Back again

So I am back in Tokyo since this morning, a few days early for a meeting this weekend with some nice folks from the county office in the Sakae village of northern Nagano. They may try to entice us to move there, but I am just waiting to see Tomoe's reaction when they tell us the annual snowfall in their area. It is one of the harshest regions in japan, deep in a valley with many meters of snow each year.

Before coming "home", if I can still call it that, I was feeling a hint of anticipation. I began to doubt our decision to "move out". I mean, Tokyo is convenient. We do have a great apartment. Not too big (expensive and wasteful) as the places some of my ex-pat friends live, and not as small as the tiny "mansions" many people rent (although it is cheaper). Plenty of room for the birds to fly and great light (sunshine all day - unless its cloudy). I only live a 20 minute walk from Shinjyuku in one direction, and a 1.5 hour train from Okutama mountains in the other. What if we give this up just can't get "settled" into our new place?

Luckily, Tokyo is magic. Even on the bus, as the mountains faded into smog behind us, and all I could see out the window for an hour (one fourth of the entire trip) was the proverbial "endless sea of concrete", my doubts magically began to fade. The twenty minute walk from Shinjyuku bus terminal to my apartment was more than enough to kill any further doubt.

Being a weekday the streets were filled with people in their suits taking their precious one-hour lunch break, and overhearing my conversations about how Kentaro sent an email to Koji and now Shyacho is mad at Ichiro, blah blah blah. It always feels good to see/hear something that shows me how little there is for me here in Tokyo.

Having spent a month in Hakuba has convinced me even more than anything I need or want can be found there as well. One of my biggest worries about moving our of Tokyo was that I was moving away from an area with a large foreigner population. Its always nice to have people around who (sometimes) understand my attempts at humor. To mysurprise, Hakuba also has a large number of foreign folks - in fact, given the small population in Hakuba, I wouldn't be surprised if the foreigner to Japanese ratio is actually higher than Tokyo.

I feel good for now, mostly because this apartment is still the place I feel is my "base". The birds are here, my computer is here, my books are here. Living in Hakuba is still like living in temporary housing for now, but I am guessing that by the end of this week I will be anxious to get the heck out again.

The photo is from my bike ride to work yesterday morning.