As I write this, I am back in Adelaide and have been for over a week. It's hard to believe that my exchange year in Japan passed so quickly - it seems like only yesterday when I was excitedly receiving my certificate of acceptance from Waseda in the mail.
At the same time, though, the time I spent in Japan is quite a long period and one that divides the old, pre-Japan me and the me that is writing this blog post now. In my time in Japan, I made a whole new network of friends, both Japanese and international. I grew familiar with the area around my dorm and the university to an extent that I began to think of it as 'home' - something that I felt when returning to Tokyo from time spent in other parts of Japan or in Korea. I also gained increasing confidence in my Japanese abilities, remarking to one (Japanese) friend how our conversations started in English in September last year and were one hundred percent Japanese by the time we said our goodbyes.
All of these things contributed to Japan becoming a large part of me and my life, whether that is immediately obvoious now or not. I know that the things I have learned and the people I have met during my time abroad will continue to have lasting influences on my life - for the better, I hope.

I am sorry that there are no photos to accompany this post but I promise that there will be some photos to look at in the near future. At the moment I have rough plans for two more posts - one regarding the things that I miss and don't miss from Japan, and one regarding a certain adventure I undertook a couple of days before I left Tokyo...

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