Right now I'm in Hawaii for Auntie Michie's memorial service. It's nice to be here with all my relatives, especially with my cousins from San Francisco who I haven't seen in about five years. Last night at the service, I read the general intercession petitions for Mich. My dad read the eulogy and I started crying during it. It was just such a simple and sweet speech, recalling their childhood together as the two oldest kids in a family of eight, and was especially touching toward the end when he began speaking to Mich directly in pidgin and Hawaiian. Since I've always known my dad as the doctor on the mainland, it's always strange to know that he started off here in Hawaii in a humble family, speaking thick pidgin in 1950s Hawaii. It was a very moving service, though I wish I could have been there for the funeral at St. Ignatius in San Francisco, which I hear was unbelievable.
And yesterday, I said goodbye to Japan. I wish I had the chance to write about my last week after getting back from Okinawa and running all over the place getting things done and saying goodbye to people and places, but I barely had enough time to sleep in the last week, and I was literally taking care of things up until the last minute I was in Japan. After getting back from Okinawa, I worked all night until 10 AM the following morning on the handbook finishing up 96% of it. I then boarded a train for Sendai for the last time and arrived 30 minutes late for the nomikai that WHO was throwing for me. Whoops. Late again. I was surprised when I arrived though - 11 people showed up! It was really great drinking and eating with those kids one last time. The only sad thing is the next day, I didn't have the time to drop by M-tou to practice with them one last time. After drinking and walking back over to Hachiman with Macchan and a couple of the shinnyuusei (new members), I went over to Takako's where I stayed the night. Her and I stayed up til pretty late talking and watching TV, and then in the morning I woke up to her scolding me to wake up and take a shower already so I can go to school and get my shit done. At school, I run a bunch of errands, including eating for the last time with Taiga in the dining hall (eating that food for the last time was sad in the same kind of "I've eaten this bad food so many times I'm going to miss it" way that eating at Hill with Gimpel for the last time at Penn was said, though the food at Tohoku Dai is definitely better). I also bought my university tshirts from the bookstore. I then ran downtown to do a little last minute shopping, close my bank account, close my national health insurance account, and get my hair cut by yoshiko for the last time at Ungu. I then took off to meet up with Takako, Mayumi, and Hina. They were waiting at a kaitenzushi place (the kind of sushi place where the sushi is on a conveyor belt) next to Mitsukoshi. After eating, we went to that German beer place I went with Hina a couple weeks ago for more German food and beer. After drinking, we went to Karaoke for one last hour of singing, and then we headed over to the bus stop. For the first time all year, I decided to take the night bus back to Tokyo, not because it was cheaper because its departure time was later than the shinkansen allowing me to stick around a couple hours longer. Yakou-kun also came down to the bus stop to come see me off, which was really nice of him. As I was getting ready to board, Takako tried to shake my hand, but I insisted all of them hug me because that's just the way it works. I got on the bus and waved to them out the window as I pulled out of Sendai. It was really goodbye.
I arrived in Tokyo at 5:10 AM when the trains weren't running and had to wait for them to start up so I could get back to the Shimizu's place and take a nap for a couple hours. After waking up Kazumi to open the door for me, I passed out for a little bit and then woke up at 9:30 to go with Akira to go see Waratteiitomo (very long running daytime variety show) in Shinjuku.
So we went to line up outside the Alta Building, where Sachiyo met us to give us the tickets to get inside. The first thing I noticed was that since most of the audience is usually girls, there were naturally a bunch of hot chicks there and also a bunch of busted, busted girls. Just thought that I'd note. Once inside, (I was number 59) they lined us up in the stairwell for about 30 minutes before giving us 20 minutes to use the bathrooms in the building prior to entering the studio. Once we went into the studio, a seating director was directing where everyone was to sit. He naturally placed all the girls in the middle with some couples on the sides and me and akira (two guys) toward the back. The craziest thing was sometimes he'd seat some girls and then cuter girls would come in and he'd tell the ugly ones to move to different seats. But I guess that's how tv is. It was also strange because everyone down to the security guards seemed to know who Akira and I were and where we were sitting since we were brought in by connection to a staff member rather than the typical postcard lottery. Without about 7 minutes left to go before filming, they started doing rehearsals with us for crowd responses (there are some things the crowd says in unison everyday during the show) and then the cast came out. Wednesdays are decent days; of course Tamori is on and then there are the typical comedy folk (bakushoumondai, shinagawa shouji) and some geinoujin (celebrity) guests - Ishihara Yoshizumi, Shibata Rie, and Sugita Kaoru. It was cool that Sugita Kaoru was on because prior to her getting married, she was just on TV all the time ever since the first time I came to Japan, so it was nice seeing her in person. But I wish I could have gone the next day: Summers, Aoki Sayaka, and Inoue Waka were all on. A ridiculous line up in terms of my Japanese celebrity rankings. But oh well - it was still a cool experience. After the show wrapped (it's broadcast live, so it moved quickly), the cast stays on stage to do a 45 minute talk after the show where they just joke around and talk. Bits of that are broadcast on the weekend version of the show, and it was the best part of the time in the studio. It was just hilarious and I could see why these people do what they do. In person, it's interesting how you can see at times the way that they are really acting on stage in terms of making exaggerated responses and forcibly calling things out or saying things to make segments more entertaining (it usually all looks pretty natural on TV, but not quite so much in person). Overall, it was a great experience and I nice way to end my time in Japan this year, what with my obsession with Japanese tv. Oh, and I was on tv a couple times during the broadcast. Nice but embarrassing. I'll show it to you - I have it on DVD. :P Once we left, Akira and I went over to Ueno to eat lunch at Pastel, this Italian I ate with Rie at last September that is embarrassingly very girly. But the food is good and I wanted some Italian food, so what can ya do.
I ran home after lunch to finish last minute modifications on the handbook before going to Akasaka-Mitsuke to order the printing. It ended up being much more expensive than I expected to print in color, but I had to order it in color for at least my class. So I ended up eating some cost myself, but I worked so hard on it I figured there was nothing else I could do. Once that wrapped, that night I saw Shinji and his girlfriend for the last time in Shibuya. I really hope great things for him because he is an awesome guy. The next afternoon, I saw another shoukengaisha great - Daisuke - in Ebisu for lunch. We ate at this swanky Chinese restaurant, which was the most expensive lunch I've had since the kobe beef a couple months ago.
Okay enough rambling about my schedule for the week... the big deal is that I ran back and forth between home and Akasaka-mitsuke going to kinkos and the fulbright office taking care of this handbook shit. It had some errors in the making of it and in the files I brought so I had to go back home a couple times to redo some things and re-export some of the files. Which wouldn't be bad if home wasn't 40 minutes of subway and walking away. But I got it done. And in the end, I'm very very proud of it. It looks great. The time I spent on it probably outweighs its importance to most people (it is just a handbook) but i learned a lot about design and it was a good experience for me and good memento of fulbright.
The night before I left, Kazumi cooked us sukiyaki at home for the last time all together. She used super high quality beef and it was absolutely amazing. I then went off to start packing my things (I actually had to go to kinkos the next morning again because at that point to pick up the color copies of the book). I was absolutely exhausted, but I got up the next morning to do my last minute errands (including buying a new digital camera, the amazing Fuji Finepix Z1). It was then off to the airport with Kazumi, Tetsuya, Yukari, and Rio. On the way, we stopped at the Docomo shop to turn off my phone and end my contract. I was naturally frantically calling and emailing from my phone up until the last minute it was activated. It was sad to see my phone incapable of communicating anymore - since its been with me every moment since the second day I was in Japan 10 months ago. Once at the airprot, I checked my five bags, which would have cost a ton but I got a nice guy at the counter who gave me a huge break, only charging me for one. I think he felt sorry for me. When I was leaving, I told Yukari and Tetsuya that "アメリカに帰るっていうか、アメリカに行くって感じがする", which basically means I don't feel like I'm returning home to America, just that I'm going there (the difference between the two is very clearly set in Japanese). I had to fight to keep from crying as I walked away from them all and Japan. The Shimizus, as always, were a huge part of making my experience this year. But the fact that I was there for 10 months this team meant that I had to depend on them even more, and ask them for more favors than I ever should have. It also means that, as everyone in the family has told me separately, that its like we're a family now. Not just relatives, but really a family. I consider them to be my family too and its hard imagining that even if I go back to Japan, things won't be the same as they have been this last three years. There is no adequate way for me to tell them how thankful I am or to pay them back, so I hope they can feel it. I was thinking about it, and I'm pretty certain that by now I would have given up on Japanese if it wasn't for them; or at least it wouldn't mean as much to me. Having them in Japan meant that the familial tie was so much more real, tangible, and immediate everyday. I had someone there worrying about me and cheering me on and teaching me about our family and the country. It has been the greatest gift to my experience there. Once I handed over my alien registration card to the officials at customs, I boarded my plane. Once on board, I read a letter Kaori had given to me and it was so moving I started crying again. How embarrassing; but it was such a sweet letter. Last time I was in Japan, she wrote me a short one page letter, but this time she wrote a three page letter and told me she considered me as her "大事なお兄さん" (i guess you would say that precious older brother in english) and not to ever forget that. When people tell me things like that - just like Takako told me the same a few weeks earlier - it absolutely kills me. I cried like crazy when I read that Takako had written that and I cried like crazy this time. As I was gathering my composure, the plane left the ground.
Its crazy that the year is over. There are so many memories now, good and bad, and so many friends and close family that I have to leave behind in Japan this time. The more times I go there and longer I stay, the deeper and broader my roots in the country dig and the more difficult it becomes to leave it behind. I love Japan and I know I'll be going back sooner than later. I have to - it's pretty much simply become a need of mine now.
This year was truly special. Not necessarily in the ways I expected it to be, and not necessarily all the things I wanted to happen happened, nor did everything go the way I expected. But to be sure, it was special. I started this blog as a way to remember this past year, and as a way to carve my memories somewhere a little more permanent than the folds of my brain. It's pretty crazy that it's ended now, and that the entire thing is here to look back on. All the things that began and ended, all the lives that changed, and all the experiences had in that time seem vastly disproportionate with how short the time seems. I'm thankful to all the people and places that I came across along the way that made it what it was. Especially my relatives, all the girls in Mitaka and Kunitachi in West Tokyo, the kids in Fulbright, and of course, all my friends at Tohoku Daigaku. It's been amazing.
Oh, and the blog will keep going past this. For now it's going to become a track of my new life in Chicago as work starts. If you liked this because you liked reading about Japan, don't worry - as I told the kids in Japan,
Dont' worry - I'll be back soon.
