And now the cool-down.

I'm back in America; regrettable it is.

It's boring here, really. But that's Japan's fault more than anything.

You know, they say that Japan appreciates the transience of things. The 儚さ (はかなさ) of things.

A few days ago, well, no, more than a week ago; two days before I left Japan, or was it the very day before? Or 12 AM of the same day? Very early, anyway, I was riding with Shouhei over to Tiki's house, when he thought I said 儚い when I was really saying something in English. It's really funny he thought I was saying that, because it's a word that's apparently only really used in novels. But if you look at jisho.org, and you see the list of meanings it gives for 儚い, you get: "fleeting; transient; short-lived; momentary; vain; fickle; miserable; empty; ephemeral." Notice that a few of these meanings aren't synonyms with the rest.

Between Japanese and English, especially with adjectives, there are few one-to-one relationships between our separate words. Even the word "word" requires different Japanese sometimes, it seems. 単語 and 言葉 can both have "word" as their best translation in separate contexts, but actually, the former is more accurately "vocabulary word." Whatever; it's confusing. In any case, many of the definitions I had to memorize for Reading and Writing Japanese were lists of words that sometimes seemed to not have much in relation with each other. I remember the definition for 届く (とどく) in my "textbook" (which was really just a packet) was this: "reach, get, carry." What? Those are like three separate steps.

とにかく (In any case), I feel like I haven't had time to appreciate the transience of my experience, the experience itself, or anything. Too much to let roll over my head, so it's not rolling. The last two weeks in Japan went way too fast because I had too much to get done. But しょうがない: there was no way for that to not happen. And then I had about 96 hours in Vancouver, no more... no, it was more like 67 hours. What? Then home. Christmas was underwhelming; but, the good thing, as usual: hanging out with my friends saves me. And now I have to get a French visa, re-energize the French part of my brain by reading, play Santa, try to secure a math job for the summer or an REU internship or something, and leave again. (adj-i) fleeting; transient; short-lived; momentary; vain; fickle; miserable; empty; ephemeral

I meant to paste "儚さ" actually. I don't think English is appropriate for this.

儚い。

Thank you, Shouhei, for the coincidence that gave me that word. Thank God for the coincidence that was Japan. Or for whatever led me there.

I guess something told me not to go back. I'm still trying to figure out what that is.

Until then,

さようなら。