さよなら

This last week has gone by so fast. I worked at the Board of Education for a few days after getting back from Naoshima. I helped plan for English camp next week, although I obviously won't be there. In the evenings I mostly packed and cleaned my apartment. Wednesday was my last game day and that night Marc, Tanya, Juha, and Megan came over to play a new game, Dead of Winter. I lost, but it was a really fun game. We played another 3 vs. 1 game after DoW and it was really fun. I was the one person trying to complete secret missions and escape and although I barely made it out, it was a ton of fun and a great last game.

Thursday was my last day at work. Afterward, I went over to Kikumi's to watch some movies. Shinki and I went to a local fish market to get some sashimi for dinner before starting the movies and Megan came over as well to watch with us. Friday I slept in before finishing the majority of my packing and starting to really get stuff ready for the new ALT taking over the apartment. I stayed home most of the day, but went out in the evening to Riverwalk where I met up with Megan to go see the new Pokémon. We ended up getting dinner after the movie and Megan doing some last minute shopping before the stores closed.

Saturday I met up with Leah for lunch before heading home to put on my yukata and head into Tobata. The weekend before I'd missed the summer fesitval in Kokura while in Noashima, but Tobata's summer festival was this weekend and so many people came out! I saw my friend Teppei who I hadn't seen in a long time and a bunch of ALTs in Kitakyushu were there. It was a great last weekend in Japan!

Sunday I finished up my packing and cleaning and had some friends over to help out. Megan, Leah, Bec, and Chris all come over to help me finish up the cleaning. We played some games after we finished and it was really a nice day. We all parted way for dinner and I went into Konyamachi to see Kikumi and Shinki who were playing with their band. I always enjoy seeing them play and it was nice to see everyone from the band one last time.

Monday I met up with Kikumi and Shinki again to take a beach trip! All the bartenders from Konyamachi went out and there were about fifteen of us all together. We set up BBQs in the sand and had a great day! We went swimming in the ocean, ate a ton of good food, and I even played soccer (and our team won!). We stayed at the beach for hours, but I went home a bit early to be back in Kokura by dinner time. Dan, another leaving ALT, was having a party at a beer garden and I went to say goodbye. Almost all the ALTs came out and even someone from the BoE joined us. It was nice to go to the beer garden one last time. After dinner some people went home, but some of us stayed out and went to karaoke. We sang our hearts out for two hours before saying goodbye to Dan and all parting ways.

Yesterday (Tuesday, July 28th) was pretty quiet for me. I went out for lunch with some of the ALTs and Bec came over afterwords with her car to help me move my bags to Leah's where I'm staying until I leave. Leah was tired from the night before, so I went out for dinner with Megan to an okonomiya/monja restaurant. The food was delicious and after dinner we decided to find the cat cafe in Kokura that we'd both heard about, but not visited. The cafe was really cute and I'm so glad I went before leaving! I was back at Leah's pretty early and we hung out just talking and watching TV until we decided it was bed time.

Today (Wednesday, July 29th) I'm hanging at Leah's until I got meet the new ALTs in the afternoon. There are two new ALTs moving into my apartment complex and I'll help show them around the area. Juha will show the new ALTs around the other area and we'll meet up for dinner at Tetsunabe where we'll join all the Kitakyushu ALTs for a welcome dinner. Because it's also my last night, we'll go out after dinner and have some fun and there will be a lot of goodbyes.

My flight tomorrow leaves at 2:10 PM from Fukuoka airport. Leah and I have breakfast plans before she leaves for work and Kikumi and Shinki will pick me up around lunch time to drive to the aiport. My last meal in Japan will of course be a sushi lunch with them before I head back home!

Living in Japan has been one of the best experiences of my life and although I know it's time for me to move on, it's certainly bittersweet. I'm leaving behind a lot of amazing people who I will never forget. I hope to see everyone again in the future and as sad as I am to leave, I'm so excited for my next adventure in Denver!

Naoshima

Last night Leah and I got back from an amazing long weekend in Uno! Uno is a small town on the coast of Honshu and it's main draw is the ferry port going to many of the islands in the Seto Inland Sea. These islands are famous for their art exhibits. The typhoon that hit us last week was supposed to also hit Uno and the Seto Inland Sea while we were there, but we got lucky and the weather was beautiful all weekend.

We left Saturday morning via shinkansen and arrived at Uno Station just before 11 AM. Momoko, the girl helping us at our guest house, drove to the station to take our bags and show us to the ferry. We didn't want to waste any time, so we hopped on the 11:10 ferry heading to Teshima. Although Naoshima is the more populated and more famous island, we still wanted to check out all Teshima had to offer. The ferry was a bit under half an hour and by noon we had rented bikes and were enjoying some lunch. Although Momoko had told us to get electric bikes to help with the steep hills of the island, we decided to save money and rent regular 3-speed bikes. After going across the entire northern area of the island we were wishing for electric bikes, though. It was so hilly!! We took frequent rests at the different exhibits on the island. We saw a few temples as well. The Teshima Art Museum was my favorite exhibit we saw. It was a white concrete enclosure with two holes in the ceiling. Water came up through some spots on the floor and ran into two pools under the holes. Inside was huge and really relaxing. It was also at the top of the biggest hill, so it was a great place for us to rest for a while and get out of the sun.

We stopped at a few smaller exhibits on the way to the eastern side of the island. At the very north-east corner was the next big exhibit, Les Archives du Coeur. You entered a completely dark hallway with rectangular mirrors of differing sizes covering the walls. About 20 feet into the hallway was a single light-bulb flashing in time with a heartbeat being played from somewhere in the back of the hallway. That flashing bulb was the only light source and the heartbeats were recorded from real people on the island. It was very cool, but a bit scary when the beat slowed as different people's heartbeats played. We could have payed extra to record our heartbeat to add to the collection, but decided against it.

We headed back towards the port on the western side of the island, stopping at a few more smaller exhibits and temples on the way. We played basketball at No One Wins - Multibasket where the backboard was a map of the island and hoops were placed at different heights. It was way more fun than we both originally thought it looked and we spent almost half an hour just goofing around. We also went to a place called Storm House, where you sat inside an old-style Japanese house and watched the windows. In a four or five minute span it seemed to go from the sunny it was outside, to a big thunder storm, and then back to sunny.

By the time we got back to the port it was almost 5 PM, closing time for the exhibits. We luckily just made it into the Yokoo House. It was a really cool house fitted with all kinds of strange features. The main house was made half of black wood and half of red, translucent plastic. The garden in the back had beautifuly crafted animal statues and a koi pond with mosaics running throughout the bottom. The smaller house in back was half tatami floored and half glass to see through to the koi pond. The walls were displaying 11 different 2-D works (some paintings, drawings, and other mediums including one half painted and half moving pictures). Back in the main house was a giant smoke stack shaped area that was covered in pictures of waterfalls and had mirrors on the top and bottom so it seemed to go on forever. I'm really glad we had time to see it before it closed!

We had a snack while waiting for the next ferry back to Uno and got back just about dinner time. Momoko had recommended a restaurant called 大坂屋 (Osaka Ya) and we decided to eat there. Momoko came to pick us up from the restaurant to show us to the guest house for the first time. The guest house, Uno Slope House, is really just the owner's parents' house refurbished into a hotel. Only three rooms are available and there's no signs saying it's a guest house because they want it to feel like you're staying with a friend instead of a hotel. Because there's no signs, though, it's hard to find for the first time, that's why Momoko picked us up. We spoke with her for a while before heading to bed.

Momoko made breakfast in the morning for us and another family staying there. We left early for Naoshima so we could spend all day there. The Uno Slope House had bikes we could use for free, so we took them with us on the ferry. I'm really glad we did, because it was packed even that early in the morning and it looked like the line to rent a bike would have taken over half an hour to get through! We started by going to the area I had been to with Hofstra in Japan. We saw all the Art House Project exhibits and the new ANDO Museum. We had macha floats at a cat cafe and yellow tail burgers at Maimai. After biking around and seeing everything there, we headed to the part of the island I'd never been to. We passed the Tsutsuji rest house and beach and it was packed! Because of the long weekend everyone was out having BBQs and swimming. Leah enjoyed the beach for a bit while I stayed in the shade a read a book. We walked around the Benesse Art Site and took pictures with the famous pumpkin. It was incredibly hot that day and we'd biked around the entire island, so we decided to call it a day. We caught a ferry back to Uno and were back around 5 PM.

Momoko was back as well, so we hung out with her for a few hours. She told us that Uno was having a summer festival that night so around dinner time we decided to check it out. It was only one square block, but it was really nice! Lanterns were hung everywhere and there was an area roped off for taiko drums and dancers. At the shrine, a priest was using an 大幣 (onusa, a wooden staff with zig-zag, white paper) to perform purification rituals for people. There were lots of yatai stalls selling all kinds of food and small goods. There was of course 金魚すくい (kingyo sukui, goldfish scooping), ヨーヨーすくい (yoyo scooping) and even スーパーボールすくい (super-ball scooping). A lot of the local businesses were also out selling food. Momoko told us a friend of hers was selling doughnuts, so we tired them and they were delicious! A local coffee shop was making fresh espresso and selling espresso beer, which was also very good.

After having dinner at the food stalls, we stopped to watch the dancing. The dancing area was a large oval with the tiako drummers int he middle everyone was dancing around the edge of the oval in a pretty easy repeated dance. Leah and I were miming it on the side and one of the dance teams pulled us in to dance with them! It was open to anyone and people from the crowd were joining into the circle, so we decided to join them. We did one full lap around the oval before stepping out, but it was an amazing experience! About an hour before the festival ended we ran into Momoko, who invited us to sit with her and her friends. They were telling us most of the tourists in the area couldn't speak Japanese, so they were excited they could all talk with us in Japanese. We stayed with her and her friends until the festival ended and we all reluctantly parted ways. It was an amazing night and although we were tourists, we really felt included and like we were welcomed into the community!

Monday we had breakfast with Momoko again before checking out of the Uno Slope House. We went back to Naoshima in the morning. We'd found a much smaller beach with no one on it and Leah wanted to go swimming. I stayed on the beach reading and Leah swam for a bit. Once the sun got too much to us we went to the bathhouse we'd missed the day before. The bathhouse was beautifully decorated on the inside with mosaics, a designed glass ceiling, and even an elephant statue. The best part, though, was the name. It's called 'I ♥ 湯.' The last kanji usually means hot water and is part of the word bath, but it's pronounced yu. So the name is, 'I love yu.'

We grabbed some lunch before taking the ferry back to Uno and catching a train to head home. We had to change from the local train to the shinkansen in Okayama and before heading all the way back to Kokura we decided to check out Okayama Castle. We walked about twenty minutes from the train station and I'm really glad we decided to stop. The castle was beautiful and we spend a relaxing time walking around the outside and exploring inside. There was a park nearby and we walked around it until dinner time. We headed back to the station and found a small restaurant on the way back. We were pretty tired by this point, but still had a great dinner and sleepy train ride home. It was the best last trip in Japan I could ask for.

I'm not less than 10 days away from my flight home and I'm going to be busy cleaning, packing, and seeing everyone. I'm hoping to get one more post in before my flight when I will no longer be a JET.

Goodbye Parties Abound

I figured I'd post now since I'm worried I'll forget some things after my trip to Naoshima. I had my last week at school and the Board of Education goodbye party. I'll be flying home in less than two weeks and it feels real now that I'll be leaving.

On Monday I met up with Caol, Shinki, and Kikumi for dinner. We went to a yakiniku place we often go. The owner was sad to hear I was leaving, but gave us some extra food as a goodbye present. After dinner we sang two hours or karaoke before saying goodbye to Caol. I went with Kikumi and Shinki to one more place before calling it a night. Tuesday I met Megan for an after dinner coffee so we could gossip about all the new things revealed at SDCC. Wednesday was the goodbye party for the BoE. We went to a nice restaurant in Kokura and I sat with Leah and some of the higher-ups. We all had to make speeches that mostly turned tearful, but it was a great night. I got a few gifts from the BoE, but the one from the other JETs was my favorite. They just bought a message card and everyone wrote a message around all these pictures of us from over the last two years. It was really touching and I couldn't have been happier. My favorite moment, though, was talking to one of the BoE employees about my new math teaching position and he told me he remembered my math lesson from English camp and he thought I'd make a great math teacher. A few of us went out to karaoke afters, five ALTs and three BoE higher-ups. It was the perfect end.

Yesterday (Thursday, 7/16) was my last day of school. There was a typhoon scheduled to hit us today (Friday), so the school canceled the last day. I hadn't been at Tsukida long, but I became really close with one of the teachers and it was hard to say goodbye. I made an English speech during closing ceremony that I'm pretty sure everyone understood and a student came up to give me a bouquet of flowers. I know coming home is for the best, but I will really miss the students and teachers I've worked with these past two years.

Thursday night Leah came over to celebrate school ending. The typhoon hadn't hit yet, but the air was cool enough to sit outside enjoyably, so we sat on my balcony for a few hours just talking and hanging out.

Today is Friday. I used my day off to clean everything and get some more packing done. I'm going to meet Leah for lunch in an hour and we'll grab our shinkansen tickets for our trip tomorrow. Tonight I'll see Caol for one last dinner and karaoke since he's going to Ireland for a visit tomorrow and I'll be gone by the time he gets back to Japan. Tomorrow I head out with Leah to Naoshima and Teshima for our last Japan trip and from then on I'll pretty much be packing and seeing everyone I can while I can. It's really bittersweet leaving, but I'm going to make the most of these next two weeks!

Counting Down

There's only two and a half weeks before I head home and I've been really busy packing and getting ready to leave. I went to Kikumi's on Monday night to watch a movie and have dinner. Another friend, Taka, came as well and we had a great night. I had my last Board of Education meeting on Wednesday and went out to dinner with Leah and Lisa afterwards. Friday I met up with Megan to go to Aru Aru City. We stayed until it closed looking for gifts for Megan's friends. We walked back to my apartment afterwards and ordered pizza for dinner. I stayed up late that night to get Welcome to Nightvale tickets that went on sale at 3 AM Japan time, so Megan stayed late to keep me company while I waited for the tickets to go on sale. She left for last bus, but I'm glad she could stay with me at least for a bit!

On Saturday I packed a few boxes and sent them off to America in the morning. In the afternoon, I met up with two of my former Shinozaki students. They heard I was leaving and wanted a chance to say goodbye. After introducing myself to their parents, we headed off to the most popular teenage girl spot in any culture, the mall. They showed me all their favorite stores I helped them pick out English books and cute bags. We went to the arcade for プリクラ (purikura, specialized photo booths) and played taiko drum rhythm games featuring new songs. We ended the afternoon at the food court where we had chocolate, banana, and strawberry crepes. After saying goodbye I headed back to Kokura to meet up with Caol for the Kitakyushu JET Sayonara Party. Eighteen of the JETs living in Kitakyushu came out for dinner and we had a fantastic time! Everything went their separate ways after the party and Leah, Caol, and I headed for karaoke. We only stayed for two hours before heading home, but we had an amazing night!

Sunday I met up with Juha and Dan and we all caught the bus to Fukuoka. For Jake, Dan, and I it was our last game day in Japan. We made sure to get there early so we'd have all 12 hours full of games. We played a ton of different stuff. I played a few new games I love and want to pick up when I get back to the States and some of my old favorites. By the end of the night there were only seven of us. Jay had a few bottles of wine for us to share to celebrate and we ended on a murder mystery game. It was so much fun and it was great to see all the board game people again before going home.

Today I'm starting my last week at Tsukida. So far I've had some great last classes. It's so bitter sweet, I love all the teachers and students here, but I'm really excited to come back and start working in Colorado. I have my Board of Education goodbye party in a few days, Kokura's Gion (a summer festival) starts on Friday, and Leah and I will take our last Japan trip to Naoshima over the weekend. It is a long weekend, so next weeks update will probably be a day late, but I'm so excited to get my last few adventures in before I start packing up for good!

Happy 4th of July!

Now that it's July I really feel like I'm in the home stretch. In less than a month I'll be home preparing to meet my first class of 7th graders for math. These two years have gone by so fast, but I still have a few more adventures before I return to the States!

On Monday I went to Colet with Megan. She wanted help picking out a yukata for the summer festivals starting soon. We grabbed dinner and a coffee and we had a great night. On Wednesday Leah came over for a drink. Jupiter and Venus were both visible and almost touching, so we went up to the top of my building for a beautiful view of the city and the stars and planets overhead. Tanya came On Friday I went to Costco with Kikumi and Shinki. We went out for sushi afterwards and even won a capsule prize!

On Saturday I was up early to clean my apartment and getting all the 4th of July food ready to travel. I headed out to meet Caol and Megan at Cha Cha town to catch the first screening of Avengers: Age of Ultron playing near us. Megan and I had already seen it in Korea, but Caol hadn't seen it yet and because of the early morning time, it was fairly cheap to see it again. We all walked back to my place afterwards and pretty soon Kazuki was there picking us up! We loaded up our rental car and headed off to Yamaguchi. The drive was a little less than two hours and we had no trouble finding the campsite. We got there a bit early, so we stopped for lunch before checking into the cabin. The cabins were beautiful and had a fully stocked kitchen, so Chris and I got started on prepping the food while Caol and Kazuki headed out to get drinks and a few extra things. Once Caol and Kazuki came back and the food was all prepped we walked back to the main camping headquarters and spend some time in the onsen there. After relaxing for a bit we headed back to the cabin to start our 4th of July celebration! We started by drinking red, white, and blue sangria (strawberries, blueberries, and white wine). Soon after I started cooking the burgers and corn. We were originally going to have a BBQ outside, but the weather didn't hold up. Thankfully the cabins had a great kitchen and we were able to cook everything without a problem! We ate and drank all night and even played truth or dare for a while. It was a ton of fun and we all had an amazing night.

The next morning we made chocolate pancakes topped with the extra fruit and whipped cream from the night before. We also had red, white, and blue sprinkles to make them extra American. We headed out around 10:00 AM and found another onsen to stop in on our way back home. There was an outside pool and the water wasn't too hot, so we ended up staying there for over an hour. We headed straight home after that to return the car, but all had lunch together. We decided to get yakiniku since that involves grilling and we wanted to get some grilling in to make the holiday official. We had a great lunch, but parted ways afterwards. Megan and Caol came back with me to pick up their bags they'd left at my place. Megan hung out and we watched some videos until she had to go home. The rest of my night was pretty quiet.

This week should be another exciting one! I'll meet Kikumi and Shinki tonight to watch movies and make hamburgers. They really wanted to come for our 4th of July trip, but had to work on Saturday, so they couldn't make it. I'll be meeting Leah and Tanya for a girls night later in the week and on Saturday I'll have another goodbye party. I'm starting to pack things up, but it doesn't quite feel real yet that I'll be leaving. These are going to be a hectic and bittersweet few weeks. And although it wasn't my best performance, here's the video from last week as promised! Sorry it took so long.

Shopping and Singing

Last week at school was pretty quiet again. Leah came over on Thursday for dinner, but other than that I stayed home. Friday I did some shopping after school at Book Off. I'm getting a few of my favorite books, music, and movies to bring home for when I miss Japan. I headed to Aru Aru City after and met Megan where we did a bit more shopping before meeting Caol for dinner. We snacked on some gyoza before doing a few hours of karaoke. Megan went home after, but Caol and I stayed out a bit later at Babu Box, a bar owned by a friend of mine and the drummer for the band. We didn't stay out too much later, but it was a nice night and a nice end to the week.

On Saturday I cleaned during the day and ran errands. For dinner I met up with one of my students from Shinozaki who I don't see anymore. It was so nice to see her! We went out for conveyor belt sushi. Normally if you order sushi they put it on a special plate to mark it as reserved and it comes around on the conveyor belt like everything else, but this restaurant had a second conveyor belt about a foot above the first where the "shinkansen" would come with your orders. It would go directly to your table and you took the plates and pushed a little button to have it go back to the kitchen. It was so cool! And instead of stacking your plates to be counted at the end of the meal, there was a little shoot the plates went down that cleared them away and counted them at the same time. As an incentive to eat more, for every five plates you sent down the shoot you had a chance to win a little capsule prize. We stayed at the restaurant for about two hours talking and it was really nice to see her. After dinner I waited with her while her mom came to pick her up. Her mom was really nice and was so excited to meet me. She told me about how much her daughter liked having me as a teacher and how sad she was when I changed school and how grateful she was for the books I have her. My poor student was getting more embarrassed every minute her mom was talking, but it was really sweet. After talking for a bit we parted ways and I headed to Caol's to watch movies and hang out. Megan was there as well and the three of us stayed up late talking.

Sunday I went over to Megan's in the morning for breakfast. I had gotten Megan a waffle iron for her birthday and she wanted to try it out. Our first batch of waffles didn't turn out so good, but we got the hang of it by the second batch and made some pretty ones by the time our batter ran out. I didn't stay long and soon I was back home getting ready for band practice. The band changed one of the songs at the last minute, so I went in at 4:00 to practice. We only had half an hour to practice the new song before mic check started for all the bands, so it was a little rushed. Despite that, everything went really well! Leah, Bec, Caol, and Megan all came out to see me and we had a great night! Two other bands played as well and they were both great. Because it was a Sunday the show started a bit early, so even though the entire show was about three hours we still finished just after 10:00. Unfortunately the video's aren't up yet, but I should have links by next week!

This last weekend was so amazing and next week should be just as fun! It'll be another quiet week in school, although I am going to go to the science classes to help them dissect pig heats. I'm also taking anther step towards coming home and will be figuring out which of the new JETs will get my apartment after I leave. Next weekend is the 4th of July, so I organized a trip for eight of us to go on a camping trip where we can BBQ and celebrate the holiday. Only three of us are Americans, but everyone is really excited!

First Goodbye

School last week was again pretty normal. I had a good time at Matsugae and enjoyed eating lunch with the students in their classroom during the week. I went out for dinner on Monday with Kikumi and Shinki, but other than that I pretty much stayed home getting work done during the week.

Friday night I went out with Leah and one of my teacher, Yamato. We went to a restaurant in Kokura that none of us had been to before, but passed by often. It was really good and I'm so glad we went! After dinner we went to Orange Door. I was helping Kikumi and bar tending that night. Before it got busier I was able to sit down and play cards with Leah, Yamato, and Caol who came to join us. Around midnight my friends left and I stayed behind the bar until I headed home. It was a really fun night!

On Saturday I cleaned up my apartment in the morning and ran errands in the afternoon. For dinner I took the train into Fukuoka and met with a bunch of JETs for the (first of many) Sayonara Party. It was at one of my favorite restaurants in Fukuoka and it was really nice to see everyone. I don't often go into Fukuoka, so I don't get to see them very often. Jake, Greg, and I left a little early to grab one more drink before going home and it was nice to spend some time with them. I caught the last train back to Kokura and all in all it was a great night.

Sunday I had work for an English camp I won't be attending. It was fun seeing all the students, especially the students I knew from last year or other schools, but it was a little sad for me to be there since I will be gone before the camp starts. It was just an afternoon full of meetings, so it didn't take too much time. After we got out I went over to Heart Key to practice with Kikumi's band. I'll sing two new songs with them next Sunday and we wanted to practice for a bit! For dinner I met up with Leah, Juha, Marc, Tanya, and Megan at Cha Cha Town. We ended up at a 回転寿司 (kaiten zushi, conveyor belt sushi) restaurant. We had an early dinner so that we could catch a movie afterwards. We went to see Mad Max: Fury Road since it came out here on Saturday. We all really enjoyed the movie! Leah, Juha, and I all walked home together afterwards and it was a great end to a great weekend.