And then comes the sadness

In 2 weeks I'll be staying at a hotel room trying to get some sleep because the next morning I'll have to catch my flight back home.
That's 14 days from now.

As soon as the three week mark was up and the last two weeks of work started, it hit me:
I have to leave. Disappear. Become another ghost on these people's lives.

I've already said goodbye to most classes. The kiddos have given me farewell letters and some of them have been so so sweet. That sweetness just slays me. My heart breaks just because my life will never be the same after this. I truly hope that I had an impact on some of them. Six hundred students, maybe one of them will be something new because of me.
That is one of the most beautiful compliments I could ever receive.

I have never met such depth in young people as here. Japan is a beauty and I'll come back one day.

But for now it's time to
Kieta.

Memories that I'l miss. A list.

Everyday I make lists in my head. The things I'll miss about Japan. The things I want to go back to in Finland. What I should savor. What I should stock up on. What I'll loose once I leave. But what I look forward to when I go back.

So here's a little list of things I'll miss
- Onigiris. I just started going to the small onigiri shop close to my work and it's just so simple. rice. fish. seaweed.
- The clouds howering around the mountains on rainy days like today. They just gather and stay put. Sometimes it makes the mountains look infinitely taller than they actually are. Sometimes it makes it look like I live in a rainforest.
-Every week there is a new flower blooming in the most vibrant colors. How is that even possible? This place is a botanical dream.
- The good service. Always awkward but always so welcoming.
- My job. My flat. My life with the easiness that has been given in return of me being patient and open.

Just look at these pictures, little glimpses of what I've seen here. It's been a different world and I've lived through it. And soon I'll be back to that airport that I've always returned to. I know it so well. So many times I've waited for the bus outside it, just to go back home.  I've always returned and made it seem that the life I once lived far away was just a dream.
That is what will happen with Japan soon. It's the saddest part of this. Letting go of your reality to return to the place that holds the most memories. 

Buttons

Hallo.
 My place is such a mess now. I'm trying to start the packing process. The worst thing of leaving. I'm doing inventory on things I want to take with me and what to leave behind. I need to be critical with these things co's I want a place filled with only "meaningful" things and get rid of all the crapola that I so easily accumulate. For example, I bought these very cute apple shaped buttons, but I have no need for them. I thought ooh, I'll sew my child (who doesn't exist at all) a cute dress and use these cute apple shaped buttons on her dress. One day. One pretty day, when I'm a sewer again and make the cutest children's clothing.

This pretty much sums me up as a consumer. I shop for the dream, the possibility.
And while that's nice and sweet, it ends up being just a bunch of stuff in my drawers.

Maybe it's time to learn to buy if I use it. Only buy when I really need apple shaped buttons or those cute small cards with an illustration of a backpack on them (only really of use when thanking primary school teachers?), instead of trying to fulfill something.

The week

The last few days have been hot again. And so I've had to gather up my summer wear. Which is difficult here, your cleavage should be hidden at all times and even though I have none, I feel self-conscious if I wear anything less then completely covering my collarbones, etc. So basically you must cover up and always sweat. Even though nobody sweats here (ladies). How, why... mysteries.
 
I've been having good days at work, usually after bad days. This week I've felt very annoyed, but then I've come back to grateful. The kiddos I get to work with always make me laugh. Whether it's the awkward laugh when I try to talk to them in English and they get this scared look on their face, or the way they make fun of me and I can't help but laugh with them. Dude, it is funny when I have a squeaky voice and speak a foreign language. I get that. I get your humor, 12 year olds.

But I do count days. Just because.
It wasn't as easy I thought it would be.
The world traveler I was (am) wants to go home.
I know, this is the theme in my posts now. " I want to go home" "But where is home?" " I don't know where home is." " Will I ever know home?"
It's ok, these next following years are still a mystery to me. Like they would be to everyone. But there are possibilities, new schools, new homes, even new countries (or old ones revisited?). There's so much more to do, that I can't say that after I return I'll be growing roots. Because that's just not true. I'll be returning to familiar grounds and a place that I've known the best, where I speak the language perfectly and people I have known since birth. But I won't stay. 

So I guess this blog is now mostly about just thoughts of a person who won't stay. Maybe food pictures and drawings will make an appearance once in awhile. Once I get back to my scanner. That had to stay.

9 months in Japan

9 months have gone by. Sometimes this place is home, sometimes it's not.
Never the less as time keeps on ticking I'm starting to savor things more. The supermarket, my neighborhood streets, the cake shops and cafe lunch sets.

It's been up and it's been down. The beginning of the roller coaster was such a thrill, I had seen all the cool pictures of Japan and thought it most be something like that. So every pond, koi fish, japanese garden or anything resembling one, excited me.  I've came across some of that coolness, and calmness and poetic-ness, that I thought I would, at times. But it's also such a lonely place to be. And I'm not a stranger in the loneliness department. I used to spend some of my weekends in city libraries, in my early twenties while studying abroad, just to not be alone. That trick doesn't work here though.

Never the less, for every foreigner there feeling lost in translation, there's another one feeling the exact same way.

Still here, but not for long.

I have know the taste of salt water,
and the smell of decaying forests,
and the cracks in hundreds of sidewalks.

I have loved the gas pedal,
and the airport concourse,
and the ever changing time zones.

in all of these places,
i thought i could find a home in not having one;
I have chased the sun across the sky so many times,
not yet ready to admit,
you never catch up.

(found on the internet with no name, and no, i didn't google)

How true. This is my fifth country I am permanently living in. Eighth if I count the month long working stumps. I guess I could, I managed to form routines during those times too.
Ever since I turned 19 I have not stopped and my suitcase has been packed and unpacked over and over again.
I'm scared of standing still. I don't know where I could just stop.
I managed to study in a program that allowed me to always leave everything behind. Promptly every four months a new scenery would open from my window.
I only had one suitcase. It felt good to get rid of all the old things in the end of my stay.

In three months I'm leaving again. Returning to somewhere so familiar.
I just hope I don't freak out.

There's always that part of me that longs a new adventure and seeks for the endless new possibilities, instead of taking the easy route. I've gained so much from taking these risks and making life a bit more difficult for me. It's been worth it.