Lost in Connecticut

Well hello there blog. Fancy seeing your face around these parts of town.

February is almost over and I am currently home for a couple weeks before I am back to the Japans. It feels strange to be home, but it gives me a sense of familiarity I haven't felt in a while. On the day I was leaving Japan it was hard to process the fact that I was actually coming back to the US, I told a friend before leaving that it wouldn't feel real until I was there. Even on the flight over it seemed strange, but maybe that's due to the fact that there was a crazy woman on board. Maybe it was the fact that my plane had to stop in Anchorage for this woman to be arrested (article), or maybe it was the fact that I was exhausted because I hadn't slept the night before and I was now trying to sleep hunched over head resting on the tray table. My mom asked me if it felt like I had never left, I told her it felt like I had been gone for a while. In my mind that seemed true, but everything felt so natural it din't seem to be the case. Big cars everywhere, wide roads, large open spaces, no more of this cramped feeling. It felt good to be home, and now that I am on my way back to Japan I am both excited but also wish I didn't have to leave this sense of familiarity, this homely feeling behind. I was talking with a friend shortly before coming to the U.S. talking about this sense of home. My friend is from Kyrgyzstan and has been in Japan for more than 2 years now. I asked her if she missed home and she told me that it was ok. In that moment I felt as if I could relate, but at the same time I found that to be sad. At this point in my life the only thing I seem to be sure of is that I would like to travel around, see unfamiliar things, something that is sure to leave me feeling out of place. How can this truly be the place I want to be? I'm not sure, but then again when does one finally feel at home after leaving their first home, their parent's protection and comfort? Is it when they move out and find a new place? Is it that instantaneous? I'm not sure but hopefully as time goes on I'll be able to find little pieces of home around the world.

Tuesday I will be leaving New York for Tokyo, with literally no set plans. It is my hope to see many of Japan's big cities in the time that I have, about one month. In Tokyo I have sleeping arrangements as I will be staying with a friend, but after that who knows? Hotels, hostels, internet cafes, staying up all night? Well I expect an adventure, and Japan being a pretty safe place I'm not too worried about may or may not happen. It is my goal to update my blog from these various places so keep an eye for upcoming blogs.

First entry

Hello.

Today is the 5th of January, and I can't believe this is only my first post. The reason why I say this is because I have now been in Japan since October 1st. I was planning to start a blog when I arrived and write down my feelings and experiences. Well as you can see, that did not happen, not in the least bit. That's why I am here now typing my mostly uneventful life for others to read.
Three months is a while but I am not going to spend my first post trying to retell all that has happened to me or what my feelings of Japan have been. Rather I'm just going to start from today and add bits and pieces as I go along.
Today marks the first day I have swallowed anything with nutrients in the past 10 days. I know, I know, most people think I am crazy, and that I was doing something dangerous. Well I was doing a fast, a water fast to be precise. I can tell you it feels good to eat again. I'm not positive as to the exact reason I started it but I was reading this nutrition/diet book called Skinny Bastard which is basically a vegan manifesto, and at the very end they mentioned fasting. I'm already a vegan so the book didn't change my views on many things, just reminded me of the horrors of animal products, from small little eggs, all the way to large mammals. But the part about the fast intrigued me. The longest fast I had ever done was a 30 hour fast for a religious fund raising thing, which was done in a large group where I spent most of my time being entertained. That wasn't very hard. This time around I got online and did some research. I found that a typical detoxification fast on just water was usually 10 days and on juice around 30. Just turned out that I was going to be on vacation for around 10 days, so I went for it. Why the need for a detox? Well that I am not sure, but doing it once in a while can't hurt. I started on December 26th, and yesterday the 4th of January was my last day. Yet again, I know! You might say, how can you decide not to eat anything during one of the most food filled holidays of the year besides Thanksgiving? Well since I am in Japan and away from family and vegan friends, I certainly wasn't expecting anything special. A little depressing, but hey, things could be worse, I am after all in the country I have been trying to be in for 4 to 5 years now. So on with the fasting. The first two days were like my first experience with not eating. I was hungry. I preoccupied myself with movies and the internet mostly, and some walking. The third day I woke up with a headache, and headaches are very rare for me. It wasn't horrible, I didn't do much that morning and it slowly went away. The third day is the day i thought for a little and realized just how much time food takes up in our lives. We spend time thinking about it, we spend time preparing it, we spend time eating it, and we spend time digesting it. A huge amount of our time in other words. I don't mean to shine a negative light on food, it's great, it's one of my greatest passions in life. Now with all this free time on my hands I had to find ways to fill it with other things, and since I was on vacation, that just meant more lazying around for me. That night I went to a birthday party, and it was my first event surrounded by food where I could neither eat it, nor drink any of the beverages. It wasn't too bad, though it did make it a bit more uninteresting. The fourth day, is when things started to get a little bad. Having done my research i knew that a great amount of exercise was not recommended and that going from a sitting or lying position to a standing one too quickly was dangerous. Regardless of my knowledge, let's just say, I was careless. My friends and I had planned a trip to a town called Ishikari (石狩) which is northwest of the city I live in, Sapporo (札幌), faces the sea and is known for its salmon and hotbaths (onsen - 温泉). Up in the morning at 8am and on a bus by 11am, the wrong bus i might add, we reached our destination around noon. Once there mostly everything was closed since of the holidays, and we were nowhere near the sea, where we were intending to go. We asked around and thought that we weren't too far off, so we started walking, and walk we did, for about 2 hours. We finally stopped at this place called the Salmon Factory, a store/restaurant, as you can guess, full of fish. On the first floor one could probably find any kind of fish they wanted, and on the second floor an expensive restaurant serving mostly fish dishes. We waited there for 10 minutes or so to stay out of the cold to wait for the next bus to take us to the sea. Long story short we finally got there, and we were all exhausted even the people who did eat regular meals. We went to the restaurant where unfortunately they did not have the famous Ishikari dish, a hot pot with vegetables and salmon. I must say sitting watching and smelling what the others were eating was pretty hard, not necessarily because I felt hungry just because I hadn't eaten in a while. Well that's the side story, back to why this relates to my fast. I was finally relaxing in an 露天風呂 (rotemburo - outside hot bath) and chatting with friends. After a while I decided to get out and to go to one of the inside baths and check out the sauna. Got up, thought I was reaching for the rail and passed out. I'll leave some of the following details out, because I just feel stupid. But I'm fine, luckily. I got back in the bath and I could feel my heart pumping and my body parts tingling, overall it was quiet a strange experience. An experience I made sure didn't happen a second time during the rest of my fast. The following six days were not too bad. Of course I had less energy, slept more, but that didn't keep me from going outside or from going to a large temple in town to celebrate the new year. Most people were asking me if I was hungry, and it's hard to describe, but that isn't exactly the feeling I was having. I must admit, I spent 70% of my time on vegan/vegetarian food blogs looking at some amazing recipes. So regardless of my lack of eating I still spent a considerable amount of time thinking of food. Now that it's all over I still have to take it slow to get my body back on track. I drank fruit juice in the morning, and I'm drinking vegetable juice, and I can tell you it feels good to have some sugar running through my veins again! Anyhow, that pretty much sums up my experiences through the fast. Next time hopefully I'll have something a little more interesting, and more pertaining to going around Hokkaido and seeing new things.

SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY.