Everytime I speak to someone from back home, I'm reminded that it's mere weeks and not months that I have left in Japan. Time, once again, is slipping away from me, just as it has done with every experience abroad I've ever had and all the time I spent at University.
The idea of not living in Japan anymore is scary. It's a scarier prospect than arriving here in the first place, and I believe the nice folk on the JET programme when they say reverse culture shock can be even more intense that the initial culture shock. It's all being brought home to me because my lessons are being wrapped up now and I only have two days left at my adored visit school.
How is it possible that I arrived in Japan nearly a year ago? So much has happened and so much has changed. I started thinking today about what I knew back then and what I've learnt, and I was reminded of a song from an anime I once watched with my brothers. It was called The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and it told the story of a high school girl who was capable of time leaps. Even though I really enjoyed it, I didn't think about it much afterwards. So tonight I watched a clip of one of its song, translated as 'Unchanging things.' You can watch it here:
The film hasn't changed since the last time that I watched it, but I have. For a start I was stunned to realise I understood about half of the Japanese that was being sung.
Every aspect of the mundane elements of that film - the scenery, the food, the classrooms, the melodramatic schoolkids, the trains - has become a part of my life now. Watching this clip again tonight, a year on, I realised that from now on everytime I saw it I would feel a pang of homesickness for a place that was only my home for a little while. If you're about to start the JET programme and you're reading this, savour every single moment because it'll be gone before you know it.
