After finishing our last concert on this tour, the Wartburg College Wind Ensemble is finally starting its journey back to the United States. While on the tour, it never like we had to leave at some point. We lived in the moment with all of the new friends we met in each place, but now there’s no more friends to make. It finally feels like we’re leaving. But before we leave, we get to finish any unfinished shopping in Tokyo.

The hotel we will stay at before flying back is the same hotel we stayed at when arriving in Tokyo. Hotel Metropolitan at Ikebukuro station. The moment we all arrived, everyone in the band made their joke about “home is where your phone automatically connects to the Wi-Fi.” But they weren’t joking about this place feeling a little bit like home. We’ve spend staying in a new city with a new host every other day for two weeks, but this is our first time returning to something. We had already used the escalator to get out of the subway station seven times, we had already used the cross-walk outside the hotel seven times, we had already walked through the entrance and seen the hotel lobby at least seven times. We’re not home yet, but everything is familiar.

Everyone is anxious to get home and rest for a while, but this last day in Tokyo allows us to fulfill any last wish we have before probably never coming back to Japan. We can eat our last bowl of ramen, buy our last souvenir, or just rest for a while with friends before starting a long trip. Everyone has a plan of some sort to make sure they don’t have regrets when our plane takes off.