The only way I can really put my feelings into words is: Christ, I cannit believe it. I've been here 6 months! 6 months without my family and friends, without sunday dinners, greggs pasties and chavs. Not all bad then, I guess. Infact, if I'm honest, it was painfully difficult to come up with many things I missed other than my friends and family (sunday dinners was an easy one, don't really miss chavs though, for obvious reasons).
If we could boat all of my friends and family out here permanently, I'd have no reason to go back to England. It's not that England doesn't have redeeming qualities - I love the place. The only problem is Japan is atleast 20,000 million times better. I love this place, it has so much England doesn't have - the coolest history of any nation (oh come on, a country which got invaded by the french can't match up to samurai, no matter how hard it tries), delicious food and so much more.
Maybe I'm just feeling mid-year blues (well, post-mid-year... I may be returning at the start of August) and panicking at the short amount of time I have left here, in the same way that when I was coming out here I spent the last few weeks of English life not really wanting to leave. Either way, I'm really setting out to make the most of these last 5 months, mostly in the form of martial arts. I've already been doing Shorinji Kempo (although, I've been hugely lazy since Christmas, but I will properly start again in April with the new school year), I joined a Shotokan Karate class a few days ago and I'm looking to start Kendo. 'How will you juggle all of this, Michael?' you ask. 'Do you really have that much free time?' Well, no. I don't, and I'm not quite sure how this will all fit in but I have my heart intent on trying. I also really want give Taiko drumming a try. How I'll manage all of this? No clue, but I really feel the drive to do more things that I can take away from the gap year, so that when I get back home I can get that "holy crap, I just spent a year training three different martial arts in Japan, the home of each of these fighting styles". The sense of achievement would easily outweigh the exhaustion that will come with it.
When I stop to think like this, I still have so much left to do before I leave. So many places to see (Kyoto, Nara, Iga ninja museum, Utsunomiya...), so many new things to experience (Taiko, Kendo, Hanami - wiki it, festivals...) and so much still that I need to do within Tokyo that I haven't got around to (seeing the Imperial Palace, visiting the war museum and the national history museum, seeing Sumo...).
Hopefully this post can be not so much a wake-up call, but a promise to myself, and to whoever reads this, that I'm going to really try to do everything I possibly can in my last few months before my journey back across the world.
This can also be a post to say "I'll be back home soon, get ready to party". I demand atleast 5 welcome back parties, including (but not limited to) some nights out, some house parties and a few trips to Japanese restaurants so I can criticise them on how un-Japanese their restaurants are.
The pictures in the post are just random ones I selected from my first few months here. The top one was taken at the Junten Bunkasai (school festival), which happened in my first few weeks here. Despite the fact that this will sound immensely cheesey, it does almost seems like an eternity ago, I'd kill to go to this year's Bunkasai just so I could relive it now that I'm really at home at Junten and now that I know so many students. Never mind, still sports day to come! The second picture is of my trip to Nikko, again that feels like so long ago - my first real trip in Japan. The third is a random picture at karaoke which must've been taken in my first few weeks when Paxman was still here.
Hopefully my next post can be about a trip somewhere - no trips planned as of yet, but I have another 3 weeks off. A small amount of travelling can and will happen!
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