I also find myself extremely busy back at work, which is actually a very good thing otherwise I’d really have to struggle to fight back sleep. The jet-lag still has ahold of me and I know I’m not all there in my head, but luckily my first few classes have been speaking tests so I haven’t had to do much by way of actual teaching, and the small time I have spent in front of the classes has gone pretty well so far. It feels as nice to be back among my students as I’d hoped it would, and indeed after this first day I almost feel as though I hadn’t been gone at all.

But as it stands I don’t know when I’m going to have time to get around to writing the obligatory blog entry about the sailing trip, and as of now I have no pictures to accompany the narrative anyway. Gerry and Rob should be sending me the pictures they took but that could take awhile. I’ll get to it eventually, but it might be extremely late.

There are only two things to mention about today at school. The first is having returned with a full beard after several months of clean-shavenness. Only a few teachers commented on it and the students’ reactions were unreadable. They were all third-graders so they remember me with a beard, but at this point I don’t think they expected to see it again. I got the feeling that while many of them didn’t like the change at first, after getting used to the clean-shaven look they now feel I looked better that way. I think I agree with them. I certainly looked younger without the beard, and now that I actually am getting old I see no reason to make myself look any older. So the facial-hair resurgence is sure to be a brief one, and I plan on playing with it a bit before making it disappear completely.

The other thing has to do with a favor I asked my mother to do while I was on the sailing trip, which is go shopping for cheap little presents to give to my students as rewards. I’d originally envisioned giving students points as little stamps on a grid in a notebook page I’d given them and giving a prize whenever anyone reached 20 points. But since the gifts my mom bought vary so much in value I decided to adopt a different idea that K-sensei had told me another ALT he’d worked with had used. I found a program online to put a picture of my face on a dollar-bill, and this morning I printed a bunch of sheets of these “Kyle-dollars” (14 to a page) and cut them up, so instead of giving points I’ll be giving fake dollars and letting students buy the presents whenever they feel like spending them. They can buy the cheap stuff right away at 1 or 2 Kyle-dollars, or save up and buy the better, more coveted stuff for upwards of 10 to 15. For 20 dollars I’ll let them go through my music library and burn a CD with songs of their choosing.

So far the students have responded with a pretty good level of excitement to this, and I think it’s going to be a great tool to motivate them. I gave one Kyle-dollar to everyone who got perfect As on the speaking test today, which was the vast majority of students because they were clearly trying hard. Some students were already clamoring to buy some of the gifts, but I’ve yet to make a firm list of what the prices will be.

In any case, once students catch on to the fact that they get 1 Kyle-dollar for every time they come to a Team C meeting, I’ll hopefully get some more participation there. I really just want to go straight home after school today because I’m exhausted (though I’m still determined to go for a run) but I’ll be showing up to Team C anyway to talk a little about my trip and play a quick card game I brought from home before heading out.

Unless something of interest happens in the mean-time, my next entry will shoot back to the beginning of the sailing trip over a week ago, and depending on how detailed it looks like it’ll end up being I may break it up into several parts. I don’t envision going into too much detail about it, but I almost never do and wind up writing novellas anyway.

One thing I will say about sailing—it wasn’t hard to get used to the feeling of constant motion on the water. With all the seismic activity around here it hardly feels like solid ground anyway.

Naturally, I’ll write about everything in great detail once I’m back in Japan.

I mention it now because after a few days of pondering I’ve come to a solid conclusion regarding the question it posed. I realized that now that I’ve done what I did that night, it’s no longer something I feel I can’t do. I’ve been to dance clubs many times (especially considering the fact that I hate them) and until recently I’ve never managed to attract the interest of any of the women there, let alone dance with them. That always made me feel like there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow less of a man. But now that I’ve managed to do it, I’ve realized that actually makes me feel like less of a man—at least less of the kind of man I want to be.

And that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. Now that I know that I can be that kind of person, I can choose not to be. And these past two days at school have solidly reinforced that feeling to the point where I don’t see myself ever engaging in that kind of behavior again. As I said, it seemed like I was a different person during that whole experience, and I didn’t like who I was. When I’m at school in the role of a teacher, I like myself. That’s the person I want to be. And that person is nothing like the guy I was on Sunday night.

It’s Golden Week, so there were only two days of school, and I only had two second-grade lessons each day. I thought I had strong material going in but as usually happens, every little flaw in the plan gets revealed the first time you try to execute it, and unfortunately on both days the lessons were back-to-back so I didn’t have time to fix it until I’d already done two sub-par lessons that first day. But on the second day I’d changed my approach to the presentation phase and simplified the game phase, and the lesson was a smashing success of the highest order. The kids not only seemed to solidly learn the grammar point I was teaching, but had an absolute blast doing so.

All four of those lessons were with To-sensei, whom I’ve now fully proven myself to. She was the one who started off by taking half the lesson to herself as a typical boring English lesson and only bringing me in for the game at the end, but after showing her that I could do the whole thing from warm-up to presentation to activation, when it came time to plan next week’s lesson she just trusted me to put the whole thing together on my own. The same goes for the other JTEs, so any fears I had about the replacements not letting me teach to my full potential have now completely subsided.

The other major milestone of the week was the beginning of my after-school activity, the Communication Club, or Team C. When I went to English Room 1 after school on Tuesday, I had no expectation that anyone at all would show up. When I introduced it in front of each class at the end of every lesson last week, I didn’t get the impression that anyone was interested, and as most of them are in other clubs anyway I figured I’d probably have to keep reminding students after every lesson until one or two finally showed up.

But on the first day, three students actually showed up: two second-grade girls and a first-grade girl, which was surprising enough as it is because I’d also assumed only third-graders would feel confident enough in their English to try and practice with me. But it turned out not to matter much because most of the time was spent speaking Japanese anyway. I started by practicing self-introductions, starting with me saying whatever I could say about myself in Japanese, and asking the students to correct me or help me figure out how to say certain things like, “I like to ride a bicycle.” When I asked them to practice introducing themselves in English, they first had to write it down on a piece of paper before they felt comfortable enough to try it out. I gave them some gentle corrections, and got a bit more comfortable myself as I recognized the similarity between this and the kind of small-group teaching I did in Germany. Just as I’d hoped, those three years were adequate preparation for this kind of thing.

I’d brought my laptop with all my pictures, and when I reminded them I’d lived in Germany for three years I was able to show them pictures of Hannover, which they really enjoyed. That also gave us an opportunity to learn some vocabulary words from each other, like the words for “church” and “power plant”. When that was done two of the students decided they were finished for the day and the third was ready to leave as well, so that was the end of the first ever Team C meeting. It lasted about thirty minutes.

Incidentally, one of the second-grade girls, M-, is actually a student I mentioned in my entry about my first day of teaching. She was a first-grader then, and in her self-introduction paragraph all the students had been instructed to write, her last sentence was, “I long for the good old days” which really stood out and I got a real kick out of. Because of that she’s one of the first students whose names I learned, and now she’s one of the first students to come to Team C. Turns out she’s just as cool and pleasant of a person as I’d imagined.

When I went yesterday afternoon, I again figured nobody would come. It was raining, it was the last day before a four-day weekend, and I figured the three girls from the previous day probably wouldn’t be back for awhile, if ever. But all three of those girls came back, and one first-grade boy joined us as well. I started off by asking them to write their names in Kanji and see if we could figure out their English meanings, but that proved too difficult even with my iPhone program to identify kanji. I then just went around and practiced the most basic Questions & Answers like, “What’s your name?” “How old are you?” and “What are your hobbies?” which allowed me to teach them (or at least remind them of) important English phrases like, “years old” and how to properly say their full birth-date in English. All four of them were born in 1999, which is crazy to me. I was already in high school, already in the full midst of my Aimee-obsession, when they came into the world. Man, I’m old.

But I also asked them what their favorite bands were, and when M- mentioned Gorillaz I felt slightly less old. Gorillaz are one of my all-time favorite bands and have been ever since college. Still, it’s weird to think she was just a little baby when their first album came out.

Once I felt we’d done enough straight-up conversation practice I busted out a deck of cards I’d made for the special needs students at the end of the last school-year, cards with pictures and names of all kinds of simple things like days, months, numbers, colors, etc. Each card had a pair, so the easiest game to play is “Go fish” which we slightly changed to “Go fishing” because they’d heard that expression before and when I came to think of it that’s actually what you say in real life. But it got them to practice the “Do you have…?” phrase as well as brush up on English names for dates and colors and such. They enjoyed the game even more than I expected them too, which was great because other students from other clubs kept coming in and out of the room (students were keeping their bags in the room because it was raining and sports teams were practicing indoors) and when they saw us Team C people laughing and having a great time, it made me hopeful that more of them will warm up to the idea of coming in the future.

I ended it when the game was finished at about 5:20. That meant we’d been there for over an hour, but it hadn’t felt like it at all. I’m technically off work at 4:15, but it’s not a bad way to spend my free time. And I’m getting more valuable Japanese-speaking practice than ever.

We’ll see how things develop, but I’m happy with the start it’s gotten off to. K-sensei explained that most of the students are in other club activities and they don’t feel comfortable asking their coaches to be absent for a day to do Team C instead. I explained that students could just come once a week or once a month, however often they wanted, and K-sensei said he needed to bring up the subject with all the teachers, so perhaps he’ll do that at the next teacher’s meeting. Again, I’m incredibly lucky he’s here this year. To have somebody else who believes in the idea is invaluable.

At any rate, it was nice to get back into my comfortable teaching-shoes after the insanity of the weekend. As a whole, my entire experience in Japan so far has been one of discovering the different kinds of person I’m capable of being. I don’t have to be everyone I’m capable of, but a good teacher and positive influence on young people’s lives is definitely someone I’m happy to be.

The reason there are no afternoon classes is somewhat interesting. In Japan, all of the homeroom teachers visit the homes of each of their students. The main reason is so that they know the locations of their students’ homes in case of an emergency, but it also gives them a chance to talk privately with the students’ parents, which can be valuable for any number of reasons. I’ve never heard of this happening in America but I suppose it probably does in some places, maybe with certain private schools. In any case I think it’s a good idea.

As for how things have been going for me with teaching so far, I’m happy to finally be back in the swing of things. I’ve met with every class at least once so far and most of the first-grade classes twice. The second-graders have been a little disappointing in their enthusiasm to see me, but there are logical reasons for this. For starters, when they were first-graders I barely met with them at all—it was only about 20 minutes every two weeks. They never really got comfortable with me. Second of all, the teacher for most of those classes, To-sensei, is apparently one of those teachers accustomed to using the ALT as a human tape-recording. She ran the first half of the class like a normal boring “repeat after me” and “please practice writing” English lesson, and only brought me in for the second half by which time the students were sufficiently zonked out. The lack of a warm-up at the beginning really makes a huge difference. My game managed to get them loosened up a little bit by the end, but unfortunately the game wasn’t as strong as I’d thought it would be so the whole first week was a bit of a let-down with them. However, I’ve got what I’m fairly certain is really strong stuff planned for next week, and I’m hoping To-sensei will let me have the entire lesson. She teaches one third-grade class, 3-1 (formerly 2-6, one of my favorites), and that’s tomorrow first-period, the only class I’ve yet to meet with. Because she’s not in charge of third-grade classes she has nothing planned so I’ll get to execute the entire lesson on my own, and hopefully demonstrate that I can do more than just make worksheets and games.

As for the third-grade lessons, I’ve been pretty happy with them. These kids were my favorites even last year, I saw them more often than any of the others, and they’ve been very warm and enthusiastic in welcoming me back. I start with a warm-up in which I teach the kids the English greeting “What’s up?” in a fun way that gets them loosened up. Then I do the presentation phase in which I introduce one of the most annoying aspects of English grammar for foreigners—the dreaded Present Perfect tense—and while I stumbled a bit with my explanations at first, now that I’ve done it five times I’ve gotten pretty good at getting the kids to understand with a bare minimum of help from the JTE, who in most cases is T-sensei. It’s nice to be teaching alongside her again, one of the only bits of continuity with the last school-year. But I also had one third-grade class with K-sensei, which went so well it made me wish I had all my third-grade classes with him. I play a couple of games they really get into and end on a high note, feeling like I actually managed to teach something they’ll remember. In any case, whereas students always used to greet me with just a “Hello” some of them are now saying, “What’s up?” which is pretty awesome.

Also of note, this morning I saw one of the third-grade girls crying to her friend in the hallways before another class. Two periods later when I was teaching her class, I could tell she was still very sad but by the end of my first game I actually had her smiling and clapping. There are few things on earth more gratifying than that.

As for the first-graders, the novelty of me hasn’t worn off on them yet and I continue to be greeted with absurd levels of enthusiasm whenever I walk into a first-grade classroom. This week’s lesson, in addition to teaching “What’s up?” has just been a phonics review, which I found a few fun ways to do and it keeps the kids active and excited throughout the whole class period—sometimes too excited. The lessons with K-sensei have been particularly lively, as the two of us seem to just naturally work really well together.

And so the school-year feels back in full-swing, but it’s going to be short-lived. Next week is “Golden Week”, a week in Japan in which a bunch of holidays just happen to fall and most offices are closed most of the days. We only have school on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, and the rest is free. I’ll be staying after for “Team C” both days, but I have no idea how many students will come. Judging by their reaction when I introduce the club at the end of class, I don’t think very many will come by at first, but hopefully it will build as word-of-mouth spreads.

As for non-academic activities, I might be going clubbing with Trey on Sunday night (I’ll know for sure tomorrow) and at some point during the next long weekend there’s a chance I might be going back into Tokyo to meet a girl that I actually met through Corey, as she met him when he worked at a music store in Santa Barbara and she was vacationing there. They’ve been in sporadic contact ever since and just this past week he recommended I connect with her through Facebook. I did and we’ve been exchanging messages with English and Japanese mixed together for the past few days. She seems like a delightful person and I’m looking forward to hanging out with her, so we’ll see how that goes. Whatever happens, it should be good Japanese practice.

So that’s all for the written portion of this entry. Now let’s journey back in time exactly two weeks and take a look at some pictures I took of my area while riding to the beach and back during prime cherry-blossom season. The cherry-blossoms are almost all gone already, so I’m glad I got these pictures when I could.

———-

This is the view from the parking lot behind my building. Beyond the fence is the elementary school sports field.

The quaint little Japanese neighborhood I discovered a few weeks ago.

The fields are absolutely gorgeous after it rains, as the water remains settled for days and leads to some spectacular scenery.

When I got to the beach, there was almost nobody there but a couple of women and some kids they were watching.  These giant sand-hills were never there before and I haven’t seen them since, but the kids though they were the coolest thing in the world as they leapt about them shouting, “sugoi, ne?” (awesome, huh?)

While at the beach I decided to play amateur photographer for awhile.  Since I’m not quite at that level yet, I suppose you’d have to call me an “amateur amateur photographer”.

These concrete slabs line the mouth of the river.  There’s a solid concrete platform not pictured where I like to go sit and absorb the atmosphere, which is markedly different between high-tide and this, which was super low-tide.

Some garbage washed up on shore made for some interesting picture possibilities, but almost none of them came out very well.

Crossing the river on the way back, it’s amazing how different it is at low-tide.

Back in Togane, this is another really nice neighborhood, the scenery spoiled only by the occasional campaign placard.

Very close to home now, the remaining pictures are all from along my jogging route.

Back on my street, the cherry trees lining the elementary school playground were a nice welcome home while they lasted.

For the first week, I only had first-grade lessons, so it’s been another long week of mostly down-time in the teacher’s room, though I’ve been able to keep surprisingly busy both by studying Japanese harder than ever and preparing for next week’s lessons. This year there are only 5 as opposed to 6 first-grade classes (strange to live in a country where the population is decreasing), so that meant just one class per day, with two this morning.

I’d forgotten how enthusiastic the kids are when they first get to meet you. I was nervous about making a strong first-impression, but as soon as I walked into the classroom for that first lesson on Tuesday, I was greeted with gasps and cheers of excitement which put me right at ease. They were applauding me for half my self-introduction, which was the same thing I did back in September and is thus already practiced and refined to perfection, with a few extra little things thrown in. I had flashcards of all the places I’ve lived—they loved the pictures of New York City and California—and I talked about all the things I like to do using heavily-animated gestures they all loved. Once that was done I opened the floor up for questions and got a lot more from most classes this time, but whenever there were no more questions I had the handy-dandy “sad Obama” picture that never ceases to please. It was great to bust that out again.

The first lesson was with K-sensei and by the end of it I was feeling better than ever about working with him this year, as he’s about as ideal a classroom partner as you could ask for, right on par with the still-dearly-missed Y-sensei. He gave me as much leeway as I wanted, but was right there to translate for me if necessary (though at this point I’m capable of translating most things I say myself) and he got the students more interested in asking questions by asking questions of me himself and letting the students ask me in Japanese. I usually didn’t need his help to translate, but he did when I needed to. It’s usually the same set of questions anyway—what Japanese food do you like, where would you like to travel in Japan, do you have a girlfriend, etc. As for that last question, last year I honestly answered that I didn’t, but this year I told them I had 63 girlfriends, which surprisingly many of them didn’t know right away was a joke.

After the Q & A I did the game where teams had to shout as many things as they could remember from the speech and they’d get one point for each thing. I’ve got that game down to a science now too, so it worked perfectly every time. But after that, there were usually still 15-25 minutes left.

With K-sensei, he had an introduction game where students introduce themselves in English to as many other students as they can within the time-limit, with extra points if they introduced themselves to me or him. So pretty much every student came up to me to introduce themselves, some obviously more excited about it than others. That was very nice.

Two of the five classes are taught by O-sensei, but since neither of us had much practice with that game I made another little game of my own involving matching cards with simple English words (I’ll spare you the details). But I got to go to each student and have them take 2 cards, during which time I asked them all for their names, repeated them, and said “nice to meet you”. So I managed to individually meet just about every student in the first-grade. Now when I see students while out cycling or jogging I’ll be able to safely know that they know who I am. Finally.

As for the other grades, I can’t wait to get back to teaching them next week. I’ve got pretty strong lessons planned for all the grades and I’m looking forward to carrying them out with the new teachers, as well as getting to teach side-by-side with T-sensei again.

Finally, there’s the matter of the after-school conversation practice idea I first pitched to T-sensei at the year-end enkai last month. T-sensei liked the idea, but K-sensei was very enthusiastic about it. He helped me get permission from the Vice Principal to use one of the rooms after school, and helped me translate a written invitation that I’ve made mass copies of and will distribute to every student, teacher, and staff member in the school. I’ll be handing those out during my English lessons all next week and explaining to the students what I have in mind, and if all goes according to plan that will get started the week after next. I have no idea how much interest there will be but the other teachers seem to think a lot of students will take advantage. In any case it feels very cool to be starting my very own after-school club activity, and doing that is what I’m most looking forward to this year.

Incidentally, I thought of a good name for it, as “Conversation Practice” or “English Club” sound too dull and academic. I’m calling it “Team Communication” or “Team C” for short. The whole idea (and I express this in the invitation with K-sensei’s translation) is that speaking other languages and talking to people from other countries helps us understand the world better, and that makes things like international business and world peace possible. That’s the main mission of the club, and why I’m calling it a “team”.

That’s pretty much the philosophy behind my entire English-teaching-in-foreign-countries career. Aside from personal growth, I’m helping to encourage and facilitate cross-cultural communication, which is a pretty damned satisfying thing for a person to be doing with one’s life. I’ve never felt more fulfilled.

I didn’t technically have to go in to work at all this week, but if I hadn’t I would have had to go in on Tuesday for my first lessons and just wing-it. I wanted to come in and make preparations, as well as sort out the name-cards and talk to the other teachers more about after-school communication practice. These tasks ended up taking longer than I expected, so I ended up going in on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. On Thursday the weather was just too gorgeous, and since cherry-blossom season doesn’t last too long I knew I had to take advantage. I did the bike-trip to the beach but I stopped frequently to take pictures. I ended up taking several hundred, and when I get to the point where I once again have to be at school but have nothing to do I’ll work on a picture blog-entry to post the best ones.

Kudo from Interac wanted to meet me at the school at 1:00 on Friday so he could meet the administrators and other JTEs, but I went in at 8:30 and worked right up until the meeting. Funnily enough, Kudo had waited until the last minute to call and inform my school he was coming, so every single JTE was busy as well as all but one administrator, a guy I’ve had almost no dealings with, and he ended up taking the meeting. I sat between two Interac people and across from this administrator while they spoke Japanese to each other for about five minutes and then that was it. I can’t believe Kudo came all the way from Chiba for that, but I suppose it’s standard practice in Japan to have a face-to-face meeting at least once.

As for lesson preparations, I didn’t even get to the third-grade lesson because T-sensei is in charge of those and she’s been so busy with other things that she hasn’t even thought of it. But I did confirm we don’t have third-grade lessons on Tuesday, so I’ll have more time to prepare.

My first lesson is first period on Tuesday, and I’m a little anxious about it because it’s a first-grade class and therefore a bunch of students I’ve never seen before. I already have good rapport with the second- and third-graders, but with the first-graders I’ve yet to make a first impression. Luckily, it’s just a self-introduction, and I’ll be doing the same thing I did in September which means I’ve already done it 18 times. Furthermore, K-sensei will be teaching 4 out of the 6 first-grade classes and I can tell I’m in great hands with him. He even has a whole game prepared that he’s done many times before, so while my introduction and game only takes about 25 minutes, there’ll be something fun in the second half.

The bulk of my time was spent preparing for the second-grade lesson, which I’m most excited about because I came up with a game I think is going to be great. The target isn’t a grammar structure like it usually is, but rather just 12 common words in past tense. I’ll hold up a card with a question like, “Where did you go?” or “What did I buy?” and all of the students will have picked a scrap of paper with answers like “I went to school” or “You bought a TV.” There are three answers to every question, and the first student to raise their hand with one of the right answers will get 10 points for their team and 5 bonus points if they can spell the past-tense word without looking. The other two students can get 5 points for their teams just for reading the sentence. I made sure to have a few funny answers to, like one of the answers for “What did he take?” is “He took my girlfriend!” Because these are all very simple sentences I decided to translate them all into Japanese, most of which I could do on my own. But I asked O-sensei to correct my mistakes when I was done, and I actually learned a lot of useful tid-bits about Japanese that way.

At this point it seems pretty clear that O-sensei is going to be even more helpful than T-sensei was last year. She seems not just willing but eager to answer my questions and give me as much information as she can. While T-sensei was always very friendly, I always got the vague feeling that I was bothering her whenever I asked her something, and I don’t get that from O-sensei at all.

I haven’t interacted much with To-sensei, the new second-grade teacher, but my impressions thus far have been very good. The “team-teacher” Ka-sensei, is extremely shy and hasn’t said two words to me since the first day. (The first-grade teacher, K-sensei, is also a “Ka-” but to distinguish I’ll go on referring to him as K-sensei and her as Ka-sensei. I’ll let T-sensei remain T-sensei, but refer to the new one as To-sensei.)

As for K-sensei, his coming to the school might be even more fortunate than I could have hoped. He’s an extremely friendly guy, and while I’m sure I could probably coast through all my classes with him and let him do just about everything, I’m almost certain he’ll let me have as much control as I ask for. Like all the other full-timers he was extremely busy this week so he only had five minutes to talk with me about the first-grade lesson, but he simply asked me if I had something planned and how long it would take. It takes 25 minutes, so he has an activity ready to go for the remainder, but if I’d told him it took the full 50 he probably would have given it to me.

And yesterday while we were both making copies in the back-room, he remarked on how strange it was that so few of the other teachers try to communicate with me. In his last school, he said, the teacher’s room was very small so it was a different atmosphere, but he said it was a better environment. I asked him if he was going to the PTA party because I needed to know the details, and he couldn’t believe no one had talked to me about it. I would have gladly gone to that party, which was last night, but I found out from T-sensei later that reservations had already been made and I wasn’t included. I felt a little offended, but not too much because I probably could have gone if I’d stayed all of Monday instead of leaving after the opening ceremony. It’s okay though, because neither K-sensei nor To-sensei were going anyway (both had parties with colleagues from their former schools), and those are the two I’m still not well-acquainted with.

I’ve gotten much more acquainted with O-sensei, whom I learned not only lived in Germany for 8 years, but also in America—Texas for 4 years where her first daughter was born, and North Carolina for 3 years where her second daughter was born. Her husband works for TDK, a company that makes electronics, so she was a housewife for most of her life just following him wherever he was transferred. She only started teaching last year, so she’s much older than most part-timers. Her daughters are now 20 and 23-years-old, which naturally made me think about my grandfather’s advice and how absurdly perfectly it would be to get introduced to a Japanese girl who not only speaks English from having been born in America but can also relate from having spent 8 years in Germany. It’s obviously too good to be true. In any case, I should wait to get to know her better before I start inquiring about the possibility of courting her children. If I’m extremely lucky she’ll bring it up on her own.

But the main thing is that after this week, I’m not just feeling better about the changes but really good about them. I’ll still miss Y-sensei, but the replacements for all the others (excluding the super-shy Ka-sensei) seem like I’ll be able to get all with them even better, perhaps much better.

Of course, this too shall pass. But I won’t have to worry about that for a nice long year.

Most students arrive before 8:00 but some don’t get in until 8:30, which is the time I’m supposed to get there. As I was walking in at 8:25 some first-graders were riding in on their bikes. Unfamiliar faces. We’re not on “hello” terms yet. Ever since Friday I’ve been seeing kids in that uniform out and about (I think that was an orientation day) and while I could always exchange a wave and a smile with any kid in that uniform, now I never know until we’re right up close whether or not they know me. I’ve definitely waved to a few students who didn’t wave back and must have been wondering why that gaijin was waving at them.

So the students I saw on the way in were unfamiliar, as were the teachers standing outside to guide them in. When I got inside and into the teachers room, I was confronted with even more unfamiliar faces, a deeply unsettling feeling (especially in my hazy state of mind), and when I saw another teacher’s stuff all over my desk I almost wondered if I’d wandered into the wrong school. Luckily T-sensei was there to greet me and show me to my desk’s new location, now at the corner of the first-grade teachers’ section as opposed to the second-grade section, and facing the window instead of the wall.

The moment I looked to the front of the room and saw a tall and intimidating-looking new vice-principal in Ta-sensei’s old seat, that’s when it really hit me. The last school-year took so long to end that when it finally ended it didn’t even feel like an ending. But this was it. The new year is under way. The old year is gone, over, finished, buried in the past forever. I badly miss Y-sensei already.

The whole morning felt like I’d stumbled through some kind of portal to an alternate dimension and came out in Bizarro World. Everything was the same but different. The building was the same but half the people were different (technically it was only a third, but it felt like half). The teacher’s room was the same but everyone’s place had shifted around. The student’s uniforms were the same but a third of their faces I don’t recognize.

Even my neighbor in the teacher’s room had changed—it’s no longer T-sensei but a new part-time teacher, O-sensei. She was the first new teacher I met, introducing herself as my new neighbor when she sat down. We exchanged brief pleasantries but didn’t talk much because she had other things to do. I was glad to be left alone, considering my terribly cloudy head. Suddenly I was in a position of having to make a first impression all over again, and I wasn’t nearly as capable of making a good one as I would have liked.

At least not all changes are painful: The replacement for Y-, the super-cute young woman secretary, is another super-cute young woman. But unfortunately, my desk no longer faces hers.

At 9:15 I went to the gym for the opening ceremony, which could be described as “bizarro graduation”. Like the graduation ceremony, there were parents seated in the middle, but they were the parents of the new first-graders. The old first-graders were now second-graders and seated immediately behind them, with the second-now-third-graders sitting in the back. A few of the third-grade boys waved at me when I came in. Ah, familiar students’ faces. How refreshing.

I took my seat in the teachers’ section in the front-right corner of the room, and at 9:25 the new first-graders entered ceremoniously and took their seats in the front section. It felt strange to think that three years from now, those same students and parents will be in those same positions for the official ending of what was officially beginning today.

The ceremony itself was pretty typical. Everyone stand up, sing the school song, hear a speech from the principal, speech from the PTA president, someone from the board of education, and one welcome speech from the third-graders to the first-graders, delivered by none other than M- from the Speech Contest. It was nice to see she’d gotten that honor.

After all the speeches, it was time for the principal to introduce the teachers, starting with the homeroom teachers who lined up in the order of their grades and classes in the front of the gym and stepped forward one at a time as the principal called out their names. They’d take a bow and say “yoroshiku onegaishimasu”, the standard formal Japanese greeting. A few of the popular teachers got random applause from some of the students in the back.

When it was time for the part-timers and random faculty members to introduce themselves I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to go up there too, but after they’d all lined up someone indicated to me that I should too so I took my place at the end of the line and scanned the giant group of new faces before me. I was glad I didn’t have to make an introduction speech like I had at my first assembly back in September, but at the same time a part of me wishes I could because I’d been able to hook the students in right away with my jokes and Obama pictures. The students were all clamoring to see me after that, but these new first-graders won’t get to find out how frickin’ awesome I am until our first lesson.

When the principal called my name I just waved and said, “Hello, everyone” then bowed and gave them my best yoroshiku onegaishimasu. There was an amusing murmur of approval from the girls’ section in the back, as apparently a bunch of them were surprised at how good my Japanese sounded. But I have to confess I felt a little disappointed that nobody clapped for me. Some of the boys had clapped for the new cute secretary, which everyone found amusing but I think made her uncomfortable.

But I got a few more smiles and waves as the second- and third-graders filed out while I stood at the side of the gym exchanging a few more words with O-sensei. A lot of these kids had seen me drunk the previous evening, which was crazy to think about. One of them, a third-grader named K-, made the loudest burst of a giggle I’ve ever heard when she saw me.

Once the only people left in the gym were the first-graders, their parents, and a few teachers and faculty members, I left and went back to the teacher’s room. I called Interac because at this point I had no idea what I was supposed to do. They still hadn’t sent me a schedule (even today they still haven’t) so I didn’t know if I was supposed to stay the rest of the day and come in every day this week, or if I was to go home and not return to the school until regular classes begin.

Kono told me I could probably go home, but she’d confirm it with a faculty member just to be safe. She called but at that time everyone was busy and there was nobody available to answer her, so she told me to wait and she’d try again in an hour. I had the most overwhelming desire to go home and sleep off the rest of this hangover, but I had a few things to do on my computer anyway so I stayed and did them.

During this time I met K-sensei, the new male teacher Dan had told me about at the hanami. As Dan had described, he struck me as a very friendly, very down-to-earth and uncharacteristically-for-Japanese easygoing person. He told me he really likes to practice speaking English, and he asked me a few things about my living arrangements and what I think of the Togane area. I knew I wasn’t making as good of an impression as I could, but I think it went OK. I just wasn’t in the frame of mind to ask him anything about what he would expect out of me in our lessons together and how much control he’d be willing to give me. But I definitely got the impression that if I ask for more control over the lessons, he wouldn’t refuse. Most of the teachers who use their ALTs as human tape-recordings are the kind who don’t like foreigners and are bitter about having to share the job they took years of school for with some gaijin who barely had any training at all.

So two out of the four new JTEs seemed OK. I didn’t meet the other two. When an hour had gone by since Kono had first called the school, I decided to give her another ten minutes, but just then T-sensei came up to me and said I could probably go home. I explained about my previous phone call to Kono and that I also didn’t know if I was supposed to come in the rest of the week. O-sensei had informed me earlier that the first week is all preparation and normal classes don’t start until Tuesday (this week school is open on Saturday but closed Monday). T-sensei called Interac and after a conversation that seemed to go on much longer than I’d assumed it had to, she handed the phone to me and Kono told me I could go home and not return to the school until Tuesday, though I had to stay in my apartment until 10:00 every morning and be “on call” on the infinitesimal chance they’d need me for something.

Had I not been hungover and deeply tired, I almost certainly would have stayed anyway and introduced myself to the other teachers and talked about what to expect from our lessons this year, but at that point I just wanted to go home and pass out. Besides, they weren’t serving school lunch and I hadn’t brought anything to eat. So I wished everyone a goodbye and left, figuring that my Spring Vacation had just been extended another week.

But over the rest of the day a feeling of regret began to grow. I’d failed to make a good first impression with my new colleagues, and that could be a big mistake if I want them to trust me with more control over lessons. If I was just the guy who showed up the morning of the opening ceremony and then went merrily back on vacation until the following week, I’d be confirming all their stereotypes about lazy Americans.

So on Tuesday morning I wrote an e-mail to Interac asking if I could go in one day this week to meet the new English teachers and discuss the lessons for the year, as well as make my preparations for next week’s lessons. I got no reply all day, but at 7:00 in the evening my phone rang and it was Kudo, who is now apparently the new Interac contact for Togane instead of Kono. More bizarro crap—same company, different contact. Can nothing stay the same?

Anyway, Kudo told me he’d spoken with my school’s vice-principal (I don’t know if it was the new one or the old one) and he’d said I was free to drop in any time I wanted this week. I wouldn’t be able to meet with all the English teachers at once but I could meet with them individually whenever they had time. That’s all I’d expected anyway. He also said he wants to come with me to the school on Friday at 1:00 p.m. so he can introduce himself to the administrators and JTEs.

So I resolved to make the following day a bit of a damage-control operation, to repair the less-than-stellar first-impression-performance I’d made on Monday. I got up early Wednesday morning and went into school at 8:00—a half-hour before I’m supposed to be there when I am supposed to be there—and marched into the teacher’s room to greet everyone. T-sensei was surprised to see me and I told her what I was doing there. She didn’t have much time because she had to get to her homeroom (she didn’t have one last year but now she’s in charge of 3-5, formerly 2-5, a great class), but told me the first lesson for the third-graders wouldn’t be a textbook lesson but to just come up with some kind of conversation practice game. Very vague, but that’s how I like it. At least with T-sensei I know I’ll have nearly total control over my lessons, and since she’s now teaching 4 out of the 6 third-grade classes that suits me perfectly because they’re my favorites (they were actually my favorites last year too when they were second-graders—don’t know why).

K-sensei was also pleasantly surprised to see me, but he said he had no time that day to meet with me but maybe Friday. I’m glad I was able to demonstrate my professionalism to him by coming in when I didn’t have to, but I won’t know until Friday what I should expect out of lessons with him. He’s teaching mostly first-grade (they’ve actually made him the senior first-grade teacher) but one third-grade class as well, so it should be very interesting to see the differences in his approach to older students.

Going into work when I didn’t have to was clearly an excellent move on my part. The old vice principal noticed and greeted me enthusiastically, obviously impressed. As a bonus I even got a super-warm greeting from the new cute secretary, who gave me the impression that it wasn’t just niceness alone (as it had always been with Y-) but that maybe she likes me. Hmmm…

Naturally, O-sensei was also impressed that I’d come in, and she was the first to have time to talk with me because she’s only part-time and has very little to do this week. This was when I really started to feel better about all these changes, as while I didn’t think it was possible O-sensei might be an even more helpful neighbor than T-sensei. She started off by going through every incomprehensible sheet of paper that had been left on my desk and explaining what each of them were: a schedule for this, a memo about that, etc. One was an invitation to a welcome party being thrown by the PTA this Saturday at 5:00 p.m. I’m not sure if it’s an enkai but I’ll most definitely be going no matter what. I want to get comfortable with all these new people a.s.a.p.

O-sensei is doing first-grade classes so my self-introduction will be the first lesson with her, and I told her what I’d done for that lesson last year and she thought it was fine. The only thing is, by the time I had my intro with the first-graders last year they’d already been studying JHS-level English for four months. These new first-graders know only basic elementary-school stuff like colors, numbers, and a few simple phrases. They haven’t even learned the alphabet yet.

It was O-sensei who showed me the schedule for all the teachers and translated all their Kanji names to roman letters for me so I could see who teaches which class when. She even took a print-out showing the layout of the teacher’s room and where each teacher was sitting and wrote their roman-letter names on that too. There were two JTEs I hadn’t met yet, one part-timer who would be “team-teaching” in all the third-grade classes (I assume that means standing quietly in the back and helping only when needed), and a full-timer in charge of all the second-grade English classes.

I introduced myself to the team-teacher (her name escapes me) and when I asked her if she had some time to speak about this year’s lessons and she clearly didn’t understand me, I realized her English might be the weakest of any JTE I’ve worked with so far. She seems nice though, younger than me and a little shy, but with a really cute voice.

The second-grade JTE is another T-sensei, so from this point on I’ll have to start referring to the old T-sensei (formerly “Mrs. T-”) as Te-sensei and the new one as To-sensei. When I first went up to her at the beginning of the day, To-sensei said she’d meet me during second-period. That meeting strengthened my relief, as she struck me as another substantially pleasant person to work with. She showed me that our first lesson together would be to teach a few words in simple past tense (they don’t start learning past tense until grade 2 of JHS) and asked me if I could come up with a game for it. Music to my ears. Games happen to be my specialty. Perhaps somebody had told her this. But I also explained to her that I love teaching, I plan to be a teacher my whole life, and that any opportunity I can have to do the whole lesson including the presentation phase would be great. She thought that was wonderful.

I also explained a couple of new ideas I have for classes this year, including teaching one useful English phrase at the end of every lesson. I’m getting tired of “see you!” and “long time no see!” as the only English expressions these kids ever say, so I want to supply them with more. And of course, I brought up my idea for after-school communication practice, with thankfully Te-sensei had already told her about. I explained to her exactly what I had in mind because I’ll probably need her help translating for the students.

Finally, I asked for her help with one more thing—determining which students were in which class for the sake of my name-cards. With 600 students, the only way to have the names of every student in a class fresh in my mind is to study the cards for that class before going. Now that the classes are different I have to rearrange the cards. Second to third grade is easy: 2-1 is now 3-1, 2-2 is now 3-2, and so on. But they mix up all the first-grade students and put them in different classes their second year, which presents me with the tedious task of figuring out where all of them went. To-sensei and O-sensei both thought my name-card strategy was fantastic, as they too have trouble learning the kids’ names. The list of which students were in which class this year was easy enough to find, but it was somewhat trickier to get a list of which class they’d been in last year. Both lists had the names in Kanji but with the hiragana pronunciation as well, so I could read them. Matching one Japanese name on a list of 200 to the name on another list of 200 is a tedious task, only made simpler by the fact that I’d already learned these names and knew whether to look for a boy or a girl. Still, I only finished off one class (determining where everyone from 1-1 had gone) before putting that task to the side for school-lunch, my first of the year…another benefit of having gone into work.

I left after lunch, telling everyone I’d be back on Friday at 1:00 p.m. with my boss from Interac, but I actually plan to go in tomorrow morning like a normal day and finish the stuff I was working on. I’d thought I might do that after Kudo’s introductions but I’d rather have the afternoon.

So that’s the start of the new school-year. It was extremely unsettling at first to have new colleagues, new students, a new desk-location, and so on. But after going in yesterday and talking to my new colleagues I already feel much better. It seems I’ve gotten lucky two years in a row, and probably (knock on wood) not have any problems with my fellow English teachers as so many ALTs do.

One last thing—when talking about my self-introduction lesson with O-sensei, she asked me if it was true that I’d lived in Germany for three years. It turned out she spent 8 years in Düsseldorf. I immediately asked her, “Sprechen sie Deutsch” and she said “Ein bisschen” and we continued a brief little exchange in German which I found delightful. I told her we’d have to bust out the German with our students sometime and she agreed. It’s going to be very easy to get along with her.

As for those first-grade students, they are the final hurdle before I can consider myself officially settled into the new school-year. I’m already sick and tired of spotting uniformed students out in the wild and not knowing whether or not to greet them. Though I did discover a way around it while riding my bike on Tuesday: just shout the school’s name at them as you pass by and give them a wave, and they’ll usually wave back whether or not they recognize you. Still, I can’t wait until I’m acquainted with all of them, when I’ve got all 200 of their names onto cards and into my brain. Then the school-year will really be rolling, and this time I’ll have an entire years’ worth of it to enjoy.

A “hanami” is a cherry-blossom viewing festival, a very popular activity during the cherry-blossom season, which lasts for different durations in different parts of Japan but is usually about one month long. The cherries only started blossoming last week, but they were in full bloom by the time of the hanami on Sunday.

I never received my school schedule in the mail from Interac, so all I knew on Sunday was that I had to attend the school’s opening ceremony the next morning. I didn’t know if I’d then have to stay the rest of the day or even do any lessons, but I was pretty resolved not to drink. It wasn’t until text messages from other ALTs informed me to bring drinks that I realized this was going to be that kind of event, so I ended up bringing four tall cans of chu-hai (a sweet alcoholic fruit-flavored beverage which is less expensive and less fattening than beer, but often with a higher alcohol content).

Before leaving for Tokyo the day before, I rang the doorbell of the new Interac ALT for Togane, Kim, and asked her if she knew about the hanami and if she wanted to go. She said yes, so I rang her again on Sunday when I was ready to go. Kim is practically fresh-off-the-plane, having just come from the big Interac training session in Narita, and she’d invited another ALT from training who now lives in nearby Sanmu, so the three of us walked to Togane Lake together while I told them about the area, about teaching Japanese students, and about all the things they learned at training that aren’t exactly true. It felt very weird to suddenly be the experienced one. Up until now I’ve been the new guy in nearly every situation.

There were already a ton of people at Togane Lake when we arrived at 3:00. After taking my first pictures I immediately spotted some of my students and said hello, and felt some more apprehension about drinking at this event. I’ve never had to encounter students in that state before, and there were guaranteed to be many of them here.

We walked around to the back of the lake, taking in the gorgeous and quintessentially Japanese scenery, until we spotted the two giant tarps on the grass swarming with fellow gaijin. Ben was there and immediately gave us a warm greeting, launching straight into introductions with the two new ALTs I’d brought. There were a few other familiar faces, but a whole bunch of people I’d never met before. Pretty much all of them had some kind of alcoholic beverage in their hand, so I went ahead and opened one up myself. They didn’t seem to have any qualms about greeting their students with booze-in-hand when they walked by, so I figured I shouldn’t either.

I chatted with a few people I haven’t seen in awhile and met a few others. Atsushi, whom I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, was one of the few Japanese people there to mingle with us, but it was nice to have a few Japanese faces among us. Most of us were American, and most of the Americans were from Wisconsin, as apparently Wisconsin and Chiba are “sister-states” and there’s a special program for Wisconsinites to come here and teach English. Kim is Canadian, and as far as I know the only one among us.

One of the first people I ended up in a conversation with is Dan, from the infamous night of Ben’s Christmas Party when he took Diana from me without realizing I’d been interested in her. I naturally hated him at the time but he clearly felt bad about it and even apologized in a Facebook message after-the-fact. We didn’t bring her up at all, but by astounding coincidence she just happened to walk by us right when we were talking, chatting some other foreigner’s ear off. She didn’t seem to notice us and he didn’t notice her, so I didn’t say anything.

What we did talk about was the teachers our schools would be exchanging. His school was getting S-Sensei in exchange for K-sensei, whom Dan told me is a really great guy who loves to chat in English and is really easy to get along with. Apparently they’ve even hung out outside of work. But he also said, “With him you’ll hardly have to do any work,” which made me nervous because having a teacher who does everything himself and leaving nothing to me is exactly what I’ve been fearing most about the replacements. But if he’s as nice a guy as Dan says, I can probably just ask him point-blank to give me more lesson-planning responsibilities.

After a little while, Kim and I decided to take a walk around the rest of the lake and check out the rest of the festival. As we walked I kept passing groups of students and saying hello, eventually no longer even thinking about the chu-hai in my hand. A few of the students’ eyes widened when they saw me with Kim and they asked me if she was my girlfriend, but I laughed and told them in Japanese that she isn’t—she’s just a new ALT. Kim thought it was funny how in Japan, if a guy and a girl are walking alone together it must mean they’re in a relationship. But she was also very excited to see how enthusiastic some of the students can get when spotting their teacher. She’s obviously looking forward to it, and indeed it is one of the best things about this job.

In fact, it turned out to be one of the best things about the festival. Back at the gaijin tarps as I continued to drink and chat with other ALTs about everything from where we’ve lived to places we’ve traveled to our impressions of Japan and so on, students would constantly be walking by and they all smiled and said hello. That doesn’t even happen at school, where the presence of their English teacher is nothing unusual and therefore calls for no acknowledgment. But seeing me outside of the school environment, in my street-clothes, drinking chu-hai, was quite a novelty for them. Some groups would call me over and challenge me to remember their names, which was really difficult having not seen them for a few weeks but I turned out to be a pretty good guesser and they all got a kick out of watching me struggle.

Of course the best part was seeing some of the recently graduated third-graders again. It’s been weeks since they graduated and I got all sad and melancholy about the idea that I’d never see them again, but since then I’ve been seeing them everywhere. The Spring Concert, the farewell ceremony, out jogging or riding my bike, in the supermarket—they’re all over the place.

The one group of recent graduates who were the most amused to see me was the “bad kid” group, Japanese middle-school version of “hoodlums” I guess you could say. They weren’t really bad, just the kind who didn’t care about school and would frequently disrespect teachers (though never me). The fourth time I spotted that group, one of the boys came up and put a chu-hai in my hand. I didn’t understand what was happening at first but one of the other ALTs explained he was giving it to me. I don’t know how he got it, but I thanked him and took it. At that point I was on my third and pretty buzzed, so if there was anything unethical about that I wasn’t concerned. He’s not my student anymore anyway.

I also got to see Jack and Lily again. They’re now back from visiting Jack’s parents in Boston and Lily’s parents from France are now here visiting her. I walked around the festival with them once and got caught up. Jack actually has some sort of job with Interac now, not as a teacher but something else I’m not too clear on. He was actually at the Narita training session, so he’d already met Kim before I did.

As dusk was setting, everyone was told to leave the grassy area and move to one end of the lake from where we could view the fireworks. I spent so much time trying to get good fireworks pictures that I forgot to enjoy the fireworks. The pictures I’m posting here are just a few of the many dozens I took, a waste of camera memory space.

During the fireworks I also somehow managed to finish the chu-hai my former students had given me, which pushed me past that fine line between buzzed and drunk. That made the next part a ridiculously bizarre experience, as with everyone all bunched together I was bumping into students left and right, and my super-enthusiastic hellos must have been highly amusing to all of them. I’m pretty sure a bunch of students had heard I was there and were deliberately coming up to say hello, perhaps just for the fun of seeing me drunk.

I probably shouldn’t have felt too apprehensive about that in the first place. It doesn’t seem to matter at all. All the other ALTs were drunk and greeting students too. I found out later that getting drunk is expected at a hanami, just like it is at an enkai. I’ve interacted with teachers while drunk, and now students as well. No harm, really. All I did was say hello and try to remember their names.

Ben invited us all back to his place for an after-party, and at that point I was extremely merry and just wanted the fun to continue, so while I really should have just gone home, eaten something, and drank tons of water before going to bed at a decent hour, I went to Ben’s place, drank my last chu-hai, and got embarrassingly drunk to the point where it wasn’t until the following afternoon that I was able to remember some of the things I did. Thank god my students didn’t see me in that state. I’m embarrassed enough that other drunken ALTs saw me that way too, but after apologizing to Ben through Facebook the next day he assured me it was okay, everyone was pretty sloppy at that point and his memory is pretty hazy too, but that getting sloshed is perfectly appropriate for a hanami.

Eventually I did stumble home and go to sleep, though I have no idea when. All I know is that the sleep I got wasn’t nearly enough. The alcohol would not wear off completely until the following afternoon. And of course, the following morning just happened to be the first day of the school-year.

To be continued…

Just as the cherry blossoms start blooming, the new school year gets started in Japan. I’m technically working again, though because the first week of school is just as abnormal as the last week of school, I have no classes and have been told to stay home (but be “on call”) until next Tuesday when the normal schedule begins. The opening ceremony was yesterday and I spent half the day there, and while that was a deeply weird experience and I have a lot to say about it, it’ll have to wait. The last few days of what was technically “Spring Vacation” (though for all practical purposes I’m still on mine) were quite eventful and must be documented. However, because I have no desire to spend another entire day blogging I’m going to break it up into pieces and post the entries over the next few days.

I’d made plans to hang out with Ryan in Chiba on Tuesday evening, but that had to be post-poned because of windstorms. I went to the station at 5:20 to catch the 5:25 and everything looked normal, but the train from Togane to Oami was 20 minutes late and I was nervous about what might happen with the train from Oami to Chiba. My fears were well-founded, as while we got to Oami just fine and the train to Chiba arrived just a few minutes late, it was held on the track for close to an hour before the entire trip was cancelled and I had to take a train back to Togane.

But the weather was better on Friday, and I met up with Ryan at Chiba station at 6:00. He recently quit Interac because he got engaged and isn’t making enough money, and I’d actually met his replacement that same afternoon as she moved into the same building as me and the Interac employee helping her move rang my doorbell and introduced us when she moved in. Though we met on Friday we wouldn’t hang out until Sunday, so there’ll be more about her in tomorrow’s entry.

Ryan first took us to a pool-bar in Chiba, which was the first time I’ve gone to such a place in Japan. You are assigned a specific pool-table and don’t pay by the game but how long you spend there (you’re charged for every 15 minutes). There are phones by the table and you call in your drink orders from the bar. Ryan and I both suck at pool, so we were very evenly matched, with him barely winning the first incredibly long game and me barely winning the second. During that time we compared our impressions of teaching and the whole end-of-the-schoolyear routine. He feels a little bad about leaving his school so suddenly and he’ll definitely miss the students, but he just can’t support a family on an Interac salary.

After that we had dinner at a pretty good restaurant he knows, then went out to a bar where we ran into his friend Michael (also an Interac ALT but in his 40s or 50s) and his Japanese wife who speaks good English. They were fun people to hang out with but I only got to spend about an hour and a half there, as the last train leaves at 10:44 and I had no intention of pulling an all-nighter. I didn’t hang out with Ryan much even when we were colleagues, but now that we’re not anymore I don’t know what will happen. He’s a really nice guy, and one of the only people around who’s as big a nerd as I am for things like Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. I imagine we’ll probably hang out again.

Saturday was a big day. I went into Tokyo where I met up with Stephen and Amy, the two ALTs from my original training that I’d met up in Tokyo back in September (when we went to Tokyo Dome City and Shibuya). Stephen wanted to take us to what he calls his “happy place” but that first meant getting on a train for a 50-minute ride to a town called Fujisawa. It’s practically due south of Tokyo and right on the coast, but Japan curves inward there so the coast is to the south. Our destination was an island connected by bridge to the mainland called Enoshima.

Stephen had decided to take us there when he saw how nice the weather was in the morning, but by the time we got off the train in Fujisawa it had clouded up significantly. Remembering how the last time the three of us met there’d been a typhoon and I’d jokingly made a comment after the third time it cleared up that it was definitely not going to rain for the rest of the day, it actually didn’t so they said I must have controlled the weather. I said I’d do my best to bring the sun back out with my powers of sorcery. Somehow we’d got into a conversation on the train about what mythical being each of us was, and it was decided that Stephen was a centaur, Amy was a fairy, and I was a sorcerer. I said we could become the new popular anime show, the “Magic Gaijin Trio and that became a running joke for the rest of the day.

As we walked down the bridge to Enoshima we could already see the sun starting to bleed through the cloud cover. Perhaps utilizing the powers of “The Secret” without even meaning to, I told them that if we all believed it would clear up it would, and lo and behold the sun actually did make a big comeback in the afternoon and we had great lighting for pictures the whole time. Maybe I really am a sorcerer.

Stephen’s “happy place” turned out to be quite a happy place indeed, especially now that it’s cherry-blossom season. There were three shrines, gardens galore, and lots of little areas with food-stands, shops, and restaurants. Everyone there seemed to be in a good mood, more outwardly friendly than most Japanese. Also, there are apparently a great deal of stray cats who live off the generosity of tourists and are therefore very friendly and willing to let you pet them.

The coolest feature of the island though is it’s view of Mt. Fuji, though this was unfortunately not on full display at the time. It could still be seen through the haze of the distance, but just barely and it refused to come out in any pictures. Still, that marks the third time I’ve seen Mt. Fuji (the first and second being from the shinkansen to and from Kyoto).

We had lunch at this incredible place overlooking the bay, and we were able to sit outside and watch the sun descending over the water as we ate. The food was good, but I ended up ordering something too similar to something they serve at school-lunch all the time.

After lunch we found our way down to an outcropping of volcanic rock stretching out from the island and spent a good chunk of time taking pictures there. It was beautiful, but also incredibly windy to the point of being uncomfortable. Still, there were some lovely images (most of them not adequately captured on camera).

By then it was already getting late, so we just headed back to Tokyo and went our separate ways. But before we did, we made tentative plans to do a Mt. Fuji climbing trip on the weekend before Stephen’s birthday, the first weekend in May. He wants to camp out on the mountain and go all the way to the top, which sounds good to me but apparently it’s out of season and you need a permit, which is something I found out the following day. But after writing to Stephen this morning he tells me he’s going to try and get the permit. So if that works out, I’ll be standing on top of Mt. Fuji a week before I’m sailing on a boat in the Caribbean. May should be an incredibly awesome month.

———-

Man, that was a crazy dream. At least I think it was because I’ve already forgotten it. Crap, it’s getting light outside, what time is it? 6:15. Okay, that gives me another hour before I absolutely have to get up. Maybe I can catch just a little more sleep.

No, it’s too late, my mind is already full of thoughts about today. I’m going to the school’s farewell ceremony in the morning, then to the farewell enkai and karaoke party in the evening, with a whole lot of nothing in between. It will be the last day I see many of the teachers I’ve worked with this past year. I’m so sick of goodbyes, but just one more day full of them and then it will at last be over. Okay, it’s 7:13. Might as well get up.

In the shower I think about what song to put in my head for the day because the cheesy Disney song I have stuck in my head for no apparent reason simply will not do. There was a really great song on the Shapeshifter CD Trey recommended that I was listening to while cycling yesterday—I don’t remember the title but I’ll probably recognize it if I see it. Finished with the shower I go to my computer and find the Shapeshifter mp3s. Ah, here it is. It’s called “The Longest Day”. Yeah, that’ll do.

Damn, this is an excellent song. Now what should I wear? Which of these shirts that I haven’t washed in weeks is the least smelly? I’ll go with the grey one, and the suit that’s just a little too big because it’s more comfortable than the one that’s a little too small (and the one that fits just right has a missing button that I’m clueless as to how to sew back on).

Time to check my e-mail while eating breakfast. A few days ago my grandpa sent me some advice about how the right way to find a girlfriend in Japan is to be introduced through her family and that I might want to bring this up with my colleagues. I explained why this was unlikely to work but said I might have an opportunity to ask some colleagues about it at the enkai. [To spare you some suspense, I ended up forgetting about it completely. My mind just wasn’t on the subject at the time.]

A couple e-mails from Corey indicate that he’s bored and lonely as usual. We have this theory that the universe balances itself out between us, wherein I’m usually up when he’s down and I’m usually down whenever something good happens to him. Something that could be thought of as “good” happened to him recently and I was depressed, but that appears to have ended. I guess that means today could potentially be a good day for me.

The school’s closing ceremony starts at 9:00 but I was told by Kono at Interac when I wrote her to confirm the time that I should go into school at 8:30, the usual time. I find this instruction a bit strange, as I’m technically on spring vacation and I’m going to this ceremony completely voluntarily. But for some reason I’ve got to go in a half-hour early and sit in the teacher’s room even though I’m not getting paid at all.

Whatever, I was going to spend a half-hour studying Japanese anyway. It makes no difference whether I do that here or at school.

I take note of the excellent weather as I walk the short distance to my school. Graduation day was cold and rainy and grey, the perfect complement for my sadness that day. Today is clear and sunny with a not-too-warm but comfortable temperature. I’ll be sure to take advantage of that later.

Man, it’s weird going back in this building when I’m already on vacation. It feels like one of those dreams I always have where I’m back in high school for one last thing because the school-year never officially ended, then you wake up to remember it actually ended years ago. I’ll probably have those dreams about Japanese schools now too.

I enter the teacher’s room and greet the faculty, going about their business in their typically serious and professional manner. Nobody asks me what I’m doing there, and I just quietly set up my computer and proceed to study. The room looks a little different from when I was last here—so many of the desks are completely bare. I guess more teachers are switching schools than I realized.

I really don’t like how they don’t let teachers stay in the same school for long periods of time. Y-sensei is at work clearing out her desk now and it’s already making me sad. I was extremely lucky to have her to work with when I started as an ALT. Some teachers don’t help at all and just leave you out on your own, and some help too much to the point where they almost take over the lesson, but Y-sensei was the perfect classroom partner, always with a perfect sense of whether my explanations to the students were clear enough or if they needed some translation, and she always knew just how to be of help during games and such. It really sucks to see her go.

Okay, I finished studying and it’s 9:00 but the ceremony isn’t starting yet. Maybe it really is at 9:25 like I’d originally thought. Thank you, Interac, for confirming the wrong time. I guess I can kill the remaining time by reviewing old kanji lists.

All right, it’s 9:15. I’ll just go to the gym while the last of the students are filing in. They’ve been slowly trickling in all morning, as they too are on vacation and didn’t have to be in their homerooms in the morning. A bunch of them came in and went to their classrooms anyway though. Japanese students are cool like that.

The gym is a separate building connected to the main building by a hallway/overpass kind of thing which is partially outside. When I get there I notice a large crowd of students standing outside the gym waiting to go in.

Oh my god, are you for real? Is this what I think it is? Yes, I know those faces. It’s the third-graders, absent all this time in a state of post-graduation purgatory and now uniformed-up and ready for one last event of their Junior High School lives. It turns out watching them all walk out the gym doors at the end of the graduation ceremony was not the actual last time I would see them. Nor was the Spring Concert when I got to see a handful of them. Today is really the last day, but I already went through that whole sad-I’ll-never-see-them-again thing two weeks ago. Those emotions have already been purged.

The first- and second-graders are just finishing up filing into the gym and taking their proper places, all the boys on the right and the girls on the left. I stand off to the left, as I’ve noticed the teachers also tend to segregate themselves by gender for these ceremonies as well. The third-graders start to enter the gym and a few of the boys notice me and greet me. Ghosts, I think. You were supposed to be gone forever.

I scan the group of girls looking for A-, the girl from the Speech Contest and one of the only students I regretted not having said a proper goodbye to. Perhaps I’ll have one last chance to rectify that later.

But now, it’s time for the ceremony to begin. Let’s all stand up and sing the school song (unless you’re like me and don’t know it). Now it’s time to bring out the teachers and faculty members who will be departing. There are ten chairs on the stage. Wow, ten of them. And the six part-time teachers who said their goodbyes at the first closing ceremony makes that sixteen colleagues I’ll never see again. Apparently at the end of every school-year you not only lose a third of the students but a third of the staff as well. I’ll be teaching at the same school next school-year but 33% of the people will be brand new.

And just who exactly besides Y-sensei is leaving? What’s this? Oh, no! Y-, the cute secretary, is first in line! Noooo! What are you doing to me, fates? And what’s this? S-sensei, the other third-grade JTE, is also going? Now hold the phone a minute. H-sensei and A-sensei were both part-timers and they’re both leaving too. And now you’re telling me that two of the other three JTEs are also leaving? So of the five JTEs I’ve been working with this year, FOUR of them are going?!

At least T-sensei (‘Mrs. T-’ in previous entries) is staying, and that’s no small blessing. She’s been the most helpful out of all of them, though that’s partly because her desk in the teacher’s room is right next to mine so she’s naturally the first person to turn to when I have a question. But she’s as great of a partner in class as Y-sensei, and she took the lead when it came to the Speech Contest. If she were among the departing teachers I would really be upset, but it looks like I’ll have one more year with her (and only one, because this next year will almost certainly be her last).

Also leaving are a few really nice teachers including the one who sat across from me in the teacher’s room, and a couple of administrators including one of the vice principals, T-sensei (you don’t have to be a teacher to get the sensei title), with whom I had a glass of whiskey at the Christmas enkai. They each get up and give a speech, some longer and more emotional than others. Y-sensei is clearly on the verge of tears and it brings a bit of a lump to my throat. Even some of the male teachers have to pause while speaking to collect their emotions. I’m lucky I’ve only been here a short time, and I just keep thinking about how much more difficult this is going to be next year. But Y-sensei has been at this school for eight years, and she really doesn’t want to leave. I don’t know what you’re doing with this system, Japan, but I hope it’s working for you.

One of the students, I believe it’s the 2^nd-grade class president, comes to the stage to give a farewell speech on behalf of the students, then ten more students come out with flowers to present them to the teachers. Then the entire schools sings one last song, the same song they sang while the third-graders left at the end of the graduation ceremony. Now Y-sensei and some of the other teachers are really fighting back tears, and I’m at my most emotional moment as well.

Finally, the girls and boys turn towards each other forming an aisle in the center of the gym for the departing teachers and faculty members to walk down on their final ceremonious exit. Some non-students are standing in the back, high-school kids who’ve returned to their Junior High School to say one last goodbye to their old teachers. That’s pretty touching, and it’s nice to see Y-sensei’s face light up in a smile as she recognizes an old student on her way out.

What follows is some confusion as to what happens next. The ceremony is over and the students are now just standing around and chatting with one another. I’m standing amongst the third-graders but nobody comes up to me. I still can’t get over that I’m seeing all these faces again. The fact that now I’ll really never see them again is drowned out by the fact that I already thought I’d never see them again.

I do finally spot A- but like the rest of the students she doesn’t appear to notice me or care about my presence. It would be nice if at least a few students would come up to say goodbye but I’m not too bothered. I was only their ALT for a short time.

When they’re finally instructed to exit the gym, I watch them go without much emotion. A few teachers follow them out to say some specific goodbyes to specific students, including T-sensei whom I notice for the first time is teary-eyed.

Look, A- is still here. She’s standing just inside the exit doors, looking back at the gym contemplatively. I raise my hand and wave at her. As intended, it catches her eye and she smiles and waves back at me, and gives me a little bow. So that’s that. It was a wordless farewell, but words weren’t needed. Just a moment of conscious contact to acknowledge that this is the end. It wasn’t exactly what I pictured, but I figure I’m going to have to get used to less-than-completely-satisfactory goodbyes. There will be many more of them in my life, including later today.

Can you believe this day is still just getting started? It’s only 10:15 right now!

Now I head back to the teacher’s room where I’ll attempt to figure out what the deal is with today. When I get there Y-sensei is standing by the heater looking forlorn. I give her a sympathetic glance, and she tells me, “I just want to go teach a class right now…” before her voice trails off. I hear that.

But I’ll have plenty of time to say my goodbyes to her later on. Right now I need to call Interac and find out what the heck I’m supposed to be doing. It certainly feels like I’m at work right now, and I was told to come in at 8:30. Is this really not a paid work-day? I call the Chiba office and get in touch with Kono to ask her. She seems just as confused as I am, and tells me she’ll call the school’s staff to find out if they need me to stay there.

Need me to stay? I thought I was here voluntarily and not getting paid. Does Interac realize if they require me to stay at my school any longer it’s technically slave-labor? I mean, I’m all about the Japanese work-ethic and everything, but being told to work for free is a little ridiculous.

As I wait for Kono to call back, T-sensei arrives back in the office and I explain my confusion to her. A vice principal comes to tell her that it’s OK for me to go home, and I thank him but I’m still very confused. Kono calls me back and tells me it’s OK for me to leave, and I try to ask her directly if this is a day I should record on my pay sheet. But the Japanese are not known for their directness. She says, “Starting tomorrow you are on spring vacation.” Okay, but I already was on spring vacation. “So today is not a paid work day?” She says “no” but I can’t shake the feeling she never quite understood what my question was.

Whatever. I came here voluntarily not expecting to get paid anyway, so I won’t record the day on my pay sheet. If that’s a few thousand extra yen I could have earned, it’s no big loss. The important thing is I have the official seal of approval from my employer and my school to go home (even though I didn’t need to be there in the first place).

Before I go I confirm the time and cost of the enkai with T-sensei, who tells me to come back at 4:30 and she’ll take me there.

As I walk out of the building there’s absolutely no sense of “this is it” at all. My school-shoes are still in my locker. I’ll be wearing them again in just a few weeks.

A whole lot of third-graders who’d come for the ceremony are still hanging around outside, having final conversations with fellow students and teachers. I’d already said goodbye to them in my mind (several times over) so I don’t bother going up to anyone. One group of boys approaches me though, led by a bit of a class-clown from 3-4 who calls me down by my last name as I’m leaving and strikes up a conversation to practice what appears to be the only English phrase he remembers: “Do you like Japanese food?” “Yes I do,” I say.

“Oh,” he says. I can tell he wants to go on but can’t think of anything.

“What’s your favorite Japanese food?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he answers. “I am Japanese food.”

His friends and I laugh and we explain what he said in Japanese.

“Are you delicious?” he asks, and we laugh and explain what he said again (though I do tell him that yes, I am in fact delicious.)

When it’s clear there’s no more English left, he says goodbye and “See you next time.”

I say, “No next time.”

“Yes next time!” he asserts defiantly to the laugher of his friends.

“Yes next time?” I ask.

“Yes. Today. Later,” he jokes.

“Ok then, I’ll see you later.”

If that does end up being the last conversation I ever have with one of this year’s third-graders, it was appropriate enough.

I could really go for a run right now. It’s almost 11:00, the sun is still shining and a cool breeze is blowing. When I get home I quickly make a playlist of songs from the Shapeshifter CD and gear up for jogging. With all these students out and about I figure today is more likely than ever that I’ll spot a bunch of them, but I make it through the whole 35-minute jog only spotting two students, which is the average amount. But right at the end, when I get to my street, there’s a group of four fully-uniformed girls walking together, apparently out for a walk after leaving the school premises. I get in front of them, turn around to see who they are, and wave. I always enjoy the second or two before the students realize who I am. I may stand out as a foreigner, but it’s such a radically different appearance between how I look in a suit and when I’m in jogging pants and a T-shirt, all red and sweaty from exercise. When the girls’ expressions change from confusion to surprise and then delight and amusement, I’m satisfied.

I get back in my apartment and cool down, then cook myself a very Japanese lunch of Campbell’s New England Clam Chowder. While eating I finish up a recent Rachel Maddow Show podcast and learn some extremely unimportant facts about the new head of the World Bank. I’ve grown very tired of Rachel Maddow and only watch a few of her shows here and there, but it’s the perfect thing to put on during lunch whenever I eat at home so I’ll be watching more of her over the vacation.

It’s 12:30 when I’m finished eating which leaves four gaping hours between now and the party. I’ll start by taking a quick nap, a luxury I don’t get when I eat at school. Luckily the construction workers next door are on their lunch break so it’s nice and peaceful outside.

I get up at 1:00 and then get ready for the next thing, a good old fashioned bicycle-trip to the beach. That can kill anywhere between 2 and 3 hours depending on how long I linger there, so it fits the current bill perfectly. I make another playlist for the trip, now the entire Shapeshifter CD followed by Blue Man Group, the most similar-sounding music I can think of. The weather is getting warmer but I could still use a thin jacket, so I toss one on and head outside.

The bicycle ride down to the beach is just as pleasant as it always is, perhaps a little moreso due to the weather and the fact that the wind isn’t as strong as it tends to get during the winter here. For the first time in months I find myself sweating during the ride and I even have to unzip my jacket.

I’ve found three main ways of getting to the beach, the first being the most direct way down Route 75, the way I always used to take but which has the least pretty scenery so I never do anymore. I’ve long since found longer but more aesthetically pleasing and less car-infested routes to the east and the west of the 75, and I usually take one way down and the other way back. The way to the west is slightly longer (about 50 minutes as opposed to 40) but I’ve been exploring some new options and slowly tweaking my standard route, and today I think I’ve finally perfected it. The east way still needs some work though.

When I get to the beach, it’s as un-crowded as I’d hoped. I love going in the early afternoon on weekdays because there’s almost nobody there. It’s even sparser now because it’s super-duper low tide and there’s practically nothing for surfers to work with.

About a ten-minute walk from the beach parking lot is my new favorite spot I always go whenever it’s not occupied. It’s the mouth of a river lined with concrete walls you can sit on. River mouths are sacred in Shinto, so maybe that’s why this feels like such a peaceful place. Whenever I sit there and watch the waves from the sea come up against the current from the river, it puts me in a very zen-like state-of-mind. That feeling is greatly augmented whenever the sun is shining, as in the afternoon the sun is no longer over the ocean but the sunlight can still be reflected off the river water. And no matter how old I get, there’s just something about sunlight reflecting off water that is absolutely awesome.

So I sit in my favorite spot and soak up some awe for about thirty minutes, giving “The Longest Day” another listen at one point, but my immobility lowers my body-heat and before too long the sea breeze is too cold for my comfort. I guess spring hasn’t quite hit yet.

I take the east route back to Togane, not quite as nice as the west way but more direct and easier to navigate. I try something new at the end, as that first stretch of road coming off the 126 (the main giant road in Togane that everything is on) is not too ideal and I’ve long suspected that a little pathway a bit further south might lead to a better option. I finally try this path today, and as I expected the option is much better aesthetically but way more complex. It leads through an absolutely gorgeous little neighborhood that is so distinctly Japanese I absolutely have to go back and take pictures. But there’s no straight path through it, so you have to make a bunch of turns and just use the sun to maintain your sense of direction. It all seems pretty intuitive going up, but I have a feeling trying to do it in reverse on the way down will be tricky. Still, totally worth it.

It’s 3:45 and I’m back at my apartment. So I’ve got 45 minutes to kill before I have to be back at the school. Maybe I could have a beer and get a head-start? A cold beer would be good right now, no? No, I can wait. Besides, it’s bad form. These Japanese parties are formal affairs—there’s a designated time when everyone is allowed to start drinking, and it’s called the kampai. If I were to drink before the kampai it would feel sacrilegious somehow.

In any case, there’s an e-mail from Corey in my inbox that looks like it’ll take all the remaining time I have. Something of big significance happened in his current situation which has brought about its apparent end. More evidence for our universe-balance theory. We both have days of significance at the same time but his is negative while mine is positive. Yet ironically, the person he’s saying goodbye to is someone he’s much better off without, while the people I’m saying goodbye to will be dearly missed.

The time of the party is approaching and I have to make a decision on what to wear. The safest bet is to put my suit back on, but I’m inclined to just go in slacks and a button-down shirt like I did to the Spring Concert, though this time I’ll tuck the shirt in. The other teachers will probably end up removing their jackets and ties at some point anyway, so why bring the extra baggage? Especially when it’s kind of warm out.

So I head over to the school and arrive in the parking lot just as the 4:30 song begins to play. (A short but loud little song plays at the official end of the school day all over Japan, though the song and exact time of its playing does vary slightly). T-sensei is there along with some other teachers, and I discover that we’ll be taking a bus to the location. It’s the same kind of small bus with about twelve seats that they had for the enkai back in November (my first one), but this time more than three people would be riding it.

One of the other teachers, O-sensei, makes a comment to me and T-sensei translates. “He wants to know if you’re already drunk.” Apparently I look drunk because my face is red. I laugh and explain that I’ve been out in the sun all day. I didn’t get burned but there is a significant tan now. But I should have had that beer before if I’m going to be suspected of drunkenness anyway.

When we get on the bus I comment to T-sensei that she’s the only English teacher staying at the school. She apparently feels just as strange about it. It doesn’t usually work out like that. She knows they’ll be getting two more full-time teachers and two more part-timers, but doesn’t know who they are or which grades they’ll teach. She doesn’t even know which grades she’ll teach. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but the Japanese education system is weird.

On the bus ride to the place I think about the replacements. It’s ironic that I was so happy when I got the news that I’d be staying with my school, but most of the people I work with at the school will be different. I really lucked-out in a big way by getting this school, as so many conversations with so many other ALTs has repeatedly made clear to me. Almost everyone has a problem with at least one or more of their JTEs, but I can hardly complain about any of mine. The worst I can say about any of them is that they’re not as helpful as they could be, but all things considered they’ve been wonderful. The likelihood that out of four new teachers, all four of them will be just as good is low. I’m sure I’ll be able to work with anybody, but my biggest fear is that I’ll get someone who just wants to use me to recite textbook passages and prevents me from doing the kind of fun game-oriented lessons I like to do. I would hope in such a situation that the students (assuming it’s second- or third-grade) would rebel and demand the same kind of lessons Kyle-sensei used to teach last year, or at least that T-sensei or another faculty member would kindly explain that I can be far more useful than a human tape-recorder (which is what many ALTs are).

The bus ride is just a short ten-minute trip to another part of Togane, a traditional Japanese somethingorother (don’t know the word but it’s not ‘restaurant’) near the train tracks. As I go inside I can tell this is the most authentically traditional Japanese place I’ve ever been. Tatami mats, shouji doors and all that, as well as full-makeup-and-kimono-clad whathaveyous (don’t know the word but it’s not ‘waitress’) who provide both service and entertainment. The Japanese have been holding events just like this for thousands of years.

But it’s not too different from the other two enkais, just the most authentic. While those were hotels or restaurants that had party-rooms like this, the entire establishment was for the party-room. There’s a lobby downstairs where you remove your shoes and put on slippers to take upstairs to the foyer of the main party room where you remove the slippers. My feet are apparently too big because I have some trouble keeping the slippers on on my way upstairs, which amuses people.

I’m told where to sit when I get to the party room, luckily right next to T-sensei because I have an idea for next school-year I’m planning to run by her. Maybe now would be a good time while we’re waiting for everyone to file in. Nah, she’s busy reading the little booklet they have with pictures and biographies of all the departing teachers and staff. It’ll be more natural to discuss it during the socializing part of the party. Instead I ask her if it’s normal for so many teachers to be leaving at the end of the year and she said it was. I explain how it’s done in America, and can tell she’s a little jealous. I even talk about the special private school my cousins go to where the teacher sticks with one class of students throughout all twelve years of their education, an idea she thinks sounds wonderful. I ask her why they do it like this in Japan, but she doesn’t know how to explain it.

Seated on the other side of me is the young woman teacher who had that conversation about music with me at the Christmas enkai. She’s one of the second-grade teachers, as is everyone at my table. I realized a few months ago that the teachers’ room is organized by grade, and the desks of those teachers are arranged in a long table with all the other teachers for their grade. As I teach all the grades I’m seated in one of the four most central desks, in the table that happens to be for second-grade teachers so I winded up at the second-grade table for this party. The first-grade table is across the room, and the table for third-grade teachers and administrators is in the right-hand corner. The back table and whole left-hand corner section are apparently the seats of honor for the departing teachers and staff. Seeing this arrangement makes it clearer than ever just what a huge chunk of the school’s staff will be leaving.

My legs are already hurting from sitting Indian-style when the arrival of the guests of honor is announced. Everyone stands up and applauds as all the departing teachers and administrators enter the room and take their places. What follows is about 30 or 40 minutes of speeches, as each of them gets up and says their formal goodbyes to the school.

I’m not the only one with a camera this time. Another teacher comes out from behind his table to kneel in a good location to take pictures of each of them as they give their speeches. I’m a bit too self-conscious to leave my place so I can’t really get good pictures of the teachers seated against the wall, but when Y-sensei speaks I can’t resist following the other teachers’ lead and coming out to kneel in a good spot for a farewell shot. I remain kneeling respectfully through her whole speech, which is incredibly painful, but as S-sensei is next I wanted a shot of her as well. Y-sensei’s voice is cracking a little during this speech like the one she gave at the school, but I think she’s feeling a little better at this point. She’s already said goodbye to the students and the building. All that remains are colleagues.

S-sensei’s tone is far less emotional, and as soon as I get a picture of her I quit kneeling and head back to my seat for the relatively less-painful Indian-style. When H-sensei speaks a little later, I do the best I can from where I’m at. But when A-sensei speaks I just don’t have a chance. I now get the idea to get a picture with me and all of the English teachers at some point during the party.

A-sensei is the last to speak, and the Japanese serving women have already been preparing the drinks. (I’ll just refer to them as geishas from now because that’s what they looked like. For all I know they were actual geishas.) When the speeches are over a bunch of the faculty gets up to help the geishas distribute beverages, of which there are two basic sorts. A pink non-alcoholic cocktail thing and beer—Ashahi Dry—which happens to be my favorite Japanese beer. Yay…I guess. I miss German beer.

Kampai time. I clink my glass with T-sensei and the teacher next to me and begin drinking. Then I sit back down and get started on the eating as well. Another smorgasbord of bizarre-looking fish-related food items is spread out before me. This weird fish thing is decent. This other weird fish thing isn’t, though it’s probably some kind of delicacy. Ah, here we go: sashimi—an animal I know. A little soy, a little wasabi…good stuff. The geishas come to top off my beer and light the soup-bowl thingy to get it cooking, and I attack this other soup-bowl thingy filled with god only knows what but it sure is weird. There’s what looks like purple slime wrapped in a leaf—I ask T-sensei if you’re supposed to eat the leaf. She laughs and says some people don’t but to give it a try. The other teacher next to me asks how it is. “Interesting,” I say in Japanese. That would be the word. None of this food is delicious, it’s just interesting. It would seem that interesting is much more expensive than delicious.

Speaking of which, do I have that 6,000 yen I’m supposed to be paying for this? The teacher next to T-sensei is collecting and would like it now. Here you go. Another 70 bucks spent on exactly the kind of thing I should be spending my money on. Still, maybe next year we could have our enkai at Mos Burger? Or maybe Denny’s—they could use the business.

So now is the perfect time to run my idea by T-sensei. It’s something I’ve been considering ever since I started this job, but I hadn’t resolved to actually try it until the end of the school-year. Whenever students approach me and try to communicate outside of class, they usually end up learning something that is far more likely to stick in their minds because it’s used in the context of an actual conversation. Conversation practice is the best way to learn things and to get good at speaking another language, but the students almost never get any actual chances to speak and when they do it’s a speaking test and they’re all nervous about it. A chance for informal, casual conversation would be invaluable to students and I’d like to offer that as an optional after-school activity.

My explanation to T-sensei is much more simplistic than all that, but she likes the idea right away. One thing that’s always prevented me from asking before is my doubt that any students would actually want to take advantage of something like that, but T-sensei tells me she hears from many students about how they wish they had more opportunities to practice speaking. My idea is to have a sign-up sheet so students can come on days of their convenience and with whomever they want, probably 1-5 students a day. If nobody signs up, the experiment will be over.

The other reason I haven’t been sure about this is that the students’ English is so bad that carrying on any kind of conversation could be like pulling teeth. But I taught beginners in Germany so I know it can be done, and those lessons were 90 minutes or more. I’m thinking 20 minutes is enough for this. Also, the practice can go both ways. I’ll help them with their English and they can help me with my Japanese. We’ll talk about basic things like hobbies and likes/dislikes, and we’ll do everything in both English and Japanese which will also go a long way to reducing the inherent nervousness anyone has in speaking a language you’re not good at to a native speaker. If I’m messing up so much, it’s okay for them to mess up too.

You get the idea, as does T-sensei. She agrees to help me figure out putting something like that together next year and so it’s resolved.

The party goes on. There’s more eating and drinking, more geishas refilling my tiny beer glass every five minutes, and more casual conversation with colleagues. The teacher to my right, the young woman who speaks a little English, strikes up another chat with me about music like she had at the Christmas party. She says she’s going to a music festival in Chiba the day after tomorrow. There are a couple of punk rock bands like The Offspring and Sum41 that are currently touring Japan. This amuses me and I explain to her how those bands were popular in the 1990s when I was a student and punk was relatively new. I can’t believe that was almost two decades ago and punk is practically classic rock now. Man, I’m getting old.

The chat with this woman—curse me for not knowing her name—goes on for awhile, and it’s good practice for the conversation-practice I hope to have to with students next school-year as we’re doing whatever we can with our small amounts of English and Japanese but still managing to communicate pretty effectively. I can even talk about Germany and explain their whole issues with national pride which she’s curious about, but she unfortunately doesn’t offer me any insight on how the Japanese feel about their role in the war. I just get the feeling it’s even less talked-about than in Germany.

N-sensei comes to sit next to me and chat for awhile like we did at the previous enkai. He brings me a flask of sake and offers to pour me a shot. I gladly accept and drink it down, enjoying its pleasant smoothness. N-sensei explains that it’s 20% alcohol. That’s good because I can tell some of the other teachers are already buzzed and I need to catch up.

I’m worrying that the party will end without my having had a chance to get that picture with all the English teachers, and I’m able to tell N-sensei easily enough what I have in mind. Shashin to zenbu eigo no sensei ga hoshii desu, which directly translated word-for-word is “picture with all English teacher want is”. That’s how they talk. It’s amazing they understand each other at all.

But N-sensei understands me perfectly and endeavors to help me assemble the English teachers for this photograph. T-sensei loves the idea as soon as she hears it. I think she wants to have that picture too. A-sensei agrees and we’re just about to approach the other three when the geishas get up on stage to begin a little performance. Bad timing. “Atto tabun,” A-sensei says: “After maybe”.

I go back to my seat and eat a little more of this food that just keeps coming and coming, and watch the performance. I-sensei comes over to me at this point to keep me company because everyone else is off chatting. (You may recall I-sensei from the infamous Lot Key Incident). The redness of his face indicates that he’s clearly been drinking his fair share, and he pours a few more shots of sake for me to help me along.

Time to give the picture thing a second try. We’ve got T and A and H, but S and Y are both engaged in serious conversations with other teachers (isn’t it convenient their names all start with different roman letters?) One of the departing part-time male teachers was full-on crying his eyes out to Y-sensei, the most emotional display I think I’ve ever seen from a Japanese male. That’s the magic of alcohol for you—drink enough and the mask really does come off. I reflexively snap a picture while the other four of us wait and see if maybe we should come back later. One of the other male teachers walks by and looks at the crying teacher and jokes to me that I should take a picture, to which I reply that I already did.

So the picture will have to wait yet again, but in the mean-time I’ll get one with H-sensei and A-sensei, the two first-grade JTEs. A-sensei was only there for the final stretch of the year because the original first-grade JTE mysteriously left the school-year shortly before December. No one offered me an explanation about that so I’ll never know why. In any case, she struck me as a somewhat joyless person, even moreso than most Japanese, so I wasn’t very sad to see her go. A-sensei by contrast is extremely warm and friendly so it sucks that she’s disappearing so quickly.

Now it’s time for the final official event of the enkai, as each of the departing teachers and faculty members stands up once again, not to give a speech this time but to have a speech given about them by a faculty member who knew them best. Some of these speeches are serious, like the one the vice principal gave about the other vice principal T-sensei (whom I’ll now call Ta-sensei to distinguish from JTE T-sensei), while some of the speeches are just poking fun. One of the teachers puts everyone in hysterics. It was clearly a joke-speech from start to finish. I wish I could have understood it.

When that’s over I get up to use the bathroom as the geishas distribute one last food item: ice cream. I return to discover that I didn’t get any ice cream while everyone else did. WTF? Oh well, it’s nothing worth complaining about. I just won’t leave a tip…

Oh wait, it turns out those speeches were not the actual last event. That would be the singing of the school song, and now that half the teachers are half drunk, it’s the most rousing and enthusiastic rendition of the song I’ve ever heard (though that’s still not saying much). I sacrifice some of my camera’s rapidly draining battery life to get a video of it.

Okay, now can we get this picture taken? I also really want to say one last goodbye to Y-sensei, so hopefully I’ll be able to kill two birds. After some brief confusion we finally manage to get T, A, H, S, and Y all together behind the table. The only problem: there’s no one to take the picture. But we call someone over, a teacher I barely know at all, and he agrees to take the picture. T-sensei then hands him her camera to get one for herself, as I notice that the picture he took didn’t come out well at all so I adjust the camera and he does it again. The picture still isn’t great, but I’ll take it.

After that I turn to Y-sensei and start my goodbye. “I will really miss you.”

“I will miss you too,” she says. “I don’t think I’ll ever meet another ALT as nice as you.”

“Oh thank you,” I say. “You were such a great help to me in the lessons.”

“I really enjoyed your lessons!”

“Thank you.”

“I hope that one day we will both work at the same school together.”

Chances of that are infinitesimal, but I say, “I hope so.”

A bow and an arigato goziamashita are exchanged, and that’s that. On the scale of goodbyes, that one wasn’t too bad. I’m just glad it’s over with.

Now it’s back outside after retrieving my shoes and bidding goodbye to the geishas. This party is only half-over. The formal half is finished, and now a bunch of people will go to a karaoke bar for just good old-fashioned karaoke fun. I have no idea how many, but this twelve-seat bus is actually full now. There are enough designated drivers (i.e. people who never drink anyway) to give rides to the rest of the people who want to come.

It’s a ten minute drive to the place, which is just a short distance down the road from the school. And look, there’s my apartment. Hello, apartment. I’ll be back soon. Then this endless day can actually end.

But first…karaoke time. This is a different place from where I went the first time, with that crowd of ALTs and Japanese girls after Ben’s Christmas Party. It looks a little bigger, and when I go inside I discover we’ve reserved the biggest room in the place. Ta-sensei leads me in and sits by me in the corner. Like most of the teachers he’s normally very serious, but now he’s buzzed and acting much more human. We talk in Japanese a little as the other teachers and staff file into the room. He compliments me on my Japanese and says he can’t believe I’ve only been here since August. I feel like I should be much better by now, but I appreciate him saying that.

When half the seats are filled with still more coming, I realize this is not like the other after-parties at the other enkais where only the hardcore drinkers attended. Everyone was coming to this one, and I mean everyone. I don’t think there’s anyone from the formal party who hadn’t come to karaoke. Even all five JTEs are here including Y-sensei. Seeing people one last time whom I’d never thought I’d see again must have been the theme of the day.

What follows is madness on a grand-scale, as I finally discover what all those other ALTs were talking about when they went on about how wild and crazy their colleagues can get at an enkai. Drinks are ordered by show of hands and distributed haphazardly, occasionally with someone getting something they didn’t order but would drink anyway. Several of the song-selection devices are being passed around and a playlist of songs is growing. When a song begins the microphone is handed off to whomever and they sing to nearly constant clapping along and even woo-wooing when a line is sung particularly skillfully. Yes, actual woo-wooing. It boggles my mind that these are the same people I work with every day.

The vibe hits even those teachers who aren’t drinking, and from their behavior you’d never know they weren’t drunk.

As I look around I can’t help but appreciate that another one of my major goals for Japan has been met: to see them at their most relaxed and enjoyable state. This is every bit the distinctively Japanese cultural experience I’d hoped to have in this country, and it may have taken until the very end of the school-year but it’s finally happening.

Another T-sensei, one of the guys I went out to the bar with after the Christmas enkai, comes up to sit by me and strike up a chat. And what’s this? It’s actually about something I can’t share publicly! Wow, a conversation with a Japanese colleague that’s too risqué to write about—that doesn’t happen very often.

Another teacher asks me if I’d like to sing, and I’m not too reluctant about agreeing. I used to think I’d never do karaoke but the mood of the place makes it impossible to resist. The teacher who had been crying earlier is now significantly drunk and dancing like an idiot in the front of the room to everybody’s wild approval. Clearly there’s no chance of embarrassment in this environment.

All the songs so far have been Japanese but he helps me work the selection-device to pick an English song. I’ve actually been pondering what to pick the whole time but it’s hard to decide. It should be something fun and something everyone knows. I know that Japanese people like The Beatles and Queen, so I ultimately decided to go with Bohemian Rhapsody.

It’s too bad my camera battery died while attempting to take a video that would adequately capture the atmosphere (the one I got doesn’t do it much justice), because I would have loved to have a video of my performance. The song begins and the clamor is to get Kyle-sensei to the microphone. I’m applauded as soon as I get up to the front, just for deciding to go for it. And it turns out that Bohemian Rhapsody was a perfect choice because they all seem to recognize it. I’m surprised by the sound of my own voice as I sing. It’s actually not that bad. I guess all those times I used to sing this song at the top of my lungs when I had the house to myself in those early high school years paid off. I’m even taking it all the way up to high-register and back down again, confident enough to put some extra flare into it, which always meets with great approval. Of course when it comes to the whole “Galileo Figaro” part I can’t help but lose my place a few times, but that’s incredibly tough to keep up with. Then of course there comes the loud climax, to which I drop to my knees and do the whole head-banging thing as it right and proper for the song, and of course everyone loves it. Huge applause when I’m done. Karaoke accomplished.

After that some other teachers come up to me because they want me to sing more. We get a couple other songs cued up including Hey Jude and We Are The Champions but those songs are not to be. At 11:00 the party promptly ends, with the volume cut and everyone told to file out. I look around at all the unfinished food and beer as my 2,500 yen contribution to this event is taken. I’d say money well spent if not for the fact that so much of it was for wasted food. We must have just ordered the works, because every few minutes waitresses would come and put an entirely new platter of food on our tables, everything from chips and chocolate to ginger-snaps to salad to onion rings and fried chicken. It’s not like we needed any of it after that huge dinner beforehand. Oh well.

Now I guess it’s finally time for the final final this-is-really-actually-the-end-for-real goodbyes so I head outside and mentally prepare. One of the teachers asks me how I’m getting home and I say I can walk—my apartment is just a few blocks away—but they won’t hear of it and the next thing I know I’m in the back of someone’s car driving away without ever saying any goodbyes at all. Oh well.

So it goes. Two minutes later I’m dropped off near my apartment and I head back inside. Holy crap, now it’s over. That had to have been the longest ending ever. Ironic that the end of the ending happened so abruptly.

But it’s only 11:10. The events may be over but the day isn’t. I’d been thinking of having one last beer and listening to music before going to sleep, but I realize I’m quite drunk enough as it is and will stick to water for the rest of the night, which I spend listening to music and contemplating the events of the day.

I could hardly believe this was the same day I got up for the school’s closing ceremony in the morning. Saying my silent goodbye to A- already feels like it happened years ago.

And now I’ve said goodbye to Y-sensei and a whole bunch of other people I like but will never see again. But somehow I’m not nearly as emotional as I was after the graduation-ceremony day. I think I just used up all of my sadness about the passing of time and of people and now there’s none left. Now I’m mostly thinking about what great experiences I had this school-year and how now that I know most of the students and I really know what I’m doing, next school-year promises to be even better (depending of course on the replacements).

Was this really the longest day? No—others have been longer and felt more significant—but this one earned the title. Here’s to many more.