This morning I put out too much instant coffee in the mug, so much that the beverage became super supersaturated and thick as tar. I drank half of if and left it on the counter and went to work. Ever since I came home, I’ve been filling the cup with hot water. I’ve drank several cups and between that and a healthy amount of cigarettes and squares of dark chocolate I am sufficiently wired. At this point, my beverage is more or less hot water tinted with the brown hue of what was once a mug of coffee. I don’t think more caffeine will do any good, it’ll just keep me up later than it already is. Drinking hot water is not something I usually do. It’s sort of odd, but adding tea or more coffee or just drinking water from the tap doesn't seem right. The cold is creeping in. Along with the darkness.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything on this blog. I told myself that I’ve been too busy to write anything. That’s a lie. I have plenty of time. I just can’t find the motivation. It’s getting dark earlier and earlier. The sun goes down before 530. It sinks down below mountains, dropping off the horizon to shine upon a new part of the world. It leaves behind nothing. There is no twilight. Just midnight black. It’s as dark at 6pm as it is at three in the morning. This darkness is crippling. It has taken control of my mind. It keeps me indoors, unmotivated and imprisoned in this cell of an apartment. I’m free to come and go as I please, but I can’t muster up the effort. Going anywhere means spending money, unless I just take a walk in the dark.

Reality is setting in. The vacation is over. Welcome back to existence.

The dishes and garbage pile up in sinks and on the floor. Unfolded laundry, both clean and dirty, rest in corners and strewn about on the backs of chairs and furniture. When left to my own devices, this solitude is a messy thing. It can make a literal mess: dirty floors and sinks. Or it can make a mess of the mind. I was scatter brained long before I came here. That hasn’t changed. I can’t focus on one task for too long before distraction or boredom or slumber takes hold. I pick up a book, I fall asleep. I try to write, and I start fucking around on the internet. I try to study or learn something new, then suddenly the guitar sitting in the corner seem much more interesting.

I stopped drinking for a while, took a whole week off. Didn’t write a word. Started back up again one Friday night and by Sunday I remembered why I took a break in the first place. I can’t find any balance between the extremes.

My mind has been too saturated with stimulants and distractions. It’s been one long paid holiday since I’ve been here, and I’ve been living in a dream or a cloud or something equally opaque, something that prevented me from recognizing the other side to all of this.

Over the weekend I went canyoning. This entailed traveling about 6 hours away into the mountainous region northwest of Tokyo. The water flowing down the mountains was cold as ice. I had on a full-body wetsuit padded with about 15 millimeters of rubber and it was still cold cold cold. I set off into the mountains with a group of 12 and two guides. We’d jump into the mountain streams and let them carry us down the path to waterfalls, which we’d jump off of, landing in deep pools of water. Anything too high or steep to jump off of was abseiled down. I had never done anything like this before, it was quite amazing.

It was on the bus ride back that I realized something was missing.

I sat alone in the back, as the bus sped down the dark highway. I was listening to Explosions in the Sky on my iPod, staring out the window, looking at nothing. My mind was somewhere far, far away. It was thinking about home.

Home for me is a strange word. It is not concrete. America is home, in a broad sense. But to get more specific than that requires a lot of explaining. I tell everyone I meet here that I come from Kansas City. Most assume Kansas City to be in the state of Kansas, and even though it’s mainly in Missouri and I was technically a Missouri resident, I don’t bother correcting them on the details.

At school, when ever I teach a class for the first time I give a self introduction. Since I have five different schools, each with six grades with and at least two classes per grade, I’ve given my self intro a lot.

I tell them I come from Kansas. I tell them about the sunflowers and the Wizard of Oz. I show them pictures of tornadoes and of the prairie.

I don’t mention that I only lived in KS for four years or that I’ve never seen a tornado and that the wizard of oz is something I’ve only seen once, long ago.

I do this for simplicity’s sake. It’s not necessary to give them my life story. But what about the people I interact with outside of school? Other English teachers, Japanese friends? They don’t necessarily get the whole truth either.

Nobody here knows me. They don’t know who I am, they don’t know what I do, they don’t know my story.

It works both ways too. I don't know any of their stories either. Sure, it takes time to build relationships and develop trust and everything. But as I was sitting on that bus looking out into the darkness, I realized the full force of this notion.

When I think of home, I don’t think of a place. I think of people. I think about their faces and their eyes. They way their hair looks. Random nights and moments we shared together, some of great significance, others so minute that I have no explanation for why they linger in my mind. But all these thoughts and images and memories form what I call home. Home is not a place. Home is people. Going home means returning to those people.

My eyes could see nothing, but in my mind everything was exploding in a blurry chaos. Through the swirling torrent of faces and memories, I landed on one moment in particular. My last night in America. Nicole and Chad’s house. Most people from the farewell send off had left and I did not know when I would see them again.

It was time for me to go too.

Standing there in the entryway, Nicole, Jenna, Ryan and I. A sad song was playing on the stereo and it was appropriate. Tears and emotion and sadness were held back all night. There was no time to react as the guests were leaving. Even as I said goodbye to the girl I love, giving her a hug for one last time before she left, there was little emotion. But everything that had been building inside me all summer, building towards this final moment before I took the last step and went out the door, ending another chapter in my life, all of that emotion and feeling and joy and sadness came out all at once. Jenna and I hugged for an eternity, embracing with such force it broke the levy. Flooding. Tears. Sobs. Everything erupting, coming to the surface.

This vivid memory came back to me in full force sitting there on the bus. It made me very happy and very sad.

It’s wonderful to have people like this in my life. But it’s terrible that they’re so far away.

Having people you love and trust and enjoy being around is incredibly important. It’s a key to survival.

I’m sure this can happen here. But it hasn’t yet, at least not to me and I’m beginning to doubt my ability to survive on the island. Maybe it won’t be as easy as I thought.

The more I think I know, the more I realize I don’t understand.