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 K san on right side, and A somewhere on the left side. Scattered around the campus are my friendly, smiling, fresh-faced students, who are so kind to me that 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 san sitting at the long wooden table enjoying a 4-hour meal with an never-ending amount of special food surprises. New foods, new names, new textures, new flavors. (How many more good things are there left to learn about?!) I didn’t know such exciting and comfortable moments could be had with a group of people. 

There it is, all 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 imagined places, nicely, kind of in the past. But it’s not sad.