さよなら。

The feelings I am having right now are such a mottled, twisted mess that I am unsure that I could unravel them.  There are so many different stimuli hitting my limbic system at the same time that my prefrontal cortex is having trouble sorting it all out.  I am excited to be going home and seeing my friends and family again.  I miss my dog.  I miss working(somehow).  I am very unhappy at my circumstances for returning, but I still stand by my decision, regardless of how the situation here turns out.  I hope that nothing bad happens and I hope that everyone stays safe and gets to finish their studies here, but at the same time, I don't feel like I'm being properly informed of the gravity of the power plant situation from either the Eastern media or the Western media, so I can't stay here and just hope for the best.  The fact is that even after this disaster is resolved, for better or worse, Japan will still be here and I can come back.  The same thing can't be said for me; they can not rebuild me and they can not make me better, stronger, faster.

I'm more than a little bit upset that I won't get to finish my studies here.  It's not the thing I'm most upset about because language acquisition is extremely difficult and I don't appear to have the knack for it.  I am able to learn the grammar points really well and I have a pretty easy time remembering the vocabulary, but I can not get myself to get over my fear of looking like a buffoon.  I've had a ridiculous amount of practice at looking like an idiot here and I can't seem to get used to it.  At home, I love having attention, both good and bad; in fact, one might say that I thrive on it.  In Japan, it's much more off-putting for me.  People greet me with this strange mixture of curiosity and interest and it makes me feel like I have something that I have to prove; almost as though I am on stage.  For whatever reason that makes me lock up and almost all understanding and ability to make coherent sentences goes out the window.  I feel like that kid on the playground who gets hit with a sick burn, but only later during class does he come up with a comeback, except that this is for things as simple as "do you have any more classes today" or "have we ever met before?" or any other simple, mundane question.  So, I can say that I am upset that I am missing out on all of the learning that I had ahead of me, but I am not missing out on all of the bad grades that I would have inevitably come away with.

Up until now, I was sure that it wasn't going to effect me, leaving all of the people I've met here but now I'm not so sure.  Despite the best of my efforts otherwise, many people here have managed to endear themselves to me in one way or another.  I daresay that some of them may even be my friends.  I'm unsure how this happened, as I spent an inordinate amount of time being anti-social, but it did.  This isn't all bad being as how the interwebs bridges all gaps in physical space, so it isn't like these new-found relationships will be unable to grow.  I only hope that their growth isn't too stunted.

Ultimately, I have to say that I am happy.  I have a lot of things to be upset and frustrated about, but dwelling on those things would only diminish all of the things that I have to be happy about.  I may be terrible at it, but I managed to pick up quite a bit of Japanese.  I met many new friends that I could have forever.  I lived in freaking Tokyo.  I watched Rent in Japanese.  The list goes on.  I am sure that in the upcoming days and weeks I will experience the full gamut of emotions involved in re-entry culture shock, but through it all I know that I will remain happy.

雪。

It snowed today.  I mean, it snowed once before, but it was at night and none of it stuck.  This time it snowed all day long and some of it actually stuck!  It wasn't much, but there were still patches of grass and trees, still green with foliage, with snow covering them.  It's funny the effect that it had.  I'll admit that once I realized that the winter here was so mild as to be non-existent, I was happy because I thought that I was going to skip an entire winter.  I didn't really think that winter would be something that I would miss from home, but when they got their big snow recently, I was upset that I missed it.  I've been a part of a hundred snows and it never occurred to me that I actually liked them and would miss them.  I was very happy to see snow here and I feel comforted from having walked around in it and felt it falling.

The snow seemed to effect Tokyo, too.  I mean, it was a pretty heavy snowfall, but the roads and sidewalks were staying clear and I still saw almost no cars out driving around.  I still saw people walking around like normal, but they were all bundled up and had their umbrellas out.  I'm fairly used to people acting like it's freezing when it's barely chilly, but I've never seen people using umbrellas in snow.  That being said, I wonder if people would use umbrellas in snow at home if they were doing more than walking from their car to their destination.  Probably.

It's been two and a half weeks since break started and I'm starting to crack up a bit.  I've been spending more of my time in the dorm, playing video games.  I haven't really felt like going out exploring, but I'm wondering if maybe I should anyway for no other reason than I know that if I don't I'll regret it.  I'm sure that whatever I find will be awesome and new and interesting and I really do want to see new and interesting things, but I've been in the grips of a horrible apathy and it's hard to care about that sort of thing.  I'm sure that if I could get myself to go out, I would have fun and then I'd want to do it again and the apathy would fade, but maybe I'm too much of a coward to let my apathy fade.  Maybe I want to hide behind my apathy and not experience anything more than I have to.  Of course, it doesn't help that I don't have very much moneys.  I should go to Shinjuku at night and turn tricks.