Sakura

This month my shift changed and I get Fridays & Saturdays off while I work on Sundays.

Yesterday was the best day for the Cherry Blossom so the best place to go was at International Christian University (ICU) in Mitaka. The problem about seeing the Cherry Blossom is that there is only limited time to see it and at the same time if you go to the famous parks like Ueno or Shinjuku Gyoen Mae, you have to fight over a spot and deal with the human traffic. In my honest opinion, I don't think it's worth all that trouble. I don't want to sit at a place where millions of people are breathing in your face, so I decided to go to the one place where it's really peaceful and in my opinion, far better than going to the famous parks.

For the 1st time, my mother convinced me to go visit ICU and see the Cherry Blossom. I haven't been at ICU for almost 3 years and not see the Cherry Blossom at ICU in 10 years. Now that I have a digital camera, I decided to take pictures and send it to my mother. To me ICU is the best place to go if you want to see the Cherry Blossom season. During that Sakura season, the entrance is about 1km long and all you will see is the Sakura trees throughout the entire road. It is the most beautiful place to be during that season. I took several pictures of the road because in 2 days, it will disappear. Much better than fighting over a spot in Shinjuku and far more peaceful.

While I was taking pictures, I met this one former student who I haven't seen in 10 years. It was weird that we recognized each other. She hasn't changed since I last met her which was back in 1995 (She was 19 back then). She lost weight, but that's basically it. We started talking about the good times we had back in ICU. She asked me how others were doing and I updated her. As most of you know, the main reason I came back to Japan is to go back to those memorable times when I exchanged at ICU. I think most of us who exchanged at ICU came back. 90% of the people that I know came back to Japan for that same reason, but now I am the only one left out of that group. The last person to leave Japan quit his job at Bloomberg and decided to return to Taiwan. Out of that whole group, none of us ever got married. Maybe because we wanted to go back to those times we shared at ICU. That summer was the most memorable time I'd ever had. I am no different to anyone else who decided to return.

The problem is we tried to hard to come back to that summer, but when we start working in Japan, it is not the same as being an exchange student. I have lived and worked in Japan for the past 6 years and going through 5 different jobs. Not one of those moments ever came close to the time we spent during that Summer. Maybe back when I got to meet a group of people who worked at "Disaster Fuse", but that is about as close as it gets. It still wasn't the same.

While I caught up with this student, I remember that she is a daughter of a professor at ICU. Her father used to live on the ICU campus, but they moved 2 years ago. She told me after she graduated from ICU, her 1st job was teaching history at a Japanese High School. She hated her job and quit after a year. Then she decided to go to Austria and get her Ph.d. She told me she tried several jobs including TV and none of the jobs she worked for made her happy. Currently she is writing her dissertation, but has no idea what to do after graduation. One thing she guaranteed is that she has no plans returning to Japan. I don't blame her. We joked about this one American Professor who had a bad reputation. This professor had the reputation hitting on his students. From what I remember, he married to one of his former student and had his child. From what I heard, he eventually established his own English teaching prep school for Japanese students wanting to study abroad. I wonder how many students he is hitting on at his own prep school? Well I wished her luck in her future and gave her my name card in case she wants to keep in touch.

One thing I did by talking to her was that I realized that the moments we all had at ICU is once-in-a-lifetime situation. Most of my friends began to realize that and later left Japan. There is one person I know who still trying hard to go back to those memorable moments and actually ran away from home. I guess it's tough to move on and it seems like I am the only one left. I plan to send pictures later on.