A Little Light

It's been a pretty rough start to summer, with bad news seeming to come nearly every other week in one form or another. One of the hardest things is having a number of the people who I'm closest with in Japan essentially disappear from my life here one by one. It's trying times and I'm having a hard time looking forward to the future. It's hard to see where things turn around.

One of the few truly good things to happen to me recently, however, was the chance to meet up with my host family in Fukuoka. I first got to know them when I studied abroad for six weeks back in the summer of 2011 and did a homestay with them. It was an amazing time and they treated me incredibly well. On both occasions that I came back to Japan after that, I made a point to head back down to Fukuoka and see them again, but hadn't had a chance to meet them since actually moving over here after graduation.

This past Wednesday, I was sent to southern Japan to meet with a client for a deal I was working on. It was just a day trip, so I could only meet with them for a little over an hour before racing to catch my flight back to Tokyo, but it was still great. My little host sister has gotten bigger (she was only 7yrs old when we first met!), but their personalities are all exactly the same. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and spent the time catching up on what was new in our lives. It felt just like the old days. They said they would try to make it up to Tokyo within the next year (none of them have ever been!!), so hopefully I'll get to see them sooner rather than later.

More than anything, it was a good reminder that, even when things just won't seem to go your way, good things do happen. I just have to keep hanging in there and try to find the turning point.