That's a Wrap!

The 2006 AJET Tokushima Musical finally finished its five-show run on Saturday night in Wakimachi.

Tradtionally, the last show is always in Wakimachi at an old Kabuki theatre called the Odeonza. It's a beautiful theatre, all wood, no seats, just zabuton cushions to sit on. It's very small, and the audience is really close to the stage, so it's quite an intimate venue. The show on Saturday was absolutely PACKED, and the audience were great. They laughed at all the right places, and at the end, donated an amazing amount of money for next year's effort. We had a great time, and they seemed to aswell. JET Programme sceptics would do well to get themselves along to a JET musical performance. You really see what an ALT means to their community at these events. One ALT named Evan had a quite a few people in the audience, and you could see how proud and excited they were that their ALT was up there in lights. I don't care what people say: someone who can touch their community in this way is worth every yennie.

After the party, the cast and crew retired to a mountaintop clutch of bungalows to have a well-earned party. We didn't start til nearer midnight, as it took a good while to get packed up, and drive out to the bunglows. We chatted and laughed til the wee small hours, did a good amount of snuggling, and a good amount of body-slamming. The tech crew, namely me, Hannah and Nick, also gave out awards to the entire cast, and those seemed to go down well.

My parents arrive on Friday. My house is still only half clean. Man. I really need some time to do nothing but sit and vegetate. This term has felt, since day one, like a sprint-to-finish. It's been a lot of fun, for sure, but I need a holiday! I am really looking forward to the olds coming though. It'll be great for them to meet all the people I've been raving about for 2.5 years, for them to see my town, where I work, and hopefully understand why I couldn't have left after only a year or two.

The party on Saturday night reminded me, cliched as this is, how important my friends are to me. Two of my closest friends weren't there, snowboarding in Hokkaido, and getting chased by police in Kobe, as they were, but there were people there on Saturday that are very close to me, and I realised that very soon, we'll be saying goodbye. I mean, who is going to replace Joe, Joe who likes sleeping in closets, Joe who only says "fuck" when he's drunk, Joe who is the most honest, unpretentious person I've ever met?

Last week was a crazy week in terms of learning about the people I hold dear to me in this country. No matter how close you feel to someone, they will always have the ability to surprise you, to shock and upset you, to make you angry beyond belief, and to make you fall in love with them all over again. All of that happened with me last week, and I was left reeling for it, feeling like I knew these people, yet didn't know them, all at the same time. I felt close to them, and felt far away from them. And this both confused me and made me smile. There's a lot to be said for "what you see is what you get" people. But there's something addictive and endearing about people who keep you guessing. I wonder if these are the people who have the ability to hurt you most, and to be hurt the most.

Unlike a friend at the moment who is feeling homesick for people at home, I am struggling to accept the fact that I am going home. I have changed so much. I found a letter I wrote to Katja in the autumn of my first year, but never sent, and freaked myself right out when I read it. Is the girl who wrote that letter really me? It speaks of a worry that time is too short for me to do all I want to do, it speaks of a longing for the womb-like confines of academia, and there is a definite thread of homesickess all the way through. Now, I realise that I will not be able to do it all. I don't want to. I don't want to spend my life with my head in books. I know who I am, I know where I want to be, what I want to do, and who I want to do it with. I have gained perspective. What I wonder about now is do I have the guts to chase after it?

Bye Bye Babies

After a couple of snowy days at the beginning of this week, I am hoping that we have truly seen the last of the winter weather. The sakura are scheduled to bloom in this part of the country on March 26th, which is Sunday week. Come on, warm weather! Show us some love!

Luckily, the warm weather did indeed make an appearance last Saturday, which meant my kiddies could graduate under a blazing blue sky. As I have said, this particular graduation was special to me: these kids are the ones who have been with me since the beginning, and while I was not relishing the thought of waving goodbye, I was happy that I was able to be there for such a milestone in their young lives. Tears spilled, yearbooks signed, many pictures taken. It was a bittersweet day, I feel like now I have truly started the long list of goodbyes I'll need to say before I leave this country. Check out the pictures: me and the girls basketball team, who were some of the brightest and friendliest kids in the year, and me with Akiko, who is a girl who always spoke to me.

As is tradition, I spent the evening of the graduation in a smoky room with about 50 drunk parents, and 20 drunk-ish teachers. Good food, good chat, lots of beer and sake. Yeah, I had a blast! I even made it along to Awa Odori practice afterwards! But then I wound my way home to my empty apartment, and wished there was someone there to talk to. And then did my usual rounds of terrorising special people with daft emails and phonecalls.

Sunday was another musical day, and it was a lot of fun. Some of my friends and students came out to see the show, and I'm told that they really enjoyed it, so that makes it all worthwhile. Only one more show left to go!

I spent Monday lying on my couch under a pile of blankets watching a movie called 'Bandits' (Nate D: it's ok, good ending), and FINALLY after ALL THESE MONTHS I completed my 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' odyssey. Phew!

It's all go this week, what with preparing for the impending arrival of my parents , trying to start the handover of National AJET business, preparing for the BBQ I need to organise at the upcoming Touch Rugby tournament, and trying to get the frisbee tournament underway. But today, while I am planning on doing something on all those little projects, I am also planning to show my co-workers some TLC, and bake them some shortbread this afternoon.

I need a haircut, new make-up and about 24 hours of sleep.

Peter Pan: 2 down, 3 to go.

I am pretty beat today. It has been a busy and very fun weekend. This week, I have not one single class at the JHS, but I'm hoping I have a full quota of three elementary classes to keep me from going totally mad.

I had been pestering people to do something on Friday night, and it looked like some of us would be in for more karaoke, but it was not to be. So I left school Friday afternoon with the prosepect of spending the evening alone, which I HATE doing on a Friday. Found myself in the freezer section of the local (tiny) supermarket, seeing nothing I wanted to eat worthy of a Friday night, and felt sooo depressed. Not a major depression just a "aww man, it's FRIDAY, why the freak doesn't Nate want to go boarding? Why is Julie sick? Why does this supermarket not stock pizza?!". Wound my way home, tidied the hovel a bit, and ate my frozen ebi-gratin type thing.

Was watching the superb "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells" when Dave called to say he'd be round in an hour. Yeah! Company! Spent the latter part of the evening drinking cheap wine, talking on the phone with our friend Linda, and generally having a good Friday night.

Saturday and Sunday saw me out in eastern part of Tokushima prefecture for the first two shows of the AJET musical. This year, we had chosen to perform 'Peter Pan', tweaking the story slightly so that it was relevant in some way to Japan. For example, the crocodile was replaced by a giant mukade (poisonous centipede). The shows themselves seemed to go really well, with minimal screw-ups (though we did have two people falling off the stage on Sunday!). It's a gruelling three weeks of perfomances. I will be missing next week's Saturday show, due to my school's graduation, which I'm sad about, but this is a special graduation.

I spent Saturday night at Amber's house, along with Bessie, Julia and Nikki, a friend of Amber's from Kobe. We had a relaxing night eating pizza (steer clear of Pizza Hut's Salmon Grande, or whatever it's called. Yuk!), drinking some drinks, and chilling out. I love hanging out with Bessie. She's totally laid back, and I always feel like it's summer when she's around... I have no idea why, I think it has something to do with her habit of wearing a sarong and sandals in winter, and with the reggae-type beats that are always blasting from her car! :)

So today, I am sitting chatting to various people online, digesting and re-living some nice events of the weekend in my head, and planning (always planning) the Holiday of the Parents. Feeling a bit sleepy too.... busy time of it!

Cleaner Extraordinaire!

Ok, so my predictions in my post yesterday? BS! I went home. Felt bored. Slept. Felt cold. Ate udon. The went mad cleaning! Here's what I blitzed:

-The hall cupboard- ususally never opened except to wrestle the hoover from it, and to shake my head at what might be in there.

- The hall in general

- The shower room

-The bathroom floor

-The hob

Wow. What an effort. And on a school night too!

三寒四温

This is a Japanese proverb to describe the schizophrenic weather that always accompanies the month of March. It reads 'san kan shi on' meaning 'three days cold, four days warm'. And that's more or less what you get in March.

At the end of February, the uninitiated could be forgiven for thinking that winter was all over bar the shouting. It was getting milder. Breath inside the house wasn't quiten as visible as it had been. The fridge was actually clicking on. And then today, we wake up to... snow. At least on the mountains. I gather from the mountain men that Mother Nature did indeed crap more of the fluffy stuff all over them last night. Seeing as how this is my third winter over here, I am accustomed to suck fickle behaviour. It'll be over soon. Then... HANAMI!

I feel like I am a resevoir of untapped energy today. I am feeling... pent up. I am feeling... ready for action. Ready for a change. Something new. A new country. New challenges. I am sitting at my desk, and I feel like I am stagnating. I am so over being an ALT. I am not over living in this town, or living with these people. But I am over this country. I can't explain this in any eloquent way.

I want to do something. I want to interact with people face-to-face. I have become a web chat monkey. And it's fun. It passes the time. But I yearn for something a bit more than that! Web chat is evil. It is addictive. It's easier to be honest when you are hiding behind a computer screen. That's no way for human civilisation to be.

I wonder why it is that people need alcohol, or a computer screen before they feel comfortable being honest. Maybe that's too much of a sweeping statement. I know people who are perfectly relaxed with revealing thoughts and feelings without either of these aides. Personally, it depends on who I am with. If I see someone else ill at ease with revelations, then I don't go in for it. If someone opens up to me easily, then I guess I do too. I am rambling. I think this is probably the same for most people. See, this is what I am now. I have thoughts that turn out to be nothing new, nothing original. I am becoming stale. My mind is not sharp enough. Aaaargh. I hate to be bored. And I know that I have the resources right here to not be bored. But idleness breeds idleness. I want to go home tonight and clean my house. In reality, I will go home, wash the dishes, perhaps make an attempt to organise a cupboard, and then I will sit and watch some mindless DVD, or something. Not because I am lazy. But because I am exhausted from doing nothing.