everything's different.

Who would have thought nine days in Japan would have changed everything? i felt like a different person; that i wasn't the girl trying sake for the first time, kissing someone, and betraying someone else in doing so. i felt as if i had lived there for months. that japan became my home away from home; in a sense, the place where i belong. i laughed so hard, i nearly cried leaving, and i felt empty the moment i woke up and realized i was in my own bed, not in some japanese hotel room. my body is functioning according to tokyo time and my brain is trying to distinguish between what was my reality overseas and what is my reality now. emily kept calling japan a dream. i kept exclaiming, "WE'RE IN JAPAN!". now instead, she says she's woken up, and i found myself saying to someone else, "we're not in japan anymore."
where am i? surely not anyplace near the beautiful country where i need to be. i dont see or feel the japanese sun, or the moon, pouring through my windows. i'm nowhere near the big, gorgeous world where i can't understand, in the slightest bit, what the people around me are saying. and despite the barrier that two different languages facing each other constructs; i didn't feel like a stranger. i did in the beginning, but as the days wore on i felt at home. life is perfect thousands of miles away. a heaven on earth, that is japan. call me overdramatic. but you'll never know until you've seen, felt, tasted, and loved japan the way i do.