Did you miss me?

Our travels from Japan went without a hitch and aside from the exhaustion, we were pumped to be home. Megan cried on the train to the airport in Japan, which is great. It means she really had a great time and would miss it.

Since we’ve been back I have bought Megan an iPhone which has been an amazing investment. Even though there is no internet at Megan’s family’s home, her iPhone can still squeak an internet signal out sometimes.

In general everyone has been running around all crazy and stressed-like getting Rachel’s (Megan’s younger sister) wedding ready for this Thursday.

I do my best to avoid the whole thing, but that only works half of the time. Megan and Audra (Megan’s older sister) hosted a shower for Rachel, but I did most of the cooking for it before I was banished to another room with beer and movies and Megan’s dad.

Not as bad as you think.

Though he does snore quite a bit, and can be a little handsy.

In other news, we were asked to return to MES at the end of the summer. I told them I would only consider it if there were no job opportunities here. Well without internet and this wedding stuff, I haven’t been able to look at all.

Anyway, I got an email from Kimoto-san (Our boss’s boss) offering us the job formally with a $20/month raise! Thats like a 0.8% increase!

Sign me up!

They want me and Megan to go back to train all of the staff and be their managers. As well as teach a full load of classes. Apparently thats only worth $20 a month more than just teaching.

When we read that email we knew that even if we would be working at Burger King, we probably won’t be taking the job in Japan again.

Don’t get me wrong, it was an amazing job and an amazing year, but it wouldn’t be the same the second time around.

For those of you familiar with Tahlequah, I am doing my internet business from the Iguana Cafe.

I said, “Goodbye,” to my class Monday, Tuesday and finally today.  Some of the kids were great fun and great people who would be fun to be around any time.  At the same time, I never got too close to them, so the memories and pictures I took will be enough.

A few interesting things happened however.  Tuesday after I taught my classes, I went with Mami to meet the Hiroi family.  I taught them from last June until April.  I did get close to them and I will miss them.  The Hiroi family wanted to see me one last time before I left, so we met at a small restaurant, and while the kids had dessert, I played with them and soaked it in.

There was Yuka who is either 5 or 6 and is the definition of cute.  Then there is the boy, Kengo.  He is really funny and just great.  The oldest is Maho, and her personality is about inbetween the other two.  She is around 12 or 13 and had a little crush on me I think.  I don’t mind though, nearly every girl I taught did that.  Seriously.

I’m not making it up.

I’m not proud of it either.

Just a fact.

So we just spent some time together and said our final farewells.

After that Megan, Mami, Yurie, Ayumi, and I went to dinner together.  These were the Japanese teachers we got closest to and the people we will miss the most by far.  I know there was a language barrier, but we tried to let them know how important they have been to us.  We ate and laughed and talked until around midnight before we pulled ourselves away again.

When we think of Japan, they will be the first people that come to mind.

I have said all of my goodbyes and now I am just packing before we fly home Friday.  I’m dreading the flight, but excited for change.

It has been one of the best years of my life.  Not because it was all happy, fun, or even easy.  Far from it.  It has been one of those years where I felt like I truly lived life, and it was great.

Now for something kind of different.

Kimoto-san (The big boss) lost his cat Friday.  Monday, people thought they heard it meowing outside and ran to locate the voice.  They were sure it was on a roof or high place at the neighbors, so I went to the roof of our building to look down.  I neither saw, nor heard anything and when I was going back in I heard Momo.  Turns out she had been locked in the roof-top storage room for 4 days.

The next day there was a box of cakes on my desk as a thank you from Kimoto-san.  I am not big on sweets, but these tempted me.  They were delicious.

Then today Kimoto-san’s girlfriend brought me fresh pineapple to eat.

Then for lunch the owners bought fried rice for Megan, Ayumi, Mami, Yurie, and I.  Everyone else was jealous.

We have been spoiled.

It has been nice to get all this attention, but it is going way past what I am able to politely deal with.

Then today (I nearly forogot), one of my kids who is around 6, gave me a present.  It was a small piece of torn paper with “Japanese money” scribbled on it.  I thought inside of the folds there would be stickers or some construction paper things that I could discreetly throw away.  Instead there was a 1000 yen bill (~$10.00).  Most people’s reaction would be, “Hell yes!”  Mine was not like that at all.

I was worried she had stolen money from her mom, or that she hadn’t told her, or any number of things that would wind up being a disaster.  Also, the line of appropriate teacher-to-student behavior was crossed.  It was just plain awkward.

Anyway, after class we find out that the mother didn’t know and she was mortified.  It was the little girl’s money, and her entire monthly allowance too.  She said that Hikaru (The little girl) wanted to get something so badly, but just didn’t have time, so she gave me money instead.

Hours pass.

Another phone call and Hikaru had convinced her mom to taker her shopping to buy me an appropriate gift to give to me.  Tomorrow I go to the Kindergarten that Hikaru used to attend.  Now Hikaru is in Elementary School, so Hikaru’s mom is going to meet me at the Kindergarten to give me the gift.

I am going to write Hikaru a letter and put the money back in.

This is all beyond sweet.  Way beyond, and well in to awkward.

First thing to mention is that Greg put his letter of resignation in.  He gave very clear, simple instructions including, “Don’t panic.”

When we went to the office, we were greeted by panic.  Megan and I were taken to a private room to talk with Mami and Yurie about us not leaving or us returning back with me as the manager for Foreign Teachers.  In a very tactful way I told them to grow a pair, and if they can’t that I would consider returning in August.

I said goodbye to my Friday classes, which was fine.  Then proceeded to meet with my previous Friday’s classes (The ones I had before April).  They all came to meet me, in the rain, to say goodbye.  It was really awesome.  I didn’t cry, but I was very aware of how sad I was going to be not seeing them again.  Then I found out that I’ll see them again Tuesday because they want to see me one more time.  Score.

As for the party, it was at Familia.  It is a great little Italian place owned by the owners of our place, and they threw a good little party for us.  Most of the Japanese staff were preoccupied with the new teachers and Greg’s resignation, but we didn’t mind.

That night we went to a mall to play in Sega.  Three floors of coin-operated fun.  We took pictures in the photo booths, sang karaoke, played video games, and stayed out way past our bed time.

The rest of the weekend has been cleaning and packing.

I’m ready.  Megan is a little unsettled by all the goodbyes and the idea that we lived here for a year and will probably never return.

The kids however didn’t let me off the hook so easily.  Today is the first of what will probably be a long week of accepting bullshit crafts from the kids that I will have a hard time not being happy about.  Yes, I am sad to say goodbye to the kids.  Yes, I am really happy that they made a goodbye card for me.  No, I don’t know if I’ll be bringing 1,000 awful drawings of Pikachu that say, “Thank you Lian,” home.

Tomorrow is our official going away party.  We are going to eat at the owner’s Italian restaurant.  It will be delicious, filling, tear-filled (Thanks to Megan), and followed up by video games.  I’m pretty excited.

The pig flu made it to Japan and has caused Osaka to shut down all of their public schools.  Japan, responding in the most fear-ridden, foolish way, has encouraged the following policies to be put into place.  The new teachers will not be allowed to teach at Kindergartens for one week.  It is a quarantine of sorts.  See, the flu is already in Japan, but they aren’t worried about Japanese people spreading it, just foreigners.  So the new teachers have to hang out a week without a fever, pay, or training because of the pig flu.

Furthermore, if the flu comes to Gifu and the Kindergartens shut down (Which they would), then nobody will be getting paid for that duration of time.  We won’t be working, so we won’t be getting paid.

Thankfully not a damn bit about the pig flu has any bearing on Megan and I and we are happy to be getting away from the hysteria.

Tuesday started with my first play time. What that is, in a nutshell, is our company gets paid to drop one of us foreign teachers for a few hours of abuse at the hands of children.

It went plenty fine, it was a beautiful day. Beautiful and hot. I had sweat through my shirt by 10AM. My shoes were also full of the weird kitty-litter sand they use on the play ground. The rest of the day involved the children giving stool and urine samples, musical chairs, and curry rice for lunch.

After play time I cooled off by teaching 4 classes. I never stopped sweating.

Then our boss’s boss took us to dinner. I need to bring up that they don’t speak English and they also don’t really socialize much with us “Round-eyes.”

They were going to take us out to a “nice” sushi restaurant. Our definition of nice sushi runs about $1 a piece. For our bosses, who own a 2nd home in Hawaii, it runs around $6 a piece.

Here’s the Japanese for what I ate for all you know Japanese only because of Sushi:

• Kanimiso
• Uni
• Anago
• Negitoro
• Daiebi
• Ikura
• Kai
• Kappa
• Salmon

The descriptions are below.

I’ll give a short description of what it all was, and a scale of 1 to 5 for how it was.

• Crab brains (3)
• Sea Urchin (-2)
• A kind of BBQ’d eel (4)
• Tuna and onion (5)
• Big shrimp (5)
• Salmon Eggs (3)
• Scallops (2)
• Cucumber (5)
• Salmon (5)

We had a great night, and the next morning during a class a kid peed his pants.

You just never know what is going to happen.