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[Red October]

*was going to post this up on facebook, until I read the insane intellectual property rules, turns out everything written on the site is theirs till its deleted. As some of you may know, I spent 5 months living in Japan during 2007. Wrote 70 pages worth of notes on the experience and thought "ah heck, why don't I go one step further and write a book? Since I still remember a lot of the non-written events very vividly and some interesting events took place during my trip I could probably squeeze out around 200 pages. Here's a little sneak peak - the prologue. Looking forward to some opinions*


------------------------Prologue---------------------------

It has been recorded throughout history, that when great minds have strived to change a troubling situation, they have succeeded with a tremendous amount of hard work, guts and effort. For example, In the days before everything was convenient, who but Albert Einstein comes along to discover electricity!?, In the days when computers weren't so simple who but Bill Gates comes along to create the Windows Operating System!?, In the days when we had to spend labourious hours wasted in Libraries researching pointless topics, who but Larry Page and Sergey Brin comes along to invent GOOGLE!? When the one year space war cut down on our freedom in Universal Century 0079, who but Char Aznable ended the war with a rocket launcher!? (Anime it may be, my point still stands) All this thanks to hard work and effort. Ironic it may be that these people worked hard to find ways to be lazy, they accomplished fine things.

However, I, Robert Rostant am an exception to that rule. At 17 I had found everyday life in England labourious and had started to look down on such things as hard work and the education system. I was headed on a downward spiral and I needed change. However I didn't exactly work for this change, it came to me as if by magic (well deserved magic at that!). I was picked as an exchange Student to experience an entire new way of life in the country I had always dreamed of living in. Japan.

My name (as I told you earlier) is Robert Rostant. And this is my story. The story of my evolution from a useless Teenager into an Adult who is perhaps slightly less useless. This Story is one that is completely non fictional, yet is filled with discovery and experience, you will see things through my flawed way of perception, which is polluted by years of nerd fiction!



***

Cultural Journeys are sometimes like emergency lockdowns, you are thrown into a pit with a series of puzzles you must quickly solve (much like the Crystal Maze) if you want to survive. These puzzles can pile up, and from then on, the pit is filled with water and from then on its sink or swim, until the emergency Bakelite pipes are opened, flooding the area with the deadly plastic that hardens with an oxygen reaction! In the Edo period a group of Japanese soldiers where caught in a sea storm and sent to Russia. I didn't see all of that movie, but they had a tough time at first, eventually adapted to it, but they had a lot to do.... and then a man lost his leg due to frost bite!

Fortunately, I still have my legs and due to the immense heat of Shikoku, I have forunately evaded frost bite. However, throughout this journey I had faced emotions such as rage, sadness and even love which had threatened to break me. Maybe I'm just stirring things due to this being the prologue. But don't expect this story to be anything near the level of slice of life magnitude that Clockwork Orange, Catcher in the Rye and even Densha Otoko had, but I at least hope these events which changed my way of living and outlook on life at least have some impact on you, My dear reader-san

***

So now its time. Time for you to disregard this prologue and ready yourself for tales of woe, gangsters, friendship, adventure and the abyss and perhaps even Romance? In any case, expect service, saabisu! (Yes, that was an Evangelion reference. Expect more of those)

[Red October]

Progress update!

3386 words written so far. The surface is merly scratched! I'm writing the chapters in a fairly disjointed order, I'll position them in the right places when everything is written. As you can see, I'm taking it slowly.