The colorful wolf

One year. It's been one year since I came to Japan. Maybe I should blog more in English. The last year I met a lot of people. People who are at least as important to me as the people in Holland. Since I talk with my parents on the phone, and most of my friends in Holland will understand English, maybe it's a good time to switch to English for my blog :)

My life in Japan seems to have it's ups and downs. Sometimes I'm really bored and sometimes I don't have enough time to do all the stuff I want to do. I had a really boring period after I returned to Japan in May, and I had a really busy time at the time when everybody left to go back home, a couple of months ago until now. In two days the last person I shared a first year in Japan with will leave, and I will be the last one left. Ironically that's two days after my first day in Japan.

I received a package from my parents saturday, finally ^_^. Apparently they are still assuming that M&M's do not exist in Japan, and that I cannot survive without Dutch M&M's... Besides that I have enough pancake mix now to supply the whole of Atsugi with Dutch pancakes for a year. At least If I manage not to screw up whether to add milk or water, like I did last time. .. Thank god for microwave food, restaurants and people who cook dinner for me (you know who you are :D). I don't know what I would do without them.

My work!?!?!? What did they do!?!? The program I was developing, my favorite activity at work, they stopped it. They told me they consider it to be finished and that I should move on to other programs :X So they give me a program I did not create, which does complicated stuff I don't understand and they tell me to improve it. Yay. Besides that, I also had to stop development on the acoustic model I worked on for the last year, because they think it improved enough and I should focus on another model now. It feels like leaving something half unfinished. That's how I felt two weeks ago. Now I've adjusted to the new programs I'm going to develop, and I'm starting to design something brilliant again, so I'm feeling a bit more happy about work lately. There's still more time pressure than last year, though, but that's okay. I can use the new challenge to keep my work interesting and to stay awake during work.

Sunday was quite interesting. I don't think I've laughed that much in my whole life. They say in Holland that laughing is healthy, but if I keep this up I will have a heart attack :| Me, Canadian Matthieu and the Chinese peoples went to the technology festival in Atsugi, which ended up being a little bit of technology and a lot of festival. Still quite small, though. It was great that they served beer during the day there, in a public park. Anyway, I got a nice calendar, rode the earthquakemobile and got insulted a lot by two Chinese girls, so all in all it was quite a nice trip.

..but it's not over yet. Matt went home, but the Chinese people and I decided to go to Tokyo to see some weird people in Harajuku park. And weird people we saw. Cosplay people are funny, hippie people are funny, but the most funny were the three Chinese people I was hanging out with :) At least, when they were talking in English XD. We were laughing so hard on the train ride to and from Tokyo that all the people in the train must've thought we were crazy. I had a lot of fun. Too bad it's probably going to be less fun in the near future, when one of them will leave :'(

And in all the busyness of this weekend I completely forgot that sunday was my anniversary in Japan. Exactly one year ago I got lost around the AXT tower and couldn't find my way back to the youth heim. I went to a restaurant at the side of the road, and asked them in my best crappy Japanese to call a taxi for me. It gets worse, because I didn't know my address... The taxi driver fortunately knew the phrase 'yuuuuuu-su hAI-mu' (youth heim), so I got home safely. That was on a saturday night. The sunday I just stayed inside and waited for people to show me around town XD

I'm quite happy about the last year. I changed so much from when I first came here, and, more importantly, I gained so much. So much friends, so much experience, so much fun. It's great to look back on that, but I also realise that the second year can never be as good as the first. Nothing is new anymore, everything is familiar to me. I still have a lot to learn though, especially Japanese. I'll do it in my own pace and have fun doing it. Actually, that kind of describes my life for the last year here. I can't say that I'm unhappy about that :)

You never know what you will find. You never know what might cross your path. Maybe you will get lucky and something better than you could ever imagine will happen. Maybe not. Who knows? Let's find out :)

This is my anniversary. I am happy.