What’s on the horizon now? I took this picture in Hakone, on top of a mountain that faces the majestic mount Fuji, which I have climbed. When I looked on Fuji from Hakone, it felt very strange to me that I had gone so far up above the clouds on foot, so far away from everything and everyone. The feat I had achieved was more obvious from this vantage point. I’m thinking about horizons tonight as I try and figure out my next step in Japanese learning. Even though I feel like I’ve come a good way, I think I might need to go back to Japan to really solidify everything. I might need language school to reinforce grammatical patterns in my brain, I might need an existence in a bustling city to memorize more Kanji and feel like i’m there again.. I might need things to keep going. But for now i’m in Jamaica, hidden between the trees and the night, seeing what the future holds.
Sometimes huge goals hold with them the promise of something different, but also the feeling of something you never know. The more I feel like I’m connecting with Japanese, the more i ask myself if I need to be back in Japan. I spent two years struggling with culture shock and various things, chasing a dream of being a graphic designer. I pushed myself to limits I didn’t even know I had, just to try and maintain some semblance of normalcy while i was living in the world’s most expensive city. Now here I am, in my room, thinking about the lights of Tokyo so far away, and I wonder, what is on the horizon?
Jamaican Learning Japanese 