Marching On and almost at max health!! Yatta!

March 15th:
Went to Koshino for a small assembly to get a present from the sannensei kids.

March 16th:
Koshino Graduation day!:

This was an interesting day for me. I brought along a former JET who taught my graduating class the year before me. She crashed at my house the night before and wanted to surprise everyone at the school. This was all well and good, however the problem with this was that all the attention and respect that would have been afforded to me during my time there managed to get usurped because she was an old friend to the staff and could speak fluent Japanese. Needless to say for the whole of the day I felt rather low. The ceremony was nice (long) but nice and I managed to hold back the tears. Once graduation was over it was time to wait outside and meet the graduation class for pictures and conversation and so on. I took as many pictures as I could with my kids and when my girl Honoka gave me flowers I lost it. I cried, she cried and we hugged each other. I truly do love that girl, and I truly loved those students. I can only hope that the children I teach after this upcoming spring break will be nearly as fun and easy to love as them. After all the graduates cleared out we went back into the school with the intention to leave for the day. However unlike Su thought we had to stay. I was told by her not to bring my bento because we traditionally left after graduation so I had no food. Su was told the same thing and yet the school magically had a bento made ready for her. So in the end she ate, I didn’t and she didn’t even notice I had nothing to eat so I went hungry for the day until we were allowed to leave at four in the afternoon. Needless to say by the time I could eat I was past the hunger stage. Su packed her things and I took her to the train station so she could head off to another friends home. I felt like crap. Regardless however I returned home and freshened up for the Enkai at Auqa hotel at six.

Time for Enkai!
It was far more formal then other Enkais that I have been to, if only because we had chairs and tables to sit at instead of tatami rooms and low tables. As far as Enkai’s are concerned however I prefer the tatami room parties better. Either way I didn’t speak all that much, and a lot of the time I wasn’t really sure of what was going on. However towards the end when it was time to pour drinks for others, I talked a bit more to people and I began to feel better about my day. The best time however was when we went to a karaoke bar and had drinks and sang. I was far more acknowledge there and a teacher even told me that he wants to speak English with me because he is trying to learn. By the end of the night ( and the judo teacher here is soo cool and a good harmonica player) I felt good enough to say the day wasn’t a total loss and returned home. Had no time to just wonder about and stay up late since I had work the following morning.

March 17th:
After work around eight o’clock I met up with Brian, Brett, Lawrence, Zack (his gf), Saiyuri, Yuki, Rie and her friend for a St. Patrick’s day drink and meal( the karage was delicious!). Most all of us wore green and it was a good feeling. We talked and had some laughs. Took a few pictures and once we were done with one bar and Yuki was totally wasted we went to the neighboring bar ( MoMo bar) and had a few more drinks there. We all had a good night, and it was also the second night in a row where I was out drinking on a weeknight when I had work the following day. However being of Irish blood myself it would be truly wrong for me not to have a Guinness and some drinks on St. Patty’s day. So it was all good!

March 18th:
Chuo Elementary school Graduation: Yet, another set of my kids are going off away from me. I quite adored these kids as well. The ceremony was nice and at the end I waited outside and took pictures and video of the kids. A few of my kids who are particularly found of me, asked me to get into pictures with them and gave me high-fives and such. I told them I’d miss them and they told me they loved me!. Cool thing is I will probably be able to teach a few of them as they are moving to middle school and I teach at one of the two junior high schools that Chuo kids filter into. Saying farewell to all my students proved to be far harder then I’d ever imagined it to be.

March 19th:
Friday and the day before Sumo I met up with Hilda and Evelyn in Toyama to hang out, eat Mexican and karaoke. It’s Evelyn’s last week or so in Japan before she leaves back to Brazil for good. I’m going to miss her. She is a really nice girl. So we all went to Mexican where I met up with all my other Brazilian friends and a few people I didn’t know. I ate greedily and too much but the food was really good. Then Karaoke time happened, and we had a good time together. The two Japanese girls that I met for the first time that night were really cute and nice. One was very bold and quite westernized which made me like her even more. I found out later on that she was thirty one years old and I cursed the Japanese stay young forever jean. It truly isn’t fair!! Once I said good bye to everyone for the night, and gave extra hugs to Evelyn I crashed at Vannie’s for the night for what was to be a good weekend!