I knew something was different when I woke up yesterday — the air felt different, it smelled different… It was still warm, but it was comfortable. I didn’t sweat on my 1 minute walk to work. And then when I got there, I realized why: it’s September! I know it’s not technically fall, but to me it’s as good as there… and fall is my favorite season hands down. I went on a long bike ride last night when it was that perfect fall night temperature: cool, humid, slight breeze, and clean smell; the kind of weather you could wear shorts, pants, a short-sleeve shirt, or a long sleeve shirt in and still be perfectly comfortable. Takefu is a beautiful city at night. The streets are so peaceful and quiet, and you can hear people having conversations, or watching TV in their homes as you bike past. Of course, in Japan, everyone leaves their windows or doors wide open on nice evenings, so I could smell what they were cooking too.

I drove down one street that I hadn’t gone down before, near the big shrine, and discovered that it was paved with white bricks instead of pavement and in the night lights, it was such a gorgeous place to stroll around.

So every year for me the inevitable consequence of fall weather is that I start to feel nostalgic. So on my bike ride I was thinking about how quickly 1 year has past — one year ago I hadn’t finished applying for JET yet, one year ago I had just come back from visiting Frances in Vancouver (and we were still dating), one year ago I was starting Children of Eden rehearsals, Lydia hadn’t been born yet, I was still working with Greta at the JASGP and hadn’t even met Sam or Kaori yet, I was still using Ubuntu Dapper Drake (wow!), and was having movie nights with Jen nearly every day. It’s really hard to believe that it’s been a whole year since then, and really hard to believe that I’ve been here for 1 and a half months already!

This borrowed internet connection really isn’t very good, so I’m going to call Yahoo BB tomorrow when they open and see what I can do to get internet here ASAP…

For now, it’s such a gorgeous day that I have to go outside, or else I’ll just sit in my room and feel nostalgic until I get all lonely and lame.