Faithful readers,
I have no fewer than 20 posts I've drafted up over the last several months, and I shall have you know that I intend to post them, though I'm sure some of the poignancy will be lost since I won't be in Japan anymore.
I have a lot of feelings about my upcoming return to the States this Saturday morning. There are happy feelings, sad feelings, tortured feelings, unresolved feelings, excited feelings, and so on. It is definitely my time to go--I have things to do in the States, and even more so I'm just ready to settle down.
I am 100% satisfied, content, and happy with my decision to go back to school, study Japanese intensively, and live in Japan for a year. However, it was not an easy decision to make. When I first left LA, and when I first got to Japan a year later, I had such a pull to stay in one place. Over the last nine years, I have lived in countless houses and apartments, I have had over fifty roommates, I've lived in New York City, Chicago, Kentucky, and LA (each on at least multiple occasions), I've had tons of jobs, I've made solid strides forward in my career as a performer and now as a Japanese speaker, and I am just exhausted.
I'm very, very grateful for the opportunities I've received, the incredible people I've met, the support from my family, friends, and complete strangers, and the memories I've created. I wouldn't trade them for absolutely anything.
Being a performer, though, it is a source of pain for me not being able to be in front of people entertaining. For that, I am looking forward to getting back to Los Angeles.
From a lifestyle perspective, I'm looking forward to settling the hell down. For instance, the last five or six months I've been using internet from the phone I'm renting here and it is hinderingly slow. I'm not a huge, huge internet person, but this has been a source of making me feel uprooted, like I'm not here for the long haul. I'm looking forward to staying in one abode, decorating, gathering the things I need and getting rid of the ones I don't that have accumulated in the last decade of endless moving around the world. I'm looking forward to building a solid social circle where I am, to having a doctor and a dentist, to having regular haunts, and, once I establish all of this, being able to travel and know where I'm returning home to when I come back.
This has been an incredible year with so many unexpected factors. I had the most amazing host family who has become part of my real family, I stayed in a zen temple, I learned Japanese Sign Language, I learned what sleep deprivation is like and became addicted to coffee, and I lived a year of my life abroad on the other side of the world from my home country. I am so lucky.
Thank you for reading, and see you soon.
