The Whole Erk Catalogue Tales of a Geek Abroad

These pictures are intended for Daniel, who'll be taking over the apartment soon, but they seem an appropriate thing to blog about. We have a pretty nice apartment, I think!

TV stand: The TV, under it is the region free DVD player, and under that is the VCR; because of the stand, the VCR is really not obtrusive. Beside the TV is a bookshelf with the VHS collection on the bottom shelf.

Couch: The loveseat in front of the sliding glass doors in the living room. The skinny lamp is the broken lamp. You can also see the living room rug under the sofa, and the stool that we normally use as an endtable. Note that is a small corner of the living room, the actual room is quite spacious as later pictures show.

This is really tough. On one hand, having not been home in over a year, I'm getting very homesick. I'm looking forward to seeing my family and friends again, and to just being somewhere spacious and familiar. On the other, I have so many friends here, so many people I can't be sure I'll ever see again in my life. So many of them are wonderful people: Saito, Iizawa, Aizawa, the entire staff of Icchu - and that I say with no exaggeration - my students, who have been incredibly sweet the last week or so... this is getting really hard. Perversely, as I get more upset about leaving, my homesickness is also building as I get closer to the hometime date. I think that's partly because Japan, and the leaving thereof, is causing me a lot of stress right now, so I am looking forward to being home and out of it.

I've been in contact with the fellow who will be moving into my apartment and taking over at Nichu in August. It's pretty weird getting ready to pass all this on; he seems like a decent guy, and as much as possible I want him to be able to pick up where I'm leaving off in some ways. A common tendency among ALTs is to dump the successor in a totally clean slate, but for me that meant spending nearly a year getting to know people who could tell me where the neat stuff was to do. I don't quite understand the point of that, besides laziness.

I just got back from Tokyo, where Jen caught her plane home safely. I'm too tired to write much else; suffice to say we had a great time up until it was time to say goodbye.

Everyone is saying goodbye to Jen, although most people will get to see her again in June. Yesterday was her big farewell with her friend Madoka; Madoka is going to work in Bali next month so it was their last meeting for an undefined period of time. Things are a little melancholy around the house despite the fact that she is coming back. I'm sad too... May is gonna be a fun month for me, but without Jen's moral support (and help) it's going to be overwhelming, too.