The Last Week

There is only one week remaining before I depart the place and the people that I have called home and friends for two years. I can say now, with most of it behind me, that I will cherish these two years I have spent here in Japan. There have been good times and bad times, happy times and lonely times, frustrating times and times when the wind was smooth in my sails.

These past few weeks have been in a continuing holding pattern, and as the days have gone by, so have I disentangled myself and my emotions from my life in my small corner of Japan. It has not been easy, and there have been moments were I have cried in front of my students. Contrastingly, there have been times when I wanted to say farewell to everything in an instant and begin a new path in life. This is my impatient side coming through, I have no doubt.

I ask myself--have these two years turned me off from Japan? While I can honestly say "no" I will truthfully say that there is a "but" to that statement. Just as there is a "but" when I say "I like America...but..." It is not a question of like or hate, black or white. Can I admit that there are things that I have come to dislike about this culture? Yes, of course I can. Contrastingly, there are things I have also learned to love on a deeper level. I don't want to become numb towards this country, and learn to live in it regardless of culture--because for me, once I take that mindset, it is as though something is lost. I do not want to be lost in my own indifference, for indifference towards life, and one's surrounding is something I cannot stand whether I am on the shores of the Sea of Japan or the Atlantic.

I will admit that much of my dissatisfaction towards this stint in the country was not based on any particular growing dislike of Japan--but my dislike of my job and the limitations it presented me. Perhaps I am an ambitious person. At the very least, I am a person who wishes to be felt useful, needed, and with a sense of achievement in my job. If someone were to ask me whether or not I had a good time in Japan these past two years--I would answer, yes, certainly--but I like so many adults, I have come to not live for my job, but for my time outside of it. My most precious memories here have not been the time I have spent with my students at Culture or Sports Festivals, but time spent with cherished people, enjoying beautiful places, interesting food or epic adventures of some sort. Perhaps this is just life in general--because at one point or another, a person will take a job they dislike. In fact it is very likely that most humans work a job they dislike--and it is for the time outside their job that they secretly yearn.

Perhaps because my life has been in a holding pattern since roughly May of this year, I find myself not evolving and not as motivated as I once was. I am a person who thrives on being busy, being productive to be happy. By being productive, I can enjoy the "down times" even more.

In any case, this past week has been filled with goodbyes--coupled with the wiping away of two years of buildup in my apartment. The time for goodbyes is almost upon me, and as I make my way further and further from my former home, I think to myself just how many changes these two years have brought upon me, and how much I have evolved as a human being.