He's so far away, come on home...

I'm now at the Narita Tobu Hotel Airport. It's actual the third time that I've stayed at this hotel. The first time I stayed here, it was my first night of being in Japan ever, when I was still touring colleges. The second time, it was the day that I landed to start my time here in Japan for grad school. Now, I'm spending the night here before I leave to go back to America. The facilities here are a bit dated, but it's clean, I booked it at a reasonable price, and it's actually the closest hotel to the airport; on the shuttle bus, it takes about 10-15 minutes for the bus to make its way through the maze of particularly narrow roads to get to the terminal.

No Bibles in this hotel, just a bilingual (English and Chinese) copy of the teachings of Buddha

Tomorrow morning, I'm boarding a Japan Airlines flight and am flying to New York. I'll be going home for about three weeks. It sounds like a very long time to be home, and I'll also be missing the New Year's festivities here. However, a certain worried next of kin who doesn't see the value of a passport wanted me home, especially because I had never been away from home, and her, for so long before. (Next week it will be nine months since I had left home.) But if I'm honest, I'm kind of glad to be going home, too. Though I've almost stopped growing physically, I've still grown as a human being. This year, I bought my own car with my own money for the first time, and a manual no less. I made repairs to it myself and I had it repaired as well. I travelled by myself to a far away place, got stuck, and had to deal with the aftermath, mainly by myself. I went to actual Japanese classes and improved my Japanese from a level of I'm so fucked to I can kind of survive by myself, which is honestly a lot more impressive that it sounds.

Of course, I've had plenty of help from my friends and mentors along the way (Saito-san the mechanic, Nagashima-san the foreign personnel advisor, Kaneta-san/Ono-san/Gunji-san from the wind ensemble, etc.). And yet, at the same time, I feel as though I've finally become an adult. I'm 24 now. Most kids my age, or even younger, work full-time jobs and are already starting their climbs up the corporate ladder. So to summarize, I left home as a "cool college kid ridin' to the beach on his mo'", and now, I'm coming back as an adult. An adult that is still getting financial support from his mother, but an adult nonetheless. And in the words of Neil Peart, when writing the song "Headline Flight", I would never trade tomorrow for today.

Anyways, there's going to be a brief change for this blog while I'm home. I've been updating this blog to serve as a window to my world for the people that I'm leaving behind. The other day, though, I figured that this philosophy can work regardless of where I'm departing from. So in addition to finishing my language learning books from cover to cover, for the next three weeks, I'm going to be updating this blog in Japanese. It's a great way for me to improve my language skills, of which I will especially need to rely on more next year. Those of you at home who want to follow along will unfortunately have to use Google Translate.

Speak of the devil, excuse me for a second.

日本人の方へ：今まで1月7日まで日本語にこのブログを書きます。私の日本語を改善したいです。だから、このブログはよい練習の物です。日本語のブログエントリーを楽しみに！

Okay, now where was I? Oh yes, coming home.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing while I'm home. Most likely, I'll be putting some time into my research, helping out Mom with the foreclosures, and seeing a few family members for New Year's. In the interest of not blowing any more money (my round trip ticket was $3k, ouc- I mean, 痛い!), we don't have plans to go anywhere special. We may take a day trip to New York, but that's about it. To be honest, I don't need the trip. I'd rather be at home spending time with Mom. That in itself is everything that I wanted for Christmas.

Time for bed. Gotta be up and out early tomorrow so that I can clear passport control in time for my flight.

-wp