Today I finished my first full bottle of soy sauce. This calls for a time of reflection. Hence, another blog post.
rainy view of Uji from classroom window. Plenty of rain this season.
I’ve been living in Kyoto for over three months now, and I can’t tell if time is becoming easier or harder to understand. Yet one thing is certainly becoming more clear – I’m not going back to UCLA in the fall. Speaking of fall, oh my goodness Kyoto is gorgeous.
こよ – autumn leaves
I’m sure that my situation is not unique in saying this: but I miss college. This is something my other friends out here and I often discuss. It was such a magical time that can’t really be reproduced – the late nights in the library, the late nights playing video games with the roomies, the late nights up to all sorts of shenanegans. Now, in my lonely apartment, I have to be in bed by 11PM and wake up early for work 5 days a week. What’s most daunting is the thought of the future, not that I think about it much now either (perhaps some things never change). What I’m getting at is that there’s no more “next quarter” or “next year” and the beautiful simplicity of short-term goals. The path ahead is through wide open terrain, and I’ve stepped into the adult-world of trailblazing.
Heading home
Such contemplation has often led me to the question of home. Where is home? For the first 18 year of my life the answer was simple. Then it got a bit confusing when UCLA became so much like a home to me. Now the former answer is across an ocean and the latter has banished me via diploma. In that regard, why not run off to a new country? I am learning much patience as Kyoto slowly becomes my new home. “Home” for me, as I’m coming to realize, has very much to do with purpose. I’m grateful for a clear purpose here as a teacher and an ambassador of Christ, but the patience is necessary for the second major aspect of “home” for me – people. Home has family. I’m making friends at work and at church and through my program and elsewhere, but relationships take work, and I need patience through the process of learning to love these new friends like family. That takes time. Language and cultural barriers make quite the added challenge as well.
My lonely apartment. JK. Daigoji – a 1,139 year old pagoda. But only a ten minute bike ride from my lonely apartment!
So I miss you guys. But the weirdest thing is that you don’t feel any further away. Maybe it’s because I just can’t grasp the distance, or maybe it’s because I’ve been learning what “home” really is. In the epic “hall of faith” chapter of Hebrews, the author says that these legends of faith “were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:13-16). Such a rad passage, and I’ve been finding so much comfort in this promise. We are eternal creatures, made for our true home with our maker, where our family and purpose and everything is perfect forever. The Kingdom is our home, and we have been given the honor of being ambassadors of our true country. So perhaps we are all heading home, for the place our hearts were made to desire. The road is long, but the journey is quite the adventure. For the time being, I’m pretty stoked be trailblazing out here in Kyoto. There’s no shortage of delightful discoveries.
KonnichiWhatsup 