Back to the...Past (Return to America, Oct 2015)

I returned to America in Oct 2015, five and a half years after I left it.

Can you believe I've been blogging that long?  Me neither.  Well, despite the fact that I sometimes don't update at all and am now backlogging everything after a 2+ year absence.

Before I tell you about the circumstances that forced me to leave Japan, I need to tell you this story.

What I find appalling is that I have changed so much, and yet my country seemed much the same--people are still bitching about the economy, The Terrorists are still the enemy, we're STILL involved in shitty Middle Eastern wars, the climate is still getting worse despite the fact that STILL no one in America believes it...etc.  Even my 60-something year old mother still has dark brown hair.  It's like I haven't been gone a day.

At the same time, everything has changed.  The smartphone revolution took full hold of everyone, which has perceptibly shifted interactions.  My little sister became the semi-responsible adult I still struggle to be.  My parents are working on retirement.  My mom got a smart car.  My step-sister's kids are no longer babies.  Everyone's moving up.  Everyone but me.

I came back to get my driver's license renewed so I could drive my ailing father places...discovered I had to re-take the test (which I did, passing with the lowest possible score).

My mother and I also took a brief trip out to Valley Forge, because I enjoy abnegating my responsibilities the way people always have for me.

This was actually a very good trip--we visited historic Philadelphia and saw the Liberty Bell.  I ate a rabbit at a traditional restaurant.  I remember I used to call it "The Unsanitary Place" because everyone dressed in these 18th century clothes and served drinks in pewter glasses and served me uncooked meat or something.  I was convinced 18th century hygiene was still in place.

I didn't get sick either time fwiw.

I also had these random memories of George Washington--and for the life of me, I couldn't remember if it was at Valley Forge with my cousins, or some past life I had vague memories of.  Turns out it was the former--I remembered this monument, and they likely were talking about visiting Washington's quarters next.

The trees put up an unusually beautiful display as we drove through the Pennsylvania countryside.  It was an oasis in the terrible place my life was before, and continued after, with my father's final illness.

I think I better tell you that story though.

Let's advance the plot.










I'll update you about my father in the next entry, and may eventually update this with some pics, if I can ever find my camera.

Fleeing Japan

So there I was, stuck in Japan, unable to earn enough to escape, and without anywhere to go.  Depressed beyond recognition, detesting my job, locked in my room.  I was trapped.  I became a semi-functional hikikomori wishing only to end this tormented existence.

Then, I did.

To the heavens above, I swear this was all set up somehow.  It pulled me out of one fated misery into quite another.

In September of 2015, I received an email quite out of the blue that my father (living in the UK) had been diagnosed with the old family curse, pancreatic cancer, and needed me to come at once.

Though I was not speaking to my mother, she clearly had to bail me out of Japan as I no longer had a functional credit card to purchase a plane ticket with.

She did.  I flew to the UK, after several days of packing and fighting Emirates airlines for bullshit luggage policies that their Asian employees are too rigid, unintuitive, and unintelligent to know how to operate.

I flew out of the misery that my life had been in East Asia, and into a situation even uglier.

(Backdated 9 June 2017)