Well, it's almost time.

I'm getting closed to being "packed" and ready to go (I'm horrible with moves; I leave absolutely everything to the last possible moment; by my standards I'm doing pretty well this time).

In the next day or two it will be difficult for me to reach or be reached by anyone. My Internet service will end on Monday, my computer monitor will be gone Sunday or Monday, and my cellphone will be cancelled probably by Tuesday.

Still, the idea that by the middle of next week I'll be in Canada just doesn't seem real to me.

I've had some wonderful farewells; thanks to Hana for arranging a great farewell dinner, and to all my dear friends for coming out to say goodbye. I meant what I said; my time in Japan would not have been the same without music, and I owe so many of my best memories of Japan to all of the people who made music with me.

And thanks, of course, to my girlfriend Saki, for whom this is not goodbye; for her the real adventure starts in a few months when she comes to join me in Canada. 咲、早くカナダに来てね。待ってるよ。

So, I probably won't be updating this Blog again (or checking e-mail) after today until I'm back in Canada.

But to remind everyone; the Blog will continue at this address, and my e-mail addresses will also remain the same, so I will be in touch once I'm set up on the other side.

To quote everybody's favourite, loveable, futuristic android killing-machine-turned-Governor; I'll be back


YouTube clip from my last show in Japan. Yuka's uploaded a ton of video from both the Reggae band and our acappella group, so check out some of the other clips as well.

To all my Toronto peeps;
This is an announcement from some of my friends who are throwing a casual little homecoming party for me next week (next week?!?!)

Please drop by if you can; though even if you can't, I'm sure we'll have lots of other chances to meet and catch up, since I'll be back in TO for the forseeable future!

For obvious reasons I'm not posting the address on my Blog, but you can contact me directly for more details.

Here's the announcement:

Hey - Have You Heard? Kern is coming back to Toronto!

Please join us in warmly welcoming him to Canada after a very long stint in Japan by coming to our Kernabration. We will be holding an open house on Saturday, August 23 at Rebecca and Rob's house. Drop by any time between 1pm and 5pm for snacks and bevvies and to say a Grand Hello to Kern and catch up with all his hilarious stories of a 6'4" black Canadian in Japan.

If the weather is fine, look for us on the deck in the back. If it's raining, we'll be inside.

See you there -

Rebecca, Robert, Kevin, Susanna, Karen, and Dion

Well, it's official; last night was my last show in Japan. It was designed as a kind of combination concert/farewell party - the idea being that every music group I'm currently involved in would perform, and perform mostly songs that feature me.

At first I thought it was an attempt to kill me; our reggae band played the night before, and then, after spending the night at the usual Internet Cafe, I had to spend Sunday afternoon practicing and Sunday night playing with three different groups, in a two-and-a-half hour show designed to have me singing as much as possible).

But in the end, it was a lot of fun! The inclusion of three groups gave the night a lot of variety, and the reggae band turned what is normally a sit-down live house into a rocking dance party! This despite the fact that it was already full beyond capacity, and there was really no room for dancing.

Thanks to everyone, onstage and off, who made it such a special night, and kept my time in Japan filled with music and fun!


All three groups on stage for the last song.
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Well, I was planning to post this last Friday but.. umm... didn't.

This is the tribute to my last day at my last school in Japan. The school is 青葉はつが野小学校 [aobahatsugano shougakkou]. It's a very new school, constructed only about two years ago. It's large and "modern", but with a relatively small student body. That's because it's very close to another, older elementary school (which I also visited) called Midorigaoka. There are a ton of houses under construction in the area, and in anticipation of the increase in the population over the next few years they built a new elementary school, and split the curent student body evenly between the two. The result is that right now each school is only about half full.

Here we go, my final day in-school in Japan.



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[I actually finished this blog entry on Thursday, but when I submitted it, the whole thing was lost because my session had timed out. I'm re-writing it on Friday, but backdating it]

Two weeks ago I said goodbye to one of my favourite schools; the only school I've attended continuously since I arrived in Izumi City - 南横山小学 [minami yokoyama shougakkou].

The word that best describes this school is "cozy". When I first arrived, the entire student body (grades 1 to 6) consisted of only 58 kids.Consider that in most schools there are 40 kids in each class, and 1500-2000 students in the school, and you get an idea of how different this place is.

I will be seeing the teachers again before I leave Japan, but it was my last time at the school, and my last time to see the kids.

Here are some pictures (I should say, incidentally, that I cheated - some of these pictures where taken the week before my last week; my penultimate day at NanYoko).

[Note: NanYoko （南横） is an abbreviation of Minami Yokoyama （南横山）]


The Grade one class. I took pictures with each class on the final day, but this is the only one that was taken with my own camera; I'm hoping to get the other pictures later
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So I was planning to do this series of posts LAST week... but didn't.

In honour of the fact that two weeks ago, wednesday, thursday and friday were all final visits to one of my three schools, today, tomorrow and friday, I will be posting photos taken on or around my last day at each of those schools.

Today, we feature pictures taken on my last day at 和気小学校 [wake shougakkou - where "shougakkou" is "elementary school", and "wake" is pronounced as a two-syllable word]


I didn't actually ask them to pose; I just asked if I could take a picture and the vice-principal got everybody in motion. I felt obliged to apologize, since the teachers were in fact in the middle of a lunch break between parent-teacher interviews.
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I know, I know... keep it clean.

Just got a call from the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo.

Long story short; I didn't have to go to Nagoya yesterday. You see, the passport that I got last year was only a one-year passport, because at the time I didn't have my birth certificate.

Turns out that now, instead of applying for a new passport all I had to do was send my passport and birth certificate, and my one-year passport can be magically extended to five years. No new photos, no $100 fee, no trip to Nagoya.

Fortunately, they're going to refund me the difference ($50 Consular fee, plus about an $80 difference between a new passport and a passport extension).

Unfortunately, I still lost a whole lot of money on trains, and all of yesterday on a fools' errand. More unfortunately, I could have done all of this easily MONTHS ago if I'd known.

Naturally, there are still a couple of hoops. I have to go now and mail my receipt for the Consular fee (the $50 I paid them to accept a sworn statement before the consul in lieu of a guarantor) to the consulate in Nagoya. The consulate in Nagoya will then send my money to the embassy in Tokyo. Tokyo will then process everything, and send me my new passport, my identification, the Consulate refund and the Embassy refund.

Oh well. It's one to grow on.

Gotta go to the post office.

So I was planning to talk about my last day at my Wednesday school today, and show pictures too, but after spending much of the day today in Nagoya (or rather, on trains; it takes about three hours to get there from here) I'm just not in the mood.

So instead... was watching one of my favourite shows; the one where they present various "Best Three" lists. Tonight, one of the presenters was the ridiculously popular comedian on the right, who I've mentioned before. His schtick is that he turns into an idiot on multiples of three (or numbers that contain the digit three). He also adds other things (like turning into a dog on multiples of five, or suddenly acting like he's high on multiples of eight).

Anyway, the point is that even when multiples of three come up in conversation he says it in his "Idiot voice". Which means he always has to be on the lookout for multiples of three. Today, in presenting his best three list (three remarkable peeople from India), number three... well obviously the number three came up. Number two was a story in which the number 45 came up, which is a multiple of three, as is 33 which came up in Number one.

Now, somewhat surprisingly for somebody who's trying to become a math teacher, I don't have a whole lot of mathematical "tricks" at my fingertips. But one that's always stuck with me is that you can test if a number is a multiple of three by adding the digits. If the sum is a multiple of three, then so is the original number. For example 4+5=9, which is a multiple of three, so 45 is a multiple of three.

What occurred to me for the first time ever today (embarassing I know), is that this implies the remarkable property that you can rearrange the digits in any multiple of three, and the result will be another multiple of three!

For example, if 45 (3 X 15) is a multiple of three, then so is 54 (3 X 18 ).

For a more remarkable example, let's try... 31845. 3+1+8+4+5=21, implying that this is a multiple of three. It also implies that all rearrangements of these five digits are also multiples of three. There are 120 ways to rearrange these digits, so let's just check a few:

31854 = 3 X 10618
18354 = 3 X 6118
81543 = 3 X 27181
15348 = 3 X 5116
54381 = 3 X 18127
34815 = 3 X 11605

Cool!

Oh, by the way, this is the Canadian Consulate in Nagoya. The official there used to work at the Consulate in Osaka, until it was shut down last year. He said that he was pretty unhappy when he got the news. I mentioned that it didn't exactly thrill me either (since it led to me spending about six hours and the equivalent of over $100 Canadian on trains today).

My air conditioner decided to break down yesterday.

Great. Summer has officially "started" (until about a week ago it was still the rainy season; according to the news, despite the fact that it hadn't really been raining much, everybody waits until the official announcement tha t the rainy season is over before heating the beaches, water parks, campgrounds and so on).

Anyway, with temperatures in the mid-30s, high humidity, and the prospect that it's only going to get worse, my air conditioner suddenly and mysteriously stopped working. Which is to say that it still kinda blows air, it just doesn't bother to cool it.

Since I'm leaving in less than a month (?!?!) it seems pointless to waste money fixing it; especially since when I do move out I will likely have to pay money to have the darned thing removed. Since nobody is moving into my room when I leave, it has to be restored to its "default" state; until now it's been passed from JET to JET, but I'm the end of the chain.

So I sit in front of a fan all day, open doors and windows as much as I can (though, lacking screen doors, I close them at night). Still, I'm sweating pretty much continuously. Not my usual, dripping, running sweat, but sweat nonetheless. Even when I think I'm not sweating, I'll touch my arm or leg and realize it's damp.

One more reason to look forward to leaving; the airports and airplanes I'll be using to get home will definitely be air-conditioned. With all my stop-overs, that's close to one solid day of guaranteed air-conditioned bliss.

August 20th.

That's the date. It's not a 100% official, but it's close enough, and I've been telling everybody here, so it's probably about time that I made it generally known.

I will be leaving Japan (hopefully not forever; I do hope to come back to visit sometime) and returning to Canada on August 20th. Unfortunately, with stop-overs in San Francisco and Denver, I'm scheduled to arrive in Toronto just before midnight.

So there it is.


I'm excited about seeing my family and friends again, but the idea of not living in Japan anymore is something I still have to come to terms with.

I finished my last day at the last school I will ever teach at in Japan today.

It was a nice finish to five years of teaching. We went out eating, drinking and singing last night, had a ceremony this morning. I sang my favourite Japanese song, Sakura, in front of the students and teachers (the link is to the recording from years ago, when I first sang it back in Katano; today's performance was caught on video but I don't have it). I'll admit, I made a point of singing it at Karaoke last night, which led to them asking me to sing it at the ceremony today.

I got a boat-load of gifts to take home, some tearful farewells from students and lots of thank-you letters. I spent close to an hour standing outside the teachers' room continuously signing autographs (unfortunately, it was at a choke-point; the kids necessarily pass within sight of the teachers' room on their way out of the school, so every time the line started to die down, another class would get out, see the ruckus, and join the line.

I took pictures with all the staff, and slowly made my way out, with hints that there would be at least one more social outing planned before I leave the country.

There were a lot of goodbyes this week, and I took a lot of pictures; I will dedicate next week to covering all the festivities in more detail. Since I'm now effectively jobless, I should have plenty of time.

Today was not the first of the "Lasts" I've experienced as my time in Japan starts winding to a close, but it was a prettyt significant one.

Today I taught the last real English class that I will ever teach in this country.
School continues until friday, and my contract continues until August 3rd, but I have no classes scheduled after today. So I'll do some playing, and some farewells, but no more classes.

Here's a picture, taken at the end of my last class in Japan.


青葉はつが野小学校、４年４組 (Aobahatsugano elementary, Grade 4, class 4). I don't think the teacher had a lot of experience with digital cameras (she's one of the oldest teachers in the school); she kept coming closer (thinking we looked too small?) when she should have been moving back; that's why some kids got cut off).


Incidentally, yesterday was my last JET meeting in Japan; we met, then played some basketball with one student and some of the other ALTs (toward the end, as I was running out of even the pretense of steam, I reminded everybody that I was the oldest guy on the court; my exact words were, "I'm an old fat guy playing basketball, and I know it!").

Then we went to dinner at this place:



I'm gonna miss Japan.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from the University of Toronto, because I had forgotten to send them proof that I'm a Canadian citizen. Forturnately my parents were good enough, a month or two back, to apply for, and send to me, a new official copy of my birth certificate (I had lost the first one at some point). At the time, I mostly wanted it for a passport application, but it was just what I needed to send to the University as well.

My old birth certificate, by the way, was a nice laminated card that I could carry in my wallet, and lasted undamaged until I came to Japan and misplaced it (I couldn't even tell you if I lost it in my old place here, my new place, or if it's still somewhere in Canada). The new card bears an admonishment that laminating or otherwise "modifying" the card renders it invalid. It must remain in the extremely flimsy form in which it was sent to me, a piece of paper about as sturdy as paper money, and hope it doesn't get ripped, dripped on or stained over the course of the rest of my life.

Anyway, since this documentation was already late, I decided I should fax it. Of course, that means I have to figure out how to send a fax from Japan to Canada. I don't have a fax machine (or a phone line) in my apartment, and from the online research I did, most convenience store fax machines won't do overseas faxes. FedEx would presumably be able to help me out, but that's about an hour away by train, and I felt pretty ridiculous about making a trip that far just to send a fax.

It occurred to me that the internet (combined with my scanner) should afford a solution, but again, a quick check showed that Skype, wonderful though it is for phone calls, doesn't do faxes. However I found a Skype plugin that does, installed, it and got it working. Unfortunately due to a technical difficulty (attempts to transfer my Skype money over to the Fax application resulted in the money vanishing into the ether, which my fancy education assured me does not exist) I was left with the ability to fax only a single page (first page is free). After being stymied for a while, I just gave up, and made the whole thing (cover page info and scan) into one page and sent it.

None of this is actually the Red Tape that made me decide to Blog. That came today.
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I'm going to be leaving Japan fairly soon; possibly not forever (I'd like to come back and visit) but certainly for a very long time, and with every intention of making my home in Canada for the forseeable future.

I keep wondering when I'll get my 実感 [jikkan]. This word literally means a "sense that something is real"; as in the moment when it will presumably hit me that, oh my god I'm really leaving Japan.

I remember when I came to Japan, it wasn't entirely real to me until I was on the airplane and somewhere over the Pacific. I had the same sort of feeling I often get on roller-coasters as they slowly ascend that first ominous rise; a combination of giddy excitement, and a feeling that this is, after all, far too scary and that it was a mistake to get on in the first place.

I wonder if I will have a feeling like that when I return to Canada. What will the balance be between the sadness of leaving, the happiness of going "home", and the fear of how my life will change.

Today I came a step closer to 実感. It was my last day of classes at the only school I've worked at consistently for the last two years. Most of my schools change from term to term, but I've been going to this little school in the mountains every Thursday for two years; and I taught my last lesson there EVER this afternoon. I'll be back there next thursday, but mostly just to say my goodbyes, play with the kids, and so on.

I will have another chance to hang out with the teachers though; they're planning to hold a farewell party for me the night before I leave for Japan and see me off to the airport. Sweet.

Well, I see it's been a while, once again; an eventful while about which I've told you nothing.

Here are some highlights:

My friend Kristin came to Japan for a couple of weeks, and spent four days here in Osaka. It was really great to see her and show her around; and it kept up my average of one-familiar-face-per-year.

There was a major earthquake in Northern Japan; MarkMark reports that he and his family are fine. Kern suggests that MarkMark and his family should move a little further south; every significant earthquake in the five years I've been here has been in his neighbourhood I think.

A Rakugo performer came to one of my elementary schools last week; good fun, and educational too! For example, I learned that the drums, gongs, and flutes that play when a Rakugo storyteller form a unique song, so that if you're a fan you know who's next just from the music. The person who came to visit us uses (I kid you not) a version of the Mickey Mouse March arranged for traditional Japanese instruments.

This week another of my schools had a drill to practice what they would do if somebody came into the school to attack the students. Even though I knew the "attacker" was actually a police officer with a rubber knife, it was surprisingly scary (mostly because I wasn't expecting the knife, and because the guy took his role very seriously, with lots of bellowing and threatening, and really struggling to get away from teachers who tried to restrain him (using poles and broomsticks and such). Had it been real, about half a dozen of the staff would have been stabbed.

Speaking of stabbings, the latest seemingly-random attack in Japan was in my neighbourhood this time; a 38-year-old woman is accused of slashing three apparently unconnected women, several minutes apart, at one of the busiest train stations in Osaka. She denies it; while the security cameras show her beside each victim right before they are attacked, they don't clearly show her cutting them. Yeah, good luck with that defence.

Well, that's all for now. I have pictures of many of these events, but of course, it's my unwillingness to wade through and post the pictures that keeps me from being more timely with these updates.

And now, I'm off to read my friends' blogs, which I've also been grossly neglecting.