Last Day

Today is my last day in Japan, before I leave tomorrow afternoon. I've realized that August 4 will seem to last forever. That's because around 1:00 pm or around that time I'll go on a flight that will take about ten or eleven hours from Narita to L.A. and then after two or so hours in L.A. I'll go on a six-hour-long flight from L.A. to Boston, and after all that time on an airplane it will still be August 4 when I arrive in Boston at night.

I've had an ok week. Last Wednesday I went to the aquarium with some of the students from the language school who are also in Nagoya. On Thursday I went to Kyoto, which I wrote about. On Friday I went to the movies with Saki. We saw the new movie from Studio Ghibli, 借りぐらしのアリエッティ. I liked the movie, and the music was wonderful. Later I had dinner at Saki's house, and three of her friends came.
It was only on Friday night that I realized that my host family had nothing planned for the weekend. Great. I wish I had asked about any plans earlier so that I could have made plans with someone from school. Then again, I hadn't seen my host family all week (because I live at the host grandparents' house) so that adds another issue to communicating.
It turned out that I was encouraged to go shopping with my friends on Saturday. Unfortunately, I didn't have anyone's phone number. I would have loved to see someone from school again before we all leave Japan this week, and I've always wanted to make plans with someone on the weekend, so I was really frustrated that I didn't get phone numbers and for not asking my host family about the weekend. There were a number of things I still wanted to do around Nagoya station, but not on my own. That's how it turned out though. It was too late to be able to see if anyone was free. That left me in a bad mood.
When I returned to the house I was exhausted, so I ended up taking a really long nap. In the evening I talked to my host grandparents for a while and watched TV with them. It made me feel better.
On Sunday I barely did much of anything. I went to a grocery store with my host parents, but that didn't take long. Afterward I hung out in my room for a long while. I read a book.

Yesterday was a long day. I went to the lobby of the building where the language school is, because there were supposed to be plans to meet to go to the zoo, except the zoo is actually closed on Mondays. I was hoping to find people in the lobby anyway, and I didn't have anyone's phone number. Nobody was there. I could have cried. After only a half an hour of just waiting in the lobby and hoping that somebody would show up, I saw two of the AFS students! I was so relieved to see them! They had just been walking around, since they hadn't made any new specific plans since the zoo was closed. I joined them, and we ended up wandering over to Nagoya station. That's where we ran into two other people from school, so we decided to join them (I hope they didn't mind). They had plans to meet someone else from school, so we all took the subway to Nagoya castle and were there for a while. In the late afternoon the six of us went to karaoke, and then we started to go home. I arrived at my house at 7:00 pm, and then I went out for dinner with my host grandparents.

I'm sorry, I'm writing a whole lot of stuff again. These posts always become so long, even if I don't mean to go on writing forever.

Anyway, tomorrow all the summer AFS students in Japan will board flights to go home. I'm sad that it's already time to go, and I'm certainly not the only one who feels this way. Now that it's the end it seems like time flew by, I guess.
I wish I would have done things differently. I think I become more upset that I couldn't become better friends with people than that it's time to leave everyone. This way it's a lot worse.
It's more than likely that I'll never see the other Nagoya summer students again. I know that. It's unfortunate. But that's the way it is, because the time has come for this experience to end.
I also regret that I tended to be awfully shy around my host family. It's unfortunate that I could never quite open up around them. They think I'm often tired or maybe sad or bored. That's not necessarily true. I was interested in a lot of things that we did and saw. I enjoyed my time in Japan. I didn't get homesick. Aside from some disappointments I was fine.
I'm sad that some things didn't turn out the way I would have liked them to. I wish I couldn't get in my own way.

This is all sounding rather pessimistic I guess, but I truly am happy that I had this experience in Japan. Maybe some things didn't work out for me, but I did have a nice time here. I could spend time with a lot of fun people and I saw many new things and tried different kinds of food and learned more about the Japanese culture. I hope I could also give instead of just take.
Well I'm going on and on again. So I'll just stop now. Sorry that I add in all these useless details. I'm sorry if I repeat myself.
I have to pack today. I'm not exactly looking forward to that.

I may leave Japan tomorrow, but I'm not done with this blog yet. I'll write about some Japanese things and I'll add a lot of pictures later this week.