Hey gang, thanks for tuning in. I’m writing this from my bed in my apartment in Takadanobaba where I woke up this morning for the last time. That’s right. It’s my final day in Tokyo. I haven’t slept well in about a week but that’s fine because there’s too much fun to be had and not enough hours in the day to have it. Last night was supposed to be my recuperation night’s sleep but it was windy and the balcony door was rattling and I thought there was a murderer coming to get me. Anyway the murderer didn’t come and I’m fine. Tired but fine.

I’m sure you’re very keen to hear how I spent my final weekend in Tokyo so luckily for you that’s what this blog post is all about. My final day at work was Thursday. I taught ten of my favourite students and they brought me cake, sweets, a fan and one even offered his hand in marriage. (I declined.) It was an emotional day and now that I’m done with it, I can confirm that I am one hundred percent unemployed. The joy! In just 36 short hours I will be handing back my autonomy, my independence, and moving back home where I will lounge slovenly for twenty-four hours a day and watch TV in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday. I’ve retired. Yippee!

So yeah, Friday was my first day of freedom. I took the monorail out to Odaiba where I went to Oedo Onsen. It’s like an onsen theme park with a twist. You wear a yukata (casual kimono) and pander around barefoot in an Edo-style building with restaurants, game arcades, a fish foot pool and an onsen. I spent most of the time in the hot springs themselves. There were indoor and outdoor rock pools, which I moved between, and a steam room and a sauna. It was metcha relaxing. (Metcha means ‘very’ in Japanese.)

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On Saturday, I met up with one of my students in the park near my house. She’s a piano teacher called Yumi and she brought me a traditional Japanese mug and some curry bread as a leaving slash early birthday present. We walked to the local library and looked at books before going our separate ways at the traffic lights near my house. Here’s the beautiful map she drew me in case I got lost.

That night I took the train to Nakano for a final ‘drinking party’ with Reishiro, Ichiro and the gang. Since the cod semen night back in April, there’s been a bit of on-again-off-again romance between two members of the crew, Reishiro and Yoko. Saturday night marked another turning point in the relationship whereby, with the help of a few large bottles of sake, Yoko and Reishiro went from off-again back to on-again, again. We all played our favourite drinking games, ate some funky looking fish and got nicely drunk. Ichiro got more than nicely drunk and actually couldn’t stand by the end of the night. He would flop onto whichever unfortunate girl happened to be sitting next to him and we would scream “sexual harassment!” at him whenever he did so. Eventually he would lift himself up, slurring, “Not sexual harassment. Not sexual harassment.” It definitely was.

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Ichiro ended up drunkenly running away from us and we searched the streets of Nakano for a bit before it was discovered that he’d taken the train home so unfortunately I didn’t get my emotional farewell with him. At around midnight we all parted at the station and I took the train back home to Takadanobaba.

Sunday was an equally busy day. I met my friends Akina and Lisa for lunch and then in the evening I had a farewell party with my work friends. We reserved a long table at an izakaya in Shinjuku and one of my managers gave me a book with pictures and messages from everyone I worked with over the past year and a half. At the izakaya, we went for the nomihodai (all you can drink) option and got nicely hammered on lemon sours and whisky highballs. I also drunkenly revealed to all of my managers the illicit affair that I partook in with a student last year. (Wasn’t actually an affair, no one was married, I just egged it up for dramatic purposes.) Anyway it was a fun night.

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We screamed songs in karaoke for an hour and a half and my friend Wendy made me a chocolate cake, then we sat in the square drinking for a final time until about two o’clock in the morning when I eventually walked home. We were in Kabukicho, the red light district, and as I walked back, a big rat ran out from one side of the street to the other. It’s nice when things like that happen. I was feeling sad about leaving the beautiful city of Tokyo and then I nearly got hit on the trainer by a big fat rat’s tail and I thought: oh yes, it will be nice to get out of here for a while.

On Monday morning, I headed straight for Tokyo University hospital where the mean doctor told me it wasn’t going to hurt before he agonisingly shoved a cue tip perpendicular to my face through my nostril and into my brain, all in the name of PCR testing. I expected a brain bleed to follow, though one never came and so I walked to Meiji-Jingu shrine in Harajuku where I wrote on an ema, a wooden prayer card, and prayed for a final time. I ate ramen for lunch and okonomiyaki with my friends Erika and Farah for dinner. Then I came home and stared at my phone for about an hour before attempting to sleep.

So here I am on Tuesday morning, my eyes are stinging and I’m waiting for the gas and electricity guys to come read my meter. Then I will be picking up my covid test certificate, buying fancy cakes from the Isetan department store, eating tempura for lunch and chicken sashimi with Reishiro for dinner. I’m sleeping at my friend Wendy’s house and then I am boarding a plane and getting the hell out of here. I guess I’ll catch you on the flip side.