The Last Days In Gifu

I realize you wouldn’t know it from reading this blog, but the last couple weeks have actually been pretty hectic as I’ve been dealing with cleaning out my apartment, packing and saying good-bye to everyone. I’ll try and sum everything up here. Could be a long post, but I’ll try and rein myself in as much as possible.

Cleaning-Packing
Those of you who know me know that cleaning is not my strong suit. But before moving out I had to clean my apartment to get my cleaning deposit back.

Last month Shoko came up for 3 days to straighten the place up a little bit. I went to work in the day, she would clean the apartment up, and then I’d come home and she’d make dinner. These Japanese girls are really nice.

She intended to come up again at the end of March to help me with the final cleaning, but she got sick early in the month and used up all her leave. So, it was up to me to do the final cleaning. No Shoko. No Board of Education. Just me and cleaning.

And packing. A friend said to me, “You never realize how much junk you have until you move.” And boy is that ever true. I have way too much stuff. And since I can’t take it all back to America, I had to throw a lot of stuff out.

I got ride of tons of books. That was rather painless because I’m not the person who reads books twice anyway. When Shoko was up last month, she told me to throw out a lot of clothes, and I did under her direction. I probably have too many clothes, but I’m always afraid to throw clothes out because I figure they’re money in the bank. If I throw out excess clothes now, it means someday down the line I’ll have to buy new clothes when I’ve worn out what I’ve got.

I threw out a lot of gifts. I feel bad about this, but you just can’t take everything with you. Some of the gifts I got when leaving Ajimu two years ago has just sat in boxes in my apartment the past couple years, so I just threw it out. It was nice stuff some of it, but giving nice stuff to me is like giving pearls to swine. I just don’t appreciate it.

I got caught once. After the International Day at the elementary school (which I wrote about a couple weeks ago), the kids gave us foreigners all sorts of gifts. I went home and promptly threw it all out. It was nice stuff, pictures the kids had made and such, but I just didn’t have room to pack it. Then the next day the teacher at the elementary school said, “We want to get a picture of you with all of the children’s gifts. Could you bring them to school with you tomorrow?”
And what could I do at that point but confess? Fortunately the school seemed pretty understanding.

I’m not a complete monster. I do save personal letters and pictures. It’s just that the stuff from International Day was for all the visiting foreigners, so it was all generic pictures the kids had made for foreigners in general.

After all that giving and throwing stuff away, I still have too much stuff. But since I’m staying at Shoko’s place for the next month or so, I can sort through it later.

Good-Bye Parties
As I wrote two years ago, I don’t like a lot of good-bye parties. I think they’re depressing, emotional exhausting, and I’m not very good at saying good-bye to people anyway. I’d much rather sneak away in the middle of the night and not say good-bye to anyone. What do good-bye’s matter anyway? You still have all the memories even if you don’t get that last good-bye in.

When I left Ajimu I had a lot of good-bye parties. I did my best to avoid that this time around. I told all my friends, “I don’t want a big good-bye party. If you want to go out for dinner casually a few times before I leave, fine, but no big parties.”

A few weeks back, on Saint Patrick’s Day, some friends organized a little dinner party for me. The problem with having a small party, however, is that you end up doing several parties instead of one big one, because not everyone is included.

I was in the bar last week, and I was talking to a friend (who hadn’t been at the dinner party), and he said, “So you’re leaving next week, eh? We’ve got to have a big going away party?”

“No, no, no,” I said. “I don’t want a big going away party.”

“You were going to try and sneak away without a party, weren’t you?” he said. “Not going to happen. Not going to happen.” He arranged the date of the party, and then the following day this e-mail was sent out to the Gifu-JETs listserve:

Comrade Joel's Sayonara Party
Some of you may not be aware that our good friend Joel is leaving Gifu
nextTuesday not to return. He was trying to leave without a fuss,
but I don't think we can let him dothat, so if anyone is interested we are
having a little going away party for himon Friday night in Nishi
Gifu. Its kicking off around 7pm, and is BYO. Contact me
off list for directions. (etc)

(Comrade Joel is I think a reference to my e-mail address comradeswagman@yahoo.com. My philosophy is always use e-mail addresses that are easy for people to remember so you don’t have to be in the bar saying, “That’s KrazzyKattz691@yahoo.com K-R-A-Z-Z…No, two Z’s…”. mrswagman@yahoo.com was already taken, so I went with comradeswagman.)

The day before the big send off party I was busy packing and cleaning my apartment. Trying to take care of a number of things I probably should have done months ago (like getting that side rear-view mirror fixed on the car before I return it to the company). I was packing a lot of things off in boxes and shipping them off to Shoko’s place.

Somewhere in the middle of this I must have twisted my neck. I’m not sure where or how because there was no big moment of pain. About halfway through the day I realized my neck hurt a bit when I turned to the right. And it just got gradually worse and worse.

By night, I couldn’t move my neck to the right at all, and my head was tilted at an angle to the left. So, I went to a BBQ party that night with my head just stuck tilted to the left, looking like “Lurch” from the Adam’s Family or something like that.

Everyone there gave me conflicting medical advice and stories of their own, but the general consensus seemed to be that these things go away in a couple days. I left the party early because I wasn’t having a good time and was in a fair amount of pain because of my neck. The drive home was a bit dangerous because I couldn’t turn to the right to check for traffic, but I made it.

The next morning I couldn’t get up. I was lying on my futon, and I’d try and raise myself, and there would be shooting pain going through my neck, so I’d just lie back down on the futon. This went on for about 15 minutes, with myself continually trying to muster the willpower to get up, and continually giving into the pain. Then I got the idea to roll over and push myself up with my arms.

When you have a bad neck like that you can’t do anything. Even walking around the apartment was a bit painful. So I decided to go to the hospital. Thus far I’ve been fairly lucky in avoiding Japanese hospitals, but I was feeling bad enough that I wanted the neck checked out.

I called up my supervisor for advice on the hospitals and insurance. The big problem was that it was Sunday, and everything except emergency care was shut down. My supervisor told me I would have to go all the way into the big hospital in the city, and then probably spend all day waiting in the emergency room.

Which turned out to be an amazingly clear prediction. I was in the emergency room from 9 to 3. I was waiting for almost all of that time except for a 5-minute consultation with the doctor, and then 5 minutes for the x-rays. They took some X-rays, couldn’t find anything wrong, and so just told me to take it easy and not do any heavy lifting. It cost me about $120 (which I’m hoping to get back on the insurance claim form).

I left the hospital feeling just as bad as when I had come in. With all of Sunday wasted, I now had one day to pack and clean out my apartment, and I could barely move.

So, I called in favors. A bunch of people had offered to help me with my moving. I don’t think they really meant it. They just said it in the way we always say those kind of things to each other, as a form of politeness. But I called up everyone who had offered, and asked if they were serious about it.

I couldn’t make the good-bye party in my honor that night because of the bad neck. But I had several people come out to help me with my packing and cleaning, and I’m forever indebted to them for their kindness. A girl from Ireland, a guy from Britian, a New Zealander, and one fellow American; a real international team cleaning out my apartment. I’m sure I didn’t deserve it, but it’s nice to have good friends.

So, to make a long story short, the packing and cleaning all got done, I checked out of my apartment, and I’m back in Oita now, where I’ll be staying with Shoko for the next month before heading home. I’ll write more about all that next post or so. Neck is doing a lot better. Still slightly tilted to the left and still with limited movement, but it doesn’t hurt so much anymore, and I think probably will get completely better in a week or so.

Link of the Day
Bush Signs Statements to Bypass Torture Ban, Oversight Rules in Patriot Act