Upon my return

The sun has set in Japan for me and I've returned to America.
It's worth noting a few things in reflection.

I enjoyed my job. My job, teaching junior high kids, is not remotely why I left. My students were oftentimes the only reason I got out of bed in the morning. The hardest part of my job was the end of the school year when 9th graders graduated and teachers I'd become friends with were transferred to a different school with almost no warning.
Saying goodbye to the entire school was unbelievably hard, seeing all of those lives I'd impacted for the last time, and for all I could tell every eye in that auditorium was dry except for mine. They were happy for me.

So, no. I didn't even leave because I was homesick. I left because I was sick and it was only going to get worse if I stayed.
I went to Japan weighing 185, which is the lowest I've weighed in a long time. I lost more weight that spring due to stress and anxiety, but managed to put it back to a healthy level for a while, but then more came back. Come July of the second year, I got back down to 195, but by the time I came back to the states I was weighing in at 220 (Some of that was water weight and bloating from the travel, but not much.), I couldn't breathe out of my nose properly since that summer, there was a point where my hair was falling out, and my teeth had begun to demineralize.

This was after two years of home cooked meals for dinner, eating the "healthy" school lunches, and eggs and bacon for breakfast. Sure, I'd eat out once in a while, or I'd buy donuts here or there or maybe chips, but for the most part I ate good food. Vegetables, meat, actual dairy products, etc. But where I normally would crave salty food, I developed a craving for sugary food in Japan. Which means I was getting a deficiency in other things. Fruit was exorbitantly priced, so I was indeed lacking in vitamin C, which prevented me from absorbing the iron I was consuming. I later found out I was anemic, among other problems.

Truth is, it was unbelievably hard to get my hands on vegetables I was willing to cook with. Celery might as well not have existed, the quality of the lettuce was terrible and not worth the cost for $2 a head, eggplant is just messy to prepare in such small kitchens, the one mushroom I was willing to eat in this paradise for mushroom lovers was very hard to find and usually only offered in dried forms, fruit was $1.50 a piece or more depending, there was no kale or baby spinach to speak of... I was down to cabbage, baby bok choy, sprouts, carrots, peas, corn, and bunch spinach. I began fermenting brown rice my last six months in Japan, which helped somewhat, but for the most part I was living off of stir fry with minimal variation to the ingredients. I'd barely get enough of anything that wasn't carbohydrates at school, and oftentimes what I would get wasn't much better for me.

But hey, I was getting in a decent amount of walking! (At most an hour in a day...)

Since getting back to California, my veggie intake has increased three-fold, I can buy fruit again, and while I again eat out periodically and have actually stopped walking anywhere because nothing is close enough to walk to, I've dropped 8 pounds almost, in the last 30 days. My breathing has returned to normal to the point where I consistently can breathe out of either nostril and climbing stairs doesn't wind me. And overall, while I still feel like not doing much of anything, not living alone anymore does mildly shame me into getting even the smallest of things done. XP