-v35- Get Lost!

I've often thought about why I loved backpacking through Europe so much - the standard cliche answers are the easiest, but not necessarily the most accurate. Things like learning new language, culture, meeting people, seeing amazing things, sure, they're exciting, but now I understand don't really accurately reflect what I was feeling.

Recently, I have had to think about leaving Japan and that thought, a few years ago, would have absolutely scared the life out of me! But for some reason, lately I'm a little excited about having to choose a city to live in, a new career, a new group of people to potentially make friends with.

In Yaizu, I've really enjoyed riding my bike around aimlessly most weekends when I had nothing to do. Yaizu roads are shitty McShitterson, so I'd always get lost. However, being lost was the best thing that could happen.
Of course at first, I was so scared of not knowing where I was, and the feeling that I may never find my way back to where I was before, and having to do this all alone without companionship was initially Fu-REAKY, but when I stopped trying to use the $2 compass that always said the direction of my iPod was north, and started looking up at what was around me, I started enjoying myself a lot more.
There isn't really much in the way of Melbourne-style entertainment or excitement, but Yaizu really has shown me a different kind of beautiful, creative, and wonderful history and life.

Ugly old buildings, when you look closer, are actually amazing testaments to varied stages of the country's economic development, the long long bridges that span seemingly pointless gravel and dirt old river beds show how the country's landscape has changed due to changes in farming development. Even the mess of mosquito-breeding bamboo sings of the country's changing loyalties - the townsfolk being told to plant cedar one year by the government because it was to be the new boom export, the next year cutting all of it down to make way for bamboo, the next direction in agricultural forecasting.

The point is, sure it has been daunting, HELL daunting, being lost, when I looked up from the mess I had made of my directions and planned route, I actually experienced more around me, I enjoyed where I was even though I didn't know where that actually was, and more importantly, I didn't mind that I didn't know where I was going.

In August, all I know is that I will leave Japan, so right now, I can enjoy being lost, knowing that there are so many roads I can take, and even more new opportunities and people to meet along the way.

Until then, またね！
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