Hello again, and yes, it's been awhile since I have last posted.
Well, it's the " once-you stop-you-can't-start" syndrome... and now that I finally am in the mood to get "the engine started" once again, I realise that it is a painful job, trying to sum up the Japan trip in a post.
It's that " I have got so much to say but don't know where to start" feeling. As Garfield would put it, " So much to eat, so little time..."
Haha,
I should go:" So much to say, so little time!.."
Ok... and now I begin to realise that more than being in a bloging mood, I am also in an extremely lame and spastic mood.
Hmmmm, it is an under-statement to say that the Japan trip has taught me a lot.It's not so much discovery of new-found friends, immersion in Japanese culture, or forming and strengthening ties......more than anything else, it's the discovery of my own identity.
I discovered myself.
Realisation hit me, on the bus trip back to Narita airport, how much I will miss the fresh air, the chatter on the bus, the ghost-story tellings late into the nights, the crazy shopping sprees and and waking up to heaps and heaps of glorious hot dogs!!
As I sat in the bus,staring out at the Japanese world for the last time in a long while, I found myself embracing every tree and feeling for every wisp of cloud that bade me goodbye. This great stirring deep within me, something that reached out and tried to grasp in vain all that was soon to be over. I wanted to bring every sight and sound, fir-tree and brick house back with me. The rolling hills, the gentle, cooling breeze... ... I wanted to bring everything home. Almost desperately, I found myself taking in everything beyond the glass pane, soaking it up, drawing it all in, preserving it, deep within the recesses of my mind.
It shall be there, forever.
There are somethings we never forget.
I shall remember all the exasperation and frustration in the toilet with Cynthia and Yu Fei, trying on the Yukata and wearing the overcoat inside and fitting my legs into the sleeves while Yu Fei went " We're late!!... We're late!!" and Cynthia went " This blasted !"%^&*#thing!!"
I shall remember how Alicea and I became Jack and Jill and tumbled down Mout Fuji, shrieking and yelping in the process.
I shall remember how I spent the nights trying and pretending to sleep while ghost stories were being told and sick jokes exhanged, and me hearing it all in the end. All that hullabaloo over Mr. giant turantula that kept Cynthia awake and afraid and me bemused. And all that heart-to heart talk deep into the night that has brought us yet closer.
I shall remember how we so suaku-ly took photoes of Sumos and entertained ourselves thereafter by examining and counting the folds of fats they shamelessly possess, by zooming right in on those impossible and unbelievable cardio-hazards with the camera.
I shall remember pillow-fighting with debby and Jolyn and hitting debby with a resounding smack right in the face, (that's but ofcourse, with my years of experience in pillow-fighting) but paying dearly for it thereafter in the "duo-attack" I suffered.
Perhaps the most important thing I realised was that these
are the things we shall remember, when we are old and wrinkled up like a prune and all, sitting on a rocking-chair. These are the things we shall look back, remember, and smile at.
We may one day forget all that jazz about electrons and subshells, amylopectin and redox reactions, Linguistic determinancy and significant forms, but we shall remember all those crazy and wild moments we shared in Japan.
Because those were the things etched in our hearts, and not in our minds.
