The iconic film poster from the 1988 release of Katsuhiro Otomo and Izo Hashimoto’s “Akira”.

My deep interest in Japan became the backbone for my course of study in college–International Relations and Asian studies with a concentration on Japan. I learned Japanese and researched the country in areas like culture, economics, politics, spirituality, media, philosophy, and literature.  Despite a deep commitment to learning about Japan, I never had the opportunity to visit. This inability to connect physically to a place I had put so much of my life into learning about made Japan, over time, feel conceptual, foreign, and fake. Eventually, I lost some of my interest. However persistent things like unconscious bowing, removing shoes in my home, the need to eat Japanese food and speak the language whenever possible kept my interest in Japan at a noticeable, albeit weak simmer.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m notoriously adverse to social media, though the nature of my business forces me to engage with it in much the same way a child is forced to eat vegetables. The difference with social media, of course, is that these “vegetables” tend to be snarky memes, cat videos, food porn, kvetch statuses, and the exercise of deleting that girl with the sketch profile trying to sell you discount “Ray Ban” sunshades. So it was surprising when, through the noise of Facebook, I found a post from old acquaintance, Mike Turner of the New Orleans Japan Society, being interviewed on local news appealing to young professionals to apply to go on a cultural exchange trip to Japan through a program called the TOMODACHI Initiative. “Finally”, I thought, “this is my chance to go to Japan”.