19 days and counting

I can hardly believe it, but I leave in only 19 days. I have spent a a great deal of time in the past months preparing. However, as time brings me closer to leaving I have been reading more and more.

Specifically, it took some time to find out a lot of detailed information about my homestay city, Miyako-jima. This was largely due to the fact that most of information that I found online was in Japanese, which my limited "Learn Japanese" podcast did not prepare me for.

The homestay city is where I will be spending most of my time, so I was hoping for a good city-and I think I lucked out! I believe that Miyako-jima will provide me with a very different Japanese experience than that of Tokyo (which I will already visit for several days).

Miyako-jima is located on Miyako island, which is one of the two southern most islands in the Okinawa Prefecture. The island is pretty small, home to only about 49,000 people. The island is home to a large number of sugarcane plantations, some of the most highly regarded beaches and diving locations, and the Strongman All-Japan Triathlon every April.

One of the things that I am most interested in about my placement is how I am going to get there. Miyako-jima is located about 300 km away from Okinawa, which is already over 1500 km from Tokyo. This means that I will be much, much closer to Taipei, Taiwan than to Tokyo, Japan. My schedule has me taking 2 days to get there from Tokyo, so I will let you all know how I get from point "A" to point "B."