Lady of leisure

I am now a lady of leisure! Meaning officially unemployed. I have 3 glorious weeks of idleness before I go home. Well actually I still have to finish the drawings I'm doing for the Canadian professor, but I don't have to leave home to do them, so it doesn't feel like work. Anyway, drawing pictures doesn't exactly feel like work...unless you've got 100 of them to do...but I only have 40 left - 頑張ります (I will fight on!)。
Yesterday I closed the door for one last time on my dear apartment with its straw matting floors and mouldy shower and poky kitchen. I loved living in that apartment. Opening the windows and lying in the sun on my futon on lazy Sundays, or cranking the kerosene heater in the middle of winter. I've sat at my table and watched the snow pile up so far it's covering my balcony, for three winters, and seen the cherry tree outside my window blossom white for three springs. Three years is the longest I've lived in any one place since I left home after high school.
Saying goodbye was kind of sad, but after I took the train to the part of town where I'm staying with Yuki for the next few weeks, I started to feel good again. Just walking around a new neighbourhood, I was looking at everything with fresh eyes - I felt like I was travelling again. New sights, new smells. I walked past a shop with huge hairy crabs in tanks, and through the thick fishy air coming onto the street. I used to hate that smell, now I quite like it. I met an old woman in the local grocery store who couldn't stop smiling at me, and patted my hand very worriedly when she gave me her change because there were some small cuts on it (from scrubbing the cooker and its cursed baked-on grease).
Also, after having three rooms plus a living room to spread out in, I'm now living in a tiny room, so I've spent the day arranging my stuff, making little piles aginst walls and slotting things into empty spaces. It's fun. I think I'm finally living the Japanese lifestyle!