Final Dawn of 2010! It was a very good year!

As I sit on the upstairs tatami floor of my in-laws ice box house, the sun is rising over western Japan and the rest of Asia for the final time in 2010. It has been a fine year for us. Of course there has been the downside as well, most notably the passing of my sister-in-law at much too young an age, also my “big brother” cousin passed without being able to say good bye.
In reflection, I realized that of the 44 New Years that have transpired in my adult life I have spent 21 of them abroad. Of these, 2010 was a year of major change for us as I left my job before it completely dried up due to a lack of students. Now I find myself a masterless samurai, “ronin”, in quest of new teaching adventures.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, in which I said farewell to my political activism stage and quit my old Twitter account, we all experience stages in our lives. In my case, I realized that it was well past time to put aside some vices that were no longer appropriate for a man of my years. I see far too many folks my age and even younger that have allowed habit to make them unhealthy and unhappy. Mind you, I am not going to become an evangelist for sobriety, fitness and nutrition, and I fully realize were I 30 years younger I would still be asleep and would be hungover when I did get up; after all, it is the New Year holiday weekend.
This was a very rare year in which I was successful in my resolution to lose weight down to 75 kilos. I need to be more disciplined in 2011 and explore the physical limits of a body that wants to surrender to the law of inertia. Never give up, never surrender. Bushido!
This won’t be my final post of the year, but is the final major post. Later I will post pictures from our final 16+ hours of 2010. I wish you all a healthy and prosperous New Year.