing movie.

Also, if you're keeping up with my journey, please comment on my posts! I'd love to hear from you!

I'll write again soon, with all my packing woes, I expect. :D

じゃまた (Romanization: Jya Mata, Pronunciation: JAH mahTAH, Translation: "Until later!")、
Christy