I didn’t intend for it to be so, but my scramble through Tokyo to buy souvenirs and Christmas presents resembled a highlights show for the last two years. Every area I searched had a little bit of personal history to it, as did many of the places I whizzed past. Some were made in the last five months, and many were left over from the six months of 2009 I spent here. It isn’t difficult to imagine the last time I was about to leave this city: I am leaving on December 23rd, again. And here I was shopping for everyone on my last weekend, again. Cursing my laziness for not buying things earlier, again. Promising myself I would do it differently next time, again.

Despite how short it seems like I’ve been here, by this time last year I already had an achievement I could use to justify my time. My final exams at the Japanese language school were anticlimactic compared to having formed that crude grasp of the language I brought to Tokyo into something a certification committee would consider “proficiency”. With time winding down on an era that would either be a key step toward, or a momentary diversion from, the rest of my life, I faced the possibility of leaving this country forever. I recall a feeling of panic; so much I hadn’t experienced yet in Tokyo, much less the rest of the country. I found myself being nostalgic about my home for the previous six months — the library I studied at for hundreds of hours, the teachers at my school who constantly impressed me with their dedication, the bright neon characters in Shinjuku I still couldn’t understand.

At the time, I was in the same position as many of my peers — no idea where I would be after turning the tassels the following May. Certainly having an offer to return to Tokyo for work was slightly abnormal, but even no-brainers aren’t easy when emotions are involved. After ten years of planning and fulfilling, I felt little pressure to commit to any more decisions of magnitude unless I absolutely had to. Besides, I had another semester of college to go and who can say how I would be feeling then?

The fickleness of feelings struck me when I remembered the words I wrote about Akihabara in 2009. “I don’t know if I will ever return to Akihabara. I’ll be fine if I don’t.” During my third trek through the place in the month, the irony certainly hit me hard. Turns out that your opinions have a funny habit of changing when you’re not too stubborn to hold onto them. The crowded stores overflowing with expensive anime and manga memorabilia were no longer an indicator of a disturbing obsession, but a peak into a hobby that many people in this country and around the world are passionate about. It’s hard not to empathize with the somewhat awkward young men in line to meet an anime voice actress when my own legs melt at the sight of an elaborately prepared Totoro display. I realize now that much of my reluctance to participate or even approve of the Akihabara subculture last year was related to insecurities of my own. It’s funny how things can change in such a short time.

One semester of college is short time by almost anybody’s standards, and yet my final jaunt through college was such an unbelievably foreign and wonderful experience compared to my first six semesters. The city of Nampa, Idaho made one last case for itself and the jury deliberated longer than expected. The arguments weren’t rooted in reason, but were convincing nonetheless. By the middle of the summer, a simple comment nearly made me toss out all the planning, all the work, and the perfect situation that was presented to me. It was a battle of the head and the heart, and both sides were convinced of the rightness of their own position.

But the city of Nampa, Idaho had a tragic flaw. The combination of a recession with the shock of post-grad life cast a shadow that could only be described as “despair” over the entire town, and my heart was just as concerned as my head about the damaging effects of working a 9 to 5 at a job I hated. So the day before August, I found myself on another plane tracing the archipelagoes of Alaska west.

Just as I didn’t predict how wonderful my last semester of college would be, I didn’t predict how perfectly things would work out after the first true leap of faith in my life. I’m very conscious of the implications of the word “perfect,” but I’m not certain how else to describe a living and working situation in which I literally have no complaints. I’ve got all the furniture I need to live comfortably and create, and nothing more. I genuinely love my job, and I feel like “co-workers” is too cold and distant of a way to describe the amazing people I work with. I live in an apartment that I have no hesitance calling “perfect,” at least for what I need an apartment to be right now.

And at the end of the day, and at the end of eleven non-consecutive months of living here, I’m still in utter awe of this city and the surrounding country. While I felt stressed last year by how much there is to see and how little time I had, it’s a great feeling to walk through one of the many bustling streets or parks and know that I can spend as much time as I want there, and come back any time I want. There’s a strange sense of giddiness from having Inokashira Park outside my window, the Ghibli Museum five minutes away, a bunch of great shopping streets and my church down the road, and easy access to a train station that can take me to one of countless destinations that are sure to be wonderful.

It’s also very easy to view the world as an exciting challenge while in these situations. The language barrier alone is a constant reminder that the more work I’m willing to put into it, the more fun this place will be. And I’ve got a number of friends over here who are living examples of how good a foreigner can get at the language. Beyond that, there’s a whole country to explore, a history to learn, and a bookshelf full of interesting information that I don’t know yet.

I’m not about to say that the world isn’t exciting from a small town in America, but it does require a bit of imagination. The toughest thing for me about being middle class in America is how easy it is to know exactly who you are, to get exactly what you want, and to run out of any reason to step outside your comfort zone. It’s still very possible, and for an example I will point to my friends who biked across America last summer, my friends who are doing a missions trip to Peru for six months this year, and any of my many friends who are taking up English teaching jobs overseas. I’m also really proud of my friends who are embracing adulthood with gusto, and instead of trying to relive past glories and simulate the environment of college, are making the most of this time of transition. I was one who quickly fell into a routine of boredom and nostalgia immediately after college ended, so it’s refreshing to hear good stories from the homeland.

I always get reflective about this sort of thing at the end of the year. I think about where I was last year, how much better things are now, and (perhaps naïvely) expect that things will be that much better next year. But I’m also aware of the work that’s required to get anything out of it. There were many things that I wanted to get done this year: my short film, some vlogs, a number of books that I wanted to read…but honestly, if I kept all the goals I ever made I would be 1) a perfect human, and 2) utterly devoid of a social life. Thankfully, I’m neither.

The last thought I have before I head to the airport is this: embracing a new situation does not actually mean betraying the people in your old one. It turns out that there’s no limits to the number of people you can care about in your life. Your heart can get bigger without stretching out. I miss the conversations, hanging out, and just being in everybody’s presence, but just because that’s stopped doesn’t mean I don’t care about all you people just as much. I’m looking forward to seeing as many of you as I can in the next two weeks and let’s pick this up like it never ended and pretend like it never will!