I had a few complaints about my first blog post. While admittedly terrible (you have to start somewhere and the benefit of starting terribly is room for improvement) the main complaint was historical innaccuracy. This post is to correct that. This is the story of how I found myself in Japan.

This is Tim.I had the joy of working with Tim on a reelection campaign for several local and statewide candidates that shall remain nameless, mostly because of these photos.

It was the kind of job where you meet dedicated, interesting people, and end up crying in front of them when the printer runs out of paper at  midnight and you haven’t finished your walk packets for your group of 9 am volunteers, or you hold off on going to the hospital because you have to finish phonebanking during call time. It was my first job after college, working on a cause I felt passionate about, and I had never been so challenged in my life. I wanted to prove to myself that I was up to it. I can’t count how many times I cried in this office due to things that, in retrospect, were not the end of the world. Tim generally remained calm in these kinds of emergencies and was able to defuse the situation. Sometimes by sleeping through it.

When Tim wasn’t sleeping or getting locked out of the office, he told us stories about living and working in Japan, where he had just returned from. I had known for a long time that I wanted to live abroad for part of my life. It was the specifics that eluded me, and the timing always felt off. I found it easy to make excuses not to make the leap. When I decided last year that it was now or never, Tim was a really encouraging resource, giving me information when I asked and pushing me if I started backing out for dumb reasons. It took a few years, but I made the jump, partially due to his encouragement.

That’s the story. I mostly wanted an excuse to unload some of these beautiful photos that have remained hidden on my hard drive for far too long.

We swept almost every race, by the way.