In three days this whole JET adventure will be over.  I’ve spent the last week at work doing basically what I did a year ago - absolutely nothing school related.  Well, I have been e-mailing my successor about the circumstances into which he’ll be entering in another 10 days.  And I guess I’ve been doing as the other teachers do (”when in Rome . . .”) and taking cat naps at my desk twice daily.  Today the climbing club had it’s first and last official outdoor climb of my tenure.  No gruesome deaths, I’m happy to say, even though we’re supposedly in the middle of a typhoon.

The visit of my friends (James and Mike) from back home went well, although they spent far more money than they imagined (mostly on beer).  Some of their adventures included all-nighters in Osaka and Tokyo, two incredible days in Kyoto, a bitter Australian ex-pat and passing out on busy train platforms in Nara, climbing all the way to the top of Fushimi Inari to find the secret “lit-up” gate (a first for me too), meeting a bunch of my Japanese friends and eating lots of convenience store food and McDonalds.  I think they had an amazing time and really got to see what Japan and my life here is like.  As so few people from back home have been here, it really meant a lot to me and will help in my transition back to American culture.  And in this time of uncertainty and change, it was nice to not be so alone.  James, I’m glad you came ya knucklehead, and Mike, we are blood.  Y’all make me miss the Bean.  See you in two weeks.

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Today was the last day I will see the students at Toban High School, probably for the rest of my life. The atmosphere resembles that of when I arrived almost exactly one year ago - the rice fields are emerald, the heat is cloying, the house is smelly and the drivers are still bad. I’ve spent the last month in a flurry of activity and will spend the next ten days before leaving for Bali in an even greater rush. After one year I have an array of feelings, but the one that’s most different from when I arrived is that I am tired. I think a combination of the pace of life in Japan and yet being so static here in Kakogawa has drained my sense of adventure and excitement. As hard as it is to do so, it’s time to move on.

Both Japanese people and my friends in other countries often comment that “you love Japan”. At this point it’s not possible for me to either refute or comply with this assessment, and perhaps it never will be. Let me just impart the polar opposites of my experience, what I love and what I hate about Japan. Like a giant iceberg that spans the seas, only arising at one home and another, this is only the tip, and the majority of how I feel lies somewhere beneath the surface. If global warming continues as planned, they’ll be visible soon enough. The following diatribe is intended to be both serious and not, as this represents my experience, so please do not be offended. Let me start with what I hate.

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Not much to report, other than that I saw a couple good movies this weekend, Adaptation and 25th Hour, both directed by Spikes.  Also saw Episode III which predictably sucked, although not as much as the previous two disasters.  This week a good friend from home, Mike, is coming to Japan.  Should be pretty crazy.  Stay tuned for more info.

I’ve just spent the last 2 hours reading one of the most interesting and relevant discussions of racism I’ve seen in a while, and certainly greater than any Diversity Day at Trinity could have produced.  It’s completely uncensored, often offensive and WAY too long, but there are many, many valid and interesting points of view.  While it’s arguable that race discussions have been done to death already, I think it’s greatly significant that the largest pop-cultural-political movement of this year, the Live-8 concerts, say very little about actual race relations and the status of class differences in the world today.  After all, how many of those performers are actually from Africa?

Anyway, check out the article over at Viceland.  Make sure you read the follow-up interview with author Jim Goad and spend at least 20-30 minutes on the comments (they start from the bottom up).

Well I nearly forgot that today is Independence Day in the US.  It’s been raining cats and dogs the past three days, and Mondays are just so crappy that it was pretty easy to forget.  This year was particularly laden with things not red, white and blue related, but then again my body is in Japan and my heart has floated off somewhere unknowable as well.

When I was a child July 4th meant sailing and fireworks on the Cape, Grandma asking innumerable times whether I’d like some fruit, seeing my cousins and feeling happy.  The simplicity of childhood is an addicting attraction - we have no responsibilities, we know no injustice or prejudice, we know no heartbreak.  Like many things in life, we only appreciate it when it’s gone.  When I was in high school July 4th meant lighting fire crackers and bottle rockets and driving out to Walden pond after midnight for skinny dipping.  It was the end of school and the freedom of summer had begun.  When I came home from Japan as a student I watched the NYC fireworks display with my family from the 29th floor of the Empire State Building - truly a bizarre transition after three months in the maze of Tokyo.

As I’ve gotten older July 4 has become a bit more serious.  We take time on this day to reflect on the history of the United States and it’s vastly varying history, from prosecuted Europeans just trying to escape tyranny, to the conquering and mass murder of the native Americans, to the throwing off of colonial shackles in 1776 and unification after the Civil War.  We look at this history and realize how young the US still is, how many freedoms have only been achieved within the last 50 years, even ten years.  And hopefully, we realize that we are still in fits and starts, we are still many years away from actual achievement, and that the rest of the world needs our help as a leader and a model, which we are still far from being.  Today I read articles about the “Democratic Republic of Congo” and its many, many woes, the G-8 meetings and Bush’s War of the Worlds, the border problems in Southern California and the US epidemic of obesity.  It’s not a pretty picture, any of it.  So don’t flip a burger without realizing what you’re eating, don’t shoot off any roman candles without remembering that people are dying in war every second, don’t slug that Cuervo without knowing that injustices are being done in your name and with your money and without your consent.  Think about where we are now, two-hundred and twenty-nine years later, and if things are really worth celebrating.  I propose a moment of silence instead.

In other news, I am working on editing probably my final series of photographs from this year.  After much sweat, blood, headaches and lack of sleep I was able to produce 10 matted black and white prints for a display of JET art in Kobe.  While the show turned out to be more of a glorified “show and tell” than any kind of serious exhibit, I was happy that I got something artistically related done. Three people have been visiting from the US and have promptly gotten themselves in lots of trouble - one got arrested on a shoplifting charge (hair gel from a convenience store) and will probably spend the rest of his life in a Japanese jail (”it is very bad thing he did”) and the other two lost their rented bicycles and have been living on ramen for two weeks.

I still do not know what the next six months hold but some things have become clearer of late.  I’ll be returning to the US on August 14th, after a week or so of traveling somewhere- right now it’s looking like Bali.  Nothing like a sunny solo adventure to clear the cobwebs of your soul.  If you want any amazing or cute Japanese things, now would be the time to start asking.