A couple years ago when I was in a frenzy for all things Japan (and has that ended?) I found and read-up a fine memoir of a young fellow who came abroad to Japan and studied a year at a Japanese boys’ school. The title of that work? Inside the Torii Gate: The Journal of an Exchange Student in Japan by Jonathan Juri Buchanan. I am sure the fellow has collected a few years and aged, but that book has been an inspiration to me. And since that work that book sprung to mind for me the other day. And why did the text come to mind? Lemme tell you.
On one of the earlier days in the week I was invited to attend an end of the school year event at our agricultural high school boys’ dormitory. The event was a mash dinner with the students, about forty in attendance plus teachers, students who were graduating high school. We had a dinner of shabu-shabu, simmer, pull, and swirl pork and veggies in a kelp broth-over-burner soup dish. We enjoyed some onigiri rice balls, too.
This experience, sitting in the school dorm cafeteria while students and teachers ate, while speeches were made, while laughs, and pokes, and jokes were exchanged all across the room -well I felt like I was living that text that I read so long ago. I remember those years ago thinking just how much I would have loved to have experienced a year abroad in a Japanese high school. And, well, here I was sitting, laughing, eating, and watching everything growing on around me experiencing it all firsthand myself.
It has been so very interesting to ‘be there’ and to see everything going on around me in high school, in my town, and in Japan. Somehow, it has almost been as if much of, if not all of, what I’ve wanted to experience in my coming to Japan has been coming true and happening every day. Wow, how lucky I am. And how lucky I feel that I have been! And hey, its not over yet.
I have however come to the recent decision that I will be returning back home to Canada after my contract year. It was not easy to resolve this matter so very halfway through the year in the midst of a busy work schedule but I have a plan and I am sticking to it. It will be back to school for me. As for the rest of the experience… well, we still have months to go. The time yet to be spent could be equivalent to something like travelling by ship across the pacific -for months at a time. Or traversing the desert on a faraway continent -for months at a time. And here we are. I still have months left on this more than fine experience to go.
Today is also setsubun here in Japan. It is a day that divides the seasons and marks the coming of Spring. So with today let me invite so many nice and full things to come my way -along with Spring. And we could use a little Spring up here in Hokkaido considering that we’ve still got so much snow all over!
Thanks for the read. There have been amounting observations and experiences fiddled in between the weeks, but again as time comes and goes, and as it all allows I will be sharing more and more of it with you, too.
Have a nice day.
And, go and do something to celebrate the coming of Spring.
My Spring-coming celebration will be had, too. But not before a smashing winter boarding trip to Niseko next weekend and you can bet there will be more to chatter about that.
But now if you’ll excuse me, I have a coffee to consume.
Ciao.
The Traveller's Typewriter 