We’re Home…I think.
We arrived back in Japan last night and it was good. It was good to be in America, visiting family and friends, but it felt so good to be back in the tiny apartment that we have come to call home.
This trip really made me question and rethink what I think of as home. I have been forced, out of necessity, to consider our place in Gifu as home for the past year. It wouldn’t have felt right to live here for such an extended time while continuing to consider America our home. I didn’t want to feel like a visitor, a traveller, for the two years while we lived here. And so, over the past year or so, without even noticing, I have come to call our place in Japan home. Funny, I don’t just call it home because that is where our stuff (well, some of it) is, I have really come to feel that way.
Our apartment here is small, especially after comparing it again to the hugeness that is America, but it is cozy and it suits us well. It is filled, sort of, with things that make it feel like home. Some of those things have been inherited from JETs of the past and some of those things were brought by us, and some have been accumulated as time has past. Nevertheless, it has become our home and I am glad about that.
Last night, after more than two weeks being visitors and guests at various homes around the Midwest, it was good to sleep on the futons that we have come to be so comfortable in. And to bathe in the nice, deep ofuro that we have come to love.
As odd as it is, I must say I am really glad to be back. To be back home.