In reality, I'm rounding out almost 8 full years in Japan having lived here twice before. I could do the maths and get much more accurate with the amount of time spent in Japan, but I'd rather leave it a bit nebulous, much like how I feel I've been existing over the past 10 years or so.
While I feel like there's much more that can be written, much more to be catalogued, and much more to be revealed, I feel like I want to work on my writing skills and my post consistency a little bit before I fall into a rabbit hole like that. Maybe for my 10th year...
At the end of summer, 2009, I started an adventure that I wouldn't trade away for anything. It was me taking a big leap of faith, bounding wildly outside of my comfort zone. I was just a sheltered boy from suburban Ohio finding himself as far away as one could be from home. In the process, my idea of home changed. I lost a lifelong identity. I came to realize all too well, painfully at times, that there's much that I don't understand about myself and about the world that had begun to unfold around me. Many memories live on, counting themselves among the memories I continue to make day by day as I stumble onward into 2024.
View from my first room in Japan, Asaka City, Saitama, Japan
I would, if I could, ask of my past self: Could you have imagined how your dear friend teaching you a little bit of Japanese in his basement you so often visited would push you to such great heights? Could you have predicted how that new language would invigorate your love for learning and lead you to a whole new world? Did you understand that you would be splitting yourself, and your heart, into many pieces?
Whether or not you could have known it all, I'm proud that you didn't give up and go home halfway through your stay... how you didn't let heartache and homesickness rob you of a golden opportunity. You made your luck and put yourself where you needed to be.
4 years down, more to follow!
Nearly there.