Life Post: Reverse Culture Shock and Happy Halloween!

A lot has happened in the four months since I last posted one of these updates.

I passed my second anniversary of living in Japan. Just the other day it hit me for the first time how long I've been there. It hadn't quite felt real until that moment. Sometimes I still seem to forget that I'm living in Japan. The fact that my life here has become normal to me adds to that. I just forget what country I am a lot of the time, and then it'll suddenly hit me all over again.

In August, I visited the U.S. for the first time since I left in 2017. It was kind of strange yet not strange at all. I don't really know how to describe it. In many ways, coming back to Japan felt more comforting and like a return to the familiar than being in the U.S. did. In the States, the TSA was super pushy, and that was my overall feelings about being there: People were more aggressive. And I didn't like it.

Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of reasons I liked being in the U.S. It's just easier there for me because everyone's speaking my native language, I understand the culture on a deeper level, and whatnot. Still, I feel like the U.S.'s bad points all stood out more than anything, including how just straight up unsafe I feel there compared to in Japan.

I'm going back again for Christmas in December. Maybe I'll have even more thoughts about it then.

Because Halloween is a few days, we've been celebrating recently at work. We always have two Halloween parties: one for adult students and one of kid students. For privacy reasons, I won't be going into detail about either party here, but the kids' party was just today, so I'm a little tired from that. I helped with games, which was probably easier than helping with the craft, so I can't complain. The kids were also all adorable in their costumes.

I dressed up as a bat. All I did was cut some wings out of fabric and safety pin them to a black jacket. I also made some ears out of black wire that I bobby pinned into my hair. It didn't look the best, but it was the first time I've really made my own costume, so I guess it was a decent enough attempt.

This week is actually Halloween week at work, so we're "dressing up" all week, though I'm really only wearing a cat ear headband at work. It's fun though. I also put some fun Halloween nail stickers (colorful ghosts) on for the kids' party, and I don't really want to take them off.

I hope everyone reading this who celebrates Halloween has a nice holiday! I'll try to write another update soon. If I did this more often, maybe I could actually get into what day-to-day life is like for me in Japan... We'll see.