The Best Time I've Ever Had

Today was my last full day in Japan.  Here's what I did.



My host family took me back to the Taiwanese restaurant we like.  Today I tried something different, which was meatballs and spicy ramen.

It wasn't too spicy, but that's okay.  I had melon soda.

After that I went to go back to my favorite book store one more time.  It's the nameless, somewhat sleazy one that has mountains of disorganized media gold.  There wasn't anything there that I needed, but I took a picture anyway.  After that I took one last trip to Book-Off, where I bought Clock Tower 2 and Sister Princess.  Thank god for that store; for around $10 I bought hours of interactive language practice and pretending I'm still here.

I needed to bring my posters to Wesley so he could put them in a protective tube, so I did that by going to school.  While there I saw Lucas, Sophie, and Micah, and we talked for a bit until they had to go.  I went to meet Wesley at the closest station, and it turns out he was waiting for Nana to get back from her job.  When she did, we all went to McDonald's and talked for a long time.  We took pictures before we went our separate ways.

Here's my last shot of the building where we did everything.

And just a nice shot of the school in general.

One last picture of the lounge.

One last banana milk.

One last picture of the rice field on the way back from school.

One last picture of my bike.

One last dinner from my host mom.

And one last spontaneous dessert.

Going to TIU has changed my life for the better.  For the first time in my school career, I can actually say I'm proud of where I studied.  I liked being there.  Of course there were days when I didn't want to go to class, but literally everything about the place was worlds better than my American school.  Thanks to TIU and the JSP program, I was able to finally, in my last semester, have the college experience I was promised.  Studying, eating out, and talking with friends, learning a lot, and growing as a person are all things I was never able to do at schools in America.  In four months here, I've had more fun, more education, and more experiences than in the rest of my college semesters combined.

There are two words for "return" in Japanese -- "modoru", which means "to go back to", and "kaeru" which means "to go home".  When I speak of the day I finally get to come back, I always use the latter.

Japan, TIU, and everyone I've met here -- I'm going to miss you.