Denial

Now we enter a weird new phase of the Japan Chronicles: denial.

Are we really going to turn our backs on the life we’ve known for the past two years and return to the life we knew for six years before that? Which one is the proper one anyway? It’s hard to know any more.

In any case, things are finishing up here at an ever accelerating pace. The kids have both had their last soccer practices at their respective clubs, their last futsal practices, and their last days at school. Amazingly, it turns out that finally, after slugging it out for a year and nine months, Ruby had started to quite enjoy school, not least because her classmates seemed to have eventually found it within themselves to accept her in their midst. So the last day at school was actually quite a saddening experience for our normally unflappable teenager. Felix, meanwhile, has had a fantastic time with his classmates ever since he started yet in typical fashion was not particularly perturbed to have finished. He just takes it all in his stride does our Felix. I hope he doesn’t feel too sad when we get back to Australia.

Eleni is suffering major withdrawal symptoms as she contemplates the end of her role as a pillar of the local Sunami community. She has been a regular at the local community center, what with the Japanese drumming, English classes, taichi sessions, not to mention the many other culturally stimulating activities such as cooking, sandal-making, calligraphy, kimono-wearing and flower arranging (let alone all the others I don’t remember). Eleni is on the public record as saying that she would have liked at least another year in Japan and hopes to return again one day soon. In fact, our imminent return to Australia is increasingly shaping up as only a temporary reprieve from the overseas adventuring that has come to define our lives. Though whether the next destination ends up being Japan or somewhere new is up for discussion.

But I digress. Last Sunday, as if to underscore Eleni’s pivotal role in the local community, a party was held in her/our honour with about 40 people in attendance, including the members of the drumming troupe and various dignitaries from the community center, including all the guys who run the festivals that we’ve variously been involved in (such as the beach opening ceremony and the portable shrine carrying ceremony). It was rather a humbling experience given the amount of effort that had clearly gone into preparing the masses of food, games and activities, a dress-up session, various musical numbers (including the kids and I reprising a couple of numbers from the PJO swing band) and of course speeches.

One of the games was this very wacky exercise where you get people in pairs, with one person sitting behind the other. The one behind is blindfolded and has to either put makeup on the face of or feed cake into the mouth of the person in front by following their commands. Naturally it’s very hard to do and shenanigans ensue. Here’s Felix about to get made up:

Note the guy next to him is already having a great time with the foundation powder.

Felix ended up getting lipstick all over his face, although the general consensus was that this was the result of deliberately bad instructions on his part.

In the next bit, I had to feed Ruby cake. She was thrilled at the prospect of having me for a partner:

And sure enough, shenanigans did ensue:

But I have to say that we won the round thanks to my skilful cake placement — not a drop of whipped cream was spilled.

After that we were all elaborately dressed up in some very fine kimonos by some local experts.

Felix was offered a ninja costume but opted instead for the ancient traditional cultural reindeer costume.

There was a ceremony where we pulled apart a ball to reveal a sign saying Eleni Don’t Go! or words to that effect.

And many presents were duly received.

It was a great night and we felt very honoured.

But that was six days ago and it already seems a world away as we wrench ourselves back into Ordinary Australians mode.

And just to add to the general weirdness of it all, we’ve come away on a last-splurge holiday up to Tokyo (to expose the kids to the bright lights big city side of Japan) and Nagano (to expose the family to a skiing holiday). I am writing this from our hotel room in a tiny little ski lodge in the wonderful town of Nozawa Onsen, site of the 1988 Winter Olympics and all-round cute Japanese mountain village where the top temperature today was -2 degrees, now that you ask.

Next week we return to Sunami and our mountain of half-packed boxes. For the first week of January the kids have already arranged a succession of last-gasp sleepovers at the homes of their bestest friends. Meanwhile, Mummy and Daddy will be hard at work getting the house in order, both literally and figuratively. Some friends have offered to help us clean it out on the last day, which is very kind. So it will be a rather strange time. But then again, everything is rather strange at the moment.