My last time coming saw me enter the building for a Japanese junior high school, but I didn't attend it. This year I was attending a senior high school, going to lessons, obeying school rules (to a degree), and the most characteristic part of Japanese schools, attending after school club activities.
The club activity I joined this year was probably the most fun I had. I made the most friends there and they were the hardest to say goodbye to on Friday.
On countless occasions this year, together we have performed with these Japanese instruments, and on one occasion we performed with the local army base's mini orchestra.
With my host family constantly changing over the year, and my classes being spread out around the school more than the rest of my class, club was the most stable part of the trip. Every day after lessons I would go to the practice room, a fine room with a genkan (small area for leaving your shoes, a small entrance room, and a tatami room with a size of 40 tatami mats. Every day I would go there and we would practice for about 3-4 hours a day.
For the first half of the year I played the Koto (a long instrument like a zither, played by plucking it's 13 strings with 3 picks attached to your thumb, index and middle finger), and greatly enjoyed it. After the summer holidays (which was spent doing 5 hour practice days for most of it), I decided to try the Shamisen (like a banjo with 3 strings and played with a very large pick called a bachi). My teacher told me she's had a few foreigners join the club over the years but none had tried the Shamisen before, and to be sure it's a difficult instrument to get the hang of.
These people were the closest to a family I had in Japan, and saying goodbye to them, possibly forever, was very hard. I was moved greatly (and that is no small thing for me) when one of my club members told me "though you can't enter the prefectural competition in January, it will be as though you're there playing beside us."
I was gifted with a Koto to take home (damn expensive to actually send home), and whenever I play it, I hope to remember the year I spent with these people.
Though they aren't the only people I'm saying goodbye to tomorrow when I get on that plane. My host families, other school students, friends I met outside of school, other exchange students, I leave them all behind when I return home. In various school activities like the sports day and the culture festival, our class worked together and we had fun.
This year has taught me many things too. That may be said too much by people on long trips, but it's true. Mostly about language, not just Japanese, but also some English, and how language works. I got to be acted against for my appearance, nothing serious, just people moving to another seat and sometimes glaring at me a bit. But it's interesting to experience. (though it could also have been my hair...)
I completed some life goals too, I can make myself understood in most situations in Japanese, not very well but well enough. I also ate some largely controversial food that I've wanted to consume for some time. Though now I have to try it cooked not raw.
One of the hardest parts about Japanese culture is their constant attempt to tell you what you want to hear, which often means praise. I like praise to a certain extent, but I also feel it adds responsibility, responsibility that I don't want. For example when I play a phrase of music in my club well, the teacher praises how good it sounds and then I have an obligation to do as well ever after or cause disappointment, which I then proceed to do the next time I try. Or at least that's what goes through me head. Either way this year was full of moments of me thinking "don't say that, there's no way I can live up to that"...
So this year comes to a close, I am leaving this place. Yet it's not so sad, I have done too much here, seen so much, made so much, so much that I can't possibly not come back again sometime. So, assuming life continues, when money allows, I will come back. Maybe for a holiday, maybe for study, maybe to find a way to live and work. In any case I don't intend on staying in Australia forever.
Congratulations Japan, you've made another regular visitor whether you want me or not. Though... only as regular as money allows.
Goodbye Japan! 又ね (^o^)/
