Really?

January and February have been busy.  What with finishing my Tokyo Adventure with 9 hours of sumo, becoming a table tennis star as one half of the only pair from S. Junior High School to win a match in the inter-school staff tournament, a couple of birthday celebrations, a ski weekend, a Shinto ritual, and a new Sunday dinner tradition, it's easy to forget that I also signed a sheet paper.  A sheet of paper that says I am leaving in July.

Leaving in July.

"Is that weird for you?" another JET asked yesterday.  No?  No, actually, it's not.  What seems weirder is that, for the past year and a half, I have been working in a public junior high school in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan and haphazardly going about the business of being a 20-something while trying not to get into too many disasters.  And that's what I want to make the most of before my time runs out.

There is something surreal about my time in Japan;  Whether that is Japan or me... or Japan AND me... I'm not sure, but when the time comes to leave, I don't know if I am going to believe my own stories.

 Did we really watch scantily clad obese men grapple with each other for nine HOURS?  

And did we really think it was a brilliant idea to start drinking champagne in a can at 10am just because the 90-year-old across the aisle cracked open a jar of sake at 9am?

 Were Morita-sensei and I really the only Seinanbu staff members to win a table tennis match?

Do people really live in a town that gets 3+ meters of snow?

And in their annual Snowman Festival, did someone really make an adorably drunk  Papa Snowman sleeping under a kotastu with a sake bottle as a pillow?

Do I really live with something this cute?