Buried

I leave in just over a month. A year in Tokyo. That’s already been said. What’s been grinding on me is everything before—the visa bureaucracy, the forms, the documents, the photos, the embassy appointments. The Japanese government doesn’t make this easy. Every day it’s another window, another person looking at your paperwork with that particular expression of mild concern.

Then there’s the apartment situation. Everything I’ve accumulated sits in these rooms and I have to figure out where it goes. Sell it, give it away, dump it on my parents’ place? Some of it I barely remember owning. The DVDs, the Wii, years of small accumulations that add up to a life you don’t even realize you’re living.

And that’s just the physical stuff. Taxes, bank accounts, contract cancellations, finding a dentist while I’m here. I’ve got maybe thirty days to get functional enough at Japanese that I won’t be completely lost. That’s the real pressure underneath all of this.

I’m also splitting my travel project into its own thing—separate blog for the Tokyo dispatches, so I’m not drowning regular readers in constant Japan content. Which means media kits for tourism boards, pitching sponsorships, the whole machinery to fund it properly. It’s the kind of thing you don’t think about until you’re doing it and realizing how much work it actually is.

Mostly I’m writing this to explain why things are quiet here right now. Everything’s in suspension. In a month I’ll be on a plane heading east. After that, we’ll find out what happens.