The Long Road Home

Now

The Bloomsberg postal office was a quaint two-storey building on the edge of a miner’s town. It lay on the east side of the Star Dance River and Blue Mountains, and was the last post office until one reached the village on the edge of the Ridges, another mountain range that was a three week’s ride away.

The arrival of a deliveryman in Bloomsberg was therefore rare enough that when Jeri’s decades-old wagon pulled into the post office, the manager came out to greet him.

“I wasn’t aware we were due for a bag of old bones today,” the manager called as Jeri slowly lowered himself to the hardpacked ground. He waved away the owner’s helping hand but accepted her familiar hug.

“Word is you retired,” the manager said, giving Jeri a grin that showed all her potion-stained teeth. “Couldn’t stay away from an office even for a week, huh?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not here for any official delivering,” Jeri replied, “Just here to say goodbye as part of my own retirement delivery trip.”

“Retirement delivery trip, eh? Where’s it end?”

“The Ridges.”

“And is there a package?”

“Of course.”

The manager looked over Jeri’s wagon once again and saw nothing more than the supplies of a standard traveller. There weren’t even any of the protective gemstones that most deliverymen refused to travel without, though the manager knew Jeri had survived this route many times during the latter half of his career.   

“So, what’s the package?”

Jeri’s face transformed into a roadmap of wrinkles as he smiled.

“Me.”

Then

“You sure you’ll be alright with this package?” the employee at the Bloomsberg post office asks Jeri. He stares at Jeri’s rather simple wagon with raised eyebrows as Jeri glances over his supplies one last time. The package in question blinks up at them from where he’s tucked into a nest of blankets beneath the muddy brown awning that covers the back of the wagon.

“Uh, yeah?” Jeri says, and finally looks at the employee for longer than three seconds. Jeri doesn’t recognize the employee which must mean he’s new. That would explain all the hovering and uncertainty. “You said I was specifically requested for this delivery, didn’t you?”

“Well, I said that the package’s grandfather is very concerned about him getting safely to the Ridges and his brother, so they specifically asked for a deliveryman with as perfect a record as possible.”

The employee says all this with a judgmental glance at Jeri’s protruding belly.

“Right,” Jeri says, and slaps the employee on the shoulder. “And as I’m sure you can see on your cute little clipboard there, my record is flawless.”

His record is in fact flawless when it comes to end results, and the record proves Jeri has done these types of deliveryman-turned-escort deliveries before.

Still, the wagon rocks on its wheels when Jeri climbs aboard, and the employee clutches his clipboard a little tighter.

“Cool, so that’s it?” Jeri says, and lifts the reins.

“Um yes–no! Here, the package details.”

The employee hands over the scroll that lists all the standard details like where the package was first received and the end destination, but also the package’s name, age, likes, special qualities, and so on.

Jeri shoves the scroll into the waistband of his trousers and leaves Bloomsberg without a backward glance.

Jolene

Never let the night in.

Everyone on the flatlands knows that. Mothers whisper it to the babes cradled in their arms. Friends say it in parting at the few scattered markets. Fathers snap it at their children when they stray too close to the shut doors.

Never let the night in.

When dusk falls, don’t step out the doorway. Shut the windows. Light the candles and the hearth.

Some people don’t bother with the light. They say that turning a home into a golden beacon only makes the night greedier.

It’s not important.

Lock the door.

Seal the windows.

Cover the holes, even if they’re only small enough for mice.

Never let the night in.

She tried, but her husband was so angry. Drunk. He said he needed a drink if he was going to stare at her face all dinner long. He said that hours before dinner started and he never lets her leave his cup empty at dinner. Then their son started wailing, less than ten months old and incapable of reading the room like her. Her husband drank some more for that. She couldn’t calm the baby down so her husband kept drinking.

The Conclusion of Three Years

I can’t believe this will be my last blog post about the three year stay in Japan. But let’s save those thoughts for the end and jump right into my last month in Tokyo.

It turns out there was one last class goodbye in store for me. This was with the H1 class, which was one of the first classes I told I was leaving. They were the class that, when I made the announcement, were much more genuinely shocked and upset than I expected. The class where one of the girls was tearing up, and the class leader always tried to say his greeting in English and shook my hand after class.

At my going away party, I told the teachers I would still be at school for the closing ceremony, and the JTE of this H1 class said that in that case, I should go see the H1 class after the ceremony because they really loved me and would love to see me again. (I had told the class as well I would be here until the closing ceremony if they wanted to see me).

Saying Goodbye to My School

It’s time for the blog post that’s all about saying goodbye to my students and teachers. I didn’t expect this to be its own post but turns out a few of the classes had actual reactions and goodbye notes to give, so time to communicate all of that here.

No one had really discussed with me when we should tell the students I was leaving. The teachers all already knew, most since June, and I knew when my going away party with them would be. With the students, I figured we would just take a few minutes at the end of each of my last classes to let them know. I was expecting some to be sad, but I wasn’t expecting much more beyond the stereotypical EHHH for the classes as whole.

A June Interlude

I can’t believe it’s already July, but I’m ignoring that (and my move-out panic) for now to share some things that happened in June.

It’s the only month in Japan where there are no long weekends and normal schedules for school. Well, except there were still two weeks where I had no H1 classes because they were away for dream camp.

Kanazawa and Takayama

Picking up right where my last blog post ended as my wonderful aunt and uncle were still in Japan and took me to Kanazawa and Takayama at the end of May.

But before that, a moment from school that relates directly to the final conversation I wrote about in my last blog post.

That last weekend of May was sports festival, which is partly why I was able to take the Friday off to travel. On Thursday the high school kids were doing their preparations, and a group of H2s spotted me as I was getting water.

Among them were some of the girls I had taught in M2, M3, and now this year in H2. One of them immediately began shouting in Japanese,

“Rebecca sensei, Rebecca sensei, when are you returning??”

The Visit

I had basically accepted that my parents wouldn’t have the chance to visit me here in Japan, only for them to message me near the start of the new year to say they had officially begun looking into flights and would definitely be coming. They arrived Friday, May 11th and stayed for just shy of two weeks.

Spoiler alert: they loved Japan

They landed while I was at work, assuring me they could figure out how to reach my station without WIFI as long as I sent them screenshots of the route via Google Maps and met them at my station. My dad also had data he could turn on in emergencies, which he used at one point to say they had gotten off the first line in order to transfer to the second line, and were outside looking for where to go.

The specific message I received was, “We followed the signs for platform and are out on street. Where now?”

I promptly had a heart-attack, managed not to say why the heck are you above ground??, and messaged back that the platform should be back inside and which line to look for.

Nagasaki and Unzen Onsen

I’ve been travelling for a full month with school in between, so let’s get right into it with my Golden Week trip to Nagasaki. Nagasaki is a city known for its historical importance, not just because of the second atomic bomb, but because it was the only open port during Japan’s many years of isolation prior to the 1900s.

I arrived in Nagasaki on the final Thursday night of Golden Week, an extremely annoying cold sore my only travelling companion. My irritation with the unwanted infliction that arrived that morning was soon forgotten as I walked along the peaceful canal my hostel overlooked. There were a handful of beautiful stone bridges crossing the water, one of which was named Spectacles Bridge.

April Stories

April and Golden Week are over (a holiday which deserves its own post), so here’s a round-up of stories from April, mostly about school and the new classes.

The first week back is always a bit of a whirlwind thanks to figuring out all the new classes and who we’ll be teaching with, etcetera etcetera, but this year felt like a black hole of chaos. So much chaos that when I started telling one of my friends about it at the end of the week, my tangent lasted for thirty uninterrupted minutes.

Cafes and Kusatsu

As I passed the one week mark of my head injury, I visited the Pokemon café with Diane. Given Pokemon’s popularity, I would have thought this was a well-established café, but Diane informed me that it had only opened up last year. She had gone once before with her friend, so she knew some of the standard menu but as is classical of Japan, there was a seasonal menu for the spring period that we both ended up ordering from.

Lots of the food and drinks had the various Pokemon faces on them and when they didn’t, there were images on the straw or the cookie placed on top of the food. There were also quite a lot of stuffed animals and statues of Pokemon throughout the room.

And near the end of the night, a staff member dressed in a massive Eevee costume paraded throughout the café, offering paws to be shaken.