One month after leaving Tokyo after having spent 300 days there

I feel like I’m looking at a life-size diorama, some 15 or 20 feet away from me. It's wide. There’s Sophia U in the middle of the diorama, the main pedestrian street that runs through campus. There are some people, and like in a diorama, the people are 2 dimensional and frozen in place, in media res. There’s Kimi san on left side, Aingeru somewhere on the right side. There are my friendly, smiling fresh-faced students, who are so kind to me they make me reflect about the strange lofty power or privilege of being a sensei in Japan. There on the left expands Zoshigaya. What a fancy, middle-upper-class neighborhood, with charming golden surprises down every pedestrian-scale street. An owl made out of dried yellow grass; a small quiet cafe where I am both out-of-place and excited; a traditional toy shop; the autumn Kichimojin temple complex. There’s the long bright wooden living/dining room in the house where we stayed, with its orange hanging hammock reminding us to take it slow. J is cooking something in a navy apron and at the same time, she and I are there with N at the long wooded table enjoying a 4 hour meal with an never-ending amount of special food surprises. New foods, new names, new textures, new flavors. I didn’t know such exciting and comfortable moments could be had with a group of people. There it all is in front of me. Frozen in place like paper dolls. Strange, ne? I could text or email any of those people. They are real and alive. But… it’s not like that, right? We are not on the daily type of texting relationship. They are placed in those places, nicely, kind of in the past. But it’s not sad.