Tokyo Jim’s 生活

In the U.S., traffic control boxes often have failsafe hardware that will prevent two competing roads from both getting a green light, just in case of some hardware or software failure.

Now which traffic engineer here in Chengdu, China thought it would be a good idea to purposely do this?

When my alarm went off at 0400 the morning I left, I thought to myself “What the HELL am I doing?” Why was I leaving my good life, friends, & city to go live someplace across the world and far from a beach where I know no one.

I’ve now been here in China for just over a week and sometimes I still wonder. But I also felt that way in 2008 when I arrived in Japan for 5 weeks; yet by the end I was having such a great time and didn’t want to go home.

So I’ll stick it out for a while and see what develops. After spending my first 5 nights in a travelers hostel, I now have an apartment and started daily Chinese classes this week, and have been spending hours a day wandering the streets exploring my new town and its eats.