(and no we`re not laughing)

I just finished a marathon english interview test session with my first years, two hundred and bloody eighty something “are you hot?”, “do you play tennis?” “Is this my pen?” and Lord knows that after the first hundred you start to lose sight of the great ideal that is to send out a band of students capable of reponding to a name-telling request. So, far too many fake smiles and lip-prompts later, a revelationary thought crossed my mind. Images of giant pliers were eclipsing through my head. I think I developed a momentary fettish for dentistry.
Nothing less that taking a saw and ripping those fugitive teeth out would have satisfied me.
I had thought and I was confident in this assumption, that teeth were intented to grow in one`s mouth. Alas no! Japan, the great nation, set apart from everywhere else, which stiffles so much expression, signals a defiant no to orthodonical constraits. Why have teeth in your mouth when they can hang from your nose, and never was it more trendy than to have an extra canine suspended from your ear lobe. It`s a permanent woodstock for these teeth, to hang as they like where they like, thrusting a middle finger to the homogeneous shoulder to shoulder stance, bra(ce)less and free, “you go north and I`ll go east and we`ll meet tommy tooth round the back near the throat exit.”
Seriously, what a mouthful!

By the way “ha” is the Japanese for “tooth”.

(Apologies to those of you you`ve heard it before, some people were interested to have a gawk. )

dignitries, a very good evening to you all.
On behalf of those of us who are leaving I’d like to say a few words.
There’s nothing like the eleventh hour to get things done. I’ve known for eighteen months that I would be leaving in July 2006, yet, growing lists remind me of my procrastination. . I’ve known for almost three weeks that I’d make this speech, yet it’s at ten to one on the eve of the party, in full panic mode, that I sit down to compose, and we use the verb “compose” ever so lightly.

( You may have found a glaring discrepancy between the English and Japanese versions of this speech. For those of you, who make love to the Japanese language with every sentence you speak please, Thank you for resisting the urge to fling tomatoes at me when I launched headlong and haplessly into my Japanese speech. Glad that bit is over.)

Two runways diverged in an airport and I, took the one bound for Saga. It wasn’t the place where many of us listed as a preference but, I for one am glad that I ended up here. In the cities you can easily avoid Japan, and live in a cocoon. In Saga with little other choice but to penetrate the culture, you find yourself riding a bicycle through mud, pounding mochii, picking strawberries, planting rice, and earning the title of one of four foreigners in a town of thirty thousand. Living in japan isn’t always easy, with the sometime unwanted celebrity status, even today an ichi-nensei shougakko student chastised me in the supermarket for buying two ice-creams, “ Are they both for you?” he asked disgusted at his teachers gluttony…..” erm…yes I mean NO!” he ran off and told his mother on me. I hope she doesn’t ring Mary Flynn.

It can be challenging to figure out the many differences between each of our respective cultures and Japan. “Excuse me why are you trimming your toenails in the staffroom?” The isolation, the loneliness, the feeling of being that one unhammerable nail, contrary to the Japanese proverb, “ the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” But, living is not always easy, no matter where you are. I lost a friend to suicide this April. It’s our greater fear, losing someone when you’re this far away. My Kyoto-sensei suggested that she and I go for a drive. We drove to the coast in Omura together. She said that she wanted me to feel closer to home, by seeing the water, that the water would carry my feelings back home. I don’t know if it was seeing the water or feeling her radiating comfort that soothed me that day but something did.
I hope in the same way when we reach our respective shores, that we’ll remember what we learned and achieved from our time here in Japan, from those special moments that pass so quickly, but which we forever hold in our heads. So for our time with each other, with our students who, personally speaking brighten up my days, with their hilarity and who I will find it most difficult to say goodbye to, “ Mister Aine, new half desu ka?’ over our lunchtime meal (and that’s funny because it’s so NOT true!); for the soldiers of patience at the Boards of Education who tolerate much pidgen Japanese and frayed tempers; for the staff at kencho, who keep this ALT boat afloat; for schools colleagues and their attempts to figure out the conundrum that is “Iceland” and “Ireland” , and exactly how much beer can this speaker hold; for friends for being there, for being who they are; and for the randomers in the community, who enter your life in the most bizarre but endearing ways and you come out of it with a kimono in your hand and a belly full of free food, let’s share a toast for Japan and Saga, and for those who made this experience possible.
I thank you and good night.

I handed over a cake and he handed my a styrafoam box of tomatoes. The door opened and in a troop of yukata-clad girls waddled.
“Come with us Aine-teacher!”
The tomatoes were a present from the principal, from his own garden. He told me that he was embarrassed because they were more obsese-cherry tomatoes, or verticallychallenged ordinary tomatoes, who were burning with envy, yet embarrassed to admit it or loyal supporters of Portugal. I hope I eat them, because I hate to waste things that are given with such good intentions.
He`s a nice man. He feels much more like a teacher than the stiff, liver-beaten keigo-stiffled other principals you meet on Primary school visits. There were less than flattering handdrawn barely recognisable portraits beneath his coffee table, screaming “I am the artwork of a five year old”. There`s a warmth about him, and he remembers where I`m from. My visits seems appreciated, so when I received the invitation to my Sayonara party, I was touched.

I followed my guides.

Pretty yukatas, Irish flags and expectant smiles abound, I looked around the gym at those who had awaited my arrival. I recognised their faces, some had stretched and matured from their 3 nensei days, some three years previous. Some faces you remember. Why is it that some people have such memorable countances?

We played games and told Aine-sensei facts about her own country, and had a small tea ceremony, but this time there was no shouting at the stupid foreigner and i learned that not all tea ceremony teachers are massive Bee with Itches, and pictures were taken to freeze the time forever.

And I inhaled a needy fix of decency and kindness and goodwill, and cast aside the toxic angst that can invade us in times of stress, reminding myself to pass it on, and also making a mental note to bookmark the conclusion that people are good.