Philosophy of Blogging Revisited
About six months ago or so, when I was in the middle of conducting the homestay with some of my students, I made an observation about what I consider to be one of the great ironies of our blogging age:  When there is nothing exciting happening, I have all the time in the world to update this weblog, but nothing really important to write about.  On the other hand, when my life is busy I have a lot of stories I want to put on the weblog, but no time to write them.  (I call it: Joel’s philosophy of weblogging.  Feel free to quote me if you like).
 
Anyway, it is time to once again reinvoke this principle, as I find myself in a similar situation.  After weeks of posting boring stories about nothing in particular, I find myself recently with a lot of exciting things happening and no time to write about it.  Lots of farewell parties and farewell speeches, as well as plans for next year which have been rapidly evolving.  If time allowed I would really have like to write about each individual incident in detail, but instead I’ll give a summary of what has been happening the past couple weeks.
 
Farewell Ceremonies
As I’ve made my last visit to all my schools in the past few weeks, I’ve had to do a number of farewell ceremonies.  In addition to the ceremonies at school, in the evenings I’ve been to four farewell parties this week alone.  I’m somewhat reminded of a joke one of my high school teachers told at his retirement ceremony.  After listening to the introductory speeches, he opened up his farewell remarks by saying, “After hearing all the nice things people are saying about me, the first thing I’m going to do when I get home is open up the obituary pages to make sure I’m not in them.”
 
A bad joke maybe but the point is well taken.  When you die or when you leave a job, people will only say good things about you and you have to take it all with a grain of salt.  This is true the world over, but perhaps especially true in Japan, a land famous for people saying one thing and meaning another.
 
All that being said, it is quite touching really to read the letters that the students have written to me.  The fact that the teachers had assigned them to write the letters caused me to discount them at first, but a Japanese friend read some of the letters and told me I should really be proud of their contents.  “Young children tend to be very honest,” my friend said.  “And although the teacher probably forbid them from writing anything bad, the fact that they wrote so many good things is probably an indication that they really mean it.”
 
Many of the children in the elementary schools told me they wished I could stay longer because they wanted to play more games with me.  But on the whole they seemed to take my leaving in good stride.  Smiles all around on the last day at each elementary school.  And some of the kids even took advantage of the fact I was leaving to “kancho” me one last time.  (Japanese play in which the hands are folded together and the index fingers are used to poke either the rear end or the genitalia, depending on which direction the kids come at you from.  Man do I hate the kancho).
 
The Junior High schools were a little bit more somber.  Since I have been here three years now, I’ve known all the Junior high school students since their elementary school days.  I gave a speech saying how neat it has been to see them grow up the past 3 years.  They all wrote me nice letters.  A few girls even started crying.  I got the impression many of them were genuinely sorry to see me leave.
 
In addition to the school ceremonies, I had several farewell parties this week.  One farewell party with the other JETs, one with the English teachers in the Usa city area, one with the Japanese lessons I go to on Thursday, and one with the students I took to America this Christmas.  Again, time allowing I would have loved to write about these in more detail.
 
I guess of all of these the last one, the one with the students I had chaperoned in America, was the most enjoyable.  I had taught all of these students at one time, but they have all graduated onto the high school now, so I don’t see them as much anymore.  Similar to the school ceremonies, they all presented me with letters they had wrote.  Very nice letters too, I was quite touched to read them.
I had been asked to give a short speech.  I told the students that I had really enjoyed getting to know them, and thought they were all wonderful people.  I said I was sorry I hadn’t spent much time with them since we returned from America, and I would have liked to talk to them more, but I didn’t want to embarrass them by talking to them in too much in front of their friends at school.  I then said a few short words about each individual student, and what qualities they had that I admired.
It was something I wanted to say, but I was worried that it would sound a bit cheesy.  Fortunately, it was received very well.  Although I’ve been making most of my good-bye speeches in Japanese, I knew my Japanese wasn’t good enough to convey everything I really wanted to say, so I gave this particular speech in English, and asked one of the older students to translate for me.  This slowed down the process a bit and proved to be a bit of a headache, but in the end it all worked out.
More to update on, but I think I’ll call this good for one entry.  Look for more news coming soon (hopefully).