going home

taipei metro
Originally uploaded by nitaspitas.

In less than a week, I'll be giving up my residency in Japan to return to the States... I'm actually coming back again this fall to study for the last level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, but I'll just be on a tourist visa, and I'll only be here until December.

It's been a long time since I've updated here, but I figured updating flickr would be more interesting. It's not like I updated there all that much, either, but more than here... maybe. Anyway, it always seems like I blog to stave off packing, even though I know it's inevitable. At least since I'm coming back, I just have to pack up my stuff, but I don't have to ship it all home yet.

I've actually been blogging more in Japanese than in English lately. I joined mixi, the Japanese version of myspace or facebook a while back, but I didn't have enough confidence in my Japanese to post there regularly. As part of getting ready to leave, though, I made myself update a few times a week there to get used to blogging more in Japanese so I wouldn't lose touch with my friends in Japan. Since I've been doing that, it feels a lot more awkward for me to write in English...

Part of it is that I have mostly been staying away from English in general as much as I can in order to immerse myself as much as possible in Japanese. So I haven't been reading much English, which makes it harder for me to think of how I want to write in it. But instead, I've been reading a lot more Japanese, which helps me write better in Japanese. I hope.

It's like how my friend was making fun of me the other day for actually caring about what we had to write for our in-class essays, so much that I usually end up taking them home to finish. She was laughing at how I like to be able to type up what I write in class to edit it and see if I could put it together more effectively. I guess I have this problem because I can't help being a writer at heart... I did get one of my essays presented to the class, so that made me happy~ (I remember writing way back in college about how I liked and was good at writing papers for anything except English, which is still pretty much true.)

In any case, after my last post back in February, I got to go back to Taiwan again for the first time in four years~ The last time I went was the last presidential election, and my mom went back to vote again this time, but I hope the next time I go back will be sooner than the next presidential election. It was a lot of fun hanging out with my cousins there. Last time I went back, no one was home, so it was kind of boring, but this time, two of them were back, so we went out pretty much every day. I don't think I felt hungry the whole time I was there. I ate a lot of fruit, though, which was what kept me full in between meals, but still, basically all we did was go out to eat and shop.

There was also a new mall in Kaoshiung that is like a mix of American, European, and Japanese shops. It was strange to see an Ikea next to a Costco next to a Nitori (the Japanese version of Ikea) in the same block. (There's only one Ikea in Japan, and it's in Kobe.) I remember going to the Japanese department store in Taiwan all the time before because I'd never been to Japan, but after living in Japan, it seemed like kind of a waste to go shopping in Japanese stores there, because everything was imported so it was more expensive. A lot of things were cheaper in Taiwan, though (like eating out :D)

The picture is my mom in the Taipei Metro. It's one of my personal favorites from my Taiwan trip, but I'm not sure why...

I leave Japan next Tuesday, arriving in L.A. on June 3 (same day). I'll be at Berkeley for 10 weeks for summer school the week after that, but I'm not sure when we're driving up yet. Jo and I will be back in L.A. mid-August, and then I'll be coming back to Japan mid-late September for about two-and-a-half months. Which means I'm missing Thanksgiving for the third year in a row ;_; but I'll be back for Christmas again. And that's pretty much my schedule until the end of the year. I'll really only be in L.A. for a few days next week, and then a month or so at the end of the summer.... I'll probably go back at least once or twice during the summer, but I hear gas prices are crazy right now ><;;