April 1st 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 1st.
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 26th 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!
