My first month in Japan was spent in Kita-Senju, and going there always awakens a lot of good memories.
If you could live in a place which connected you to the absolute best time of your life on a regular basis, wouldn't you want to live there? I wrote about how I originally came to Japan back in 1988 and spent a month with my then boyfriend (now husband) on a vacation which was so wonderful that it seemed like a dream. I have very specific and unique memories of my time in Japan during that month. Since Japanese people have a high desire for novelty, it is actually quite rare for anything to remain the same for long. The clothes I saw and bought, the food I ate, and the places I visited have changed since that time. In fact, my husband and I went back and visited the place where he lived at that time, and it was quite different, but some of those places really sparked strong feelings. Recently, perhaps because such things have a life cycle, I encountered not one but two things which I connected to that time. One was a housecoat which my husband bought me back then. The design is old-fashioned, and I hadn't seen it in decades. The other was a package of blueberry pies which my husband bought during that visit, but hadn't purchased since then. We hadn't seen them for years and years. Japan will always be the place where I first met the man I loved face to face and had a first month which was as close to heaven as I'll ever know on earth.
I will miss random encounters with things which remind me of that very special time because I'll never see them again after I leave Japan.
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