Expatriate

Expatriate 

A woefully long 'About Me' 

こんにちは, 안넝, Xin chào, مرحبا, 你好, Hi

I'm Zac, Jack to my Korean friends, Zaku to my Japanese friends.

I am an expatriate, someone who has emigrated from their country of birth.

I'm moving to Japan as a student, and by the end of college will apply for Japanese Citizenship. Why? Well, the western world lost it's charm to me. Or maybe it isn't so much the loss of charm of charm on the Western front is it is the overabundance of it on the Eastern...

Growing up,

Asia was an enigma to me, and still is.

I caught interest in contemporary 

Asian History and Literature early on

and am slowly progressing through

a seemingly endless backlog of 

Asian books.

From Chairman Mao's Little Red Book to

Haruki Murakami's emotionally-insightful 

books on life and loneliness in modern Japan.

On the TV Side, I grew up with anime, 

and am admittedly still a huge 'One Piece' fan.

But that quickly evolved into a deep 

knowledge and admiration of Asian Cinema.

To this day, I watch Akira Kurosawa movies

ritualistically.

Asia is a land cloaked with a thousands of years of history and isolationism, wearing a hat of progressive modernity... And it's filled with Damn good food. It became evident that I had to be on that side of the world. I wanted my life to be akin to the explorations of Marco Polo, or to find Shangri-La like in James Hilton's 'Lost Horizon'. But that time has passed, for the most part. There is no more perilous 3-year journey across the seas, being the first to communicate with a completely different society. I've always wanted to see Pre-Japanese-Occupation Korea, or be the lucky cartographer to look out over the Conical Mountains before any western eyes.  Now the world is fast paced and far-more easily explored. 

And with that progression of time comes a new Asia to explore. 

A China, whose landscape now has it's fair share of ghost-cities. 

A Korea to the north, who behaves like the socially awkward 12 year old  of the political world. 

And a Korea to the south that is arguably one of the greatest comeback-kid stories in history.

A Japan who managed to become the cultural center of the universe.

A Myanmar that got tired of throwing everyone in Jail, and is now experimenting with an entirely new political structure...

That is the continent I will call home. 

Where, regardless of citizenship, I may be simply named 'foreigner' among other things...

So here I am, preparing to leave for the world that has been the basis of my hopes and dreams... after 8 years of waiting.

While in Japan, I plan on obtaining my private pilots license, so I can see my beloved continent from a new angle (and have bragging rights)...

I also plan on writing books. A lot of them. I want to write children's books to teach the new, more progressive generation of Japanese youngsters about disability awareness. I also plan to one day publish a photography book, memoir, and an epic poem... 

Post college, I plan to live among a handful of Asian countries as a teacher, mountaineer and pilot.

So that's me: 

A soon-to-be-author/pilot/teacher... and Expatriate