(I swear if theO doesn't start letting my type in actual Japanese soon....)
It's the end of June, making it officially summer at last. While all my friends' MySpace & Facebook posts are about vacations and beach trips, for us here in Japan it's not quite time for holidays yet. Some Japanese people will even argue with you that it's not summer (despite the whole seasonal changes becoming official on the solstice or equinox thing....) since it's still the rainy season. I guess I can't fault them. In my Florida brain it's been summer since the middle of May. All my life as soon as my birthday was over, it was summer. So maybe that's why even now, as I'm dutifully teaching children day after day in the humidity that's so much like home, it still feels like it's time to have fun.
(Pin's school festival)
I noticed this happening last year too, not just to me but other Americans I know here. We just can't forget that ingrained feeling of "summer". Even if we're working adults in a country whose 'summer holiday' is only in August. And only for school kids & those of us lucky enough to work with them. Summer means fireworks are soon to come (after the rains pass) and festivals and snow cones and sitting around outside in the afternoon.....evening......into the night.....just because we can. Because it's not cold.
Of course, this isn't my last summer in Japan. It's just my last summer with my first, and best friend here. In just a little over a month Stacey will go back to the states for grad school. I keep telling myself it's really going to happen, but I can't really seem to picture her not being here. I've been imagining it, sure, been thinking of writing this post for months, knowing I'd have to. I can see myself taking her to the train station to say goodbye, but only because we did it for Lauren last year. In my head I can see the platform, Stacey on the train, the train leaving..........and then I turn into one of those anime girls who collapses straight downward with her knees turned out in a 'V' shape and can't talk or cry or even look away from the empty track.
My little dramatic fantasy.
But in reality......I don't know what will happen. I don't even know what I want to happen.
