14.01.08  Thoughts on going back to Japan

Back in Nihon.  De retour.  I don’t know how I feel to be “back” except that my heart sunk a little when we opened the door to the apartment.  It’s really quite a dreary place with brown in every conceivable corner.  We bought a (stinking) kerosene heater today to clip the January chill.  Makes the place somewhat less frightening.

And tomorrow it’s back to Soka Nishi.  I find myself nervous.  I don’t know what I’m afraid of.

I miss home.  Of course I’m sure it would feel dull to actually go back to that place which is as familiar as the details of my fingers.  The nights I have been driven home, half-asleep, down those roads.  I look for it everywhere.  In the kanji and strange fashions of this place and always it escapes me a little.

Life is going on without us.  When all we really wanted was to freeze that place for when we returned.  How dare they age and move and divorce and prepare to die while we are so far away living as spectators of another world.