Tuesday, December 11, 2007

And So Begins The Downward Spiral

It is setting in on me rather quickly that my time here is starting to get very short. While I am glad to be heading back to the US and getting a fresh start on everything, pangs of sadness that I am leaving all of this behind are becoming more frequent. Japan has been very good to me and I am going to miss it. I have seen and done so much while I've been here and now that is all coming to a close.

When I left America, I knew I would be back at some point. Leaving here though, I am not sure if I will ever see a lot of the places I have grown to love again. There are so many nooks and crannies that I have explored here and now I am going back to familiar ground and won't have as much to explore that I haven't seen before. This bothers me, but at this point, I am ready to leave Japan and start anew somewhere else.

I am now to the point where each day I teach is the last time I will ever see these kids and for the most part that is just fine with me but I do have a few that I will miss and I wish I could do more to explain to them that I have had so much fun with them and I hope they keep studying English. As for me, I am firmly resolved I will keep working on my Japanese. I have learned too much to forget and have no desire to stop now. Who knows, if I get good enough, maybe another door will open for me that will lead me to this wonderful country once again.

The cleaning and the sorting has begun in earnest and I am fairly certain I will not be taking a ton of stuff back with me when I leave. Aside from books and my largish collection of manga, I have not bought a lot of stuff while I have been here. At least not meaningful stuff. The nice part about my manga collection is that when I buy a new book, I know it will help me keep studying Japanese and as I learn more, each book will become more accessible and more fun to read. My manga collection will also probably make me a god amongst all of the Japanese cartoon and manga nerds in the US. As I am learning, it sounds like there are starting to be a lot of them too. I am not sure how I feel about this but whatever works, at least when I read manga, I will be doing so in Japanese, the way it was meant to be read. Elitist, yes I am.

Anywho, everything is starting to wrap up and I am going to try and stay cheerful because I know I have no good reason to be sad. While I will be leaving Japan, there isn't much here that I haven't accomplished that I set out to do. I have seen centuries old temples, I have climbed mountains, I have seen sprawling metropolises. I have pretty much conquered this island nation and now it is time to go.

4 Comments:

At 12:00 AM, Blogger dustin said...

Have you ever seen one of these in your classroom? If so, were you trained in its use?

http://thelowdown.org/index.php?topic=13742.0

 
At 5:49 AM, Blogger JessicaElizabeth said...

I can understand your grief of leaving. I still have 3 and a half months and am already trying to savor every minute. Good luck back in the states, let me know how hard it was to re acclimate. :)

 
At 6:18 AM, Blogger Mogwai said...

Dustin, I have seen a sasumata before but I unfortunately, don't have one in my classes. I have see cops use them before though. It is a pretty ingenious device as long as the person doesn't have a gun.

 
At 6:31 AM, Blogger dustin said...

Given that the device is used, I guess guns aren't as common a concern, not that I worry about them much here.

 

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