Kaonashi Ga Suki

Yes, I’m unashamedly announcing that today is my 28th birthday! W00T! Huzzah for me! Ok, now I’ve gotten my excitement out of the way, I can wax philosophically about birthdays ^_^.

So the big question is- how do I feel? Different? Older? Wiser? Sophisticated? No, not really. I feel the same way as I did when I went to bed last night. When I was little, my mom would encourage my brother and I to jump as high as possible for a minute on our birthdays as a way of “growing”. It was a fun tradition, and at the time I would feel just a little taller, a little older and wiser, a little different, on my birthdays. Now, I’m not getting any taller, just a little older each year. I’ve already passed many of the “milestone” birthdays (16, 18, 21), and I don’t think there’s that many milestone birthdays left, save for perhaps my 30th or 50th. When I hit the early milestone birthdays, they really didn’t mean much to me. I didn’t have a Sweet 16 birthday party because I was a shy teen and had little friends. I didn’t do much on my 18th birthday either, and being of voting age meant little to me at the time. My 21st- now, that was different. It was when I finally considered myself to be a true adult. Ok, I’ll be honest- I was just glad that I was finally able to drink legally, gamble in Las Vegas, and go to 21 and over clubs. But other than that, I didn’t feel that I went through a big change or anything. I have no idea how I’ll feel during my 30th or 50th birthday. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll feel any different.

One thing I do feel though, is that I should learn to be a little more -ok, a lot more- patient with my family. Living at home these past two years with them hasn’t exactly been a picnic for any of us, and we’ve often been getting on each other’s nerves. It truly is difficult for an adult child to live with his or her parents. I’m constantly irritated with my parents, and they with me. What happened to the Zen-like personality I earned and learned in Japan?

Back to my birthday. I don’t really have a lot planned today. I’m working for a little bit early in the morning, then I’m going to class in the afternoon. Tonight I’m going out with my family and boyfriend to a Japanese restaurant. For the first time ever, I’ll have all the people I love most in the world gathered in one room for my birthday, and that’s a pretty nice feeling. Saturday I’m leaving with my boyfriend for a reunion with some old Japan friends. Not all of them are Japanese, but all of them are friends I made in Japan. It’s going to be loads of fun. Lots of catching up, reminiscing, druken karaoke, druken jacuzzi time, drunken dinners, drunken….everything ^_^