Do and don't miss

One of the Japan-related blogs I've been following for a long time is 1000 Things About Japan. This blog was started by an American lady who had lived in Japan for over 20 years and was planning to finally return to America. She decided to blog 1000 things she would and wouldn't miss after leaving Japan.

It's interesting to read it now, because she has just recently returned to America and so some of her recent posts are coloured by what she does actually now miss and doesn't miss.

It got me thinking; now that I have been steadily living back in Australia for a year and a half, what do I miss about Japan?

1. The shopping. In general, I really preferred shopping in Japan. There were lots of different shops; you could easily go to different areas and have a huge selection to choose from. And most things are cheaper there than in Australia. Books, for example. Most ESL textbooks here are around $70-80 each, but in Japan I could get the same books for about $30. Comfortable and inexpensive shoes are also much easier to find in Japan.

2. Hanami (cherry-blossom parties). On Facebook last month, all my Japanese friends were posting pictures of the cherry blossoms. My old 'group', which used to have a party in the same park every year, posted pictures of this year's, which made me aware that it was the first one I'd missed in four years.

3. The chance to unconsciously improve my Japanese every day. I still study Japanese a lot, and recently I've been blasting a lot of kanji study. Any time I see kanji in my 'real life' - such as on menus at a Chinese restaurant - I look at them all to see which ones I recognise. Other than that, I don't get much opportunity to practise what I'm learning. I would love to spend some time in Japan again so I could be surrounded by Japanese. Every time I've been to Japan, I've noticed that I could understand and read more of what was around me, and I enjoy that.

4. Karaoke. This ties in with both enjoying hanging out with my friends, and wanting to practise my Japanese reading more. I sometimes go to karaoke here and sing Japanese songs, but the selection is much smaller, and a lot of the songs I know aren't there, so I have to sing the same songs every time. But I love karaoke! ^_^


5. The way everything was so new and unpredictable. This was not only a facet of being a foreigner in a new country and learning the culture; in such a huge metro area as Greater Tokyo, there really are masses of new things to learn and see every week. New exhibitions open, new department stores go up, some particularly strange new variant of a local snack is introduced; there are concerts, free live shows, street markets, festivals, and all manner of other new experiences.


I am happy to say, though, that on the whole I am pretty content living back in Australia. For many months after returning from Japan, I really longed to go back; it took me over a year to begin to enjoy life here again and start to think of here as 'home' again. I think it wasn't only because I'd loved Japan; it was the fact that I'd gone away and was thinking of the world as full of potential places to live or travel to; this made it hard to settle down again.