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.