Greetings all,
This is the next to next to last post I will be posting. (Fun times with doubling up on the repetition.) I thought I would give a small diagnostic in view of my immanent return to the states.
I came to Japan thristy for wisdom and understanding of myself and my destiny. It occurs to me that Wisdom is the juice of Perspective, plucked from the tree of Hindsight, grown in the muck of experience. I've accumulated a lot of muck so far, so that's a good thing.
Many people have asked me if I'm excited to come home, sad to leave Japan, or scrambling to get out of here. In answer, I'm extremely glad I came and grateful for the work the Lord has done in my life while here, but it was a season, and I'm glad that its coming to its "telos" as Paul says. I have made one really good friend, Blake, who lives in Texas, and I'll be keeping up with him for sure, but for the most part, this has been a very dry time for me relationally. I've hit bottom and crawled from the valley. Good but costly, emotionally speaking. As you can imagine, not having English in common with 99% of your world does take its toll on you. (Especially a raging extrovert like me who has never met a stranger in his life... only met friends I don't know so well yet.)
How soon do I return? I fly out of Japan on March 22nd, and I'll be moving back to Augusta almost immediately. I have a job lined up as a swim coach, which will be a sallaried job for the summer. Pretty sweet set up, jobwise. I'll be near my best friends Daniel and Chad, and back at my home church FPC Augusta. All in all, I'd rather be there than travelling around Japan with a pocket-full of cash.
After living here for a year I've discovered that every place on earth has some amount of natural beauty, local flavor, and peculiar people, and those are the things that make a particular place worth visiting... but its only where you are loved and where people let you love them that you have a home. Relationships make a place worth putting roots down. I miss my friends and being able to speak to strangers... sorry, immanent friends... and I think I might even be almost ready to move towards a serious relationship... just a decade or so and I'll be ready. (I figure it will take that long to find a girl who's crazy enough.)
So, that's the news from Lake Watanabe where the women do the manual labor, the men tweeze their eyebrows, and the children have nervous breakdowns from stress.
So, that's the news from Lake Watanabe where the women do the manual labor, the men tweeze their eyebrows, and the children have nervous breakdowns from stress.
I've posted pictures and movies on Facebook and Youtube. If you're unclear as to how you can access either of those sites, just let me know. I'll walk you through how to sign up for Facecrack... I mean Facebook.
From Japan with love,
Josh <{><
3 comments:
I'm reminded of some thoughts I had last year while traveling between the U.K. and France. I share them with you below, and look forward to catching up with you after the 22nd!
***
Oh my. How to begin recapping the last week and a half of my life? As some people have faithfully reminded me, I’ve been conspicuously absent from Rough Drafts for quite some time, which is entirely due to the fact that I’ve been absent from my computer for some time, and have only recently returned to our sparsely furnished house, which, after eight days of traveling all over the British Isles, is feeling more and more like home. It’s quiet, cozy enough, and when we’re all home, almost feels like a family lives here. That being said, in the midst of all this traveling, I’m starting to notice that sometimes it feels like one place in the world is just like another in essence; small details change here and there, like the language everyone speaks, or what side of the road people drive on. But I guess what I’m noticing is that, if you’re not surrounded by the people you love, everywhere seems kind of the same – i.e., not home, despite how wonderful the place may be. Conversely, I suppose, if you are surrounded by loved ones, it is possible to feel at home most anywhere. I experienced this during my family’s trip to Italy in 2005. We were on the other side of the world, in a culture where I understood less of the language than I do now. And yet, I felt as though I could have stayed there quite happily for a long time.
"Its the people that make a place, not the place that makes a place"
A lesson that I learned too after travels abroad, travels within the good old USA, and living in a place that ISN'T "my place". Wisdom I am happy to share but this is one lesson people have to learn on their own or make up their minds to accept on their own. Some days are easier than others. Good luck with your new life journeys.
-friend of blake's
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