The Town of Fukuma – 福間町
Hello and ようこそ！
Shortly after I arrived I realized that each day spawned so many interesting (and sometimes deliciously banal) stories about life in Japan that I just had to share them with everyone I knew. At a time when LiveJournal was still the defacto way to share thoughts online, I instead decided to dip my toes into the relatively young publishing format of the weblog, or ‘blog’.
During my three years in Japan, I did my best to post stories, photos and even the occasional insights into life abroad from my perspective. I’m not going to tell you that within these pages you’re going to find the best-written, most thought-provoking material ever written about Japan but I always did my best to make things at least entertaining enough that it justified opening a browser window and pointing the address field to my chuckle-worthy URL.
It’s going on almost 10 years since I lived in Japan and I don’t know how much of that experience is still relevant. I’ve decided to revamp the site in a searchable wordpress format (the whole thing used to be hand-updated in an HTML generator, oy!) and continue to keep it online for anyone who happens to stumble across it and find it interesting or useful. I somehow get the feeling that even though many of the specifics of my experience have changed over the years, the institution of being a ‘stranger in a strange land’ endures across decades and individuals.
I don’t know who you are or how you ended up here, but please accept my warmest welcome to this odd little collection of tales of the lives of me and my friends from a place that, despite how little time I’ve spent there in my days, will always be home in my heart.
Scott Piekarczyk
March, 2013