Oppai or Ippai?

Today has been a bag of horrible emotions. They are all volatile, and waiting to come out. They are horrible in the sense that they are intense, and can't easily be coded into words and expelled.
Let me start again. Today was my orientation in Chicago. Tomorrow, I get onto a plane headed for Tokyo, where adventure and the deadly "kancho" await. ...But, probably more on that later.

Today, I sat through many helpful parts of the orientation...but, it was also very sterile and boring. I had the same conversations about a hundred times with all the other nervous JETs.
Then I realized how sad I would be in Japan. Not sad, really. But...geez. I feel safe and secure and things around me feel familiar at home. But...I realized today that I'm wearing clothes I don't feel good in, and that I don't identify with, and that I'm all out of context for the people I'm meeting. And...those people who do know me...won't have any say or influence where I'm going, because we'll be all over the island. And...if I ever want that feeling of safety and familiarity again...I'll have to create it myself, in a place where I don't even speak the language. ....Needless to say, I got pretty upset. I kept getting nervous and feeling like I'd made some kind of mistake.

It's very hard to say goodbye to someone you love. I want to say more, but it's really quite hard. Why does the difference between staying one year and staying two years seem to bother me so much?

(post script)
Things are a little better now. I'm in Tokyo at the hotel, and I've got orientations all day today. I'm not freaking out right now...but, things here are weird. This post was written in a late-night freak out before I left, and though I still have many issues to freak out about...things are just fine now.
Last night in Tokyo, I hung out with some people and ate at a japanese restaurant, which was amazing and pretty cheap (I thought Tokyo was expensive!). We caught a beer in a Western bar, and it felt really weird. My new friend Rock mentioned that it felt like Chicago, and I was shocked at how right he was. I needn't freak out. THere's a little Tokyo in Chicago, and there's a little Chicago in Tokyo. I guess that's where we're at in this modern world. There's no such thing as goodbye anymore, because we can keep in touch almost instantaneously.

More later...