昔々

Once upon a time,

I decided to leave everything behind and thought I knew what I was doing.

Once upon a time,

I decided to leave everything behind and was pretty sure I had no idea what I was doing.

Once upon a time,

I came to be where I was.

Now I am at where I am. What happens next?

Hearts and Stars

Sunspot cycles.




How many moments are lost because they are never spoken?

Life is made of the moments, and I'm still grateful for all that I have. Sometimes I wish I could make more of them. Sometimes I wish I could pick and choose the ones I get to keep. Pick and choose which ones I will get to experience again. Life ... not so simple, but because of that it means more. There are little truths all over the place that may be bittersweet at times, but help us keep on moving. Keep on moving, eh?


I spent 11 days in America. It was an interesting experience. I was told by many people before I went back that the reverse culture shock would be difficult to handle. America would seem ruder, fatter, bigger, louder, and busier than I had ever previously experienced they said. Maybe some of it was true, the contrast was a bit surprising. One thing that never got me though was that people were in any way ruder. It's just different ways of communicating. While Americans might not wear the mask of formality in their language often, the directness of their speech didn't seem intended to offend or put people off. It was just different. Wherever we travel in the world, there may be different cultures, languages, and customs ... but we are still people.

Look up in the sky and night and see stars, and we're all people under them. We live, breath, and our hearts beat. Even if we can't see the stars we still have our hearts.

It's comforting to know there are common ties. Stars and hearts might be good things to follow and reach for from time to time. Just maybe.

While I was in America I found that I was able to see many people I missed dearly ... though not for long enough. I found there were others I didn't get to see at all. Others I missed simply because I had left them behind in Japan while I was gallanting around on a different continent.

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The picture at the top of this blog is from when I joined a circle at my University. It's sort of an 'Outdoor Adventure' club, but what it really equates to is people thinking of fun random things to do for fun, and then doing them. In this case it was from after a meeting. We had all gotten together that evening to go over some upcoming events, and then ate out afterward. A friend and I started joking about climbing a mountain that very night, because it was adventurous. Several of the people took us up on the offer, and that picture is the result. Funny how things can end up sometimes.

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Time Time Time

Time is something that I think people spend a lot of time trying to figure out. They want to organize it, plan it, save it, kill it, understand it, prolong it, and always seem to either have too much or too little at different points in our lives. It heals wounds, blurs the memories, fades the photographs, slips through our fingers, and waits for no one. Sometimes it means nothing and you wonder where it went, other times it is everything. That 30 seconds you took to run out and hug somebody goodbye might mean more to you that weeks spent invested in something else, and could be something you remember the rest of your life.

As time moves onward, one has to wonder where things go, what has happened really. As previously mentioned I'm more than a bit terrible at keeping any sort of personal record of myself and my doings. Since I have been to Japan I have countless days that seemed so unique and new, but are now being washed away and faded by the intervening months. I've traveled and seen things I never knew existed, met old friends and made new ones, and all the while time passed by, drawing me irrevocably forward along with everything caught up in this thing we call time. I see choices coming on the horizon, and need to decide how to steer myself as they draw near. I see people close to me drawn through there own paths, trying to direct where they end up. I wish us all the best. I'm enjoying the ride so far, and it will be interesting to see where we end up.


Over the break I traveled up through Tokyo and to Niigata. Last weekend I went to Miyoshi and participated in a speech contest. Both events while seeming so recent, still fade so fast. In a way the ephemerality makes it that much more precious of an experience. Still though the images fade, the feelings remain, and I'm grateful for everything that I've been able to experience so far, and look forward to much more in the upcoming months and years ahead of me.

Let us see where time takes us.

~Jeffrey