One Thing at a Time

When everything is changing and there are a million things to do, I have to slow down and take comfort in constants. For example, no matter where I go, there will always be pretty flowers and tasty sweets. Remembering this gives me a little comfort during this time in my life, where it feels like everything I worked so hard for is slipping through my fingers and the future is uncertain.

Pictured here: a couple of flowers from the gargantuan bouquet I received on my last day of work at school and Japanese warabi sweets with kinako powder.

Everything is going to be okay. Take it one thing at a time.

Packing

We have a three day weekend in Japan right now, Monday being 海の日, "Marine Day."

This is my last completely free weekend in my apartment. I seriously can't believe it.


I've been putting off packing as long as possible, just because I love this place and packing up makes it seem like it's not mine anymore, and reminds me that I can't really just relax and enjoy living here anymore; I have to get ready to leave in exactly a month.

The goal is to finish the majority of my main packing and cleaning up this weekend, but it's so difficult. How do you pack up 3 years of one's life/accumulated possessions/gifts from friends/precious memories into a limited number of boxes? All of which you will have to send home at a hefty cost? I talked to my parents today and even though I knew this, my dad reminded me to only pack the things I really needed, not to bring home things I can get at home.

But the thing is, the more I clean and pack, the more I realize it's hard to throw things away. One of my goals is to seriously streamline my possessions (they're just things, after all...) but when monetary value, i.e. hard-earned money that I've spent, and memories are attached to these possessions, parting with them becomes really difficult. I'm trying hard to be as ruthless as possible, but sometimes I wish someone could just come in here and burn everything in the apartment, just so I wouldn't have to see everything and deal with it. I found that if I'm not looking at the stuff, I don't think about it and don't remember it. I swear to myself that I have to cut down on the things I buy from now on. Shopping for things is the same, I think: if I don't go out window shopping, don't look at magazines and new fashions on the internet, I don't crave shopping and don't need to buy anything. Damn advertising and ever-changing merchandise! I guess the solution here is to just stay holed up where I live and never go out, right?

I have currently filled two boxes with only clothes. I wish I didn't care so much, I would just get rid of everything. But for some reason, I worry about whether I will regret throwing things away later (it's happened before, especially with clothes), or whether the things I own can be considered cool and unique, and so I should bring them home. I wish I didn't care what I wore, I wish people in general didn't care about fashion, in cases like this that require paying to ship things across an ocean. I even went online to see what kinds of things people back in the States are wearing right now, so that I would know what to keep and what to get rid of, isn't that ridiculous?

When I get home, I'm going to try to cut down on the amount of possessions I have stored in my room at my parents' house as well. New Goal: Own less possessions, Be less materialistic. When it comes to clothes, have a few set outfits and let those few outfits set the tone for your style. I am going to simplify. Less is more. After all, it's just stuff, right? When I die, it will all get thrown away anyway, right?

Japanese Love Hotels

Apparently love hotels are recession-proof!
Interesting article from the BBC:

Love Beats the Recession in Japan

Recession or no recession, it looks like people will always need somewhere to get it on...
I guess I know where my investment money should be going then!

It's so funny to read this article when I live here in Japan, I see love hotels all the time and can understand the necessity for the concept: apartments are small, extended families live in one house, privacy is difficult to come by. Overall a good idea, if I say so myself! Pay by the hour, no contact with a human being staff member needed, get a cool room with a theme (supposedly there is a Christmas-themed one somewhere here in Kumamoto...but I think that would ruin the holiday and scar one forever). Only in Japan...?

I am doing 43 things.

Well actually, only 15 right now...but I learned about this useful website from a friend of a friend:

43 Things

You can list out the goals you have in life and keep track of them, share your progress, and check it off the list when you achieve it! A really nice way to organize one's goals and keep motivated.

Hope I can do it!

WOW.

The New York Times, Vows: Erika Fredell and Ted Skala

Today...

...I received my airplane tickets home. Has it seriously already been 3 years in Japan? COMPLETELY SURREAL.


When I think of 3 years, a million memories rush through my mind, all those new adventures, all the places I visited, everything I've seen, everyone I've met, everything I've learned, all the dizzying highs and heartbreaking lows, the accomplishments I worked so hard for, and how much I have irrevocably changed and grown. I remember very clearly flying to Japan and landing in the Tokyo Narita Airport, going through a whirlwind high-class orientation, flying to Kumamoto, and driving to my new home with my new superiors. It's so clear, and really doesn't feel like that long ago.

And despite the fact that I am soon to return home to a broken economy, to go back to living with my parents for a while, with no particular job lined up, very little money saved, lots of credit card debt, and a million anxieties about returning to a place I've been away from for 3 years (but felt like a blink of an eye), I feel a strange calm about the prospect of being able to slow down for the first time in a long time, properly digest and meditate on the past 3 years, pare down my belongings with the newly acquired insight of a woman who has come to realize that life is transitory and so are material things, get a job (any job that doesn't involve teaching), save money, and get my life in order. I feel very ready to finish saying goodbye to my life in Japan (properly, of course) and start the slow and sacrificial process of getting myself financially stable.

I have a feeling this will not be the first and last time I live abroad though; I realized/decided tonight that I need to live abroad again, at least one more time, so that I can compare the experiences, continue to grow, and keep the adventures coming. This blog is not called "Wanderlust Annals" for no reason; despite being broke, it really is an addiction. There will always be somewhere to go, something new to explore. As one of the speakers at the Yokohama Returner's Conference I went to in March said (something that has stuck with me and rises to the surface when I find myself in emotional tatters or bittersweet nostalgic reverie clinging to Japan, this cherished nascent experience: "Japan isn't everything...there is a big world out there."

Tibet with Natalee, The Trans-Siberian Railroad through Russia and Mongolia, anywhere in Europe, other destinations that I haven't even thought of yet which fate has waiting for me...here I come. I just hope that Japan doesn't feel like it was a dream, as it has every time I've flown home before, touched down, and walked through the gates at SFO. I don't know why it feels like that. But, for the record, it wasn't a dream...it was 3 years of preparing me for the rest of my life as an adult and international citizen. There's no going back now.

Thank you, Japan. ３年間お世話になり、本当にありがとうございました。心からの感謝は、言葉になれない。