{"id":306,"date":"2003-06-12T13:56:49","date_gmt":"2003-06-12T13:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/?p=306"},"modified":"2015-02-03T16:26:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T00:26:51","slug":"leaving-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2003\/06\/12\/leaving-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"exit<\/p>\n

I’m at Narita airport, waiting for my plane to take me back to Seattle. Somehow, one year of my life has passed by in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n

I can’t remember how long I’ve just assumed I’d live in Japan one day. It seems like something I’ve always planned on doing. This country has been in my conscious since a very early age, when I’d hear stories from my grandparents of their lives here in the early 20th century. I grew up having scraps of Japanese culture, language and cuisine weaving a cord between me and an exotic country across the sea.<\/p>\n

My first visit to Japan was in 1981, when I was 13 years old. Nortoriously unadventurous at that time when it came to food, I suvived on rice, seaweed and two trips to McDonalds. Despite my lack of culinary adventure, the trip left a huge impression on me and I’ve wanted to return every since.<\/p>\n

And now here I am at the end of a year of my life lived in Japan. Despite being excited about returning to the States to see family and friends, I have mixed feelings about leaving after only one year. It seems too short a time, really, to come to any fair conclusions as to what type of place Japan really is.<\/p>\n

And as I write this, I’m having trouble coming up with anything like a neat summary of my time and of my experiences here. My mind is kind of mush now after three weeks of being uprooted — traveling, as well as leaving one life behind and returning to another I haven’t occupied for a year.<\/p>\n

So, no deep thoughts at this point. Only a mention that I know I’ll be back one day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m at Narita airport, waiting for my plane to take me back to Seattle. Somehow, one year of my life has passed by in the blink of an eye. I can’t remember how long I’ve just assumed I’d live in Japan one day. It seems like something I’ve always planned on doing. This country has… Continue reading Leaving Japan<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entries-with-images","category-life-in-japan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5heLP-4W","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}