The Presentation

Today I accomplished one of the larger feats of my Japanese career. After a few weeks of preparation with Justin, Makoto, Isamu, and Son, we successfully pulled off a presentation that was mostly about Evergreen, Kinan College (the Chinese sister school to Hyogo University), and a little on rural life in China. I actually lead the organization of the event, and although it didn't go perfectly, it went well enough. We drew about 35 people (mostly from the English club that I'm involved with), and provided free tacos, gyoza, harumaki, and other assorted edibles. An enjoyable time all in all. The event as a whole was around 2 1/2 hours, with mine and Justin's presentation running at about 45 min (all in broken, yet understandable Japanese).

This was, by and large, the biggest concern of mine for the last few weeks, and now that it's over I can relax for a couple days and then go back to the US. I guess relax isn't the best word... maybe "stress the fuck out" would work a little better. Cleaning, getting rid of junk and all that will take up a majority of the last days here.

As the end approaches, I think about memory. I think about Sans Soleil. This is an inaccurate quote, but it's something along these lines, "How can anyone remember the past without taking pictures?" God knows, I've taken my fair share of pictures over here, but I feel like all my memories will be stored in these pictures until I die, and then quickly deleted because they are digital. Still, this is something that worries me. I did talk to one of my friends, Atsuko (Justin's girlfriend), who studied in The United States. She told me that she remembers her experience there clear as day because it was such a completely different experience then her typical life in Japan. This may be summed up by the following.


The "The" marks that of her experience in America. The white space marks that of her life in Japan. Something like that. Saying that, I look back on my experience in Korea 6 years ago, and I remember it clearer than ever before. It's completely detached from my everyday life, but attached nonetheless, because I still remember and think back on it quite often.

So, I've been trying to take more pictures out of sheer paranoia, but I've been living too much in the present to do so. As there are too many experiences to explain here, I'll leave it at that.