The Final Days And The Last Journey Of The Shoes

After a day of scrubbing, sweeping, mopping, washing, whipping, polishing, buffing and vacuuming the apartment is cleaner then it was when I moved in. All my bags are packed and sitting neatly in the corner by the empty closet and all that remains in the room is a shelf, the television and the comforter that will be this evenings bed. Oh yeah, and the heater. That’s the last thing I’m getting rid of. With the snowfall today things have become mighty chilly in Kashihara. Tomorrow morning I’m to meet the person who will move me out and by tomorrow afternoon I should be, if I can find it, at the hotel that will be home for the final week in Japan. There goes the clanging of the train crosswalk. I really have to listen to hear it now. Over the year it has become an ingrained facet of life. Like opening the door to come in and go out, like flushing the toilet or turning on the sink, like peaking in the fridge or firing up the gas stove, the clanging of the crosswalk just seems like part of the apartment now. Can’t say I’m going to miss it, though.

Everything is now “the last”. The last day of lessons was yesterday. Tonight is the last night here. Not only did the week go fast but the whole damn year just went. Life when looking forward moves so slowly but when you look back it was all just a blur. Here, gone in the time it takes to nuke a plate of nachos in the micro. You know, I could really go for a nuked plate of nachos from the micro but I don’t have a micro. Not here in Japan and not in Canada. Actually, this comforter bed is more then I will have when I get back home. The rest of this bed sitting torn in two, the innards pulled out, all stuffed into two garbage bags out by the scooter parking is also more of a bed then I have of my own in the North of oh so great and whiteness. The dishes that are not mine were at least dishes and the television I never watched at least a television to briefly call my own. Somethings soon to be nothings to be and somethings again to somebody else.

My final three hours of students saw the biggest crowd of parents and siblings since my first week 13 months ago. The room became so hot the walls started to bleed moister. One kid decided to get half naked. I decided to turn off the heat. It was a good compromise to get his clothes back on. My youngest and cutest set of kids were hard to say goodbye to. The younger the kids I found the better the bond they had with me. These are the kids that would sit on your lap or jump on your back or try to jam their fingers into your ass. Japanese child bonding at it’s best, folks. They were too young to grasp the concept of my leaving. All they wanted to do was play and I obliged running myself ragged for them all the way to the stairwell. Listening to their laughter disappear made the ending of my Japanese teaching life all too real. Then came the girl in the second class who would come back after leaving to give me a little note. I had heard of teachers getting notes from students but because most of my kids didn’t even know I was leaving I received no such notes…until this one. After the last lesson which I ended with the legendary Gorilla Game, I opened the tiny, pink memo paper. It read: “Dear Mr. teacher. My daughter Rion says she will miss you. Me too. Please give me your address and we will send you a letter.” Like the handshake and hug by Riko that first week, this was a heartbreaker. A simple letter but it was thanks. You come into this gig wondering if anybody will remember you. Teachers want to make some kind of impact educationally, naturally, but will your students remember you after they are gone. I remember certain teachers, not all of them. Most are for the negative aspects they possessed but then you have the John Firn’s who made an impact to my life. These kids get a revolving door of foreign teachers yearly. You come in, you touch their lives, they touch yours and maybe you got a little English into them. Will they talk of that gorilla teacher? I know I will not forget these kids, even those terror demons and spawns of Lucifers. Since my time here I have taught a total of at least a couple hundred different kids all over the Kansai region and I owe them all a thanks for instilling in me the faith in myself to do this kind of work. I am nowhere near the teacher I’d like to be. I need more patience. I need more shaping. But a lot of what I am now in that regards was given to me by these kids. They will be missed.

And so it came time today to say one last goodbye. I knew it was coming when I first packed the suitcase in my test run last night. There wasn’t room for everything. Something would have to stay behind. That day I glanced down at my feet. Upon them were two torn, tattered and travel worn shoes. Stained with Prince Edward Island mud, souls battered, one bearing a large hole from Fuji, the shoes now bit at the back of my feet. A rip in the back was now torn clear through. The shoes were on their last legs. They would not be coming back home. Shoes, you’ve been a constant companion over their last few years of travel. Together we’ve walked the streets of Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver. We’ve been through Dublin and Belfast, Cork and Galway. We’ve been through Kyoto and Tokyo, Osaka and Hiroshima. We’ve hiked great mountains, strolled on the edges of green cliffs, climbed castle stairs and rested under the cherry blossom trees. In you I’ve stepped into both oceans, cut paths through woodlands and ached in you in buses and cars and kayaks and boats. Shoes, we’ve had a good run and we’ve had a good walk. How about one more.

I slip into them once more, the gray sneakers purchased for under ten bucks in Toronto in the beginning years of the new millennium, and together we head for the mountain. The going is cold and a winter of remaining indoors has left me out of shape but still we press on. Up, up, up Mount Minimashi and towards the temple at the top. I climb the wooden steps of the temple, sit and remove my traveling companions from my feet for the final time. This is my tribute. Shoes like these are not to be cast away in a trash bag. Shoes like these go out with respect. I place them at the top of the steps below the torii gate and the alter. They rest there as the sun sets above the mountain. The patches between the branches above shimmer. I sit and put on the brown sneakers. They don’t feel right. For a moment I think I’d just as soon leave these behind me and take back the grays but I know this is best. I feel like I am leaving behind a pet, like all those stray cats on the mountain here, so many now that signs have been placed up asking to not bring them here. Well, Minimashi, how about one pair of amazing shoes. Sit with them, keep them well and listen…just listen. Oh what stories they will tell you.

And now to bed. Tomorrow is another city and another hotel room and in five more days it’s friends and family, hugs and home. Home? Well, home for now.