The future is now

Writing takes courage. The kind of courage you don't think you need when you first sit down to write, but it is so real. In my experience I find all the dreams of being the next Naipaul evaporate and procrastination (the nemesis of courage) gets the better of me. If I lost you at the Naipaul reference, then you probably haven't read a true West Indian story, these days we call the region "the Caribbean" but I like that Columbus bumble better, and I consider myself a true West Indian...an island girl from the Caribbean with a global life. My roots reach much deeper than sun kissed shores, however. This blog is really a space where I could show how that perspective has come to shape my experience of the world. Many moons ago, I was encouraged to write more and while I think the title of writer is hardly one I'd bestow on myself, I do one day hope this blog shapes me into the type of writer I have dreamed of becoming. Present: I'm sitting here in the hub of Asia, a cultural metropolis and a place I'd like to call my second home. It seems like the best place to right the wrongs of my procrastination and write myself a new chapter in my life story. In 2010 I first came to Japan on the JET Programme, and it changed my life...as it has done for many people I know. My good friend Jazz had given me a diary to record my "Japan years" as a parting gift. The contents of that diary has many stories of those years, experiences of fearlessness and of feelings of loneliness too. Travel is like a double edged sword and the expat life has in it the best of times, and the worst. To be fair, I packed up with me a lot of baggage from Trinidad (and not just the kind that has a 20kg limit) so the first episodes of "Japan years" aren't the kind I'd want to share on a blog. As the name of the blog says rambling, those were ramblings of a different sort. But now, now is beyond the present, it's the future. It's six years later and I am here in Japan again...to pick up this dusty old story and continue to the next chapter. Japan is already showing signs of getting ready for Olympics in 2020, even as the Rio Olympics have only just begun. An Israeli guy I met yesterday in Ginza said his first impressions of Japan were that it felt like he had come to the future, of the sort you see in movies. It was nice hearing what that feels like for someone for the first time, even as I'm on my fourth trip to Tokyo. This thing we call time is not as it seems, and even as I am here in the future, 13 hours ahead of the time zone I was born into, I know change sometimes can be slow in the land of the rising sun. So I look forward to sharing what's new and exciting happening in my area of the globe. I'm hoping it will be the time of my life, and so much more. I hope you will stay with me.