One aspect of being in a foreign culture with very different values than yours is that your are either in a near constant state of frustration and anger, or you learn to cope. It may seem based on my talking every other posts about things that annoy me that I run around mad all of the time, but that's an illusion that comes from the simple act of talking about such things. My awareness of them and talking about them is a way of talking about life and the culture here, not an indication of an apoplectic reaction every time I experience such things. While I may not like a lot of things that happen to me, I try to alter the manner in which I "process" them. That is, I try to change my reaction, because it is the only thing I have the power to change. Changing the response, however, doesn't mean that I regard the things which tend to rub me the wrong way positively, it simply means that I try to mitigate how negatively I emotionally respond (not how negatively I feel on a logical level).
I don't think that the personal challenges I feel as a result of living in Japan will be duplicated on the same scale or frequency when I eventually go home, and some part of me will be relieved about that, and some part will miss the constant personal growth opportunity.
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