Standing on a street corner, nothing on my mind

Today I caught up with Shouko's family to give them some chocolates that I was supposed to give them last time I visited.
In the past week I've caught up with Madoka, Shizuka and Keiko aswell, friends from my highschool days.
There is one thing I have come to abhore here though above all others.
Getting dropped home.
I can't quite explain it, but I hate it. Back in Oz, I got dropped home all the time when visiting my folks. They threw the explodinator in the back of whatever car and janice, dad, my sister or brother would drop me off at my apartment. We'd have a little one on one chat, good times, I'd get home, watch some tv, go to the store, go to sleep. Whatever.
Here it is much the same exercise, I catch up with someone, it gets late, we're all tired and someone offers to drive me home, we have a good chat in the car then we reach the place I'm staying, I get out and then wave good bye. Go to the combini, watch tv or go to sleep.
And yet I hate it. Here it feels like being put to bed. Even though most people are giving me the old fuckoffski because they have to work the next day, its not like the party is over.
But there is something here that I distinctly lack. And that is the ability to get up in someones house, declare 'that's it' and go home.
As I blink now, I can see the frosty streets of melbourne, on a summer night, the alternating quite dark park lanes and the busy al fresco dining inner streets. I am cycling in t-shirt and shorts, or walking in a three piece suit. Making my own nocturnal way homewards.
I pass beggers with no shoes, and year 12 private school girls in garish dresses and no shoes. People late at night dipping their legs into fountains that now must be defunct in Melbourne's many public gardens.
My bike lights are blinking in the reflection of someone's car parked on Johnson st, as I make my way through Collingwood back to civilization of Fitzroy, one suburb over.
I'm riding through two consecutive sets of red lights in the complete absense of traffic at 2 am on the college crescent, riding around behind princes park where old men solicit college residents for blowjobs as they have a drunken rest on a park bench making their own way home.
I've left early enough to catch the last tram or train home, I'm sitting feeling fucking seedy, looking around at the malaysian talent turned in early from a night of good wholesome fun in the city, the talent is dispersed evenly amongst some of the ugliest people I will ever see.
Some people are on edge looking for tram inspectors.
There was 1001 roads home, foot, train, bike, at my disposal anytime I wanted. Nothing particularly special about melbourne. Japan has a 24 hour train service just about, foot can get a little ridiculous, I don't have a bike.
My independance is gone, not entirely of course. But I am getting taken home, dropped off.
It is not me putting my feet in front of the other. I miss that. It is not me making my own sweet time home, to do what I want when I want.
I am getting dropped off, always an act of caring generosity on my hosts part, but I feel like a cancerous mole being removed.
My inability to comprehend distance means that home always cuts my conversations off. It arrives abruptly, I get out and then everything folds itself back into the night, and I go to sleep.
I can't really explain it, but I miss the romance of wandering home. Even in the industrial centre that is Toyota city, or the rice paddies meets residential suburbs that was Handa, or the Queenscliff, Geelongesque vibe of Takematsu, getting dropped off feels like having my arms pinned down by a blanket and my head kissed, knowing that the sound of adults drinking wine, eating cheese and cracking lame ass jokes will keep me up for hours yet.
And my mind longs to wander the streets, taking turns, in the lights, hear the noise of traffic. I think I will go wander the streets tomorrow.