Packed my things. Paid my bills. Left a bag of nice oranges with the obaasan and said I’d be back.
I walked my bags to the station back in November. This was January and a promising new year,
so I took a cab. The driver offered me candies. On the train, I just watched the scenery and thought
of a film rewinding. The neighborhoods slipped past, and we were into the fields.
I spent most of my yen at the airport to buy gifts and rode home wondering...about everything.
Why hadn’t I gone to Tokyo after high school? Why didn’t I speak, read and write Japanese?
How was I going to find a job there? How would I ever move my stuff, even if I shed most of what
I owned? Why was I even going back to Los Angeles, and for how long?
A year later, the questions are the same.
At LAX, I slipped into the back seat of a limosine and rode home in silence.
I turned by watch back sometime in September.