I went down to Nagoya today, using the last of my all-you-can-ride train tickets. Had a chance to meet up with Osamu and chill for at least a bit, playing a game of darts and two rounds of pool. It'd been more than 4 months since I last saw him (in Tokyo around New Year's), but it hardly seems like any time has passed at all. I wondered before how it is my parents manage to visit friends of theirs once or twice every few years and still be on such good terms with them; little by little it's becoming clear to me. The laughs and good times we have now makes me wonder why it is we didn't hang out more in Berkeley when it would have been so much more convenient (but you never know what you've got 'til it's gone), and it makes me think about how much I'm going to miss the people and places I've grown to love here.
I can remember when I thought to myself "wow it's already January, I only have a few more months here before I have to go back." It doesn't even feel like any time's passed since thinking that; yet here I am, three months further down the line with hardly another 3-4 months to go before I have to go back to Berkeley. It almost doesn't feel real, as if I'm supposed to stay here indefinitely and the only thing that makes me feel at all like I have to go back sometime is dealing with housing, course registration, and people asking me when it is I'm going back home (that last one makes it kind of obvious, of course).
I got to check Nagoya off my list of places to go. West Japan has been covered, central Japan has been covered (because there's nothing else there), east Japan has been covered (mostly), all that's left now is the northeast part, Hokkaido, and Okinawa (but that will hopefully get taken care of during Golden Week).
I catch myself pausing when I say "I don't want to go home yet," because with all the uprooting and replanting that's gone on in recent years it feels like everywhere is a piece of home.
Posted by aoshi at April 11, 2004 03:34 AM