Well, it’s hard to believe that today was our last class. We spent the morning just getting a very fast taste of the rather complicated Honorific Verb Forms—something that will take a long time of study before I can start to understand it.

At lunch, I met Keiko and Emi for the last time, and treated them to lunch at Sweet Pepper. I felt like that was the least I could do considering how kind and patient they’ve been with me. It was really hot in the restaurant, so we returned to the classroom for the rest of our time where it was cooler. We took some last pictures, and then something surprising happened: first Keiko, then Emi begain tearing up. That of course brought tears to my eyes, and we gave each other hugs and then they were gone. I never thought an old guy like me could have any such effect on people anymore. I was really touched, and will always remember them both—and I vow to stay in touch, what with email and everything. They made my time here special, even if I felt like an idiot most of the time.

The afternoon was first spent giving 3 minute impromptu speeches about our IJP experiences this past month. We then had a five-minute, rather scary “dress rehearsal” for our oral finals tomorrow—I think I still need to study more…

Our last event with the classroom CPs was to make Onigiri (Japanese rice balls), which was a lot of fun—not to mention delicious. I actually am absolutely no good at making them pretty, but they tasted great! I still have one left in my fridge for a late-night snack.

The last thing was meeting the postman to ship my three packages. Not really having any clue about the process, it luckily turned out to be rather painless. I managed to fill out the forms correctly, talk my way through any questions and off the went. Of course the real pain came when I got the final total: ¥25,100 for all three together—that’s just under $250.00! That should teach me to get a more lightweight hobby other than buying books! It was a good thing I had some extra cash stashed away in a book on my desk, or I’d have been up the creek. I sent two of them SAL (partial airmail), so that was possibly a bit unnecessarily pricey, but the really heavy one went by ship. I’ll be interested in seeing how long it takes for them to get to me.

So tomorrow my oral final is at 11:30, then I’ll meet Yasu for lunch for the last time. The rest of the day is free time until our farewell party begins at 3:00. It all happened just too quickly. Next week’s vacationing will be nice, and I can’t wait to see even more of the extraordinary sights in this beautiful country.

And then I suppose it’ll be back to my regularly scheduled life…