終わり The End

So that's it. That's where it ends. Last Friday I took my final 日本語 exam, ate lunch, and headed out to my final farewell party. All of my friends were there. My host mom was there too! With mixed breaths of sorrow and joy being exhaled by everyone. I said a final farewell to two of my professors, who in turn wished me luck in my endeavors. "Surely you intend to continue?" "Yes, I do." I sincerely replied. I had some great professors at Nanzan, one not so great professor too...but that is to be expected. One student gave a farewell speech and thanked his professors and host parents, at this I too turned to Wakae and thanked her for such a wonderful semester. When his speech ended the food was served. I hardly ate but instead spent these few minutes running around to all of my friends to say goodbye and get one final picture with them before they disappeared into the foggy mist of my past. There were so many people! I would head over to one person, snap a picture together, and then turn immediately to another friend to my left.
At the end of all of this I changed clothes. I had been wearing a suit to the event as a kind of parting formality (my host mom saw this and thus came to the event in her kimono!) and it did not suit my evening plans. I disgracefully burdened my kimono-clad host mom with my backpack and turned back around to one last night on the town with my friends. I met up with Keiko, Natsumi, and Mohawk Mike before walking briskly towards Club ID. We talked about the semester, Mike commented on how this was the first time that we had hung out together, and took time to notice the gigantic crowd that just happened to be following us. That was strange...It was a pleasant walk and I enjoyed the conversation, but Keiko had to leave us for someone else and left me, Mike, and Natsumi to run to make the 8:00 entrance time (after which the entrance fee climbed from 0 to 10 dollars.) We arrived in 栄, put our stuff in a locker, and made it just in time. I had plans to go to Kanayama later that night so it made sense that we had arrived so early.
At first there was no one there, just a few of the foreign students and some locals (and this really creepy masked figure). We talked for a bit, watched Mike and Paris mix it up a bit on the dance floor, and drank. I talked to Ryan a bit, another friend from Nanzan, about dances: it was really no fun when there was no girl that would dance with any guy...but especially girls that knew how to dance, to which he pointed out these two girls that were dancing incredibly well. Ha! Good luck man, that's a dream.
One or two drinks, and an hour or so later I was out on the dance floor with both of them.

All through the night though, and even before the dance had started, the only person that I had desired to dance with that night was Natsumi. So I saved my the last dance for her, and what a dance it was. So the night turned into all that I had hoped it would: one final, incredible, parting event. We all stopped early (11pm) and headed out. I said my final goodbyes to my friends (Mike and I made up a song about portapoties...), Tosh (Mack) turned up for a final goodbye too, and jumped on the subway and headed out to 金山 to accomplish a small dream that had bubbled up in my emotions over the past 4 months: to join in with the local artists with a small performance of a song on the cold sidewalk in front of the train station. I always stopped by to hear them play. Their music always ended my weekend follies in a way that I loved. They calmed my nerves and inspired my creativity. I listened to countless artists there, made some of them my friends, and only hoped one day to join them. That day was this night. I wrote up my carol and sang it to my one listener. Into the cold winter sky, with my lonely sheet of paper, I sang:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

I finished up, folded and tucked the paper into my pocket, and rushed into the station in order to catch the last train home to Owari-Ichinomiya 尾張一宮. I boarded at around 11:50....

...and woke up around 1:00AM. Yeah, I slept on the train. Big mistake #1 that night. I had woken up in a city called Gifu, 岐阜, in another prefecture. With no way of taking the train back ( I had ridden the last train there), and only about $40 left in my pocket, I decided that staying in a Manga cafe was probably my best option. So I asked around in some of the 7-11s and 99shops but it turns out that Gifu has no Manga cafes. However, one kind soul pointed me in the right direction towards the closest one and I hoofed it....

...hours, and half a wine bottle, later, I arrived back in my own prefecture and within a couple kilometers ( I thought) of my city. Unfortunately, Ichinomiya is HUGE. It was 3:30AM and I was tired so I grabbed a taxi. It cost me just about the rest of my cash to get the ride home. Nice. Glad I got the taxi though, it turned out that I was still a ways from my destination. You think that's where it ends? Think again. Remember I have to ride a bike to get home? Yeah, that was my final task. For about 20 minutes at around 4:00AM on my last night in Japan I rode by poor ass back to my host family's house. Exhausted and smelly, I decided that the best thing to do was to pack. (?) I packed for an hour before heading to bed around 5AM.
Lucky for me I got to sleep in...until 8AM. Some of my host family (host aunt & cousins) had come over to say goodbye to me that day so I had to get up early to eat breakfast with them. Meh! I felt great. It was strange to pack that day...there was a feeling about the family of denial or a desire to ignore the fact that I was departing that day.
With all my bags packed and the picture frame with me and my host parents together placed on the table in my room for when they arrived back home, we headed out to the airport. It was a strange goodbye really, there was very little talk about what I would be doing after I arrived home, very little talk about the past few months. The focus was on the here and now. We grabbed my last meal, 海老フライ, one or two other souvenirs, and started making our way to the gate. It was a strange goodbye. I turned to the group behind me: Wakae, Rieko, Kento, Satsuki, and two of their cousins had all come to see me off. I waved goodbye, not knowing how to really part ways with them after having lived together for 4 months, learning, trying together... but I still didn't expect it at all. Japanese people are so reserved with their emotions, and she is old and traditional, but still she started to tear up. Right before my eyes I could see her experienced eyes swell with tears before she did the one thing that she knew how to do to show her appreciation with the relationship we had: she reached out her hand to shake mine. Looking down at her hand, the hand that had done so much for me, everyday, and I began to tear up too. So I hugged her. Then I turned to all my siblings and cousins, said goodbye to them in turn, and turned around to face my gate. They all stayed and waved to me as I wound my way slowly through the line, and I waved back...in a sad, slow wave. The kind of wave that you give to someone who you might never see again.
But, I'm going back someday.

A few flights, astrange navy dude (MEXT), and this man with the HEAVIEST Minnesota accent I have EVER heard later, and I was home.

Home, to my family. Home, to snow. Home, so far away from Japan.

It is strange to write this, look at my souvenirs, talk about my experiences in Japan, and only have memories of Japan to recall now...none to be made anymore.

I hope you all had a good time with my entries. Some of them were more boring than the others but all of them made up a little part of my life. There were so many other things that happened in my day-to-day that I didn't write down, so many things that one can only experience for themselves because they are just so unique and indescribable. They are feelings of discovery, distance, discontent, comradeship, cautiousness, new self, an awareness of differences in human paths, and an awareness of the similarities of human goals.
I lived in Japan for 4 months, hardly a long time, but I learned more about the culture and day-to-day lifestyle of the Japanese people than I ever though I would in those 4 short months. I made some lifelong friends in Japan over those 4 short months. And over those 4 short months I didn't lose my desire to return someday to the 美しい東国島、日本。

The Pictures:
1) A view from a hill of a suburb looking through a pole holding up a clock. The city that is framed in the pole is none other than Nagoya.
2) I took so long taking the first picture that my friends walked ahead of me and had to call me on. Gonna miss em.
3) My host dad and I at one of our last meals together, Suki-yaki. Suki-yaki is truly a delicious meal and I highly recommend it. Sauteed meats, veggies, and tofu in a soy/sake mix, and then dipped in a raw egg and served with rice and a cup of green tea.
4) Me and my friend Yuka and her friend.
5) Me and my spanish-speaking friends! Masahiro, Maki, Satomi and Sayako!