On Saturday I somehow got up and out of the house in time to see the san-nensei (third year) students at Naruto Tech spend their final day at school. Graduation ceremonies in Japan are very formal and I was told to just follow everyone else as they sat down and stood up on command. There were a lot of speakers (including the mayor and the superintendent of the board of education, who I was having a beer with with later on in the evening) and an equal number of musical numbers such as the Japanese national anthem (which I never heard before). Afterwards, I helped take down the decorations in the gym and then had some lunch at my desk. A group of my favorite students came up to me to say 'thank you' and wanted their pictures taken with me. This made me really happy because I wanted to get in one last goodbye before the day was done. Graduates from this school go off to do many different things...from construction, to playing music professionally, to pro baseball. One of my most enthusiastic students will soon be the catcher for the Hiroshima Carp. I want to see him in a game sometime and revisit Hiroshima, my favorite Japanese city when I first visited the country.
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