Fifteen years ago, as an undergrad at UW-Madison, I studied abroad in Denmark. There, I fell hard for a 19-year-old Danish fellow, Dani. It was a beautiful six-week romance before I had to return to the states, and we made promises to work through the distance and stick it out. But I, as a 20-year-old, was not the most relationship-mature and within a few months, I had sabotaged the relationship. For years after, I felt an ache for Dani. Every time I would break up with another boyfriend, I wouldn’t think as much about him as I would Dani. It was sad, nostalgic, joyful, rich with a cozy (hyggelig) feeling. I had never matched that broken-hearted love nostalgia again.
One year ago, Heather and I landed in Japan. No, we weren’t particularly prepared and our first day was the requisite traveler’s adventure. And, to be fair, Japan was probably the most difficult period in our transition for our relationship. We had to learn to live in a 350 square foot apartment together. We worked through the discovery of unmet introversion-extroversion spectrum needs. We had to update our daily budget because we had under-planned for expenses. We (I) lost our minds trying to find a place to exercise. We battled both the tension between time spent planning and doing (and blogging) and the expectations of our individual and shared planning responsibilities.
But none of that is surprising.
What is surprising to me today, one year after our feet touched Tokyo topsoil is the Dani-level nostalgia I feel. In the last couple of days, I haven’t been able to get Japan off my mind. I am first-rate stalking it. Checking flight prices, looking at Airbnb online experiences, researching how long one can live there with no purpose but to live there. And it’s all the same from my hyggelig feelings for Dani. The warmth that creeps over my body. The deep sense of longing. The bittersweet nostalgia and joy. I’m flooded with memories of Samurai practice, watching the fish jump in Odaiba, beating a Maiko, meeting new friends in a bootleg Star Wars theme bar, seeing monkeys in Nagano, watching the clouds block our view of Mt. Fuji (only to be rewarded later with a fly-over), giggling throughout the poop museum, eating at konbinis, practicing Japanese and realizing my year-long class was kind of garbage, marveling at the perfection of Disney Sea and Universal Studios Japan, and nuding it out with all of the beautiful and real bodies in the Onsens.
I could literally go on and on.
Every memory is like a surge of coziness and longing. And now I guess I question – was my 20-year-old brain really missing Dani that much (he truthfully was wonderful, and the best male I’ve dated), or was it Denmark? The whole flowing experience of my first time living abroad? The amazing culture of the (truly) happiest place on earth? I’m not sure, but it really is a fortunate position to be in, to have all the hyggelig feelings, and be able to explain them through multiple sources.
Where are they now…?
So, where are we now, one year later?
If you’ve followed our blog to-date, you know that COVID busted up our plans (just like it did yours) and we skated back to the U.S. after a glorious 6-month stint in a pre-pandemic world. We spent two months in Oregon and one-month road-tripping across the western United States before landing in Texas and getting down to business. My dad (thanks pops!) owns a home in the suburbs of Houston, and we felt it prudent to stop paying rent while we were uncertain for how long we would go unemployed. So we stayed there (he lives in WI for the summer) and started my job search.
Surprisingly, it only took 6 weeks (not our planned 6 months) and I started at NerdWallet in late August.
Heather, on the other hand, is living out our sexy dreams of entrepreneurship. We discovered a wonderful product in NZ that the U.S. market doesn’t know it’s missing. We’ve made contact with the company, NDA’d it out, and have been partnering to investigate the viability of bringing a little slice of NZ heaven to the U.S. When I say we, I mainly mean Heather because she is really the brains of the operation and anymore, is the one spending all of her time on it while I really only pop in and out for quick discussions. She has already made impressive progress, and I think the next six to eight months will sort out whether she is leading the U.S. business for these N.Z. hipsters, or whether we’re both back to the daily grind, saving up for our early retirement dreams in Japan.
P.S. My hair hasn’t grown as long as I imagined after a year (I guess I expected it to be gracing my shoulder blades), but I’ll save that progression for another blog.