It’s getting real now, folks. I have sent the first of my belongings back to the US. There’s really no escaping it at this point. I will be leaving Japan. Sooner rather than later. You would think I would be more nervous or anxious about it. That I would be wondering if I were making the right decision. And from a certain perspective, I suppose that is true. The reality, however, is that regardless of how much I love Japan and enjoy living here, my time as a resident here has come to an end. I’ll certainly miss aspects of life here, and definitely miss friends I’ve made over the course of four years, but it’s time to move on. I recognized that it was time maybe in August of last year, but it was too late then to move back. I don’t regret the extra year at all, but it has only confirmed me in my decision.
I had originally intended to ship three boxes back home today, but the weather didn’t want to cooperate. It seems a flimsy excuse on the surface, but try lugging moving boxes to the post office in the rain. It’s close enough that driving would be completely pointless, but that means you’re walking down the street trying to hold a heavy moving box and somehow balance an umbrella so that you and the package aren’t completely soaked by the time you arrive. As a result, I have two more boxes sitting here waiting to ship. Assuming that the weather clears up and it’s not pouring rain, they will get shipped tomorrow.
Wednesday is my short day. I only work until noon(ish) on Wednesdays, so I try to get stuff like going to the post office or the bank or going shopping then. It’s also a major reason why I update this page on Wednesdays. I have time to sit down and write. I often think about writing these posts earlier so I don’t have to worry about getting it done at the last minute, but that happens with far less regularity than it should. Too often, I find something else that I need to be doing instead and forget all about writing until Wednesday. I think I had a full month’s worth of posts written out at one point in time and just spent that month happy that I didn’t have deadlines instead of maintaining the advantage.
Here it is June 7, and I still have no information at all on who my successor will be. I have to assume at this point that they made a decision and then the person they selected elected to decline the position. Otherwise I would know by now. Since we don’t know when my successor will arrive, I haven’t been able to schedule my return flight yet. I could schedule it anyway, but I’d like to have at least one day of overlap so I can meet them and explain the living and working situation here before flying back. If we haven’t heard anything by Friday, I think I will book my flight anyway and just deal with the schedule I’m given. I’m going to go with the date of August 9 as my return date for the time being. If we get information this week and that changes, I’ll post the new information here.
Before I sign off for the week, I’ll leave you with this video that I recorded just moments prior to writing this. In fact, I was writing this while it was uploading. It’s my ham-fisted version of What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. Listening to it, I recognize a lot that I could fix, but I don’t feel like taking the time to re-record it. I’m making progress, but it’s slow.
Latin Rite Motorsports 