The past two days have been a whirlwind of reunions, farewells, and hours upon hours of hanging out with friends.
Being a classic introvert, I get really worn out after a lot of socializing. This isn’t to say that I didn’t have any fun this past weekend—quite to the contrary, I had a lot of fun. But what I need right now is a few hours to spend by myself while I process through what’s happened in the last few days. Read on for the scoop.
Saturday began around 9:45 (yay for sleeping in!) for me. The weather was great, so I put on my skates and wandered around for two hours, exploring to the northwest of the church around the neighborhood of Tsudaka, where we used to have a Family Center until recently. The Saturday morning traffic was moderately heavy, but pedestrian traffic was light, so I had lots of room to myself on the sidewalks.
That evening we (meaning about a dozen of the mostly college-age guys and girls from Tsushima Christ Church and elsewhere) met at the Tsushima Family Center for a sort of Japanese food exhibition. Preparing and consuming meals in the Family Center is a great idea—I wish we had thought of that the first time I was here. Besides the great food, the best part is just being able to hang out and talk over dinner. On Saturday the menu was takoyaki (octopus fried in bite-size spheres of batter), okonomiyaki (an omelette mixed with vegetables and meat), and yakisoba (stir-fried soba noodles with vegetables). For the grammar enthusiasts out there, the yaki in all three of those names comes from the verb yaku, which means to grill or cook. And no, the octopus dish isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds, but if you ever want to try it, stay away from the frozen packages you might see in Asian markets—the flavor isn’t nearly as good.
The cause for celebration on Saturday was the arrival of Keiko, one of Jeremy’s friends and a former attender of Tsushima Christ Church who now lives in Kyushu (the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands). Keiko arrived late on Friday evening and was able to spend part of Saturday and nearly all of Sunday with us before she had to return to her home in Oita prefecture.
After dinner we had an informal worship session with Jeremy and Christina leading on guitar and piano, respectively. Pastor Goto has put together several binders with copies of two dozen or so worship songs (about half of which are in English as well as Japanese), so we each picked out songs until we had nearly gone through the entire set. Pastor Goto actually paid us a surprise visit at midnight, and we persuaded him to play a song that he had written (and no one else knew the melody to).
Sunday morning started early with Kids Adventure at 9:00, followed by the special Worship Celebration service at 10:30. With the entire congregation (plus several people whom Jeremy had invited to worship over the past week) all present at a single service, the size of the Family Center becomes a problem. By the time everyone arrived we were pretty much at standing room only, but it was encouraging to see the room filled to capacity on Sunday.
The highlights of Sunday morning included a brief but moving farewell message from Jeremy and the baptism of Mrs. Koide. Doctor Koide, the husband of Mrs. Koide, is a former English student of mine from the Saturday night Advanced English class at Megumi Church. That class was unfortunately cancelled after I left and I haven’t seen him since. He is also not a Christian, so he was not present on Sunday for his wife’s baptism.
After the service we (pretty much the same group as the previous evening) moved on to a series of activities as a sort of gigantic farewell party for Jeremy. This time we were joined by Chung, a former international student at Okayama University from Korea who is visiting Okayama for several days before going to Kobe. Chung was also part of the Thursday night college group during my first trip to Japan, so it was good to see a familiar face and share a few jokes. (Chung speaks fluent Japanese, but she uses the masculine forms, which is odd for a girl but matches her commanding, playfully dictatorial personality.)
Our list of stops, in order, was a kaitenzushi restaurant (an all-you-can-eat version of a sushi restaurant where the sushi orbits the restaurant on a conveyor belt), Mister Donut (naturally, a donut/pastry chain), the sports park for frisbee and badminton, McDonald’s, and then back to the Family Center for yet another collaborative meal. This time we prepared nabe. Nabe literally means “saucepan” in Japanese, but in the food sense it refers to a dish prepared by throwing practically anything into a broth and boiling it until it’s done (another name for this oden). The list of ingredients can include meat, vegetables such as leeks and daikon radish (which is milder than its smaller Western counterpart of the red variety), various mushrooms, and kon’yaku, which is a curious gelatin with a very subtle flavor.
After dinner about ten of us headed to Great Pumpkin, the same karaoke establishment we went to last week for Ashleigh’s farewell party. Most of us made it through to 3:00 in the morning the following day, despite not arriving for karaoke until 11:00 on Sunday evening. Since we went for the unlimited-time price, I think we ended up getting our money’s worth.
Jeremy was up early on Monday, but I took advantage of my lack of classes to get a couple more hours of sleep. At about 11:30 I skated out to the station to meet with the Sedlaceks and several others who had come to see Jeremy off. In all there were about fifteen of us who met him on the platform and said goodbye one last time as we waited for the 12:40 eastbound bullet train. Jeremy took that train to Osaka, where he caught another ride to Kansai International Airport for his flight to Chicago.
With that, the baton has been officially passed, and I’m now totally on my own as far as most of the English classes go. I’m also on my own in the apartment, which feels much bigger now that only one person’s belongings are here. I spent a couple of hours this afternoon looking through everything, reorganizing all of my things, cleaning, and rearranging furniture (where furniture means a small sofa, a table, and the television). In the middle of it all I got caught up in the fun of organizing and sorted all of the available clothes hangers by color and type before I arranged all of my clothes on them in color-separated groups. It probably took about twenty minutes longer than if I had just put the clothes on whatever hangers were available, but the closet looks much nicer this way.