Today I was in the bathroom--on my last day in Japan--and I realized that the 6-pack of toilet paper I had purchased months ago was about to come to an end.

Perfect timing.

Maybe it means something?

--

"Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

So this is it! After 10 months we've finally come to the end... and it's sort of disappointing that I don't have something more profound to say than simply, "I'm coming home!"

But that's really all I've got.

My computer is broken, so even though I'll be in Japan for another week, today is my last day with Internet access--my last day to use this crappy old computer in this grey, second floor teacher's lounge.

It's the end, and I know it... but I'm not really that sad or distraught or full of dread for the flight home... I ... just ... am. I'm just here, sitting, typing slowly, nothing really on my mind at all.

The students are upstairs in biology class, today my last day so see them... it's the thing that tears are made of, and yet, its strange how that short period of time--say, a week or so--before you return home is like morphine for your feelings, dulling your senses completely, washing your mind completely hollow.

You want to treasure every last moment, preserve it somehow in your mind...

You want it to be there always, to be able to reach out and just touch it, pull it from thin air.

You want your memories to be just that crisp, and vivid...

...and yet, you don't know what to think, because, it's the end, and your mind just isn't processing things right, and you're talking to your students, and in your head you KNOW that this is it, but yet, your mind tricks you and says: there's tomorrow! It's going to continue like this! It's not really the end! You'll get to see her face tomorrow and tease her about her boyfriend, and you'll get to see his face tomorrow and kid him about his weekend activities...

But it is the end, of this at least, and though I'll be back to Japan and see those stunningly beautiful eyes again someday, this part of my life, is about to wind up; perhaps the greatest learning experience anyone could have hoped for... is over.

Their eyes will keep shining when I'm on the plane and when I land and on and on to eternity. Those eyes will wait.

...

Not a very profound reflection, I know.

It's just that for everything that is to be said about Japan, and how crazy and weird and strange and great and -insert adjective here- that it is, I think after living here for a year I've learned it's not so different as we'd like to paint it. First Japan was all of that, those descriptive, exotic words, and then Japan is the place that you lay your head at night, the place you call home.

A home with a cellphone full of friends and Saturday nights full of fun and weekdays full of work. A place just like any other, that despite it's oddities is still just a place, and I've learned that living here with that frame of mind, was ultimately the best way to live.

I know it doesn't make sense.

I already said I have nothing profound to say.

I'm terrified to get on that airplane... because, you know, the moment you truly realize you are actually at THE END... well, that is the hardest moment of all.

...

I'll be back in Nebraska on Saturday, June 25th at about 5 p.m. and will probably be in Lincoln around 6:30 or so. I'm planning on getting together at Bisonwitches for some greasy American food and then maybe going to the bars for a bit.

So if you'd like to see what reverse culture shock looks like up close and personal, by all means drop a comment in this thread and I'll try and give you a call when I get in and let you know my plans.

See you on the other side.

Fashion magazines that are nothing but people posing with iPods.

Chanting unintelligible words over and over with salary men in a club called Vanilla at 3 a.m. in Roppongi.

Getting kancho'd. (I'll explain later)

Lying flat on your back on the floor of the last train for no other reason than just because YOU CAN.

Awkward karaoke experiences with Italians.

Getting hit on my someone twice your age at an Udon shop in Ueno station.

The guy with the same purple shirt standing in the same place every night, offering the same nomihoudai deal.

7-11 Tofu.

The stupidest music in the world.

That coffee shop guy who always seems just so-damn-friendly.

Not caring that it's that stupidest music in the world, dacing like nothing matters, and having a STUPID good time.

That "Numa" song by that Eastern European band O-Zone.

Drinking a sports drink called "Walkin."

The guy who stands at the bottom of the stairs at Kita-Matsudo and solicits his prostitutes every night of the week, and who has gradually been getting tanner.

Kurotobi Sensei's phenomenally inclusive Air Jordan shoe collection spanning back over a decade.

Sleeping on the floor.

And did I mention the fist-pumping fun with the businessmen at Vanilla? It was like a religious experience.

Anyway.

I got to go back to high school for a semester.

Not as a teacher, but rather a student... the tall white guy with dreads who doesn't have to wear the school uniform and wanders around the hallways aimlessly day-in and day-out, asking questions like:

"Who is your girlfriend?" and

"Where is your boyfriend?" and

"Don't you hate such and such teacher?" and

on and on and on.

The questions teachers aren't supposed to ask students are the only questions worth asking, the questions that tell the world and then a little bit more.

Like the discovery that our assistant principal told parents of students headed to Nebraska for a school trip that, "There is no need to worry because Nebraska doesn't have very many black people."

This is the same guy who travels to America with the students but has Japanese food freeze dried in advance and sent ahead of him via express mail--because he hates American food just that much.

(And it's not cheap to air mail 20 pounds of boxed lunches, either.)

It's the stuff I learned as a student.

Who likes who and who is hot and who is not... and which teacher messed around with the school director's daughter and was fired... and

on and on and on.

The students who have crushes on teachers...

The students who know more about Kabukicho than you...

The students...

And then you "graduate" again, and are gone and it's all just a memory fading away... a longing in the back of you mind that sometimes calls out to you and says, "I wish I could go back to high school..."

How long does it take you to realize--in your half-awake half-asleep head-nodding-down-to-your-chest commuting home confusion--that you are staring at someone's ass?

I only noticed it for the first time last week.

But it's something I--all of us--have been doing, well, probably since we started riding trains; I just never realized it before.

It's not any perverted thing, or vouyeristic fetish. Men and women alike are subject to the gaze, and not just rear-ends either, but front-sides too, unfortunately.

The seats on the train are to blame, placing seated passengers at eye level with, well, typically their neighbors crotch.

You don't stare.

You sleep, or doze, or stare out the window, or put your eyes anywhere but the soiled behind of a salary man. But on those crowded, 11:30 p.m. trains where there is no window to look out, no advertisement not blocked by a suit; sometimes on those trains, you wake up out of that blank stare and realize that, "Wow, the focus of my glassy-eyed daydreaming gaze was that mans ass."

And then... well, where the hell do you put your eyes? You say...

And then close them and go to sleep...

And you wake up somewhere, maybe Roppongi, always unexpectedly.

You're at McDonald's waiting for that subway to open up because, well, tonight was one of those nights you shouldn't have gone clubbing but did becaue, well, it's Tokyo and what were you going to do anyway, SLEEP?

So you're at McDonald's, 3rd floor, eating a large fry and repeating lullabyes to yourself trying to pass the time.

And though that McDonald's is a paradise for exhausted clubbers, there are others who use it's glossy tables and smoky rooms as a hangout.

Like Hiroyuki, the Ph.D student in nanotechnology from Tokyo University who I met there.

He was studying English.

I was recovering from two Kamikaze's.

I asked him everything.

But he couldn't really explain just exactly what he was doing at 3 a.m. in Roppongi on a Friday night. Studying, I know... but? A Ph.D student in nanotechnology from Japan's equivalent of Harvard University, using--of all places--Roppongi as his hangout?

Wouldn't Ochanomizu be more, well, typical? Maybe more relaxed? Safer, at least?

"Yes, but... I want to be around English, so I come here."

I told him I nanotechnology was a frighteningly futuristic technology, wished him luck, and headed for the first train home, where I sat down and rested my behind on the lovely cloth seats, and then rested my eyes on some lovely behind.

And speaking of private parts:

"How long? Your penis?" I was asked, yesterday.

I didn't answer but instead solemnly shook the hand of the boy who asked the question, produced a disposable camera, and with my arm over his shoulder had my picture taken with this 13-year-old potty-mouth.

He probably was a bit like the 13-year-old me, maybe.

At least he was making a solid effort at English, though I don't know if I can call it conversational, it will certainly get people to laugh, and laughter is some kind of communication, right?

Junior high boys are the best.

If you talk to them long enough, they will ask you anything.

"First sex? When? When?"

I love my students.

I think I sat around at school until almost 7 p.m. last night, just talking to them, being with them, staring out an open 4th story window toward Tokyo, just talking, talking...

Soon they'll be gone.

The boy who brings his guitar to school everyday and plays Nirvana and Metallica...

The girl who giggles everytime I tell her I'm going home soon...

The boy who never let's me try on his glasses...

The girl who's name is the same sound as the word sugar...

Soon they'll be gone.

I love my students.

All of them.

Completely.

Today I received a hand-crafted book about four inches thick, inside which was over 100 portraits of me, drawn in crayon, by kindergardners.

Nothing was left out. Dreadlocks, earrings, five-o-clock shadow: all completely rendered in Crayola.

I shook hands with a few hundred kindergardners today, and said "bye-bye" a few hundred times.

Two days ago I sat and talked for over two hours to Satoko, Natsuko and Chizuru. It was sports day. They played basketball, I cheered.

I don't think they understood everything I said about being sad to go.

I don't think they will understand how much I'm going to miss them.

Two days ago I had a going away party in-front of an auditorium full of junior high students. A small girl whose name I never learned came up to me with a tear stained face and said "Don't go, don't go!" Her lip trembling and her face flushed.

"Don't go, don't go..." she keeps saying to me... and it's painful.

I only have 3 more days of school left.

OK. So it looks like I'm not going to be able to fix my computer until I'm back in Nebraska, so after Friday I won't have internet access!

However, if you really need to contact me you can reach my cellphone anytime at brett.wertz at ezweb.ne.jp. Of course, replace the 'at' with @. That e-mail goes directly to me anytime of day, and I can e-mail back immediately!

I'll post some more before I come home, but... just updating you on the situation of my computer.

The greatest restaurant-picker ever.

The closest thing I have to a mother/sister in Japan.

The best self-taught English speaker I know.

One of the hardest workers I've met here.

One of the longest commuters I've met here.

Did I mention the best restaurant-picker ever?

She's taken me all over Tokyo, from the finest tofu specialty shop above Ueno station to the bowels of the Ginza 5 for authentic Thai. She taken me to restaurants with candles and restaurants with blazing chandaleirs.

She's taken me to a rabbit-themed restaurants.

She's taken me to her aunt's home where there were no cooks but a few old farm hands, seasoned veterans who have been making Udon by hand for decades.

She's taken me everywhere, and never once complained about my vegetarian inclination.

On Tuesday she took me to a tiny alley in Hamamatucho--just close enough to Tokyo Tower to feel that red glow--and then led me into a place called Nguyen where she had arranged a course meal for her, myself, Takiko, Yasuko and Emi, a meal that laster over three hours, four glasses of wine, and was so immaculate that I couldn't believe we didn't have to leave a tip.

But this is Japan, and here, there are no tips...

Besides being a microscopically small four table restaurant with an open kitchen and a French theme, there was something more than atmosphere that made this meal special: Megumi knew the chef and the owner, and had arranged that my meal be cooked completely vegetarian, and completely original.

Every dish I tasted was unique, and every dish amazing.

But beyond the taste, the atmosphere, the tired friends toasting to work, Japan, America, and life; beyond those things... there was Megumi, who's kindness and comradarie I will never forget.

And when she comes to Nebraska in the not-so-far future, I will have to treat her to something delicious... but alas, since I can't really cook and the Lincoln gourmet scene doesn't yet rival Tokyo in its scope or granduer, I'm hoping that a batch of mom's cookies will do.

I know Meg will appreciate them, at least.

And to think... all of this came from a chance meeting at a little youth hostle in front of Kyoto station almost a year ago.

Unbelievable, really.

The only time I've ever been bumped into in Tokyo was by an American.

OK, I'm sort of lying.

But the only time I've even been bumped into, HARD, in Tokyo, was by an American--and I knew it was an American because only assholes like us, from America, can dish out pain like that to people we've never met.

C'mon, buddy. It's a crowded street. No need to shove me.

But moments like that provide for a nice, silent time for reflection on streets where the only silent place is typically in one's head.

Sort of like the second or two of quiet clarity that one has after a perfect train dash--the commuter train home, 11:15 p.m., your train pulls up at platform 1 and the train you want is just a bit behind on platform 4, and when that door opens you tear out of there like your life depended on it, with all the suits and skirts sprinting beside you.

A great race, it is...

And as you descend the stairs for your train you can hear that voice on the P.A. telling you, "The door is now closing." You are at full speed, the passengers in the train are motionless. You put on foot in as the door begins to shut, and haul the rest of your body in afterwards. The door shuts a split-second later with a dull thud, and all is quiet again.

"The next station is Kita-Matsudo," he says.

And as you wipe the sweat from your forhead you reflect in the silence of that train, and you wave goodbye to your comrades who were left on the platform... That perfect dash is symbolic of something, I guess.

Maybe a perfect time, here? No, not that... but, something.

The music beats your ears through your headphones... and you're speeding along... and you're home, descending the same set of stairs you have for the last six months, listening to the same pimp try to sell you the same hookers.

"How about it...? How about it...?" he whistles in your direction.

Not tonight, thanks.

It's all just so surreal sometimes, and though everyone who writes about every foreign travel says, "Oh, man... it was like, so surreal! You know, just, like, surreal," this really is surreal.

A scramble crosswalk in Shinjuku at 4 p.m., silent except for footsteps, when all of a sudden shooting through the air at a million miles per hour comes a tidal wave of gutiars and drums, hitting the back of your head like a mountain tumbling down... and no one flinches.

... as the band assembled on the corner begins their slow, sullen intro and the goth fans nod their heads, you and the other pedestrians walk and listen to that metallic, clanging noise, rocketing nervously, slowly through the streets.

It put some kind of strange, perfect soundtrack to this place, and it was... surreal, man. Like totally completely, surreal, you know, dude?

That music, like slow lightning moving through everybody, just exposing them for what they were, ticking time bombs on a street moving to and fro, somewhere... nowhere... back and forth...

...

"So kind of like the Grand Canyon, right?"

Well, not exactly, I told the officer. It's mostly just flat. There's a lot of farms there.

"Oh, so like Saitama."

Well, no, you see, we don't have any mountains or oceans either. You can see the horizon, I guess.

"That sounds amazing."

And I suppose it is pretty amazing. It's Nebraska, and I described it in all of its glory for the police officer outside Kashiwa station at 12:30 a.m.

He wanted to check our IDs. I guess we looked like trouble.

He ended up talking to us for over an hour about America, college, Japan, President Bush, etc.

A bit different than the police in America, I'd say.

Oh, and they don't carry guns either.

Sorry I haven't posted any photos or stories or things about Osaka but my computer DIED on me. Hopefully will be fixed within a few days and I can bring you up to speed on one of the busiest weeks of my time here...

Some highlights include: eating famous, 4000 Yen okonomiyaki; Osaka castle; SPIDERMAN! (The Ride!); ferris wheels, internet cafes, having my photo taken by a stranger and an amazing, amazing themed 'mall' of sorts designed to take the customer back to Edo period Japan.

And for those of you counting the days: I'll be back in 15!

Tomorrow night I'll be in Shinjuku eating/drinking/watching soccer, and then I'll be leaving for Osaka with Shi-chan.

Should be back probably by Monday night. I plan to go to Universal Studios Japan and eat a lot of okonomiyaki.

I'll keep you posted.

Update: Can someone PLEASE tell me why I can't stop listening to J-POP? I never thought this would happen. But... seriously, I've really become... a part of this place, I guess. (And NO I'm not going to say that phrase. You know what I'm talking about.)