I was invited to attend graduation dinner with the teachers at the school at which I'd been to the graduation ceremony. On the way to my graduation dinner, I caught up with a couple of teachers from Takenochi (one of my different schools), one of whom was nice enough to show me to my restaurant, as I was struggling to interpret the all Japanese map. When I got to the restaurant, I saw another teacher, from another school (Nankan), who assumed I must be joining them, but I wasn't. They were in the next room.
Dinner was a success. Over the year I've been to a number of different dinners, and this one was distinguished by the lack of fish. I was expecting to pay for an expensive but inedible dinner. Instead, it was an expensive, quite tasty, but somewhat short on food, dinner. I was seated with all the Yr. 6 teachers, and we chatted away through the evening. Halfway through dinner, they got all the Yr. 6 teachers making speeches, and somehow I found myself classed as a Yr. 6 teacher expected to make a speech about the graduation, the graduating class or something, I wasn't entirely sure. I'd had a couple (literally a couple) of drinks by then, and managed to come up with a fair bit, though I'm not sure how grammatically sound it was.
A few minutes later, a teacher from the school next door popped his head in and asked if they could borrow me for a bit. I excused myself, and entered the adjacent room, where I was cheerfully greeted, and asked to make a speech. I proceeded to make another speech, as tactful as I could make it, about a graduation that I hadn't seen, and a graduating class I didn't much like. I stuck mostly to congratulating the teachers on surviving the year.
After pulling off that speech, I sat down with a few of my teachers to chat for a few minutes. One of them, prone to saying borderline inappropriate things when sober, had had a lot to drink and was smoking like a chimney stack. He offered me a cigarette, practically sticking it my mouth for me. I declined firmly, using the word mazui, disgusting. We chatted pleasantly for a bit, and then the conversation turned to why I was leaving Japan. The yopparai (drunk) teacher was quite insistent for a reason, as I fumbled around trying to explain that our intention had always been to stay only one year, and that I loved Japan, but had to return. He asked if we were going back to make babies. I said no. He informed me that in Japan, people usually only get married when they intend to start making babies. Questions continued to get more personal after that, in a mostly amusing fashion, until another teacher on the other side of me rescued me and sent me back to my original school, although I had to claw the yopparai teacher off me as he grabbed at me imploring me to stay.
While I was there, I was also offered a desert. They looked like scoops of ice-cream topped with a berry, although they weren't ice-cream, I'm not sure what they were. The yopparai teacher offered me one, pointing to it gesturing with his hands emphasising the round whiteness with the red tip, and asked me what it looked like. I didn't even know the Japanese to answer him, but he didn't seem to require an answer, he was just incredibly pleased with his observation.
After dinner, a number of the younger teachers decided to go out for more food. Like I said, they didn't actually serve much up. It took us a while to find somewhere we could get in (I think every primary school in Takatsuki was celebrating that night), but eventually we found somewhere, and then the night really took off. The whole time, I had someone beside me keen for a chat. Teachers who'd apparently been keen to talk to me all year but had been too shy suddenly found the courage to talk. I found out that one each of my year 5 and year 6 male teachers were recently engaged and getting married later in the year, one of them to another of the teachers there that night. Both of the guys getting married were incredible teachers, and really lovely people, so the news was wonderful. I told one of them he was a "good catch", and then had to explain that it had nothing to do with being good at catching. Then we discussed wedding customs in Aus vs Japan, after which I was pressed for a proposal story, and then the other teachers were pressed in turn.
Somehow, this time round, saying good-bye was not so hard. I had said good-bye nearly 3 weeks prior, not expecting to see them again, and that night was a wonderful bonus.
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