Sayonara, Nihon

[ZenGum]

I am leaving Japan.

The reason is a great one. I am going home to the woman I love.
We met at 19, became great friends and I and fell in love, but she was already with someone else. After six months of self-inflicted emotional misery, I completely stopped seeing her, and spent most of the next decade wondering what she was up to.
In 2005 I wrote a letter which managed to find her and we became friends again. This time she was married. However, the marriage was already struggling and in early 2007 they broke up entirely. And for the last six months or so we have been an "item" over the internet.
We have waited almost a year for things to settle down. She now seems to be as ready as she will ever be. I want to be with her, she wants me there, so I am going. This is the most important thing in my life.

I have negotiated an early end to my contract, booked my flights, and am halfway through canceling all my services. I still have to send or pack or sell or give or dump all my stuff, and clean my apartment. I have four and a half days to do this. Holy &%$#!!!

As of one hour ago I am unemployed. I will miss many (but not all) of my students and colleagues. I will miss getting paid on a regular basis, too :p but I have enough saved to tide me over until I can find something back home.
I am a little sad to be leaving Japan. It has been almost entirely a positive experience (Morie, give it a try. Socially, it's almost the exact opposite of China). There are quite a few things I haven't managed to do but there are some very good ones I have done.

So for the cellar, I will very soon have seriously reduced internet access, so I don't think I'll be able to drop by here so often, at least for a while, which will be good news for Cicero and her post-count.

I'll be back when I can, though.

Errr, any questions?