The End of an Era

April 1^st in Japan will mark the end of the Heisei era as the current emperor will abdicate and pass control to his son.  It will also mark the end of the era of me working for my suck ass company, as they decided to not renew my visa and are flying me home on that exact same day.  I was originally scheduled to stay for another month to help train the new teachers, but inexplicably the plan changed after they had already started the paperwork with immigration.  My best guess is that they don’t want to have the liability of being my visa sponsor for 11 months after I leave Hellos and potentially wreak havoc in Japan.  Oh well, my work is pretty much done here.   Many of my coworkers share this sentiment as six Americans and two Japanese are leaving next month.  They are shipping in four brand new Americans to take our places, and three of them will arrive over spring break, so they’ll teach the first day of the school year without ever having sat in on a class.  Good luck kiddos!

The only big news I have is that I ran an Ekiden last month!  Our team of seven runners finished the 44 kilometer course in an unimpressive time that currently escapes my recollection.  I ran a cold, windy 9.3km leg in 37:03, which was exactly what I expected.  Amazingly my club fielded two teams, and the seventh stage runner of the second team was also named Michael.  We had three hours to sit by the side of the road while waiting for our team to arrive, so I got to know him a little.  He’s a lawyer with a wife and kids that just moved to Japan and even more amazingly he has a super similar running background to me.  In the race he beat me by just 7 seconds!  I chopped off his head with my Katana to avoid the shame.  After the race we went to a bath and then an all you can eat restaurant where we got pretty hammered at 3pm.  Fortunately it was only a mile from my house as the guy who drove me was plastered and have to leave his car there.  It was a fun experience I haven’t had in a long time, and has motivated me to train more and run less slow-ass times.  I’ve actually been running almost every day since fall, and have built back up to where I can jog 8 to 10 miles on Saturday and feel fine on Sunday.  Now I somehow need to figure out how to do that at 7 minute mile pace instead of 9…

So tomorrow starts my last week of teaching, then I have a week to hang out before the 1^st.  The last couple of months I’ve been enjoying teaching more than ever before, probably because I’ve flogged the resistance out of most of my trouble makers.  I’ve especially had fun with my first graders, who in the past had always been exhausting.  I’ll miss them and I’ll miss the coworkers that have slowly warmed up to me as I’ve shaken off my reputation for being bitter and burned out after last year.  On the other hand some teachers have been less than friendly all year, so now seems like a good time to leave.

As for my last week, I’ll say goodbye to my friends that are leaving on the 26^th and then go explore for a few days, probably on a small island somewhere.  Then pack up and head home!  See you soon and let me know if anyone needs a good English teacher in Minnesota!

Vietnam!

A few words of update before I disappear back into the mysterious orient for a few more months!  Since my last post I enjoyed a wonderful white and slightly above freezing Christmas in Minnesota and then got promptly back to work in Japan.  2019 is off to a smooth start with no major changes to my classes or work schedule.  In case you were wondering I was back for a total of three weeks before I went on vacation again!  Phew, I was getting worried about burn out there.  This week I took a short trip to Vietnam with two friends from work (Sam and Emily the same two as Malaysia in September).  It was supposed to be four days, but we applied for the visas too late and it wound up being only three.  We got $250 tickets out of Osaka for an early Monday flight, so we took the train three hours on Sunday and stayed in a little town to the airport.  Then after getting up at 6 on Monday we were denied boarding due to lack of visas and had to spend another 24 hours in Osaka.  Who knew you needed a visa to visit counties the United States formerly bombed?  So on Monday we went back into Osaka and spent the day visiting the instant noodle museum.  It was like Asia’s version of the Spam Museum!  Then three trains back to small airport town, get up at six, make the flight by five minutes due to visa printing difficulties, blah blah blah.  Anyhow, we got to Hanoi at 1pm, messed around with immigration for an hour, took an uber for an hour, checked into the air BNB and then literally ran a mile to the start of our 5pm food tour.  Running through the old quarter of Hanoi was probably the most dangerous thing I’ve done since trying to drive a moped in Indonesia in 2010.  Very invigorating.  Hanoi has roughly 100 pedestrians, 200 street vendors, 400 mopeds and one square meter of open space per block.  Also no stop lights of traffic laws.  You gotta just stop thinking and go baby! 

So the first night I had like three dinners of bomb ass Vietnamese street food like Pho and Banh Mi.  I also learned that Hanoi is super touristy with plenty of English speakers and also that Vietnam is like totally communist but also totally capitalist.  Our 27 year old tour guide was totally stoked about Ho Chi Minh, Lennon and one party elections, but also loved Americans and accepted visa.  So you wind up with a country with free health care and no homeless people or beggars, but Americans can go anywhere, say anything and even pay with US dollars.  No surprise it’s one of the fastest growing economies.  Anyhow that’s just a first impression, I don’t really know anything.

Anyhow, the second day we explored on foot (literally one foot as we were hopping over squatting-sidewalk-coffee-drinkers all day) and checked out a couple of temples and a water puppet show.  If you want to know what entertainment looked like in an 11^th century rice field I recommend this!  We also caught a show at a Jazz club.  The next day we did an art museum and tried to check out Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, which sadly closes at 11am.  We wrapped up with the 65 story Lotte tower, where we watched the sun set through the hazy  polluted sky. Then we caught a red eye home followed by a miserable and heavily delayed 4 hour train ride home.

Overall it was a crazy but great trip.  The air BNB was gorgeous, almost like a hotel room, but tucked in skinny four story building on a back alley.  The weather was 60-70 degrees the whole trip, but unfortunately very hazy and polluted.  If I could do it again I’d get my visa on time and spend a night or two outside the big city.  The people were so friendly I don’t think it would be a problem, even with zero Vietnamese.

So I’m back now, and getting ready for a 9am free lesson tomorrow (Sunday).  Take care and keep in touch!