It was March 15, 1997. The time too early to remember. What was clear however, was the fact that I was soon going to be on my own in a country where I did not know the language or the people that I would be meeting there and staying with. The adrenaline rushed through me as I packed the last of my things and ran out of the door. I closed the door to my house and jumped in the car. The idea of leaving America and going to Japan seemed to really not have hit me yet, but now that I look back I know that I had to feel it. I think that the things that I was feeling was such a blob of mixed em…