Goodbye to Love

Separation anxiety, could perhaps be the closest thing in describing how I felt last Friday when I saw someone dear to me go. We have spent so much time together this past year and half, taking her with me to see many of northern Japan and creating good memories of my time here in Misawa.

I will miss her sunroofs and plush velvet seats that turned around.

I will miss her trying to jump through snowbanks.

I can’t help but laugh thinking about the time she got stuck in the beach and 14 Air Force cadets had to pull her out. I stopped just in time before I touched the ocean...the water was only a few feet away. It was dark and didn't realize how close we were to the water...

Yes, saying goodbye to a dear friend is hard. But as hard as it was I realized that junking her was the better decision. Yes perhaps even harder than going to an old friend's wedding. I must admit I shed a tear when I saw her off to the junkyard.

Goodbye Red.

I knew I shouldn’t have given my van a name.



Here I am sitting on the toilet. But before any of you get carried away by your creative imaginations, let me give you some background.

I have a two-story, three bedroom house that sits on a hill here in Misawa. Beside’s not having enough kitchen counter space, I think I have a beautiful house overlooking a very scenic and breathtaking view of the local park and surrounding hills. Unfortunately, the majority of the houses (9.9 out of 10) here in Misawa do not have any semblance to insulation at all. A few weeks ago, we had a mini-typhoon (65 miles of wind and a torrential downpour for 3 days. I enjoyed watching the trees danced as the wind sang along. It shook my house and made me think: are trees really supposed to bend that much? Water seeped through my windows but thankfully my house was not carried into the wind.

Oddly enough, it is always 10 degrees warmer outside my house during winter and the opposite during the summer season.

Back to my first sentence: Here I am sitting on the toilet. Many Japanese toilets have heated seats. I also have an electric heater in my bathroom. Instead of heating my living room (which takes over an hour and involves a very expensive bill) with the provided kerosene heaters (which I do not have the smell toleration for) I decided to camp in my bathroom to eat lunch, type this entry and defrost for a few minutes prior to returning to bed to sleep. Heating my bathroom, which is at least 5 feet wide and 10 feet long, not counting the bathtub and shower area, will be faster and I might as well use the seat for something else besides it’s normal use. It may also prove to be cheaper than the $400 (and then some) monthly heating bill if I chose to heat my whole house. Who knows I may just move my TV and DVD player in here and maybe, just maybe, my sleeping bag.