The sad news is that I'm leaving Japan in a couple months. After two years of being a registered citizen, I'm migrating back to my roost in America. I don't know what to expect back there, but I'll be happy with whatever is thrown at me.
I was expecting my world to shrivel and sort of implode since I started telling people I'm leaving. But instead, my world has simply continued to expand! People aren't slinking away from me as if I'd farted in church. On the contrary, I'm gathering more and more phone numbers and emails and addresses so I can keep in touch with old stand-bys and new friends. With the new friends, we both lament that we've connected so late into my time here, but the beauty of living in such a connected world thanks to Facebook and Skype and the glorious thing known as the postal service, we'll still stay involved in each others' lives.
My parents still write Christmas cards to old friends from college and their youthful travel days. I'll actually be meeting one of my dad's friends when I go to Amsterdam in April. I remember being a kid, dutifully decorating our Christmas cards and envelopes and asking my parents about the cards that were leaving the country. I'd see a foreign address and ask my parents about the recipient. I loved hearing the stories and thinking that this card in my hand was going to an exotic, distant land like Puerto Rico, Amsterdam, Germany, or Canada.
I love my parents for keeping up with those friendships: it takes a special effort these days to send mail the "old" way with stamps and stationary. I want that for myself. I want that tangible evidence of our friendship flying across the world to land in someone's mailbox. It's old-fashioned, maybe bordering on obsolete, and I will lament the day sending cards and letters is no longer possible because I'm a pessimist about things like this and I can absolutely see that happening.
Until then, I'm glad to cling to my address book and watch the pages fill with names and street numbers.
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