Farewell Yuki...

I just said good-bye to Yuki. She is leaving for Washington to go to college. Like I have with so many of my conversation partners in the past, I said good-bye, and then, with a perfuncntory "karada ki wo tsukete ne..." and a lingering hug, I turn around, they turn around, and we walk our seperate ways, knowing that chances are high that we will probably never ever see each other again in this life, in this world.

I can't count the number of times I've done this whole routine before. Sometimes my heart feels so heavy when my mind brushes against the immensity of it all, of how, even in this global age, the other side of the world is still the other side of the world, and how it can be so cruel to meet someone from so far away, become friends, and then go your seperate ways so suddenly, perhaps to keep in touch via e-mail, perhaps not... It used to be, in the era of steam ships and what not, that a voyage across the ocean took months; months of time to "decompress", to adjust from one world to the next. Nowadays, with the global era of technology, we can be in Japan one day, and on the other side of the world before the next. The pace of life has quickened, sometimes to a frantic tempo, and sometimes my mind just can't keep up with it all. I don't know how many more times I can keep saying good-bye at airports, taxi stands, bus depots, train stations, turning one way in a street at night and they the other... Sometimes I feel so sad to witness how truely fragile the web of human connections which we weave really is.

So to Sawako, Naomi, Sachiko, Chie, Yuko, Aiko, Mariko, Risa, Taichi, Emiko, Miki, Kazumi, Miho, Mariko, Chieko, Kuniko, Asagi, Ikuro, Yuki and any of my other friends I may have forgotten over the years... I hope you are all still doing well in life, and that we can someday meet again either in Japan, or wherever you have ended up, and have a beer or two and reminisce about all the fun we had these past four years...

Now currently listening to: "Hybrid: Ministry of Sound Session Live" (*sigh* I wanna go to London)
4:09 am