I had a 40 minute Line video call with Atsu in Kanazawa last night which was good for the soul but heavy on the heart this morning. Naturally, distance gives us rose coloured glasses and no place is perfect, but I cast my mind back to my recent trip as I watch the goings on from afar via Line and I just wish above all that I was back there, living a life different to the one I have chosen for myself and have attempted to forge. I say this with a sense of the utmost selfishness - it was me that drove the charge back to Melbourne all those years ago. It was my wife who gave up life with her family and home town of Tokyo. It was me that created a picture that we’d be better off here rather than there. The reasons that were so clear to me back then I can’t really recall now, but the reality is that I was wrong.
But I don’t want this blog to be a place of sad musings. I want it to be a celebration. So let me cast off the heavy heart and come back to my cheerful memories and pleasure at good conversation and funny interactions, like last night. It was so good to get a window into EJC again, even though I was actually there not that long ago. Yes, it is like looking through a sliding door but if I zoom out Japan for me will always be open. Never closed, and whatever happens, it will always be my most special place.
I wander the midnight streets of Kanazawa.
Atsu contemplating the library of whiskey.
