Home[like]

After unpacking all my stuff, and especially after replacing the serviced apartment's comforter with my own comforter & duvet, my new apartment is almost homey. It still feels very commercial and hotel-y though.

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I stayed up reading Time Traveler's Wife again last night, probably my 44th time reading it. I cannot WAIT to watch the movie this weekend!! Every time I read it I am so filled with...longing and heartache. *sigh* Don't ever marry a time traveler, it's too sad.

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Having S visit for the weekend made Tokyo feel just like home - it felt so good to be up to our usual (ridiculous) antics and to be with a girlfriend that just knows me through and through. I think that's the thing - Tokyo is an uber-fantastic city that I am growing to love more each second, but it's just not the same when you feel essentially alone because you aren't really known by people here, if that makes sense. Even though I am now acquainted with a lot of people and my calendar is packed every day, I still feel kind of alone because people here don't really know me yet. The kind of knowing where you can say a whack or off-color comment but people will get that you are being sarcastic or facetious. The kind of knowing where you don't have to try to know someone, you just do. The friend-soulmate kind of knowing where you don't even have to say anything but are totally on the same wavelength. I understand that takes time to develop but quite honestly, as an adult, I just don't have the patience or desire to spend the quantity and quality of time with a new acquaintance required to become real friends. However, slowly but surely I am meeting lots of girls here that I think I can develop real friendships with and maybe that's why but seriously each week my like/love of Tokyo increases exponentially.

Interestingly, the things that really bothered/intrigued me at first are now characteristics that I really appreciate and think make this city so unique and liveable - such as the orderliness, the obedience of the rules, the universally understood (among Japanese) rule that you should do your best not to be a bother to other people, etc. At first it seemed suffocating and oppressive to me, but now I understand that those rules, and people's collective obedience of the rules, is what allows Tokyo to function so amazingly well. This city is bloody fantastic!

I'm almost afraid of the reverse-culture shock I will experience in my upcoming visit to the States: the rudeness, people honking on the freeway, incompetent workers, having to pay tip, etc.