Entering the Time of the Lasts

This morning, still half asleep, I stumbled onto the platform of Unebi station. There are no more cats. Skimble has moved on to wherever on may be. I walk by the vending machine offering me small cups of various hot beverages. I already have a bottle of orange juice mingling with grapefruit juice in my left pocket. It’s the last day of the teaching week, the longest, and I will need a bit of energy. There are three people on the platform already. An old woman buries her face into the folds of her coat. A man taps his feet on the ground to no beat in particular. A woman gazes blankly at the tracks. I decide to take a walk. Unebi station is a long one and one can burn off some time by making the walk from one end of the platform to another. It’s not much but what else are you going to do without any books or an Etch a Sketch to fiddle around with. Never leave home without it, folks. It then occurred to me that after today I would no longer be needing this station and that my time on the rickety ol’ JR line to Gojo was now a “last” time. In fact, the walk through the small alleyways by the canal was the last time, too. And then it stuck me that now, with only a week left, nearly everything I do in Kashihara will be the last time I do it. Not only is my time with the children ending my time in my apartment and the city I’ve called home for 13 months…all gone in eight days.

When you enter into the time of the lasts you start to ask yourself is there anything you missed? Was there something you wanted to do but didn’t for one reason for another and now only have a few days in which to do it? Thankfully, I can answer this question with a resounding no. Country wide, of course, there was more I would have liked to do, other places I’d have liked to have seen but in my city and the surrounding areas, ripe with history as they are, I can say I am content with my pre-winter wanderings, thousands of photos and collected memories. I’ve over-killed some of the city sights, to tell you the truth and don’t feel so bad hibernating most of the winter inside this apartment practically sitting on top of the plug-in heater. Recently I took a quick walking tour trying to cover some ground I hadn’t previously walked behind the apartment but I found there was nothing really to see and I was just reaching to make things interesting. But, then again, when you enter the time of the lasts and you know that each time you look on something could be the last time you see it you, if you are me, study things a bit closer then you usually word. Let’s be honest, people live out their daily lives, for the most part, without really studying their surroundings. It is all just there, as it will be there, and you pass that sign or bush or tree or house or mail box every day. But did you know that there, on the mail box, is a scratched in love note written in the late 1990s? Did you notice that the tree bends slightly more to the left, as though in a state of depression? No? Don’t worry, I didn’t either. The atmosphere you live in becomes so naturalistic that you sort of just float through it from day to day after, maybe, an initial period of consternation. Though I like to think I attacked my surroundings with vim and vigor I realize on my more recent walks that there have been things I’ve never really looked at. Sure, I’ve seen them, but not looked at them. They were just gardens or homes I passed. In the time of the lasts, though, your vision clears some and things you hadn’t noticed before, as minute as some of them may be, come into focus if you let them.

And so the last time I walk by that bakery on route to the station I will stop in and purchase one of the items whose smell catches my nose. I will stop to look at the large, mutant like cabbages in the garden behind the old, wooden fence. I will take the gamble that that green thing that looks like a muffin in the 7-11 will taste good. I’ll gaze at the mountains as they domino off over the countryside. I’ll get me some green tea from the vending machine across the train tracks. When I walk by the old man’s fruit stand, hidden almost within the homes surrounding it, I’ll pick up a bag of oranges. I’ll say my goodbyes to the shrine cats and I’ll smile a little wider at the grocery store clerk who always practices a little English on me each time she rings me through. I’ll take a different road to work. I’ll rise a little earlier to get one last good walk out of these old shoes, I’ll stay out a little later to see the sun sink over the city from the mountain once more and today, as the train rolls me off that final ride on that rickety Gojo line I’ll no close my eyes and try to sleep. Today I’ll sit eyes wide open watching the mountains and farms and rice fields roll by as the dark clouds move in above and the first snowflakes of the day begin to fall.