Note: This is another one of those entries I wrote in the tumultuous period of my last month teaching that I never got around to finishing.
It’s the last day I will be visiting a school and teaching, with one class to go, and presently I would articulate my feelings in three:
- I can’t wait for it to be over, after knowing it was coming for so long!
- I don’t want to leave! What am I going to do now?
- Where did the past two years go?
It’s an interesting conundrum, trying to both contain and express your emotions while throwing a foreign language and culture in there too.
With nine schools, I have been having lots of little goodbye ceremonies and drinking parties with staff. The most recent one was my favourite, a much different atmosphere with just the women. Apparently the men were all busy. In any case, that means we had some nice conversation, ordered what we liked, and even had dessert rather than focusing on alcohol and formalities.
At graduations and farewells people are often perhaps not expected but anticipated to end up in tears, but for me I’ve only come close. My lovely fellow island foreigners would refer to this as my cold, black heart.
When people lavish attention and well-wishing and little to big gifts on me, I feel almost an obligation to get a little theatric, but I will not (or maybe cannot) well up artificially. That is not to say I don’t feel a warmth in the heart and a knot in the throat.
formal scroll wrapping technique
One school in particular gave me some really special goodbye presents. They took the New Year’s calligraphy piece I wrote along with the students and made it into a traditional hanging scroll.
They also took the time to make me a personal seal in kanji, something I’ve been wanting for a long time without knowing which kanji character would be best to use. The one they chose combines the meanings of heart, devotion, sincerity, grace, compassion, a heart without falsehood, and friendship.
large personal seal using 情
Apparently they got one made through a neighbour of mine, who I’ve said all of “konnichiwa” to a few times, and she or the maker cleverly modified the character so one part is actually the shape of a heart.
On the way home, my taxi driver and I marvelled at the effects of the recent heavy rain…
I heard there is a tea ceremony sensei living next door and that I should stop by sometime. It doesn`t look like I will be stopping by between now and going home in July, but maybe. I wonder if this sensei is the same person who made the seal? I too only say konnichiwa to a wise looking couple that`s always out trimming flowers. I assume one of them is the sensei.
That`s awesome about the just-women enkai! My enkais have been a little too testosterone-y. After an epic day of walking around through Izuhara with all guys dressed up as soldiers, then sitting in a basketball court with more guys readying speeches, I wanted to go to G-cafe. It was apparently the Japanese guy`s first time, and they didn`t want tea with a doily, they wanted beer! (Jesse! Why did you bring us here? There` s no beer!) The G-cafe lady was teasingly like `arukouru-chu desuka?` then she found some cans of Asahi and I don`t think she even charged us for them. I think this weekend I`m going to have pizza plus tea with a doily to recover from Friday`s party.
By: Jesse F on February 2, 2012
at 11:28 am
Beeru at Gカフェ? That’s like soo 禁止！But yeah, they are always so generous…
Umm… I don’t know about the 茶道先生. But don’t be too shy…
By: yamaninjo on February 3, 2012
at 4:40 pm
And yeah, having an 俺と女子だけの宴会 was awesome. Such a different experience. It’s like they’re zapped into their social roles at mixed gender parties.
By: yamaninjo on February 3, 2012
at 4:43 pm