thoughts pre-Japan

how odd is the way life unfolds?
when i was 28 years old, i was 3 years married and moving into my first home in the Monopoly suburb of Schaumburg, IL. if you had told me that w/in 3 years i would be considering a week-long trip to Japan as a casual occurrence, i would never have believed you.

i spent much of my down-time today doing research on Japan and getting thoroughly excited about the prospect of seeing another landscape, a new skyline, and a different sub-set of people of a foreign culture.

in photos, the Japanese vistas look sometimes similar to Korea's. they also look amazing and bright at different angles.
i've got the stereotype of exacting, prepackaged, shrink-wrapped, super clean, robotic trees and Lego cities/people floating about in my head. these prospects are actually very unpalatable to me--but i'm assuming these pictographs are probably inaccurate. i can only use my imagination to shape my notions of what it will be like when i get there.

to be honest, Japan was not on my list of places i wanted to visit, but w/ my friend out there and only a week to vacation, the two hour flight seemed that it was the right choice.
maybe i will surprise myself w/ how much i enjoy the Land of the Rising Sun? all i know is that i want a chance to get away. and really rest. and be emotionally pampered a little bit.

it might be terrible to say, but i know i'll be able to count on my friend to emotionally pamper me.
we've known each other for about 3 years. he was the 2nd man in the course of my marriage that i had to actively avoid in order to circumvent the possibility of infidelity unwrapping itself. when i realized that i was looking forward to flirting w/ him when i got to work, i had to protect my marriage by cutting off contact w/ him.
and he immediately knew that the tone had changed between us. he immediately respected those boundaries.

when i separated from my ex-husband, he definitely had the opportunity to 'comfort' me--an indulgence that i would've both welcomed and seriously turmoiled over. he was a decent enough guy to not engage me in that way, but that tension been established between us.
so, to avoid the possibility of Japanese shenanigans, i've already told him the white lie that i've recently started seeing someone.

anyway, outside of this one little factor, i'm curious to see what Japan might bring... the miniature deer, the mountains, the islands, the blue sky, the fresh air!

it could be disturbingly robotic or it could be beautiful and romantic and bohemian and/or the perfect storm of all of these elements. who knows?! but this is the wonderful thing about seeing every-places in the world. you always get to be surprised. even if by slight boredom.