Well, this is it my friends. With the departure of my father and the imminent end of spring break, I am about to begin the last leg of my journey in Japan. As I've told many of you, I have about 4 months time left here, but really only about 3 months and a weeks worth of work. I imagine the time will fly at this point, heck, it already has.
I crossed off a few more places I wanted to go while my dad was here. Himeji castle and Koyaasan temple complex were up there and I'm glad I got to see them. Arashiyama in western Kyoto was also pretty awesome with it's bamboo forest and laid back atmosphere. Seeing all the major sites in Tokyo, Nara, Osaka, and Kyoto again was a nice refresher course. A good time was had by all.
My last goals, at least for this period of time, is to get out to western Japan and see my friend Aaron, who lives on some little island in the Sea of Japan, and some of the cities out that way, like Fukuoka and Nagasaki. Getting up north to Hokkaido would be great too, but I'm not so sure that's going to happen. There's a good chance I'll make it to the island of Shikoku just because the ferry is only about 30 minutes from where I live. We'll see.
I'm not really looking forward to the next few days of work, because its just all ceremonies. I have to dress up in a suit for something that lasts 20 minutes and then sit in the teachers room for the rest of the day. Whoo hoo. There's only two days of that though, shouldn't be so bad. By April 11th things should be back to normal. Then it's just three weeks to Golden Week when I large portion of the population has off for several days.
