Meanwhile, in Toyama...

I had a leaving ceremony of sorts during my last ever visit to a special school last week (as a teacher at least). Whenever I leave there I feel like a totally overpaid incredibly handsome fraud. These kids, surely, get nothing out of me. Thirty minutes a week is not enough for them to actually learn anything productive. Each week we play a game that's a variation on the previous week and which is so easy that I could teach it tied and gagged from a thick canvas bag. Down a well. I feel incredibly guilty. I can see it in the eyes of the other teachers: "my god, you get paid to do that? I bet you're drunk right now as well..."

They gave me a send off though. First we played a massive version of snakes and ladders that I had made ("Kondo, roll the big dice, the box there. Here, roll it. Oh, um, kick, okay kick it, here let me…oh look you 'dropped' it, ah ha, so you got a five. Lets move five places…Okay, I'll move five places! Okay! Oh look you landed on "swimming"! Say swimming! Sw-...Swimm... okay, lets wipe that up...right! Tsugawa! Roll the dice, the big box thing here...").

After that (“Wow! Everybody won! Isn’t that great!?”) the teacher got out all manner of strange looking instruments. They were going to play "Edelweiss" for me. The lullaby. Anyway, Tsugawa gave a rousing performance with his breath-operated keyboard, Kuniya screamed unintelligibly but in tune, and Kondo kicked at a keyboard held at his feet by a teacher. Shimoda sat by staring at gosh-knows-what while a teacher played the triangle for him. The cacophony was actually quite moving.

Then we moved onto 'games'. Kuniya asked me to put my finger in a Chinese finger-trap snake ("Oh no! Kuniya! Oh dear! I can’t get my finger out - Kuniya! Arg! Heh heh, um. No, really, I cant get it out..." wild laughter all round), Kondo gave me an envelope marked 'scorpion' which when opened an elastic banded coin spun against the paper to sound like a scorpion ("Arg! Kondo! A real live scorpion! Oh no! Arrrg! Whoo-wee, you really got me there Kondo! Ha ha!" - wild laughter all round) and then Shimoda gave me a box wrapped in string. "Open quickly" the teacher whispered - and out sprung home-made springy snakes made of milk-cartons and elastic bands ("ARG! Snakes! Real live snakes – IN A BOX! Jesus! Shimoda! Arrrrg!" - wild laughter all round). It was pretty fun actually.

I'm also closing in on my last days at Kureha High School. I had my 'farewell ceremony' at Kureha this morning. It's the ceremony where I stand on stage and get my Japanese speech wrong, drop the microphone, and generally entertain the students. Just like class actually. The principal to gave a quick speech about me, and then the students had to send me off. 568 of them parted down the middle and I was ushered through like Moses, to ecstatic applause. As I walked I waved to a few kids I knew. Several boys ran out to shake my hand and run back again. As I got to the back of the hall the calligraphy teacher, Mrs Yamazaki, gave me a thick envelope saying "puresento!" and then "go staff room," because it seems I can't hang around for the rest of the ceremony if I'm 'leaving' (though I still have until Monday to clear my desk). The present was a very beautiful kanji print she had made, the meaning apparantly: ‘Spring Has Come, The Water Is Clear You Can See Forever.’

As well as Robin and I several other JETs are leaving Toyama this year. The bulk of the second years are leaving and around half of last years crop. Some people are sad to be leaving, others cant wait to get out, and a few are being left behind. It’s always sad to leave friends behind and to see them go. Being here for just a short year I have made lots of friends, many of them I’m sad to leave, but this is the price you pay for being a Drifter Junior Grade.

As part of the leaving comes the drinking. It seems like everybody has been leaving for the past month; the JET community in Toyama is a close knit one and so several parties have been needed to properly say goodbye to everyone. Two weeks ago for the England v Portugal world cup semi final there was a party in Uozu, a town several train stops away. The build up to the match was a set given by Toyama’s resident band The Bento Boys, who like nothing better than rapping on the life of a JET. After the tragic hush that followed several highly paid sport stars totally failing at what they practice every day of the year, the bar emptied quietly and people started to go home. I missed it all however as I was arguing politics with some guy whom I will probably never meet again. I was told a few days later that we then went on to another bar until the early hours of the morning. I’m also told that Brad and I had had a conversation on the train right up to his stop, one before mine, in which he told me not to fall asleep. I woke up in Kanazawa, an hour away and in the next prefecture. I woke totally confused as to where I was, where I had been, and indeed who I was. When I finally got back to Toyama at 9am I discovered that I had lost my umbrella, my Bento Boys CD, and my book (Salinger).

The ‘official’ leavers party was in on a campsite in Toga over two days – because that’s just how JETs roll. The campsite was actually the venue of the Welcome Weekend, which was nicely cyclical. I remember little of it other than a power hour with Max, Brad, and Emily and a football game in which I, as usual, slide tackled sopmebody and tore my knee and my elbow to shreds. On the Sunday afternoon we decided to have a Nepalese curry at a nearby restaurant. Tucked away in deepest Ishikawa-ken is a Nepalese restaurant and museum. A group of Nepalese run the place during the summer and escape during the winter as Toga, and indeed much of Eastern Japan, is buried in snow. On the hour each day the chefs and waitresses perform a traditional Nepalese dance, like fools they asked us to join in.

Nice Men


Nice Ladies


Uh? Oh dear, it's all gone wrong


Very wrong


Of course, Toyama JETs can’t just leave it at that. On the final weekend there was another party. The theme of this party was Toga - as in the bedsheet wearers of yore. It's enough for the Japanese to have to witness the rabble that is drunken JETs stumbling through town but when they're not quite wrapped in bedsheets I really feel for them. Many people were leaving the next morning so there were teary farewells and manly handshakes all round, and copious irresponsible drinking. This is what happens when you down someone else’s drink only to discover that it is a tequila poured by an overly generous barman. Ahem.





Arg! Togas!

Gandhi?


Hey, nice sword...








At some point during the last two weeks I have a hazy recollection that we went on a 'Beer Tram.' Imagine this amazingly simple and amazingly awesome concept: beer, on a tram. Commuting, but with none of the drawbacks and all of the benefits. I'll let the photos explain.





Hey, I've got a great idea...!



In the last few weeks it hasn't all been high jinks and hedonism, there has been some culture too. Ikebana is the Japanese art of arranging flowers, in a very particular Japanese way, and so we went to the annual Toyama Ikebana Competition last saturday. I was mightily impressed by the displays, here are a few:







The best of course was this one:



Hang on, I recognise that! Isn't that a...Robin Burfield?



Robin has been attending ikibana classes for the past few months and has made considerable progress, so much so that she entered to rave reviews.

However, I dont think this chap was impressed by anything.



So this is the end. It was fun, mostly. A lot of it was entertaining, a lot infuriating, but this is surely the charrenge of living in an entirely alien culture. You may remember back in April my agonising over recontracting. I can look back now and know that I made the right decision; I am ready to leave; to get on with the next thing. The thought of staying another year gives me a stomach ache, but recently so does the thought of leaving. It’s a strange place this.