Farewelling Japan

As you know, we're both settling in to our new life here in the UAE, but in all the excitement and frustration of starting up here, we haven't had the chance to tell you about our last few days in Japan.

Liz lived in Japan for four years; I lived there for seven. That's a long time, and in that time we obviously formed many good friendships. It was hard to leave. It was the right thing to do, and we both knew that, but it was still hard to actually pack up, say goodbye to everyone and leave.

A week or two before we left Japan, we reunited with my former Iwataki English Conversation Group. This is the group that I used to meet up with every month for dinner, drinks and English conversation. Really nice people. Liz used to come along to most of the dinners as well, so everyone loved Liz, and in fact when Liz and I got engaged this group threw an engagement party for us. We l0ve them. So it was really nice to meet up with everyone again in our old regular place. We had a great night, filled with fun and laughter, though it was hard to say goodbye at the end of the night.
Also a short time before we moved out, it came time to say goodbye to my oldest friend in Japan - Toru. Toru and I have been close friends since the very beginning. Toru was supposed to be a groomsman at our wedding, but his wife Kana was having a baby at the time, so he couldn't make it. I owe him so much, and we've done some pretty crazy things and some pretty random road trips together over the last seven years. As such, Liz and I saw it as pretty fitting to go off on a "farewell road trip" for old times' sake. Our destination: an old temple built on a cliff face up high on a mountain in Tottori Prefecture. The temple is called "sanbutu-ji". It sounded cool, because you have to follow the old old pilgrims' path through the forest and over rocks and so on. So Toru picked us up early in the morning and the three of us drove down to Tottori. When we reached the temple entrance (at the base of the mountain), we were asked to show our shoes! Liz's shoes were appropriate, but mine and Toru's were deemed "unsuitable" and so we weren't allowed to climb up the mountain in them. We had to take our shoes off and wear straw sandals instead. Apparently the rough straw sandals have better tread/grip and is what the pilgrims used to wear in the old days. Ok, bring it on!! Toru and I donned our straw sandals and headed on towards the "track".
It was at about step three or so that I realised this was going to be a VERY painful treck, since the sandals were rubbing and digging in to me. I could feel blisters and scratches forming already! Just before the track started, we had to sign a waiver and wear a number!!! GET THIS!!! one or two people die on this climb every year, and someone just fell and died FIVE DAYS BEFORE!!!!!!! FIVE DAYS PEOPLE!!!!! DEAD!! So we signed our waivers and put on our numbers and continued on, Liz striding in her shoes, and me hobbling in my hellish straw sandals. Toru was very excited.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the scenery was stunning. We were deep in the forest, filled with tall cedars, streams, big rocks, moss and slivers of sunshine darting down and reflecting off young leaves. Can you see Toru?

However, we reached a treacherous part of the climb when it dawned on me: my health insurance just ran out!! If I fall or twist my ankle on these warped roots I'm screwed!!! So Liz and I agreed to call it quits. Toru was disappointed, but he understood. We told him to go ahead and we'd wait for him at the bottom, but he chose to hang out with us instead, so the three of us headed back down again and went out for lunch at Moss Burger!

I tell you, it felt SO GOOD to take those straw sandals off! My feet hurt for days afterwards!
We did have a good time though. Even if we never made it to our destination.

Oh the relief and the pain!

When the time came to move out of our house, we stayed a few nights in Kyoto City before heading to the airport to fly out. Yoko drove us to the city, and even managed to get a room at the same hotel as us for that night. The three of us had a great chatty drive down to the city, and went out for dinner that night. The next day we met up with Junko (who was also in the city that day) and Ippei took the afternoon off work and trained down to the city to meet up with us, and the five of us all went out for an American dinner at a steak house. It was a fantastic night. These are the three friends who came from Japan to our wedding. It's something we'll never forget and the three of them will always be close friends of ours. Again, it was very hard to say goodbye at the end of the night.

Finally, the day before we left, we managed to catch up with Takatsugu (one of my favourite graduated and grown up former students) in Kyoto. We had chatted with him a wee bit back in Yosano just before we left, since he was back home working in a cafe during his university summer break. He came back to Kyoto to have dinner with us before we left. He really wanted to come meet us at the airport and wave us off, but I told him not to since it would cost him too much in train fares to and from the airport. Such a nice kid. I miss him and his brothers, but I'm sure they'll come visit one day soon.

Takatsugu messing around for our amusement at his part time job.

Finally, when we were at the airport wasting a few hours before checking in, we RANDOMLY bumped into my best friend Ryosuke (AKA Mr Hattori). He had decided to come hunt us down. Everyone had told him it would be impossible to find us, but he came anyway, and sure enough... we bumped into eachother. I was so stoked to see him there... but it sure made leaving so much harder. I had emotionally prepared myself for leaving and blocking out all emotions, but then for him to come and surprise us, and wave us off made me quite sad to leave. But I was really stoked at the same time. Ryosuke called Yoko to tell her that he had actually FOUND us, and passed the phone over to Liz so she could speak to Yoko, who then passed the phone around her entire family, each person taking a turn to say goodbye to Liz. It was really nice for both of us.

Me and Ryosuke at the airport

Anyway, in a nutshell, it was really hard to leave Japan. It was my home. Liz and I have many friends there and a million memories. But, change is natural and it was time to move on and start something new. We are really starting to love our new life here in the UAE. I will probably miss Japan for the rest of my life - though not in a sad way, but with fond memories and a smile.

And so, now there's a whole new and exciting country just waiting to be discovered by us. Stay tuned for our adventures - whatever they may be!