In college, when I went to Japan, I came back and decided that life would be difficult without a cellphone.\u00c2\u00a0 I distinctly remember deciding not to pay for text messages, because none of my US friends used them.<\/p>\n
This time I return, and find I “need” a 3G connected smartphone. When I visited the States in February and June, I felt like I was missing my thumbs or something. \u00c2\u00a0 Getting in touch meant calling<\/em>, and if I didn’t have your latest number, I couldn’t even look it up from my email.\u00c2\u00a0 Getting lost meant I was actually lost.<\/p>\n So…my temporary salve was $20 for 100mb of data on my ATT GoPhone plan (which is actually awesome if you’re in and out of the country).\u00c2\u00a0 Pay ATT $100, and they’ll save your number for a year, plus you have minutes to use whenever you visit.<\/p>\n Of course, my remaining minutes of talk time went fairly quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 People seem to call you more when they realize they don’t need to figure out country codes to do so.\u00c2\u00a0 Sooo…with my shiny new T-mobile sim effective as of today, I have my number ported, AND some shiny 3G love.\u00c2\u00a0 Having had to make 3 phone calls to t-mobile to order the sim, get a special data plan activated, and get my number ported…I was actualy impressed with their customer service.\u00c2\u00a0 Okay, actually – they screwed up on the number port the first time, so I had to call back.\u00c2\u00a0 But the last guy I talked to was together, and actually got it<\/em>, and really left me with a good impression.<\/p>\n But going back to the whole point of “being back.”<\/p>\n People ask, of course, if I’m happy to be back.\u00c2\u00a0 If it’s hard readjusting.<\/p>\n I guess so.<\/p>\n I mean, the trouble is that in some ways it doesn’t feel like I really AM back. \u00c2\u00a0 People make their schedules work like I’m a limited time attraction. \u00c2\u00a0I’m still living out of a suitcase, I’m still doing the same stuff at work…adjusting back to the state I was born and raised in ismore of a relaxing-back-to.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like I was a rubber band, stretched to hold this “Japanese mode” thing, and now I get to relax back to a non-stressed state.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, the rubber bands a little different now (one year older, if nothing else), but business as usual seems easy as pie.<\/p>\n Though, in one year, some things do change. \u00c2\u00a0Mountain View has a bunch of pedestrian bridges, some of the 101’s been repaved, people are ENGAGED, have KIDS, have KIDS ON THE WAY,\u00c2\u00a0 my fish (intern) died, \u00c2\u00a0my car was dented and repaired…lots of stuff that cumulatively, makes me feel like the round hole I left behind is now looking a little squarish from this side.<\/p>\n I’m finding myself on the left side of sidewalks. Firing up the English cylinders is a little slow and sputtery.\u00c2\u00a0 I unnecessarily pay for things in cash and feel slightly uncomfortable whipping out my credit card (I think, in the same way I initially felt uncomfortable using 10,000 yen bills in Japan).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Some websites still think I’m in Japan, and show me Japanese time zones and maps.<\/p>\n What do I miss?<\/p>\n I miss feeling tall.\u00c2\u00a0 I miss the magic of ubiquitous subways and trains.\u00c2\u00a0 The special feeling of being an Asian-looking wolf in a crowd of Japanese sheep.\u00c2\u00a0 The little victories of successful non-English transactions. The clean, quiet of urban streets late at night.\u00c2\u00a0 Good food, seasoned with thoughtfulness and sincerity regardless of the level of establishment. Good service.\u00c2\u00a0 No tipping. \u00c2\u00a0 The city view (including Tokyo Tower!) from my apartment.<\/p>\n And of course, people.\u00c2\u00a0 Coworkers, friends, almost-friends.\u00c2\u00a0 Leaving people behind feels a little like having small tender root-threads gently ripped away.\u00c2\u00a0 You hang out, you talk, you develop these feeble connections.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe spider silk’s a better metaphor.\u00c2\u00a0 You spin this stuff up, and it’s great.\u00c2\u00a0 Then you move one anchor, and the threads cling, and stretch…and with time and stress, slowly tear apart.\u00c2\u00a0 And you can maybe touch some and reconnect them, but more often than not, you just have some loose ends, waving hopefully in the breeze.\u00c2\u00a0 “uprooted” makes a little more sense to me now, though my experience is nothing so severe as that.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s funny how you hear some metaphors, think that you understand them, and then you experience something which adds a color to it that makes you realize you’ve still got a lot of life and experiences to run through.<\/p>\n Not missing?<\/p>\n Having to take a deep breath before plunging through yet another weekend crowd.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Having mouth-breathing inebriated salarymen sit next to ME on the train.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Paying my rent through bank transfer.\u00c2\u00a0 Having people honestly marvel at how big I am.\u00c2\u00a0 Super slow Pandora and Hulu.<\/p>\n So much to catch up and keep up on.\u00c2\u00a0 Pictures to print (or even transfer), thank-yous to compose. \u00c2\u00a0 Books and TV and movies to catch up on.\u00c2\u00a0 People <\/em>to catch up on.\u00c2\u00a0 Not to mention hunting for two apartments – one to buy, and one to stay in while I look for one to buy. Egads.\u00c2\u00a0 Can I just hit fast forward please?\u00c2\u00a0 This next part doesn’t have any fight scenes and seems a bit long…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In college, when I went to Japan, I came back and decided that life would be difficult without a cellphone.\u00c2\u00a0 I distinctly remember deciding not to pay for text messages, because none of my US friends used them. This time I return, and find I “need” a 3G connected smartphone. When I visited the States […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WqcV-3n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}