On a clear day in Kambara you can see Fujisan thrusting high into the air, immense on the horizon. I often see just the top of Mt. Fuji over the various hills and factories that inhabit my town. But biking over on the river side I can see all of Fuji - from my feet all the way to its snow dusted top. Today I was biking to lunch and looking at the horizon where there was a wall of cumulus clouds in the North and East. It wasn't a high wall, but it was enough to completely cover the mountain. It was then that I suddenly realized how big the sky is. Here I'd been contemplating the immensity of Fuji, only to find it masked by a thin stretch of clouds covering only a fraction of the sky. I looked up and saw a brilliant blue. (Blue? That is definitely the color I would choose to paint the sky if I were a surrealist.) And then I looked around at the different shades as sky faded towards horizon. The sky is huge! I mean, you can't even see it all if you keep your eyes in one place.

I definitely want to come home. I'm really glad I booked a ticket to come back for 19 days in December. But I want to be back for good. I'm homesick. Probably the most homesick I've been since I've been in Japan. I am having fun here and there's no way I would break contract and come home - there's too many things I need to see and do still while I'm over here. But I know that I don't want to be here as an ALT forever. This is just a temporary thing. I'm ready to move on to the next phase in my life.

And I'd like to be able to do the hobbies I enjoyed back home: playing catch with a football, playing disc golf, lifting weights, not being 30 minutes to an hour-and-a-half commute from friends. And I'd like to be able to communicate with unlimited possibility with the people around me. I'm so hampered by my situation. When I get home I'm going to be talking silly to just about everyone.

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