The End Game

 

2 Months and 5 days….

and that will be the end of this chapter of my life.  The light at the end of this long tunnel is clearly visible now, and it’s only going to grow in brightness, a blinding distraction to the now and the present.  It’s hard to believe that, when I first came here I swore myself to two years, one year if the winter was horrible.  After surviving the worst winter to hit Tohoku in 80 years, I’m still here.  I can’t help but wonder why.  Why didn’t I pack up and leave after that horrible winter?  Why didn’t I pack up when my self-pronounced deadline came around?

The truth is I don’t have to think about it long, though.  Futatsui has a home quality to it.  Something comfortably familiar amongst the foreign, something irreplacably friendly.  Futatsui is a place I know I will miss, but I know it is a place I can’t stay.  I can’t stay because there’s really nothing left to take from this experience.  It’s waiting for another person.  But it is an experience I will always carry with me, that few people will understand.  And by few, I mean exactly six.  But even the six foreign people who have lived in this town will inevitably see it differently.  It’s very telling, though, that out of the six other ALTs of Futatsui, I have met four of them in person, and know plenty about the other two.  Futatsui brought these folks back– back to the middle of nowhere in redneck Japan, back just to say hello and see familiar folks.

I met Walker, of course, shortly after arriving in town.  As my predecessor he was on his way out.

I met Geoff and Matt in Masahiro’s bar– at different times, mind you.  Matt had a wife and kid with him.  Geoff was a law student, who had lived in Futatsui, and had roots in Ohio.

And finally I met Simon, not one hour after returning from Mongolia, when he rang my doorbell.  It was a shame I was so tired, as I would liked to have been more sociable.

That’s the charm of Futatsui and, while no one else may understand it, it’s that experience that I’m bringing home, and I already know it.  I’m standing at the finish line and just waiting for the race to be over.

So, now what?

What’s left when you’ve already experienced everything you can?  Sadly, there’s still plenty.

This Sunday I have a taiko performance– performing an 8-minute long forearm throbber of a piece with the Futatsui taiko folk.

Sometime in the next two months I have a final table tennis tournament.

And then there’s gaijin sumo– last year my beautiful figure adorned the Yomiuri Shinbun Newspaper.  This year I can shoot for no less than Yokozuna.

And then there’s a swarm of good-bye parties, good-bye ceremonies, and closure.

And the tunnel will disappear and I’ll be in the sky on my way home, ready to enter a three-year long tunnel marked ‘Law School.’

2 months and 5 days.

Yes, the end game has begun.