Goodbye Nishinomiya

We have joked for months that we would be leaving Japan on July 18 right after closing ceremonies at Takasu. When I signed the contract with Nishinomiya, they made it clear that with my 21 days of sick/vacation time, I could not take time off during opening or closing ceremonies. The afternoon of July 18, however, was open for us to leave. I had not returned home during the past year; I was ready to go home.

I sailed through closing ceremonies at Takasu. Back in March, when I gave my goodbye speech at Kawaragi I looked up and made eye contact with kids in the audience, then Jessie showed up in the back of the Gym for her first and only visit to my school and I became emotional. Because it seems that Chrissy lives to laugh at me, I had to mark each of the difficult times with a note to her. After closing ceremony at Takasu I checked off each emotional hurdle with a quick text message to Chrissy on my AU phone:

“1 speech-0 tears!”

“Goodbye to 9 classes 1 by 1. No tears! My voice got high n tight, but that’s it!”

“Teacher speech done. No tears! RU proud? Kobe @ 5:30.”

You wouldn’t realize the heck she has put me through since seeing me say goodbye to Kawaragi. The thing is, Takasu didn’t have anyone like Katsumoto, someone who went well out of their way to make me and Chrissy feel at home. The kids were just as good, in fact they were warmer and friendlier than the kids at Kawaragi, even more than I had expected, but I hadn’t had the time to really get to know many of them.

At 5:30 that night, we met Katsumoto, his wife, Shigeko and a family friend at Spaghetti Factory in the harbor of Kobe. During our farewell feast we laughed and planned for Katsumoto to come over early in the morning to pick up some plants and things that we no longer needed. It is amazing how much information we could share with each other even through the gaping language barrier.

The joke about leaving on the afternoon of the 18th wasn’t very funny as Chrissy and I continued to pack into the wee hours of the 19th. It was really just deciding what to throw out and what to keep and what bag to put it in, but it took all night long.



The next morning at 7:20, Katsumoto came to our door with his entire family. We gave Maho my American-style sling backpack. It was worn, but she was very excited when she realized that I wanted to give it to her. We gave her and Shota our collection of scratched up sunglasses. Whenever I would see Shota, he would want to put on a pair of my sunglasses, he seemed to identify the sunglasses with my American-ness.



The handlers from Sogo Center also arrived early. Sakurai came to take Claudia off to the Shinkansen for her trip to Tokyo. Shimizu and Maeda came for Chrissy and me. The small cars were just large enough for the luggage and us.

Traffic was a beast all of the way to Sannomiya. We had never been there by car so the trip was interesting. Even though it took us nearly an hour to get there, we were amazed at how close the center of Kobe was to our home.

Shimizu and Maeda helped us with our luggage onto the bus and they stayed on the curb to wave goodbye to us as our bus pulled away. They really wanted to make sure that we left the country. Once on the bus, Chrissy began asking me if I felt strange leaving Japan for the last time. I told her, “No it doesn’t”, at least it didn’t then.