The Sad Stuff

Kind of real post here.

When you go away, you need to know that things will happen. Unchangeable things. People will die. Pets will die. Your parents will move and your childhood home will belong to someone else. Yeah, the backyard fort too. 

You might even feel that somehow this might all be tied to you in someway. You feel responsible for for it and might try to move back. Perhaps you are right. In one of my cases I had a love bird who was pretty young, only 3 years old. And barely that. My sad news of his death came last November. I didn't even get to see him at Christmas. And his death was pretty sudden too. He lacked for no food and no drink and was entertained by another nearby bird. He showed no signs of sickness, but was one day irrevocably dead. I have been gone for years now, but that didn't stop my dream that I was going to go back and pick up things where I last left them. My bird would love me and cuddle me again, my dog would not be an old lady, Gwen would still hate me and the world. Well at least the last one would still be true for now. And perhaps if I was indeed home, it would not have happened, perhaps Goose died from lack of emotional attachment. Who knows really. You can't go back and change it sadly. But moving back now? After the fact? That won't change anything. 

Another sad story was just before my first year ended abroad. It was July 4th and I was in Korea, my grandfather died. Good Ole Granddad, a world war two vet and a model train enthusiast and probably one of the people that convinced me to see the world, had been having lots and lots of trouble lately. He had been suffering cardiac arrests, strokes, arthritis  and I think even his last stroke was so bad it left him in a terrible state where it was hard for him to do much besides sleep. He wasn't really expected to make it too long but I still had hope that he could make it until I saw him one last time. That didn't happen. But our goodbye was perfect and memorable and he was still fully functioning and I am sure he would want me to remember him that way. Being home instead of in Korea would never have changed his condition, but it might have eased his burden a small bit, he wouldn't have to stress and worry about the only adventurous grandchild to go out into the world alone and forget her sword. But either way, it was his time soon. You can only struggle for so long. 

Now my greatest fear is something happening to my wonderful cook of a grandmother. The one who makes me the worlds best cheesecakes every time I visit. The one who would entertain me for days upon days so my parents could get the Christmas shopping done. The only one I have left. I am lucky though that she seems to be in perfect health, weak at the joints, but fine otherwise. Christmas' are still the event of the year. 

The last one I mentioned about parents moving from your childhood home, that hasn't happen yet, and in fact it isn't really even my childhood home, but the one I identify with most (also it is seriously awesome), but they tell me it will happen. They tell me it will happen before I make it back home permanently even. Just another shoe waiting to drop.

And now what has happened to make me write this post. My dog has cancer.

 You might think oh but you still have have time to go home and see her one last time. Sadly I don't. Her cancer is terminal and  it is so rapid that in less than one week it has began and swelled to such a size that for a normal vet to call it inoperable. We will take her to a specialist soon and see what they say, but the future looks pretty grim. It had probably first started with this cell mass that we saw back in November and had removed and then in December, she was coned the entire month. She then had a cracked tooth in mid January which we had to get pulled. And after that, my parents came to visit me in Japan, unfortunately, when they got back at the end of January, just a few days later, the tell tale lump was waiting for them. And it is additionally really sad since we had a vet assistant coming and feeding her and walking her every day since she was on drugs for the tooth while my parents were gone. Since it was noticed it was quintupled in size and spread from her neck to an area just behind her ears. Her time is short and my parents and brother are doing their best to make sure that it is the best possible for her. 

Going abroad you have a choice. You have the choice to leave it all behind and be selfish, experience culture, mentally grow in exponential proportions, and let us not forget, have the adventure of a lifetime. But things will change. People move on, pet move on, your friends will move, your parents. When you go back it will almost be like starting over. You need to properly grieve for everything, miss them, and love them, but not regret anything. So going abroad is not for the weak of will, or overly emotional. But I can promise you, living abroad is not something I have once regretted. 

A pack of Packrats

Packrats are not as uncommon in Japan as you might think.

People really don't like to throw things away, making their already more narrow homes, even more crowded. And whats more, is that families will live together, a daughter and her husband might live with her parents and if they have kids as well...Well the picture gets very crowded already. But then you have to account for all of their belongings, and if you know how many toys I had as a kid, you would think they lived in their very own house.
So of course you have the normal packrats, who just can't throw their own stuff away with things like 'Oh, I loved that! I have such fond memories of it! I am sure I will use it again....someday...'. And then you have people with their parents old things and heirlooms of their family 'Oh this is my grandmothers kimono she had it since before World War 2 and its such a beautiful and classic antique nevermind that it smells like it is made out of musk'. I mean how could you possibly throw that away or resell it for an incredible price. And then you have the families with families, which pretty much just combines the two. And honestly some of the things I have seen in these peoples homes. It is just better that they find a nice spot of lawn and bury a little time capsule to be forgotten about immediately. There are some really grotesque antiques in there. Some of the worst is the 70's and 80's pottery, those shiny little pastel figurines that are made grossly out of portion? Yes, those. There was a whole trophy case full of them.
And then if you think all of that seems perfectly normal and not that weird, I come to the main point of all of this: the mega-you-shall-not-walk-a-step-of-doom packrats. These people literally do not have enough space in their own home, that they have started flooding the sidewalk with their possessions because it cannot fit inside. And since I live in a city, people just do not have lawns, not unless you buy a house and a half. So it is the sidewalks they fill up. At first if you come across one of these, you will think that someone just moved out and they have yet to pick up their trash, but that would be an incorrect assumption. You see, all those stacks of decades worth of newspapers, all the umbrellas, and rusted bicycles embedded in the newspapers? Yes those all belong to a person. A person who has the serious misconception that one day they will have use of all these items. And if this is the outside, I must admit my morbid sense of curiosity really wonders what the inside looks like. Are there tunnels? Secret passages? Does the person keep things in certain hidden locations only know to him/her? And what kind of things clutter the inside? I also wonder about the person and what time of physios they must have and how they act in public, but seeing as they(at least this person(s)) do live in a city, they probably have a fair chance of interacting with a fair amount of people. Makes me wonder a good many things...
I am sure that there are certainly people like this in America, and I can certainly attest that there are not many of this kind of person in Japan, but in discovering it, it shocked me enough to find this kind of living situation, let alone in the midst of a city, that I thought it was worth a mention. Though I am sure in America, with our larger houses, and acres of land, our sheds, and storage units, it is much easier to conceal this pack-rattyness behavior than it is in Japan. Also I had to do SOMEthing with this photo ;)

I must admit. At least he/she is very neat about it.