Every now and then my mind wanders to my little town of Ubuyama, the only little town I've ever really been a true citizen of.
And if you are possibly reading this, dear Ubuyama chugakko, shogakko, and hoikuen teachers, dear eikawa class ladies, dear Mieko-san: I wish you happy holidays, and despite my poor skills at staying in touch, I have not and will not forget all of you. That goes for everyone else too: Hanae, Chris, Vicky, Austin, Tomoko, John, Miyuki, and many more. You guys were wonderful to me and I will always consider you my friends.
Sometimes I also wonder why I would leave such a stable, well-paying job with so many perks. The easy answer is that I do not like jobs with time limits, especially if those jobs require you to be completely isolated for 2-3 years. The more difficult side of the question is the human one: I never wanted to say goodbye to the people that were part of my life. And to that I say that sometimes life gives us little choice in these sorts of decisions.... That I had to do what I had to do.
Decisions can be too final. Saying goodbye to that little village was one example. No one leaves Ubuyama unscathed. I fear the scar from leaving will never fully disappear - that I will always feel my traveler's heart yearning to return. But return only for a short time?
Time is limited. And yet airplanes devour the circumference of the globe in only a little more than a day. What voracious beasts airplanes are! They travel so unnaturally fast. How can the human heart survive such a thing? Is it because the heart has been numbed, anesthetized, before the travel even begins? Or are we like the dogs who ride in back of trucks, eagerly awaiting potentially unknown destinations?
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