Cycle

Since twelve, the longest I’ve stayed in one place is three years. Three years on 369 Mountain, 95 Gardenia Bay, 225 Tyndall, in a single door room bed on 110 Tache. As my time in Japan draws closer to an end another address will be added to my list. Even my relationships with men carry this expiration date: 3 years with my high school boyfriend and 3 years getting over an obsession with a small town Manitoban farm boy.

This time interval is not always self willed, some had been forced, but it is the former that is the hardest. Leaving Japan and returning to my adopted country is going to be hard. I am full of anxieties and fear. I find it hard to balance or identify my emotions. Most of the time I am not really here, I’m lost in June’s haze. I stare for hours in smudged blue mountain peaks of Yatsugatake until the sky becomes dark and frogs from rice paddies below my balcony start to serenade me.

Japan has been an accommodating place to live, and teaching English here is a well paid, secured job that only required minimal qualifications—I can see why people choose to stay.