Reeling

Looking at old pictures when you're in a foreign country is probably a terrible idea. And it probably doesn't help that I should be studying for the religion test I have tomorrow, or if not that then interacting with my family. I'm in Japan. I have five weeks left. And I want to stop counting. But I feel like I'm at a crossroads somehow, stuck. I'm already thinking about when I'm going to come back here, and how, as if I've already left. And that seems like a problem.

My biggest struggle these past few days is concerning, big surprise, relationships. As they stand right now, all of my relationships with Japanese students (and even my host family, actually), seem like they're not developed to a point where we are likely to stay in contact beyond the next year, if that. What I mean is--and what I've been telling virtually everyone lately, it seems--is that I don't really have any good Japanese friends. For some reason, I don't foresee contact with the church in Osaka being difficult, but with the students, it's different; I feel like, by now, I should have college-age Japanese friends that I can go out with on weekends or whenever, friends I am comfortable with asking 'hey let's hang out' without making a formal thing of it like 'let's go here on this day and do this and this and that's it'. So why don't I feel that way about anyone here? Why shouldn't I?

I'm still here, I know. Can't I just start talking to people more? I don't know. I feel frozen, like there's nothing I can do about not having Japanese friends. Like there's nothing I can do in the next month to learn more Japanese (because my class is not really teaching me anything new, and I don't have time to study the grammar from my private lessons enough to actually learn how to use them in conversation). I feel like there's so much I've learned but there's so much more, and it's like...I mean, I'm not slipping back into the frame of mind from September, early October. I think I'm past that "point" where I could see myself looking back and asking myself, 'did I waste that opportunity?' At the same time, I wonder... well, what, exactly?

Is it so wrong to want to do my homework, even if it's not Japanese? Is it so bad to be too busy during the week to have hour-long conversations with Japanese people? Sure I have an opportunity once a week with my speaking partner, but to be honest, that's not the person I want to talk to. I'm not going to force it. But homework, really--I am here to study, am I not? I mean, I'm still a student, of everything--I'm still able to learn every day, am I not? Shouldn't I pay attention to everything, even if some of it can be learned "elsewhere"?

I'm confusing myself. I just want it to sink in that I have time before there isn't time left. I'm just kind of reeling right now. Hiei-zan yesterday, watching a half-marathon today, looking through old pictures...maybe soon I'll wake up.