First time in Japan was Summer of 1985. Landed into NRT on a Pan Am flight that had an engine malfunction and had to dump fuel and make an emergency landing in Anchorage, which delayed the flight for many hours. It was early July, and the weather was (as expected) perfectly unpleasant. My parents were coming in independently at the same time as I was so we were all going to meet in NRT.

But my mom, being my mom, when she learned my flight was terribly delayed she just headed to the Keio Plaza and left me to fend for my own devices. Which was unfortunate, as she was an experienced Japan traveler (her first visit was with my dad in 1964). So I had to find my own way to the Keio Plaza, which I apparently managed to do, don't even know how.

The next few weeks were a very strange, jet-lagged, hallucinatory, sweat-drenched experience. My conclusion at the time was that Japan was the future and the 21st Century was going to be the Asian Century. Putting my money where my mouth was, I ended up moving to Asia in 1992, and have been living in and out of Japan and Hong Kong (with some longish stretches in the West) ever since.

The first six months of actually living in Japan (as opposed to just visiting for long stretches) happened in the early 1990s, and that was another attitude-adjustment session. My personality and my world-view were severely reconfigured in that period, probably as much (or maybe more) as taking psychedelics when I was young and impressionable.