It’s now a little past 4:00 in the afternoon here in Japan. I’m living now in a 3 hour window of time that I will get to live twice! Our plane is scheduled to depart Narita at 7:10 this evening and land at 3:45 the same afternoon in Dallas. It’s a crazy thing that is the responsibility of time zones, an international date line, and so on. But enough of that confusing stuff.<\/p>\n
Wow, the thought of living 3 hours of your life over is really making me reflect and think deeply about all that has happened in the past week and a half. I’ve had the adventure of a lifetime. Been exposed to some of the most foreign culture I’ve ever had the chance of experiencing. Spent 10 days in a country that’s based on a non-latin alphabet and survived… Ha! Admittedly though, America is slacking when most of us only know one language fluidly. The people here, for the most part, knew as much English as they would need to know to survive in America. And for that I’m thankful because I sure did not know enough Japanese to survive in Japan.<\/p>\n
As I sit here on the Narita Express anxiously anticipating our flight home this evening, I’m looking around at the other people here and trying to figure out their stories. What brought them to Japan, or what is taking them to the airport? I see an (obviously) American couple sitting across from me. He’s on his iPad playing a game and she has her window shade pulled down. It’s quickly apparent that they’ve probably had enough of Japan and cannot wait to sit down at a Chili’s with bottomless tortillas chips and endless Diet Coke (don’t get me wrong, I’m right there with them on the Chili’s but there’s no way I’d pull my window shade down and miss these incredible views of the Tokyo suburbs).<\/p>\n
Behind them, there’s a couple speaking a language I cannot quite detect. They have two LARGE backpacks above their seats making me think that they are accustomed to traveling. More than likely, they took a quick trip to Japan and only what would fit in their backpacks came with them.<\/p>\n
Lastly, I look in the window next to me and see my own reflection. What brought me to Japan? Adventure, world travel, exposure to new things… Those are all normal reasons of mine. I’m sure many of them apply to this trip, but I think this trip was about something else. A slightly more personal reason and a chance to discover some of my own self. This was my first trip without parents and family–one might say even my first trip on my own (even though I’m very thankful Max was here to help get us around from place to place)! Whatever the reason, outcome or eventual understanding of why I decided to come to Japan, I’ve enjoyed every moment of my time here!<\/p>\n
Alright, our train is approaching Narita.<\/p>\n
Sayonara, Japan!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s now a little past 4:00 in the afternoon here in Japan. I’m living now in a 3 hour window of time that I will get to live twice! Our plane is scheduled to depart Narita at 7:10 this evening and land at 3:45 the same afternoon in Dallas. It’s a crazy thing that is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":517,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions\/517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}