Back at it... Thanks for a great visit everyone!

Well, that's all for Canada for now! Thank you everyone! You made my trip! For anyone I didn't manage to meet up with, I hope you had a fantastic Christmacha-NY complex! I realize everyone was busy as crazy can be and as we get older, there seems to be less and less time. Certainly my 30 days went far more quickly than I ever expected. It seems like only yesterday that I was here in the office. Anyway, seeing so many friends and family really made me realize just what I'm missing here in Japan. I have friends here, but only a handful. At home, I have dozens of friends who've known me for years and years! Some I've even known half my life! That amazes me. I used to wonder at people who'd had friends they'd known since kindergarten or elementary school, being alternatively jealous and just plain amazed that anyone could have been friends with anyone else that long. I now realize that what was missing was just the fit. I am truly blessed to have the friends I do. You know who you are! Thanks for everything! I'll come back real soon, y' hear!?! That said, if anyone wants to visit me in the remainder of my stay here, do get in touch!
Anyway, now for the gory details. I arrived back in Japan last night, safe and sound. What a flight! 15 hours on a 777 is really tough. I lucked out in the morning on Sunday and my cheery mornin' nature led the attendant checking me in to switch my seat to an emergency exit aisle seat. Fantastic! Even still, it was no walk in the park. I slept maybe 4 hours of the flight. Sudoku, a Murakami novel and CSI episodes occupied my scampering mind while the hours ticked on past. I sat beside a woman from Toronto whom I'd met on the flight from TO to Dallas, who was (and probably still is) a teacher for a private company in Osaka. Interesting person to talk to as although our interests seemed completely divergent, we were coming from the same place, had both grown up in Ontario and were doing a pretty similar job in the same foreign culture. So, there was lots to talk about and some good fellow feeling. It turned out that she had a Japanese boyfriend, which shocked the hell out of me, as she came across as having in abundance all the traits that I'd heard Japanese men say they didn't like about western women. She was really outgoing, outspoken, frank, quick to laugh, but not at all a "girly" girl. Nothing infantile about her. Good travelling companionship for sure.
Anyway, I took the train back to Matsue, standing room only on the 45 minute Shinkansen trip to Okayama and then a nice sprawled out sleep on the, as usual, Super Yakumo. I got back to Matsue and it took me almost 15 minutes to realize what was odd... there was snow all over the place! My car was covered in snow about a foot deep! I couldn't believe it! There was more snow in Matsue than London or Toronto! Anyway, it was late, but I realized I'd need groceries, so I headed out to the grocery store to stock up, made my lunches, unpacked and crashed out. I was up at 5 and going. Yay Jet lag!
So I'm moving all my books to school where they won't be collecting dust and making my house unlivable. I've also decided to strip the gritty wall paper in my aparto and paint it with some kind of mildew resistant paint. I'm not gonna take the alergies anymore! Helping Richard out with his reno in his London rentals has given me "reno fever", as his friend Rob put it. Hopefully I will follow through on it... My main new years resolution is to follow through on shit and take those baby steps to build up my capacity for gettin stuff done and the resultant cockyness that comes along with the self-esteem you get from doing that. We'll see.

Ganbatteimasu!