End of an era

Saying goodbye is hard. REALLY hard. I feel like I'm doing it all the time these days. I've had to make several goodbye speeches, sometimes in Japanese, sometimes in English. But I've discovered that I quite like making speeches. That's something about myself I never knew until I came to Japan. There are a lot of things I've discovered about myself since I came here 3 years ago.
One of the Japanese teachers, Mr T, made a speech at the PTA afternoon tea last week in which he talked about picking me up at the airport when I first arrived in Sapporo. Among other things he mentioned taking me futon shopping. Funnily enough it's one of the strongest memories I have from that time. I had got off the plane, and met the principal of the school, and been taken for lunch, and then I had to buy some necessities for my quite large but extremely bare apartment. I had 3 rooms with tatami matting but no bed - so I needed a futon. I was taken by two Japanese male teachers and one of the women from the school office to a local home furnishings store. They lead me over to the single futon section, but I had my eye on a double.
'What about this one?' I suggested.
Mr T blushed and shook his head, smiling. No, was the message, a single is better.
If I had decided on the double, it would have been fine, after all I was paying. But I was anxious on making a good impression, and I did not them to see me as a wanton, luxury double-futon-using type of woman, but as a nunnish, dutiful woman who would sleep on a thin sliver of a mattress and a pillow full of gravel (which they are by the way, Japanese pillows - full of gravel). So I opted for a single futon, thinking I'd get a double later on. I was going to need extra futons anyway, for friends who came to stay. Which design to choose? They all looked so - cute. I asked Mr T which design he liked the best ( I had been reading up on Japanese psychology and apparently it is seen as a strength to show dependency on your elders, even if you are not) and he smiled shyly and pointed at a blue one, which was decorated with strange dancing animals which looked like the result of a wild night of passion between a rabbit and a teddy bear. I agreed it was a good choice, and also, it came as a set, complete with a matching pillow full of gravel.
When Mr T was giving his speech I thought back to that time and it amazed me to think how much has happened since then. These last 3 years have been maybe the most intense 3 years of my life, and yet, when I go back, I know I will have almost nothing to show for it, on the outside. It will all be inside me. Most of my friends back in NZ have homes, and cars, and dishwashers, and pushchairs, with little people inside the pushchairs, and stable jobs, and, and... I'm going back with almost as much as I came with. On the outside I mean. That's what it means to travel. It's a wonderful experience, but it's not about matching dinnersets. In many ways I very much envy my friends' comfortable lives, and what they have achieved. But if I had the choice to do it again, would I change anything? No way. This experience has enriched my life in ways I never could have imagined.
But I think it's time to go home. Apart from the fact that Immigration agree with me on this point, it's also that I want to remember what it's like to live in New Zealand.
I feel like the end of an era is coming. One of the hardest things about travelling is packing up and leaving again. It's so hard to say goodbye to people not knowing when you will see them again, but I'm really, really hoping they are going to come and visit me in NZ, and I know I'll always have places to stay, if I go to Canada, Australia, France, the UK, Hawaii, the States, or back to Japan again. Once a traveller, they say, always a traveller...