僕の長い旅をここに始まります (My Long Journey Starts Here)

My name is Bryan Zen Hiraki and I grew up in Sunnyvale, California. I am currently 20 years old and am double majoring in Global Economic Relations and Japanese at the University of the Pacific. So far, I have visited Japan twice and have loved every second I was there. That is why I plan to study abroad in Osaka for a year. It is official now that I will be studying at a school called 関西学院大学 (Kwansei Gakuin Daigaku) or just KGU for short, and I will start in the beginning of April 2006. The school is located in a town called Nishinomiya and I plan to do a homestay during my 9 months there. Hopefully all will go well and I remember to keep this diary up to date so that everyone at home can see what Japan is like. I don't know how often I will get to update this however because internet access is limited at the school and I'm not sure if my homestay will have access either, but I will try my best! Anyways, I have decided to keep a journal of all my activities either directly concerning my trip to Japan or my actual experiences while in Japan. I decided on KGU because it was one of the popular schools in Japan to apply to from University of the Pacific and I have had many friends/classmates come from there on exchange programs to America. The fact that I also visited the campus while on my summer trip also made the decision easier. It seems like a wonderful school with extremely nice people in a marvelous area. What else could one ask for? The campus is quite large and enrollment is just as big with the student count at a little over 15,000. This is not really something that I'm used to, seeing that I've never gone to a school with more than 4,000 students, but it should work out just fine. As of this moment, I know at least one other person that will go to KGU as well. Her name is Dawn and she has been in my Japanese class for some time now. She is going to KGU a little before me (in February) for the Winter Session, but she will only stay for one semester. My other Japanese friends and relatives will be in Japan as well and I will definately try to contact them so they can show me all the wonderful things they have described to me. I am very excited about studying abroad and can hopefully make some wonderful experiences to share with you so until then, この日記を楽しむように!! (Look forward to and enjoy this diary!!)

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