Thursday, July 18, 2013

Shuffled Feels


As I walked home from work last week, I listened to my iPod on shuffle.  An eclectic taste in music combined with a 60 gig listening device results in a musical cache almost too diverse and vast to navigate.  When I find myself unable to make a musical choice to match my mood, I put the 8000+ songs on shuffle.

My iPod has been living on shuffle the past few weeks. 

I feel this is a musical manifestation of my emotions lately.  Tomorrow marks the beginning of our final week living in Japan.  I am elated to be moving back to my city on The Lake and to be once again near to my family and friends.  On the other hand, I am feeling melancholy.  Melancholy to leave my international community of dear friends, my little Japanese town, my life of international adventure. 

As I sift and sort through this myriad of emotions, I consistently come back to this one emotion: gratefulness.  I am so grateful that I have had this remarkable life experience.  Grateful for the friends I have made.  Grateful for the things I have learned.  I have changed (for the better, I think) a considerable amount since living abroad.  For this too, I am grateful. 

Major life changes can be bitter sweet; I like to focus on the sweet.  Although leaving our friends and community in Japan is difficult, I can’t help but stay positive.  My life has been so enriched by my experiences and friends over the past three years that I cannot be sad. 

The feeling I had when I graduated from university is similar to what I am feeling now.  I was ready then to graduate and move on to my new adventures of marriage and moving abroad.  Now, I am ready to graduate again.  I am ready to move forward to my next phase of life and discover new adventures, challenges, and experiences. 

And so I take a breath, count to three, and take the plunge into the next pool of life. 

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17 comments:

  1. Thank you, your blog is amazing... it's really a pleasure to read all the articles with these wonderful pictures. I'm in love with Japan too, I lived in Kyoto 6 months, and thanks to your blog, I discovered many places in Japan ! Thanks a lot. You should classify your articles by travel or by categories, it would be easier to find something :) Merci encore

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  2. Nice blog here! Also your web site loads up fast! What host are you using? Can I get your affiliate link to your host? I wish my web site loaded up as fast as yours lol

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Dear Kate
    My name is Joe Pinzone and I'm casting an international travel show about expats moving abroad. We'd love to film in Japan and wanted to know if you could help us find expats who have moved there within the last 15 months or have been there for 3-4 years, but recently moved into a new home. The show documents their move to a new country and will place the country in fabulous light. The contributors on the show would also receive monetary compensation if they are filmed. If you'd like more information, please give me a call at 212-231-7716 or skype me at joefromnyc. You can also email me at joepinzone@leopardusa.com. Looking forward to hearing from you.

    Joe Pinzone
    Casting Producer
    P: 212-231-7716
    Skype: Joefromnyc

    ReplyDelete
  5. As what it says in Romeo and Juliet, "Parting is such sweet sorrow." Everything will be fine tomorrow.

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  6. Dear Life in the land of the rising sun

    Nice to talk to you.
    My name is Yuta Sugawara.

    How are you doing?
    I hope you are doing well.

    Currently, I live and work in Tokyo.
    First, sorry to message you all of a sudden.

    I'm here to ask your permission to use your blog content on our Facebook page.

    We made a Facebook page for conveying the allure of Japan to those who don't know about Japan.
    At this point, we have about 20,000 fans from all over the world on our Facebook page.
    Since we are going turn it into a web service with its own site at the end of March, we need native English bloggers to help get people interested.

    URL : https://www.facebook.com/TokyoLocalGuide/?ref=ts&fref=ts

    I looked at your blog posts about Japan, which are so organized and easy to read with your fantastic description of each location.
    Thus, I thought the concept of your blog matches right up with the concept for our Facebook page.
    This is why I'm contacting you, to ask permission to share posts from your blog onto our Facebook page. Of course, we'd provide a link back to your original post each time.

    Or even better, if you could write posts for your blog on our web service.
    It'd be great if you could collaborate with us on making content for the site as a writer.
    In the process, we'd be totally open to hearing input from you, like how the design on a blog page should look.

    If you're up for it, I'd really like to have you on our team.
    Let’s make a wonderful blog platform together.
    When it comes to attracting customers,
    I’m willing to go the extra mile.

    I look forward to hearing from you.
    Thanks
    Yuta Sugawara
    sugawara@miraie-group.jp

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks for sharing this. all of your pictures was nice and your blog was awesome.
    #audiosolutions

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  8. Hi found you on Japan Blog Directory. How are you currently staying in Japan? My wife and I moved to Fukuoka in 2016 and came back this year. We'll be heading back next year under a business Visa.

    Just wondering when I see others who go out and do such things :)

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