Let us forget the lapse of time; let us forget the conflict of opinions. Let us make our appeal to the infinite, and take up our positions there- Chuang Tzu

I have had this day marked in my brain for so long. August 6th. My last day at school as a teacher. The last night spent in my apartment. The last meal I will eat at Nagomi, Chika’s café. Tomorrow I fly to Indonesia and my bag is packed, but it is too hot and too sunny out to be sad yet so I’ll just write about how I have spent the last four months.

I wrote my last newsletter on the eve of a big bike trip to the southernmost island in Japan, Kyushu. My normal biking partner Ben and I went for 10 days and it was quite the adventure. It was the perfect time to go with our school schedule and the weather couldn’t have been better. We were able to sleep outside every night without even setting up our tent, no bugs, just cold enough to be comfortable in big sleeping bag. We just put the rain tarp over us to keep us warm and slept under the stars, or street lamp or really anyplace that we could find for the night. I really love sleeping outside. I feel like I am getting away with something. I’m too chicken to steal anything or do other really illegal things, but sleeping outside in a place where I probably shouldn’t be sleeping is just bad enough that I feel like an outlaw. And it saves us a ton of money. It is good for everyone in the end. We were able to see all kinds of beautiful scenery as always, soak in the most wonderful hot springs bordering rivers and visit some beautiful old traditional towns. After enjoying the main island for a week, we were able to take a couple day trip by boat to a very remote island called Yakushima which is home to the oldest trees in Japan and is just all around beautiful also. One of the scariest moments of the trip was when a group of monkeys surrounded us as we were eating, taking in the view. I have no real love for monkeys and find them generally disagreeable beings, and this was no exception. We had no choice but to try and pick up speed and hope that they would get out of our way as we bolted through the group blocking the road. We flew through the group, past the grunt and the lunging bodies of the shameless island monkeys and on to more beautiful views of the sea and to encounters with much more peaceful mini island deer who had no fear of humans and were quite kind with us. Damn monkeys. Another nice moment was arriving at a hot spring right on the ocean’s edge that is only accessible during low tide. You sit in one of three small pools that are carved out of the seaside rocks and take in the sounds of gentle waves and ocean scenery. We were very lucky to arrive with plenty of time before the tide came back in to soak our tired bodies before retiring to our waterfall- side “camp” site, again clearly marked “no camping”.

During the spring time I was able to explore performing with my guitar and presenting my songs to audiences. I have been writing songs ever since I came to Japan but I never really got the chance to perform them before I met a friend named Tetsuya. He is a guitar player and singer song writer who does local gigs around the Chiba/Tokyo area. We arranged for him to give a concert at Chika’s cafe and I coyly arranged for myself to be his opening act. Since then, anytime he plays a gig at a local café he has asked me to play a couple of songs before he comes on. Most nights it is literally Chika, her mother, and three or four other attendees but the space is really cozy and it is a great opportunity to practice playing live in front of people with little stress included. Because of it I have met some really interesting people and was even invited to play at a local festival. The festival was very big but the stage that us “singer/songwriters from the kamagaya area” performed at was a bit hidden and out of the way. Always I am very grateful for the chance to play my songs and have gotten a little bit less nervous and shy about showing the world my original work. Tetsuya even graciously offered to record some of my music for me. He brought some recording equipment to Nagomi and we spent an afternoon recording 6 or 7 songs. It was fun because Nagomi is right next to a train station with a train crossing which rings every 10 minutes so we had to time the recording to start and end while the bells weren’t sounding which didn’t always work. It was the first time singing most of the songs all the way through and I only had time to record one take of each song so I imagine it isn’t very good but it was a great experience none the less. He has yet to give me the edited version yet so I have no idea actually how it sounds.

In May Chika and I took our last big trip here in Japan to an island on the other side of Japan called Sado. We took the always impressive bullet train and ferry to get there and then spent the next 3 days camping and taking buses around the island. The island had the cheapest fish I have ever seen in Japan and luckily we brought a little camping stove with us, so every night as the sun was setting we would get out our bottle of wine and fry up some fish as the stars came up over the beautiful craggy rock coast. On our way home we stopped in the town where all of Chika’s family comes from in Niigata prefecture. By May it was already quite hot in Chiba but Chika’s mother assured me there would still be snow in Matsuyama where they are all from. I didn’t believe her until I was standing on top of 3 feet of snow in a mountain forest. We made friends with the local noodle shop owners and they ended up driving us around to see some sights. Later Chika got her first taste of hitch hiking which saved us a 2 hour walk back to town. As always we met some really interesting, kind and generous people and had a great vacation.

Saying good bye and getting ready to move out has taken up the majority of the past month here. Every circle in my life wanted to say good bye in their own special way which led to lots of memorable days and nights. My school has four foreign English teachers and three of us are leaving at the same time. I individually had to say goodbye to every class and eventually to the entire school at a school assembly in the gymnasium. I brought my guitar along and with another ALT plucking a bass line on his cello three of us sang “All you need is love” by the Beatles. Even better than that though was when the same bass line plucking man played a beautiful Bach piece on his cello for his good bye. He played alone with no accompaniment and the 1000 people in audience were perfectly silent. I was on stage waiting to sing our song and it was the perfect perspective to look out and see all the people who have been such a big part of my life for the past three years. It was very nice background music as well. Lots of students and teachers went out of their way to write me a little note and/or give me a little handmade something. One of my favorite goodbye parties was a river cruise that some of my adult private students arranged for us to take. Apparently they have friends in high places because on our ship were three real life geishas including Japan’s one and only man geisha who dresses just like a normal woman geisha only has a penis as well.

Moving out was quite the hassle because the city where I live has a very strict garbage/recycling system. I could only throw certain things away on certain days and since I am flying back to America I had to condense three years of craft/music/bike/camp/literature things into two suitcases. Luckily I am able to keep some things at Chika’s home for further sorting and I was able to give many things to friends to lighten the load. I didn’t have access to a car during the whole time so I moved everything by bike and train. It made for some very entertaining scenes I am sure. The recycle shop man and I grew very close during the past month and he is now blessed with many of same things I bought from there in the first place. He had quite the laugh when I showed up carrying an entire table on top of my bicycle, short shorts and straw hat to boot.

In June of this year my friend Ezra and I took a Japanese proficiency test. We both hadn’t taken a test since more than three years ago during university so it was a very interesting experience studying again. I started studying quite early and improved quite a bit at Japanese because of my hours spent hunched over kanji books. We won’t get the results until later this month and I really gain nothing by passing the test other than bragging rights but it was a great impetus to study and finally learn a lot of things I should have already known. I want to study for the next level once I am settled down somewhere again and in the meantime I have started to read my first Japanese comic. I still have to look up a lot of words but it is a very rewarding thing to be able to read something written for Japanese speakers and laugh at the appropriate times and more or less follow the story. Someday I hope to be able to read a real book written for people over the age of 12, but for the moment “Dragonball” is pretty darn interesting.

While I am on the subject of Ezra and Japan, right before the real madness of moving out took place, Ezra and I took at week long bike trip to the northernmost big city on the main island of Japan, Aomori and cycled down over the course of the week to a city a couple hundred kilometers north of where I live, Sendai. In Aomori we visited the “Nebuta” festival museum which was so fascinating. I knew nothing of this festival before planning for this trip, but every year in Aomori, groups of people make the most incredible floats, bang on enormous drums and dance around for a couple of days in early August. The floats are hard to describe but artists basically take wire and sculpt some old Japanese mythological scene, of a dragon fighting a guy or something similar, and then cover the wire with white paper which they later paint with dazzling colors. They afterwards put lights inside the sculptures to illuminate the whole float from the inside out. At the museum they had 5 on display but during the actual festival 30-40 of them are paraded around the city. It was really breathtaking to see what someone can do with some paper and wire and lots of time. After a tire failure early in the trip in the mountains we were forced to take a bus to the coast which we later followed south for the remainder of our trip. This is the part of Japan that was devastated in 2011 by a huge tsunami and since then they have spent the last 4 years clearing away debris and now they are in the process of rebuilding everything, everywhere. We had no other choice but to stay on a major highway for most of the trip and I have never seen construction on such a large scale before. In every low laying town they are in the process of building huge sea walls (which don’t seem high enough to really protect against anything but that is just my own opinion), and moving the entire road much farther west and into the mountains. Because of this, every morning starting at 8 in the morning we spent the entire day being passed by enormous truck after truck carrying full loads of dirt from one place to another. It was loud, it was dirty, it was tiring but we kicked butt. We figured out very early that early morning was absolutely the best time to bike because it wasn’t so hot and because the construction hadn’t started yet so every morning we set the alarm for 4:00AM and we had normally done 30-40km before we ate our breakfast. We again slept in a tent every night and at each stage of the trip when we needed to meet someone nice to boost our spirits, and every time we needed to take a bath to get the day’s dirt and sweat off, we were met with exactly what we were looking for. One family at a camp ground, which included mom, dad and four of the most adorable little girls prepared a whole meal for us and then proceeded to cook us breakfast before we took off in the morning the next day. It was the first time Ezra and I have taken a trip just the two of us and it was so great to get to know him better and to take on such an adventure.

Tomorrow morning I am off on a three week journey with Ben and Ezra to Indonesia. We will all head out to different part of the US and eventually the world after leaving Japan so this is our last hoorah before saying goodbye to one another. We have absolutely nothing planned besides a general idea of wanting to surf, scuba dive, eat good food and get sick as little as possible so I am sure it will be quite the voyage no matter what happens. Afterwards I come back to Japan for one last week before returning to Wisconsin on September 6th and a new life in America and eventually New Zealand. Like I said before I am moved out of my apartment this morning which means I will be staying at Chika’s home with her family for the first time ever starting tonight and then later on for a whole week after returning from Indonesia. It will be a very fun chance to see the inner workings of a Japanese household and to spend time with a family that I really love. Thank you all for reading these journals and I am sure once I get settled into New Zealand you will all get some more of these musing coming your way.

Over and out and on the road again,

James