JAPAN (Koka) - Last Day of Capoeira

Tonight, I went to my final practice with the Capoeira group I've been training with for the past 5 years. I've had a lot of good times with the group and feel a great deal of affection for the instructor, Kenji, and his family. Kenji came to Japan from Brazil roughly around the same time I came from America. When I first started training with him, he wasn't teaching a proper class...it was just a few of us who liked Capoeira gathering to practice once a week. As the years passed, Kenji rapidly improved and in the course of it all, also became a skilled teacher.

Until recently, the group was composed primarily of Brazilians, Americans and Peruvians. This meant that saying goodbye to members was a fairly regular thing. I'm the only member of the group aside from Kenji left from that time 5 years ago.

So, I dunno...I guess I was somewhat expecting something special for my final practice. Maybe ending practice early to go to dinner together or something, like we usually do when someone is leaving.

Nope.

There is a Batizado (advancement test) coming up in April, so the practice was naturally focused on covering stuff for those folks who are taking the test. At the end of practice, we had a free roda. As it was my last day, they kept me in the circle for as long as I could stay in (not very long, since I've missed a lot of practices over the past couple of months and gotten horribly out of shape as a result). It also happened to be the birthday of another member, Akira...who I believe is Kenji's half-brother. Which was good in that I had someone to relieve me in the roda.

The roda ended, Kenji told the group I was leaving and Monica talked about how I had taught that group of boys Capoeira in my town. "Take care," and the group applauded for me. Then the guys all gathered around me and gave me the three tosses into the air. Then Akira. Then Alejandro who also happened to have had a birthday recently.

And then, everybody was like, "See you. Take care."

Oh.

Inside, I was thinking to myself, "Uhh...what about dinner? Don't we normally all go hang out and eat dinner together when somebody is leaving?"

Turns out everybody was heading home or to Yokaichi for Akira's birthday party.

Oh.

After all of the elaborate farewell parties that my colleagues and students have thrown for me over the past few weeks, I guess it was a bit shocking to me that my farewell was so...simple. Take care. Hug. Bye.

I remember when I first got here thinking that Japanese people really made partings far too sad by making things so elaborate. You should keep it simple and happy so that nobody feels sad.

Now that I've been here almost 7 years, I think I'm into the whole elaborate thing. Boy. I guess I can tell myself if it hadn't been for the birthday party tonight, people would have gone out to dinner with me. But I was still disappointed and a bit sad. I had been looking forward to being able to hang out with the folks in the group one last time before leaving.

This is not to say I was completely left on my own. Rafael and Daniel stayed on to go to dinner with me. We ended up at the Gusto family restaurant down the road and spent the rest of the evening discussing a culture clash in child rearing; the merits of homeopathic medicine (Daniel is a medical researcher at a local university but is originally from a village somewhere in the Amazon); the state of interpersonal relationships in Japan and modern society in general; and how the waitress was cute and looked really familiar (I was the one who eventually figured out it was because she looked just like Teri Hatcher of Louis & Clark fame).

So I guess things ended on a good note after all. I got to hang with two guys I like...and make a random beautiful woman smile.

That's enough whining for now.

JAPAN (Koka) - Fashion Special: The Afterparty

After a long day of tearful goodbyes and many many glasses of Kirin Lager and Sake One-Cup, what better way to cap things off than by going bowling...furyou style. J (background) is thoroughly lit up off of many One-Cups and bowling fever. TJ (foreground), however, is keeping it frosty with the always classic Asian-poop squat decked out in his finest furyou gear: Nika-poka Pants by Toraichi (5000yen), Doka-jan Jacket by Winter Wear (1800yen), White Towel by Seiyu (100yen), rented Bowling Shoes (300yen), Sight of J drunk off his ass going down the lane with his bowling ball by Sake One-Cup (priceless)

Japan (Koka): Busride - Living Life With No Regrets

The King of Salem has many faces and many forms. Yesterday, he took on the form of a 60 year old gentleman working here in my office as temporary staff until the end of this month. I figured out it was him as we rode the bus ride to our office farewell party in Mie.

"So Yamato-kun, what are you doing after this? You headed home?," he asked from the seat behind me, his voice loud and friendly in a stereotypical Kansaijin kind of way.

"Well," I replied, reluctantly pulling my eyes away from the beautiful sunset in the western sky, "...eventually. But first, I'm going on a long trip."

Our bus pulled out of the parking lot of the Board of Education and onto the road. I continued, "I'm gonna head down to Southeast Asia for awhile, then head over to India, hopefully do some volunteer work and..."

"Ooooh. Trip around the world, eh?," interrupted the gentleman, a smile on his face.

"Well, actually, just Asia this time around," I responded.

"Come on, why limit yourself?" chided the gentleman, "You could volunteer your way around the world. People do it all the time...even lots of Japanese people do it," he said.

For some reason, I got the feeling he was making fun of me. But he continued on, telling me about how I should see as much of the world as possible. And as he continued, I began to realize he was being serious. In the west, clear warm reds were fading into the blues of nightfall.

"You're young. You're healthy. You're single. You don't need to worry about taking care of anyone but yourself yet. You'll never have a chance like this again your life."

I nodded, recalling a number of occassions over the previous few months in which people (especially in their late 40's and above) had told me basically the same thing.

The gentleman continued, his face growing serious, "There will always be people around you to push their expectations on you of how they think you should live your life," said the older gentleman, "But in the end, only you know what it is that you really want to do. The final decision as to what you do is yours and yours alone. Live your dreams. Not somebody else's."

By now the bus was beginning to wind its way into the deep green of the mountains at dusk. There were no other conversations on the bus. Everybody was listening to the gentleman.

"This is not to say that you can just go off and completely disregard the needs of others around you. You need to find balance between caring for those around you and pursuing your dreams," said the gentleman as he brought his hands together to form what looked like a time-out sign knocked on its side, "You know this, right, the Chinese character for hito (person)? This stroke cannot stand without the other, right? We are the same. We stand with the support of others...and in turn, we support others so that they can stand. That is what it is to be human. You can never forget this. Live your life for your dreams, but never forget this," said the gentleman, looking straight into my eyes.

Then his expression softened and he laughed.

"Maa, this is all coming from an old guy who's never been out of the country so you can make of this what you please... But I'm telling you this based on the 60 years of life I've lived so far. Make no mistake; life is filled with hardships and there are many times when things don't go as you plan... But in the end, you are going to regret the things that you didn't do far more than the things that you tried that didn't go well. As the old saying goes, 'Shippai wa seikou no moto (Failure is but a stepping stone to success).'"

The gentleman paused for a few moments and the bus bumped along in silence. Looking outside at the passing trees, I visualized my life in the form of the hito character, propped up and made possible by the caring and generosity of so many people. I felt profoundly grateful. And then I visualized my future stretching out before me, a vast landscape of possibility.

JAPAN (Koka) - The Art of Procrastinating and Memories

18 days left in my contract as Coordinator of International Relations for this town. 18 days left in which I have an apartment to live in. You would think that at this point, I would have my packing completed, plane tickets to Thailand reserved and fundamental itinerary through Asia sketched out to a fair degree of detail, right?

That is, of course, unless you actually know me.

Back in my college days, I raised the art of procrastination to a high art form. I was legendary. To this day, a plaque still hangs in the dean's office commerating my achievements in not completing my assignments on time.

One of my fondest memories from my college days is of heading to Dean Lieber's office one beautiful spring day during the last couple of weeks of my senior year (Heading to the dean's office to ask for extensions on my papers was a finals period ritual that I put myself through every semester after my freshman year).

I walked into the office with my best apologetic face on, feeling genuinely ashamed of myself and dreading Dean Lieber's look of "Not again."

Instead, Dean Lieber appeared at the door of his office with a big friendly smile on his face and said, "Hey Tatsu, I've been expecting you. Come in, have a seat." He then called out to his secretary in the reception area and said, "Go ahead and bring it on in."

The secretary entered the office a moment later with a big tray of cookies and two cups of juice.

"This is the last time you're ever going to come to my office asking for extensions...and you've been my best customer," explained Dean Lieber, "We've got to celebrate!"

I was thoroughly confused as to how to react -- on the one hand, happy for Dean Lieber's thoughtfulness and on other, wanting desperately to find a rock to crawl under and die. But good ole Dean Lieber was in a celebrating mood. Handing me a cup of juice and raising his own cup in the air, he proposed a toast:

"To the real world...where there are no extensions."

Anyway, I've got some boxes here to fill up with my crap. But before I do, here are some blast from the past links to some of the fruits of my procrastinating energies in college, compliments of the Wayback Machine (a cool site that takes periodic snapshots of the internet to preserve what would otherwise be lost to the wacky and ever changing nature of the world wide web).

* An essay on my hair I wrote when I should have been working on a paper analyzing the roots of the war in the Pacific during World War II.

* Quite possibly the funniest joke I have ever heard in my life. Oddly, I believe I may be the only person to have ever taken the time to sit down and write it all out (when I was supposed to be writing a paper on gender issues during the Civil War). It's best to actually hear it told, but if you take the time to read it carefully to the end, the punchline has close to the same impact. Be careful -- you may wet your pants.

JAPAN (Koka) - Capoeira for Kids

Today was the last class of the Capoeira for Kids class I've been teaching here in Koka for the past two years. I started the class when a number of my kids expressed the desire to learn following a visit from my Capoeira teacher who was kind enough to come to my schools to share about Brazil and teach the basics of Capoeira. At the time, I was really wanting to improve my skills and figured that one of the best ways to master something is by teaching it. I had no idea that the class would be as frustrating (at first) as it turned out to be. Nor could I foresee how rewarding it be in the end.

I was a terrible instructor at first and had a tough time getting the kids to settle down and practice. The class ended up being composed solely of 5th and 6th grade boys who, quite naturally, enjoyed running around, hitting each other, giving kancho (schoolkid finger enema prank) to each other, playing baseball and soccer with any objects in the room not nailed to the ground, farting in each other's faces and in general causing destruction and mayhem.

Yet, as time passed, I learned how to steer that energy towards practice and for their part, the boys really started to get into it. The major turning point came when we competed in the Gozare Goshuu dance competition (similar to the more well known Yosakoi dance competition) as part of the "Let's Aburahi" team. The boys worked really hard to master the maculele dance moves I taught them and in the end, we ended up taking 2nd place out of 20 teams (many composed solely of adults) gathered from throughout the Kansai region.

I will miss the boys tremendously and hope that when they get older, they will seek out and continue their capoeira training.

JAPAN - My History With Japan in a Nutshell

Ever since my family and I moved from Japan to the United States back when I was four, it had been a dream of mine to one day return to Japan. Ultimately, fifteen years would pass before I finally made it back to Japan as a US delegate to the Japan America Student Conference (JASC). The conference was held at locales throughout the country (Kyoto, Sendai, Hiroshima, Tokyo, etc.), and for me, it was everything my fragmentary memories and dreams had told me it would be - beautiful, mysterious, somehow soft and comforting.

My experience of Japan through JASC was just enough to whet my appetite for more. During the spring semester of my junior year in college, I found my way back to Japan, this time as a student in Tokyo. I quickly found that taken in a larger dose, things were not quite as idyllic as I had fancied... and by the end of it, I left feeling defeated, disillusioned and certainly not fond of Tokyo.

But I hate losing. I thus decided to come back again following graduation, determined to prove to myself that I could make it.

I returned to Japan as a participant in the Japan Exchange Teaching (JET) Programme, planning to stay in Japan for one, perhaps two years at tops...then I would move on either towards India or Brazil.

The JET Programme is sold to many incoming participants as something close to an extended homestay experience where you also happen to show up in junior high or high school classes and in doing so, help to "internationalize" Japan's youth. The importance of this teaching aspect I wholly underestimated...which led to a rocky beginning indeed.

I was placed by the powers that be in the most isolated and country posting of the prefecture of Shiga (located in western Honshu, sandwiched between Kyoto, Fukui, Gifu and Mie) -- a small town called Tsuchiyama.

The first year proved to be very trying. Midway through, I was about ready to throw in the towel and concede defeat. However, for some reason that eludes me to this day, I was offered the chance to move to the prefectural capital and serve as the counselor and administrative advocate for all JET participants in Shiga.

Much to my surprise, after the first ten months in Tsuchiyama, I finally started to get the hang of things, and over the next two years as the Prefectural Advisor in the capital, I was able to consolidate my language, cultural, teaching and administrative skills to the point that I felt like I had mastered the "Japan-thing" enough to move on.

Then I met M. And we started dating. And things got serious enough that I did not want to leave her behind. So when my three years on the JET Programme ended, I returned to the US with M, agreeing that I would return again with her to Japan less than half a year later.

I returned, and once again, I was in the Japanese countryside, teaching. But this time around, I knew what I was doing and I had a woman I loved and who loved me. And the countryside teaching gig was only a "temporary measure" to allow me to remain close to M until I could figure out how to take the next step and still have her in the picture.

Two years passed, and I still hadn't figured out the next step. And my relationship with M had slowly spiraled down to its death as we gradually came to realize that the limits of compromise we were each willing to concede on fundamental differences were not enough to allow things to continue.

Looking back on things, I can't help but wonder if part of what caused that spiral had to do with me not being able to figure out how to move forward and stay with her at the same time. I was floating, unsure of what I wanted to do next.

And yet, the truth was, all along I knew exactly what it was that I wanted to do.