I’m sitting here at my computer on the very last night that
I’ll live here in Japan.
It’s such a crazy bitter-sweet feeling. I’ve had so many amazing experiences
here as well as so many wretched stories as well. It has been one wild
rollercoaster ride and part of me is aching thinking about the fact that it is
about to end. But end it shall and I can only look back fondly and remember all
the good times. The bad times don’t seem quite so bad and I am the proud owner
of many interesting stories which I hope to add to as my life goes on.
It was a very hard decision to leave Japan but I had
to do it. I feel that as a foreigner coming to Japan you can either be a teacher
or work at a bar in some capacity (such as a hostess) and this is not my
calling. I don’t particularly like teaching English and I don’t have what it
takes to be a hostess so I felt that my calling was leading me elsewhere,
outside of the land of the rising sun. I also felt that I was becoming too
complacent here, which is so easy to do – you find yourself starting all these
new routines and sticking to them, many of which I didn’t feel was good for me.
I found myself not wanting to leave my apartment some days because I just didn’t
want to deal with the wandering eyes everywhere I went. And as a foreign girl
you find yourself hard-pressed to find a date on a Saturday night because you
are too “intimidating” to all the Japanese boys out there, sad to say but
rather true as far as foreign women are concerned. If you’re lucky and speak
quite a bit of Japanese you might have better luck but perhaps not. It’s such a
strange thing, the dating game here. Foreign men are a completely different
ball game, though, luckily for them. So I become complacent at home, at work,
and within my social life and didn’t feel myself growing enough in ways that I
wanted and needed to. It was time to decide to move on to something new.
From reasons like these among many others I felt that it was
my time to leave Osaka.
I started this sayonara journey back in October of 2008 wondering what to do next and
settling things so that I had a new path to follow starting this summer and now
that time has come and it is so
bitter-sweet. I am saying goodbye to so many amazing friends and leaving behind
so many amazing experiences and photos and part of me regrets doing this. But
the other part of me is relishing in the new adventure I have lined up. It’s
hard leaving and even harder to go somewhere new and start up again but it’s
also exciting and you find yourself having so many more amazing experiences
than you might have had otherwise. This is what travel does to you – it opens
up your world and your eyes to what is out there outside of your little sphere
of influence and knowledge.
So with that I must now say a fond, if sad, farewell to my
home for over a year and a half: Osaka,
Japan. I will
miss you dearly but I have my next adventure to pursue: Melbourne, Australia.
After a month back home in sunny Los
Angeles I will pack my bags and start my life over
once again in a foreign country far away from home. Wish me luck!!
Kurenai from Osaka,
signing out.
