Homecoming

In less than two months now, I will be going back to the United States for a week. I have know I was going back since December but time has gone by quite rapidly and I find myself less than a month and a half away from my plane touching down in Boise. There is part of me that is excited to go back, lots of people to see and lots of food to eat. The biggest chunk of me is very nervous, however.

Having lived in Japan for a year and a half now, I have come to barely tolerate most white people. Whitey is loud, obnoxious, and most often, totally disrespectful of the country they find themselves in. And as I have said earlier, most of the white people that come here are an embarrassment to normal Caucasians. What is in the world am I going to do when I am in a place that is 99.5% white? On the flipside of that, what am I going to do when I find myself able to read and understand everything I see and hear around me? One way or the other, I think it will be a sensory overload of sorts.

Then there is my brother's wedding. While I am happy for him and his fiance, I can't help but to be the tiniest bit nervous about the whole thing. I guess I am a little jaded and I know not all relationships turn out the way mine have, but I would hate to have him and his girlfriend have to go through what Mushi and I did and I know that what I went through was pretty tame in comparison to other divorces. Good or bad divorce, they are horribly fun either way.

Then there is the whole layout of American life that is totally different to what I have been living in for the past while. Big houses, malls, cars everywhere, huge freakin' trucks with idiots in cowboy hats, gunracks, swimming pools and hottubs, Walmart, dry air, very hot days, beds, white people, couches, TV commercials that aren't cute and funny, everything. The reason I mention couches in that list is because I have lounged on a couch only three or four time since I have come here. I miss couches and will definitely need one when I return permanently. The shear level of relaxation reached when sprawled all over a comfy couch is amazing when compared to the level of relaxation reached when sprawled across a train seat. Swimming pools and hottubs are mentioned because thanks to certain body art, I am not allowed into most public pools and hot springs here. There are lots of things Americans take for granted that other countries simply don't have or don't have a lot of. I am going to need to re-adjust. Oh, one other biggy, driving. I haven't driven a car for the last year and a half, that will be odd.

So anywho, there are lots of things associated with coming back to the US that I have been thinking about. While it will be great to see everyone, and understand what they are saying, and talk at a normal pace while in conversation, I think it will feel slightly odd. I am also curious as to how long it will take me to get homesick once I am there, after all, my home is in the mountains of South-Central Japan now. All in all, I am intrigued as to how the whole trip goes. I expect it will be fun; it will just be very different.