I'm headed back to Lawrence again this May; this time for an indefinite stay.
Though I'm naturally a bit sad to be leaving Tokyo, somehow this feels like a good time to return. Neither of my jobs has any future, which has been fine with me, but I suppose there's a time when even an unambitious jack of all trades and master of none like me wants to get ahead in the cutthroat world of translation checking and editing of contract boilerplate. But though I've done a fair amount of translation and speak Japanese at work, I haven't continued studying as I should have been and my Japanese skills are still seated on a chair with fairly wobbly legs. I would have figured I would be super-duper translator extraordinaire at this point, but apparently learning involves studying and remembering things, and I have lost my talent for that. I hope to rediscover the skill, but maybe not here.
Tokyo has been a mixed bag. I never planned to stay here very long, though I suppose I've toyed with the idea now and again of staying here for the rest of my life. It's amazing how easy it is to just live here: though I still have a fairly weighty language barrier to deal with on a day to day basis, in reality that's more in the background than it is an obstacle, and I can pretty much navigate through as I like. Sure, life isn't exciting, but this is the most "settled down" I've felt, and that's saying a lot.