A Japanese Love Song

There isn't a man in the moon in Japan - there is a rabbit (or two, if you believe the McDonalds ad) making mochi. I could never see it, though I looked. Bright lights, tall buildings and hazy skies make it hard to find the moon some nights. But I kept looking...

Two years ago I arrived in summer and thought I'd dropped into the fires of hell, it was that hot. I didn't understand how anyone survived that weather once, let alone year after year. But as the typhoons rolled in and the heat broke, giving way to cooler nights and the first hints of autumn I forgot the awfulness and watched the trees along my street instead, wating for the yellow, red and gold. The wind that swept them along the street pulled winter in on it's coat tails and suddenly earmuffs didn't seem an unreasonable proposition. Then slowly, after what seemed an eternity swamped in coats and scarves and gloves, the trees along Meguro river exploded into bloom with cherry blossoms fat and fluffy as cotton wool and popcorn and I caught sakura fever and took 300 photos of flowers in two days. And then the rain came...

For two years the passing seasons have marked the passing of my time in Japan, and somehow now it's over although that first week seems like only yesterday. I can't quite comprehend that I've walked down my home street at night for the last time, that there'll be no more crazy coffees with Cal on our interminably long breaks, that the first time I sang "YMCA" with my workmates will also be the last. How do you begin to say good-bye to the place that you've made your home? I'll miss the leaves turning this year, I'll miss train chaos if it snows, I'll miss the best of the seafood, the new year temple visits, the craziness of bonenkai season when drunken office workers stumble out of the train to throw up on the platform or just fall asleep and forget to get off at their station. I said good-bye to all my workmates tonight but it honestly feels like I'll see them in a few days.

So to them, to my students and friends, to the 130 kindergarten children who each drew me a picture or wrote me a message for my last day, to the pickled vegetable man who's only English was "teacher", "holiday" and "celery" but whom I looked forward to seeing every week, to the old people who stared at my tattoos on the train, and to this country - often unfathomable but filled with more generosity and kindness than I've experienced anywhere else in the world - I say thank-you. Thank-you for making this an amazing journey, for the stories and the laughter, for the karaoke madness, for the food that I will miss SO much and for many more things that can't be put into words. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.

As I was walking home tonight, I looked up. The autumn harvest moon was almost full and the night was clear. And there he was... a little rabbit, making mochi.