Life is pretty grand right now. I'm making a niche in San Diego, I've got a dream job for a research gig, I can handle the academic pressures of school, and I'm beginning to be exposed to the joys of southern California, such as lots and lots of promising concerts from artists I love.
Still:
I'd rather be in Japan. I can't spend a day without walking home from school thinking I'd rather be walking home from work somewhere in Japan, following my nose to good food and beer. And sumo on TV. And trying to understand the evening news immediately thereafter.It's easy to be nostalgic when my life in Japan was so relatively easy, but I think what draws me most is the same thing that sent me there in the first place: the sheer unpredictability of each day. I didn't know where I'd eat, or who I'd meet doing so. I didn't know what I'd learn. For all my training, I still couldn't read a lot of the signs I'd see along the way, and they became miniature intellectual curiosities as I walked along.
And I could really go for some legit sushi right about now.
I still miss that general sensation of "I'm in a foreign land! I'm in Japan! Wowwwwww!" It's still a motivator, even after having lived there. For the last three years, I've been in Japan at least once every 8 months. I'm about to break that trend, and it's disappointing.