"So long and Thanks for the Fish"

The title's from "Hitchhikers guide to the Universe" for those that missed the reference.

There'll be nothing like the going away parties that I've been to over here. All you can eat and late night Karoke the night before...

Steve from Minnesota

Look at the dude to the right. Now that's stuffing your face!

Twan from Sweeden (yes, he's Asian!)

...and then an all nighter party the next day to hang out...

Hang Loose!

Squish! Wow his face turns really red!

The remaining bunch of students!

Unfortunate for me that I didn't spend enough time hanging out with these people during the first 4 months. Too busy working like crazy teaching english (I took on way too many classes :P), studying Japanese, having my life sucked in on the weekends and on the other days, I spent either exploring on my own or sleeping in my room to recouperate.

Most of these people are atleast 2~4 years younger than I. Some were the same age and were still doing their undergrad. At first I thought, "how am I going to fit in with a bunch of undergrads? They party all the time and do all sorts of silly things!" I acted like a grown up and I got treated like a grown up... then one day I was my usual insane self when one friend turned to me and said "what happened to you? I thought you were a gentleman" (what my friend ment by gentlemen was that I was mature), heh, I put an end to that image quite quickly.

Today, Albert, a student from Indonesia left this morning, yesterday's party was for him and we stayed up all night hanging out (well they did, I had to get some sleep at 2:00 am for a lab meeting but I woke up to see him off before he left). I've never seen so much crying while seeing a friend off. I got to listen to all sorts of stories and look at their yearbook. After looking at their year book, these people spent an amazing year and they had every right to cry as these people leave one by one. After heading back to my room, I realized something strange however... that I was a little jealous that they did have something to cry about.

I tell these people that should they ever the find their way back to Japan that they'd be more than welcome to crash, but that's really only a small consolation-- living here is *all* about the people. If world peace existed, yeah, it existed here between a mix of American, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (both Taiwanese and Mainland), Swedish, French, Indonesian, Thai, Columbian, Canadian, Philipino, Venezuelian, Russian and more.

Comming to Japan country to experience life like this has gone beyond all my expectations.