Another Planet!

I wish I hadn't known what it was like to look into your eyes and see there my own reflection.
...
When I first arrived in London for a language course seven months ago, everything I did in my first couple of days etched in my memory. My first train ticket at Heathrow, passengers on the train, the weather, people on the streets that I asked location to and the conversations that we had, the face of the lady who welcomed me to the house where I would stay and the taste of the espresso that she made for me and so on. It was my first trip abroad and I was going to stay for six months! Everything was great and interesting, but not for long...
After the excitement and shock of these first days wore off, an extreme and terrible, really terrible homesickness came over me and I asked myself again and again,
What am I doing here? Why, why did I leave my country, my home, my family? How am I going to hold on for six months? Six whole months! ...and so on.
Fortunately, this changed after a short while. Starting from my third week, I started really enjoying my time. And then time flew by and there I was waiting at the airport for my return journey back home, feeling sad and sorry for the things I couldn't do due to the lack of time.
In ten days, I'm leaving for Shiga, Japan to finally start my Master on Economic Development. I say finally, because it's really been a pain to get an acceptance from a university in Japan. I don't know why... I'm not a great student, but I'm not a bad one either. Moreover, I've been accepted to all of the schools that I applied to in the UK, which were great schools. Of course, I was more like a customer to them than a student, but still... Anyway, no point in dwelling in the past, let's look forward.
I'm going away this time for much more than six months and the impression I now have about Japan is that it's not a foreign country, it's a foreign planet! I'm quite relaxed for the moment and I don't think about it much, but I think somewhere along the flight I will really freak out, just as I did on my first trip abroad to London. This wasn't a negative comment about Japan, however. Quite the contrary, I have really high expectations about Japan and Japanese people. It just means that Japan really is a very different world. And this is scary. That's how I feel about it after watching some videos of Youtubers and shuffling through some articles, books and blog posts anyway.
...
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.
Pablo Neruda

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