Left Japan, now in Seoul

Finally I left Japan today.

I will stay in Seoul for 4 days and leave for the States on the 28th. 

Honestly I have not been so sentimental about leaving Japan, my family and my friends since I have been deathly busy dealing with a lot of things: getting my visa overcoming all the problems, arranging stuff such as flight tickets, packing and shipping, insurance, selling my car etc...I had to do these things within 2 weeks after I could confirm my visa was going to be approved. It was really exhausting.

It was painful saying good-bye to my beloved people when the time really came. I cannot see them in person whenever from now on. Although it is easy to get contact with them thanks to technology, it is still different.

Leaving a country and saying good-bye to people is a rare occasion. I took this oppotunity to say my biggest gratefulness and apologies to my family and friends. It is embarassing to dare to say such things usually. But saying good-bye seems to make you and your people miss each other all the more for it. It is sad but it makes the bonds to people strong.  

My mother gave me a letter, funny but touching. I didn't imagine that I could become so close to her when I was a child. That's why I feel so happy looking back my past although It is quite sad that I cannot see her soon again ...so I will invite my mother to where I live soon!!

A new phase of my life has started.
I will see and handle what is gonna happen there.

  

Visiting my hometown

I visited my hometown where I had lived until 18.

This could be the last visit for me to see my father and my grandfather before I leave this country. This made me look back my childhood.

My father is living in this house alone.

The left one is a storage, the middle is the old house (one one lives now), and the right one is where my father lives. It is also where my room was. 

My parents bought me lots of books. I want to give my child(ren)

such an environment.

I used to play outside every day. I hanged around my grandparents who were often in the field. These field banks were the playground for me. I caught insects, picked up flowers, walking along them to call them for meals. There used to be a lot of insects and birds in my childhood but I didn’t see many when I visited there yesterday. My father said, one stat says the number of sparrows is now one tenth compared to it 10 years ago. It would be partly because they have encased most of the banks of the paddy fields in concrete in my hometown a few years ago.  This one is unchanged, but most of the others are concreted. The less the natural bank where grass glow becomes, the less insects survive, and the less birds we can see now.

It looks peaceful, but it is not. Maybe, using insecticide and herbicide caused the decrease too.

It is a shameful long story but the family of my father's side live apart physically and emotionally. It is so sad that they hate each other although they are the immediate family.

I don’t want to be involved in such a stupid entanglement. Since my big brother, my little sister and I see their sad relationship, we get along together. We know what is important for life.

I was soo happy that I could meet my grandfather for the first time in...I don't know...8 months? (This is also a long story...) He is the nicest person I have ever known despite his life so full of ups and downs. Maybe I need to visit him again before I go to record his life...