Epic Failure
That's what I am. At least in terms of blogging. "I'm going to do this every week!" Do it twice. "Instant ramen! but I like soba better." Put in the picture of the instant soba on accident (to be fair, I did say I didn't read the cover *whistles innocently*) and didn't pay attention when posting it >.<.
That being said, my time here in at Aoyama Gakuin in Japan has now come to it's complete close (not Japan, just AGU). I finished my last exams earlier today. Have little under a month before I fly back. Looking back, it was fun and I'm gonna miss some things. Actual convenience stores, akihabara, International Business with Dr. Duignan (and the JIC events like rambles), the IEC staff, the friends I have here, and so forth.
But in a way I'm kind of happy to be returning to the US for a bit. Sure the economy sucks, it's an election year, and I'm going from a land of technology and civilization back to the land of farms, hippies, and pot smokers. But it'll be nice to get back to UVM where I can get back to real things. Living in Japan feels kind of lackluster in a way this semester. I didn't really have a long enough stay to get a real job, and not knowing exactly how long I'd be staying last semester hurt even more in that regard. Had a nice kitchen at my guest house, but it was just too busy most of the time. Also, I wasn't that big a fan of the schedule or commute. Any time I wanted to go anywhere it usually took over an hour to get there. Living in VT I'm used to having to travel a ways, but having to travel for at least 3 hours a day six days a week (since I had classes 6 days a week again), 7 days if I decided to do something on sunday, just kind of wears a person down after awhile.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Japan and feel that this semester my language did improve much more than it did last semester. I'm not saying Japan is a bad place to live, either. It's just sort of reality hitting. Everywhere has its ups and downs. Living in the US has its ups and downs as well. It just sort of went from my pre-trip uber-excitement to last semester's excitement to this semester kind of having the veil removed. Given the opportunity, I'd definitely love to work here in Japan and live here in the future. It's just right now, I'm kind of excited to be heading back. I'm a CS major. A mathematical and scientific geek. And sadly, as much as Japan is known for geeky things, it's really lacking in geek academics for foreigners.
Or it could just be homesickness finally hitting. Up until part way through this semester, the awesomeness of living in Japan sort of over-shadowed everything else. I loved living here, loved the places, loved how there was always somewhere to go and do things. And although japan may be full of otaku, they don't have geeks. Nor does there really exist an easily accessible or even findable geek culture. They have the geek places, but they don't have the geek people or the geek feel. I miss friday night magic games, I miss in-person D&D, I miss the video game tournaments, I miss the all-nighters doing CS homework with friends, I miss being able to say "hey, let's do something" and end up watching a football game or scrubs marathons, I miss having co-workers who weren't classmates who I could hang out with.
Speaking of hanging out, as much as I acknowledge that people do other things too in Japan, I'm f'ing tired of bars. Far and away, my largest complaint about Japan is bars. Seriously, walk two feet down the road, hit up the arcade for a quarter of the cost. Go watch some movies for half the cost. I don't know, do SOMETHING, even if it costs the same or more. Maybe it's just since I'm from VT and there's not really a whole lot to do when UVM is on break, but when you're in the middle of Tokyo with pretty much anything you would ever want to do available to do, why on god's green earth is the majority of times people hang out end up being at a f'ing bar or to a park to drink cheap beer that was bought at a hundred yen store?
Sorry, started writing this around 11 PMish, and it's getting on 2 AM now (been writing it off and on while do other stuff to get my computer back to pre-wipe status since I had to return it to factory defaults), so my tiredness is leaking into some of this >.<.