Hershel, David, and a House Full of Love

I woke up this morning to the sun beating down on me through the sliding glass doors of my room. Of the three nights I've slept in my bed since rearranging my furniture this has happened twice. The time was around 6:40am.

It's not that I don't like being woken up by the sun, the same thing happened when I had everything set up how it was before, but I more or less moved my pillow to the exact location where the sun first enters my room after cresting the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. There's no real way to avoid it, shy of closing my blinds, which I'm reluctant to do because I do, in fact, rely on the sun to wake me up.

This morning, however, I wasn't so thrilled to be woken up so early. I wanted to sleep for as long as I could. Last night was yet another, and hopefully the last, night of drinking in a streak of occasions that spanned about 5 days. My body is somewhat less than amused, and is doing what it can to exact some sort of revenge, or at least recovery.

Saturday night was Natascha and Sammy's official going-away party, where the students would have a chance to say goodbye to them and wish them well. Much drinking was called for, schmoozing and practicing of Japanese was frequent and sloppily done. Karaoke came later, but after about 2am I had to catch a cab home, due to a shift swap with Allen that put me at work the next morning at 10:50am. Needless to say I was tired the next day, and popped a Genki Drink as soon as I got to work.

Genki Drinks would be the focus of that day, as I had two at work, and at least another 3 later that night in an attempt to keep it going longer than my body was really prepared for. After work I went home, changed clothes and went to Moriya to Greg's house to meet up with Pam Pam Pam who flew all the way out here for a visit. It was really nice seeing her again. We all, of course, went out for sushi, and then went back to Greg's house for a long night of drinking. Long as in, say, 4am by the time the energy drinks were no longer doing anything whatsoever to keep me awake and we all crashed shortly afterward. Catching up with Pam was nice, she had a lot of really nice things to say to me, mostly about how much she was amazed to see me actually happy, and content with my life, something which I admit, in her time knowing me, she's basically never seen.

Pam and I go back about 7 years now, so she's had a lot of experience with me, and saw me at a lot of different phases in my life, none of which, come to think of it, really involve me being true to myself or having healthy relationships with people. A lot of it involved her and I at some point butting heads, and eventually pushing each other away. So when she told me that it was a shock to her to see me how I am now, "Dave, you look really good now", lalala etc, I knew there had to be some truth to it. But really I don't ever think about it anymore, because the life I left behind when I came here is more or less dead to me, it's a memory that exists only when it's brought up. I've separated myself from it, so hearing her bring up the reasons she and I had a falling out came as a surprise to me, because it had been so long since I had considered it, or it was of importance.

Monday I had the day off, but my bike got impounded, so I stayed home after returning home and tore my room entirely apart, took everything out, cleaned, threw stuff away, sorted things, and did my laundry. Hangover days are good for cleaning, I find, because you can just go into complete zombie-autopilot and get a lot done without realizing you've been working. Not only that but you get it done a lot more thoroughly, or at least I do. When I'm good and hungover, I clean meticulously, and I'm willing to throw things away that I could reason keeping otherwise, and would, since I'm a packrat. Too many years playing video games where every item with which you could interact or add to your inventory had a use in advancing the plot. I took the opportunity to rearrange my furniture, something that I find really difficult, as I always try to find the optimum configuration for things whenver I do it the first time.

Rearranging one's room is quite the task, because it completely changes your concept of a place, and a place as personal as your room affects your concept of reality, that whole Feng Shui thing. So this cleared out room I'm in, freshly cleaned and rearranged, makes me feel like I'm in a new place, it's warmer, brighter, and I've centralized my bed, a typically feminine thing, which has put my head, as I mentioned, directly in the path of the early morning sun. But the room feels cleaner, clearer, and bigger than it did before. I attribute it to the cleaning more than anything else. As one accumulates garbage, trinkets, and scraps of paper that eventually clutter up the surfaces of a room, I feel like they suck the light out of a place, make it darker, saturated with the essence of everyday life, and slowly becomes more a lair than a room. In this way cleaning and rearranging renews a place, and breathes life into a place that has become stagnant no matter how long you leave the windows open.

Tuesday after work I went to a houseparty at Christian's place, where we all drank and mingled, and a couple of the J-Staff came so it was alright. Bryan, Ty, Steve, Natascha and I all had to catch last train so we left before 1am, and Ty Tascha and I cought a taxi from Kita Kogane. When we got back to our place, Ty said goobye to Natascha, and on the way into the apartment, Ty and I had one of those odd, surreal conversations about how that was the last time Ty would probably ever see Natascha ever again.

Wednesday after work was Natascha's actual, chill, small group going away party at Bora Bora in Kashiwa. I gave her her gifts, signed her and Sammy's books, and didn't really talk to either of them that much. I talked to Anna and Jenny more than anyone else, but this I'm ok with because I wanted her to go and talk to as many people as she could and be happy and all that. I know that we'll all see each other again when I return to America, so it's not a big deal, and though it may be a while, maybe a few years, it's not goodbye. There were a lot of people there that she may never see again, and I figured it would be best just to leave her to say goodbye to those people rather than wonder why she's not paying any attention to the group of us at our table. Eventually, the time came to say goodbye, and we hugged, said a few words about how it's not really goodbye, and I made my way home via taxi with Charlie, drunken Jenny, Anna myself and....one other person. Lol...one other person, who I can't recall. Oh, Alan, I think. Yea, Alan.

So, yea, lots of drinking. The reason for the title of this entry is that Thursday morning my roommates left to go to Thailand, so I have the place to myself. It feels very lonely, just Hershal and me being here for a week. The love/hate relationship between me and my cat is the bit about it being a house full of love. As in, I chase my cat around all day trying to get him to stop doing things. But I still love him. That sorta thing.