It's a new month, I bought a new suit, and it's 13 degrees outside.

Today is December 1st, which means that one year ago today I was making those final preparations to return home from Japan for the winter holiday, completely unaware of what was waiting.

I never really wrote about my return home. I think my last blog entry was actually in late November, and then I got on that plane and never bothered to commit anything to writing until I had arrived in Matsudo in January.

I did take lots of photos though.

I remember the last day pretty well.

We stayed up all night, just sort of hanging around the dorm. A lot of people had already left--for America of for a week long vacation in Kyoto--and the dorm was really, really quiet.

When I actually left that big building and all of its memories, it was no big deal. I said my goodbyes and walked out of the entryway, down that narrow, green, wet path to the station with Takayuki and Kyohei, where they saw me off with cigarettes clutched in their hands; and even though I was only leaving for a few weeks, something about leaving them behind really hit me hard.

Takayuki always says the same thing whenever we part ways, back to our home countries:

元気でね

Always the same thing, and that's the only time he says it.

Genki dene.

Take care of yourself.

Something about hearing him say that sort of makes my knees buckle and my stomach turn, because I know that it really is goodbye.

Standing there in front of Mukougaoka-yuen Station on that December morning was the first time I heard him say it, and as I slipped my ticket through the gate and walked away from him, it was all I could do to supress tears.

Midori and Yumi were waiting for me inside the station, and Yumi rode the entire way to the airport; with me sometimes dozing on her shoulder, sometimes holding her hand, sometimes just quietly talking.

I had on my brown stocking cap.

It's crazy to think that Midori and Yumi are really no longer a part of my life, especially when I had meant so much to them and they so much to me--when I had become their "bu-chan."

Stupid Narita airport.

I've said so many goodbyes there and cried to many cries there. It's strange that an airport carries with it so many memories, but of course it only makes sense that the place where the people you love are coming and going from should become a sort of hub in your brain for sad memories.

That day was a hard goodbye.

Yumi and I ate bagels at the airport, and I still have a picture of her sitting there sort of staring sideways at me and at the cellphone I used to take her photo.

I remember distinctly the "It's over"-sensation that consumed me. It happened just as we embraced near the terminal.

Passengers only.

It washed over me, totally unstoppable, and I started crying and couldn't stop until I fell asleep on the plane more than five hours later.

I handed my passport to the woman with a ridiculously shaky hand, trying to maintain at least some semblance of composure, and I wondered just how many people she had seen like me, walking out of the lives of their loved ones; their friends.

I rounded the corner and headed down the stairway, finally starting to bring my emotion under control.

But then something happened that I will never forget.

Above the stairway there is a long pane of glass overlooking the descending passengers, and as I walked down, head down, I heard a little patter on that glass.

Of course it was Yumi, standing there alone, waving... goodbye... goodbye...

Who knows what the guy next to me on the plane thought.

I pulled my brown stocking cap down around my eyes and ears and relaxed just as much as the seats an in American Airlines 747 will allow one to. I covered myself with a blanket. I watched the faces of my friends roll through my mind, and heard their words in my ears.

Then I went to sleep...

...and then I woke up in America.

And of course we know where the story goes from there, right?

The story goes home to family, friends and familiar places. It goes to a banquet and it goes to a post-party. The story introduces a mysterious little brown headed girl with a heart-piercing, earth-ending smile.

So it's been about a year.

This year's Winter banquet is in a week and a day, and it just reminds me that my life--our lives--are a lot more unpredictable than we care to admit.

We are totally and completely out of control.

I rode my bike to work today, like everyday. I bought a suit. I sneezed. I plan to go to the gym. I'll probably take a geography quiz.

Who knows.

Come September I might be saying goodbye to you.

...

That stupid brown hat that I bought in a little store in Harajuku. That fuzzy blue scarf emblazoned with the Japanese national team's logo, bought in Ueno on Ame-yoko.

I thought I had lost them.

The hat that hid my tears...

Turns out both of those artifacts are in the back of Anna's car, from the last football game that I went to with her, Tabitha and Colleen.

What a relief.