WELCOME 2018!

Hello guys! So the stage curtains of 2017 have been drawn closed and the lights lit on the stage of 2018! I could ramble on for hour about how time is passing too fast but there is little use of such complaints. No matter how much we are surprised or sometimes regret the flow of life, it can’t be stopped can it?

This year for me has so far been amazing. I could not ask for a better way to start afresh in such tangible way. Last year in December I moved out from the guest house where I had been living. It was a choice that held so many conflicted feelings for me, however in the end I decided as an ‘adult’ ahem, it was time to finally get my own place and a bedroom with four walls that touched the ceiling. However I am lucky to still have close relationship with everyone back where I lived who had become a sort of family for me in all the connotations of the word, the good and the bad.

I am now living in a ‘mansion’ together with a friend who joined the same study program as I did in September. It sounds so fancy to say I live in a mansion, like I am a rich woman perched at her elegant mahogany table sitting atop a red velvet rug right now. On the contrary however I am sitting in seiza slouched across my kotatsu table, the blanket pulled up across my legs. Mansions in Japan are actually similar to what most would call apartments, the main difference being that they are built from concrete and steel reinforcement rather than wood and lighter metals that are used for apartments. This means that our mansion has better sound insulation and late into the night we can blast Shakira until our hearts content because our neighbours ‘probably’ don’t hear us. If they can, I hope they have developed a liking for Shakira and appreciate the new lullaby.

It has been over a month and a half since I have been living here, reaffirming my suspicion that I could never live alone. I couldn’t live without my roommate and I couldn’t really imagine living with anyone else here. People who live alone are strong souls.

Other achievements of this year also include completing my second academic essay for my class on ‘Multiculturality in Hokkaido and Japan.’ Essays are incredibly difficult but every time I write and read pages upon pages of essays in order to form my arguments I always find myself engrossed. This year I also did a presentation on my research about the Japanese aesthetic of ‘Wabi Sabi’ which is also a like a life philosophy that encourages us to accept the Three Marks of Existence in Buddhist teaching, ‘Impermanent, Imperfect and Incomplete (or no one-self, because in Buddhism we have no soul). Standing up in front of the class reminds me vividly of the time I ran for school captain at my primary school at the age of twelve where I stopped half way through my speech and declared, ‘I can’t’ in front of an assembly of the entire school and staff body and parents in attendance. Nerves are a funny thing and learning to embrace them is still something I struggle to do but constantly strive to overcome.

The end of this school year is drawing close however. Just three weeks remaining alongside a hurdle of Japanese examinations and more presentations. Then it is back to the start again, where this whole Japan adventure started: Nagano, on the middle of a mountain. My spring vacation will be spent working and snowboarding and reading the pile of essays that I have been wanting to read but had troublesome homework which had to be completed instead.

April is the beginning of a new university semester, a semester I am eagerly anticipating because I will be able to study social theories and a class on music and culture. April also means I will have to find myself a new job so I can pay for my tuition fees D: at the same time saving money to go visit my friend who returned back to Germany.

I will leave this post there. I have some video footage that I have being attempting to edit, so once I am successful in navigating my editing program I may have some snippets to share. But for the time being, those who read this, what are your goals for the New Year? Was last year a success?

One of my goals is to write a short story in Japanese before this year is over.

Well, over and out! Sign~ Jessica