Hindsight

First, randomosity:

Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
Quicktime Trailer (11mb)

“…the more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you…”

This was first spotted by Nej at jeansnow.net

Bill Murray plays a washed up actor doing Japanese CMs (commercials) in Tokyo and meets a soul searcher in the process. The film will be released stateside in September, and I’ll be sure to catch it.

The new Sony CLIE

http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/PEG/PEG-UX50/index.html
Japan is good at making me lose money.

***

The last few days have been mellow yet intense.

Sunday night I went to Koichi’s one last time at around 6pm. I had little to do so I figured some yakitori wouldn’t hurt. Alex came down eventually from his own engagement and we ate and drank. And drank more.

It was about 8 or so when we headed down the small streets to meet up with Stacey, who had joined up with a Taiko group. Drummers were “feeding” others more and more Asahi. Both Alex and I joined in and, believe it or not, I drummed myself some. Alex accomplished this as well. Go beer.

Amber wanted to meet up once before I left, so we shared our recent stories at McDonald’s by the station. About an hour and a half later I said a brief farewell to Tim and Yuki.

Later in the evening I went to Kameyama sensei’s home along with Dion and Livia, where we ate yakiniku, talked about teaching experiences. It got very intense at one point: what will make the system better, what needs to be changed and so on and so forth. I ended up listening quite a bit, but it was arresting throughout.

I got a tie from Kameyama sensei that had repeated imagery of a matsuri. An outline of a taiko drum here, a festival-goer there. It was neat.

Tomorrow I have to cancel my J-Phone service, send in my DSL to terminate my Yahoo BroadBand access and turn in my textbooks to the BOE (in addition to my inkan and other personal documents). It’s all coming to a close.

While I originally wanted to post something about this entire experience, this year of being in a foreign country, the story isn’t really ending per se. It’s just going to continue as I move forward. So I’ll end there, and I’ll weblog again when I get to a net connection either in Osaka or Tokyo.

Until then, I am swimming in thought of moments with kids at junior high, drunken discussions at Yakyuudori and times of revelation.

As I say in e-mails to friends…

More to come.