Japanese Summer...

isn't quite here yet, but I can smell it in the air. There's this distinct scent to it, something like a combination of damp and smoky (probably from the approaching humid weather and the burning of garbage). It's not a bad smell, just a distinct one. I can feel summer coming, and I can see it in the stores too. Fireworks and yukata are coming out on store shelves, and lots of cold drinks too. It blows my mind that in a few months it'll be a year of me being here.

Went to my homestay family's tonight for dinner as usual on a Monday and saw fireflies for the first time. We were cleaning up after dinner and otou-san told us to go outside and we walked in the dark along the path between the family's rice paddies and gazed in the general direction of the forest, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness they slowly appeared. It was dreamlike; little floating green intervals of glowing light between the cedar trees. Then I looked around in the darkness with rice paddies and only a few lights in the distance and had another one of those "oh yeah, I'm in Japan" moments. It doesn't happen very often. As much as I try to focus on the moment sometimes, it just doesn't register in my mind where I am or what I'm doing sometimes, and I wonder if that's a good thing because if it always did, maybe I would be overwhelmed. But the few times it does happen, I love it. It's a moment where I feel completely aware and everything makes sense for a split second. I guess it can be likened to a satori (yeah, Mr. Steeb's Major Religions only becomes more applicable as I get older), and it's an amazing feeling. It was a moment of contented peace and comprehension, standing in the dark with otou-san and Naho and Tsubasa, staring at these little floating green lights. I know in a few months the weather will be awful, first with the rainy season in June and July, and then the debilitating summer heat and humidity come August, but there's a lot of things about summer that I am looking forward to that I blindly went through the motions with last summer because I had just arrived. Definitely looking forward to the Furusato Matsuri and dressing up in yukata again, lighting fireworks that are illegal in America, having lots of barbecues, going swimming, eating ice cream everyday and not feeling guilty about it. Not looking forward to lot of bugs (which are starting to infiltrate the apartment somehow...), mosquitoes that pay no mind to profusely-applied insect repellant, humidity, needing to take two showers a day. But before all that, I think I'm coming home for a stint in July or August, so I'll keep you posted. It's a strange feeling, wishing you could put two things together. There are things I love and hate about both America and Japan, of course. I guess if we didn't have to choose between things life wouldn't be so interesting and choices wouldn't have any meaning then, would they? But man sometimes I wish life was easy.

Kristen and Andrew are coming to visit this Friday! Very excited. God, when was the last time I saw you guys? Was it when you guys came to SC and we crumped on the knoll and visited the Econ department for Andrew? Or when we went to Danvin's place..? Either way, it's been too long. See you soon. Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara, Mie-ken, here we come!