Irony

On the final day of their entire secondary schooling career, on which all the 12th grade students here have their final exams, the train is late. Two seniors came in (actually pretty relaxed) about 20 minutes late into the classroom. The principal had walked in about half a minute before them, and gave a sympathetic laugh as the two rushed in. One of the kids presented to me a blue slip noted, "Tardy Admit," with a white paper that looked much like the following stapled onto the corner:
The principal took a long look at the blue slip and its white attachment, and asked, "What's that? A receipt for a cab?" I explained to him that this was a ticket that train companies would print when their trains are late on a given day at a given time. The n-thousand people that are thus affected by the delayed train are, upon submission of this small 'proof' to their respective companies, excused for their tardiness. According to the principal, this is also a Japanese phenomenon unseen anywhere else in the world. This makes sense. No other country in the world (that I've been to or heard of) is as obsessed with running transportation systems consistenly on time as Japan, to the point where they feel that they must put their apology on paper and distribute it in times of delay.

Living with such a transportation system, however, spoils you. I remember my first weeks in Vancouver when none of the buses seem to appear on time. In fact, it took me a while to figure out that there even existed a schedule; as far as I was concerned there wasn't one that the drivers cared to adhere by. As months passed I realized that Japan's transportation system, in the greater scheme of things (called, the world), is a total anomaly. In fact, my return to Japan after four years abroad revealed to me that, as some of my previous entries have attempted to show, Japan is an anomaly in every sense of the word. It's interesting (and tiresome to adapt to, actually) what seeing other countries does to our world views. I can't even imagine what I'm going to think after my upcoming years in London.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about the upcoming move. Don't get me wrong - the prospect of going and living in Europe is exciting; it's something I've always wanted to do. I get to fly to continental Europe anytime for a pretty cheap price, and I can't wait to hit up Italy and Germany again. And it's not even that I'm worried about being able to adapt to the city - I've done it too many times before. It's just that the moves are getting tiring. I've been in one city for no more than 5 consecutive years, and while 5 years may seem like a long time, it's actually really not, considering that I can't set my roots in too deeply during them. I uprooted myself from Hawaii (you know I used to speak fluent Hawaiian? crazy thought.), from Tokyo, from Florence, from Vancouver, and from Tokyo again, and now I'm moving somewhere from which I'm going to uproot myself, sooner or later. Traveling is awesome, in every which way possible. But it's also very tiring and it drains me mentally and emotionally. But, what can you do. I suppose some people would love to live the way I do.