想い出は遠くの日々

Well, this weekend was nothing but lethergy. I got this nasty headache which I can’t find the reason… really, since I had such a high number of drink parties last month, this month is prohibition month for me. In 3 days, I can resume wines and spirits once again.

My classes are going well… though they are a bit lacklustre in terms of challenge. Nothing compared to my last winter term which I distinctly remember at this time last year, I was sitting with my group in MC3006 hacking away at the operating systems project.

To say the least, it has been almost 4 weeks back in Canada, but I still have this lingering ‘empty’ feeling… I am missing Japan; very much. Frankly, I am missing the people who have supported the very vulnerable self that I was in the last 8 months. However, I am very glad that I have support back here in Waterloo but I can’t seem to shake off this unusual feeling. I wonder how the other CJP students are handling this? Or if they’re experiencing this at all?

I guess I will spend a bit more time debriefing now. I’ll cover another aspect of my life in Japan in retrospect. Time to dig up some pictures from the ‘final days of Japan’ folder.

Some of you may question how did I survived in a society where very few people speak my native language. To say the least, there was only one way to survive, by learning Japanese, crash-course style. I don’t think my boss knows this, he’s probably wondering how I was actually improving my Japanese… Okamoto-san is probably recalling the time I asked where I could find Japanese lessons, as he is reading this. I am certainly picking up quite a lot of Japanese from my boss and coworkers but everyone had their own work to do. The truth is, I had a volunteer Japanese tutor who helped me work with learning everyday Japanese (or as I commonly put it, 毎日日本語). I was originally looking at the Musashino International Association for Japanese classes, but by June, their Japanese classes have already started and the next set is sometime in October… too late for Billy. So I ended up at MISHOP (Mitaka International Society for Hospitality) to find a Japanese tutor. I guess after joining, everything else was history…

Let me spend a bit of time to introduce my tutor… I owe her a lot of gratitude for helping me with my critical Japanese skills. Her name is Kunimoto-san (with utmost respect) and I’ve known her since June of last year.

Every Monday after work, I would bus off to MISHOP office near Mitaka station for my tutoring session… usually around 6:30pm (my colleagues can now put all the pieces together on why I always leave later on Mondays :p). My tutoring session involves having me talking about what happened recently in my life and trying to grasp new words to describe my experience. Usually, the tutoring session goes in this order:

1. I talk about how invincible I was playing Go on the weekend. And/or my long distance travelling in Japan.
2. I ask how was Kunimoto-san’s weekend. Kunimoto-san talks about how she was doing in tennis.
3. Followed by my comment on how terrible I am at tennis and how I’m a home-run batter and ball-loser at the company.

Thankfully, Kunimoto-san could speak a bit of English which is a big saving grace… I think the learning is going both ways… I tend to translate English words to Japanese in my electronic dictionary where I ask for meaning confirmation and Kunimoto-san learns more English vocab out of this. Nonetheless, this went on for about a good half year or so… it was nice that I picked up many new Japanese words, but the real gem that I got was confidence in speaking Japanese.

So, Kunimoto-san, I think you’re checking my website at work… I want to take this opportunity to thank you again. You probably don’t know this, but this made a huge difference in my life in Japan.

I’ve just realized I haven’t updated my blog in 13 days. Yikes!

I better get cracking… more on this tonight.

I don’t think I have covered my last days in Japan properly yet. I will spend this time to recall what occured on my last day at NTT. Here goes from memory…

My superiors let me use the morning to run my final errands before departing from Japan. Mainly, they were:
– withdrawing all my Japanese yen from the bank and closing the account
– mail my futon back to Canada

I think my boss, Okamoto-san, was quite concerned whether I could pull these errands off. I assured him that of all the challenges I faced in the last 7 months, this would be one of easiest ones to accomplish. As a final competancy test of adapting to Japanese society, I HAD to do all of these activities solo, for my own sake. Okamoto-san made sure I had his number just in case… (-__-”)

My first stop of the morning was my local Mizuho bank branch where I told the reception guy I wanted to close my account. After some simple Japanese, Katakana-ized English, and hand gestures, he gave me a wait number. 45 minutes later, my number was called… another 15 minutes later, I had all the money I had in Japan in my possession.

The next stop was the post office… I hauled my giant futon out of my room and sealed it back into the bag that it came in 7 months ago. I wasn’t about to haul this big item all the way to the post office, so I got a hold of a local taxi to drive me and my futon there. At the post office, I explained to the mail guy that I wanted to mail my futon to Canada by ship… the other people at the post office watched in bewilderment as my giant futon package was placed on a miniature scale used for letters.

With the errands done, it was almost lunch so I had to quickly haul myself back to the office… thinking back, I should have taken some pictures of my morning errands.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful… clearing my desk, saying many thank yous to different people, transferring last bits of knowledge back to the team…

Then came the year-end and my farewell party… as with all parties with my colleagues, it is of the free-flowing-drink format, as my old boss Shiraga-san puts it. Also something to note: I promised my team that for my farewell party I will down at 12 drinks or bust… cause the intern is diehard (なかなか死なない).

1 farewell speech and 11 drinks later, the farewell party was over. Pictures will do the talking here.

Then came the second party… my boss was worried that I won’t wake up the next day for the airport. I assured him that this was a non-issue… 12 drinks or bust. The 12th drink later…

The aftermath wasn’t so bad… I was able to get back without falling into the rail tracks and not passing out on the train (another story later).

The next day, I woke up early to clean my room… several bags of separated garbage later, my boss Okamoto-san, my colleague Suzuki-san, and my group leader Mizuno-san came and picked me up.

On the way there, I remembered what has happened in the last 7 months… how far I have come to see this conclusion…

This is why my tears flowed.

I’ll blog more in the morning… Hong Kong and its corresponding pictures should be the next post.

I was a bit distraught in the last week or so. With the move into Waterloo just 3 days after I arrived back in Canada, I am pretty darn sure I was not prepared for what laid ahead. Week one in Waterloo was a train wreak in slow motion… I couldn’t focus on anything properly. The good thing is that no severe mistakes were made that week and I’ve finally collected my marbles this week.

For now, it is snowing in Waterloo. For the first time in weeks, I truly feel like I am back in Canada.