Saying good bye is much easier when you have beautiful flowers and yummy food smushed into your face as you're show then door.



In as much as I love what I do there is one really painful part that I dread each year in March. Saying goodbye. A year may seem like a long time but it flies by in the blink of an eye leaving you wondering what just happened. 

光陰矢の如し

As with every other year, March has rolled round again it was time for me to say goodbye to people I had spent the better part of a year working with. It was also time to say good bye to the young humans I had been helping to get the best possible start to their futures.

一年間で楽しみました。



Relationships are strange things because we are never really in control of how they develop. There are so many things beyond our control that affect how things will turn out in the end. We kind of just hold on for dear life much like we would do on rollercoaster. Small events that seem really insignificant can have a giant impact on the relationships you share with people. 

人間の関係を作るのが自分の責任ではなく。



In Japan, saying goodbye at a school is something that is taken seriously and there is an actual ceremony that allows students and teachers to say goodbye to each other in an official kind of way. To some extent, the formal atmosphere helps to keep emotions in check and prevent them running rampant. As with most things in Japan, it is a time to be stoic. Blowing kisses to students from the podium is not condoned… I promise to do behave if there is a next time!

離任式で投げキスをしてのはダメですか？！あ！すみませんでした！



I had not been at this school for a full year but in that time I was lucky to meet s group of young humans who while taxing (don’t ever play tag with JHS kids, never) to the extreme were amazing in their capacity to be vanilla human. Kind, caring and willing to share happiness while asking for nothing in return. You gain a tremendous amount of respect for these young people. You begin to question to whom the title “teacher” should be attributed. 

事と次第で学校にいる若い人は大人より大人らしく。



One thing that is really great about this experience is that you get to make many amazing memories each day. However, multiply that by the number of people you engage with each day and you can see why leaving a place that makes you so happy can be somewhat traumatic. Like ripping a bandaid from you skin… only it is not a bandaid just actual skin it has been there for so long. 

前にちにたくさんの良い思い出を作ることが出来ます。



In any case it is done. There is a sense of relief in some sense because at least now one can begin the process of healing. Filling in all the gaps that have been left by fading memories. In the same way that you don’t really get to choose how these cherished relationships were formed, you don’t get to pick and choose which memories remain and which fade away. 

別れてる時に、たくさんの良い思い出を忘れ可能性もあります。

I suppose that sometimes the hardest part of saying goodbye is that very often you don’t actually want to say it.  

たまに「さようなら」って自分が言いたいことではなく。


The hardest part of leaving is fighting the desire to stay.