So, last week I finished work and now I'm officially unemployed! Wooo! And Awww! at the same time. I'm going to miss the students, and working in general really. Apart from the really long hours, working was so much fun - I really loved teaching English, but sadly I'm not sure if teaching is in my future. Couldn't hack teaching in England.
During these past few weeks I gave plenty of goodbye speeches, I even gave a few in Japanese (but I was reading from a prewritten one on my phone =P). I gave a speech to most classes in Junten, and I gave some to the PTA, the ex-PTA and also to my evening classes, but they were nothing compared to what's to come. My final speech, and my final day of 'work' to do for Junten, is on the 24th when I will give a speech to every student, every teacher and every passerby... in Japanese. That means well over a thousand people in total, all standing before me and watching me speak my awful (at best) Japanese, while I shake in total fear. It'll be interesting... not fun, but certainly interesting.
Anyway, on with less depressing news! I went to the gardens around the Imperial Palace for the first time at the weekend. I hadn't noticed yet but the cicadas are out in force in some places! I love the sound of the cicadas, its one of those sounds that will always remind me of when I first arrived in Japan. If you don't know what they are, they're these bugs that live in trees and make quite alot of noise in the summer.
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Needless to say the gardens weren't so bad. They are in the Emporer's grounds, after all. Some really nice quiet areas (apart from the annoying american tourists) and lush grassy and wooded parts. Wish I went there for hanami back in the spring, I can imagine that it'd have been a pretty amazing place to get drunk underneath cherry blossoms.
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One thing that was really highlighted by the gardens, and hopefully by each of the photos here, is the amazing juxtaposition of old and new in Japan. Old meets new, East meets west, ...Skyscraper meets traditional Japanese building...? Ok, I ran out of ideas, but I'm sure you can see what I mean. It's something that's became hugely apparent in my time here - although Japan is very modernised (and some might say quite westernised), it also maintains alot of tradition. With young people going out in the summer wearing yukatas, traditional buildings in the middle of skyscraper districts and robots who can do tea ceremony, its easy to see where its desires lie, in a crazy mixture of maintaining the past while keeping ahead of the future. It's something that makes Japan a really special country, different from the rest.
The boat trip. For Matt's farewell party a bunch of us went on a cruise around Tokyo bay. An all-you-can-drink-for-two-hours-costing-only-£15 cruise around Tokyo bay. Amazing sights, seemingly free drinks and a giant lit up life-size Gundam replica in Odaiba, pretty much the best boat trip you could ever ask for. If anyone, and I mean anyone, comes to visit me in my exchange year here in 2011, they'll be treated (by treated I mean I'll organise it but they can pay for themselves, of course) to this cruise - its an awesome experience. Some of the best photo opportunities of the year, its just too bad I was too busy trying to tank more than my money's worth of free drinks to take many pictures. It just means that people will have to come on it with me to see for themselves!
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With about 2 and a half weeks left I still have a few plans for my time here. By a few I mean far too many to actually do, but I will try. I'll keep you updated on what I get upto (hopefully).
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Laters
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