![\"kaifubye-00001.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/kaifubye-00001.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today I said goodbye to Kamikaifu Elementary, my very favorite school in Murakami.\u00a0 Over the past year, I have visited the school 17 times.\u00a0 This is far less than any other school, but it only has 41 students.\u00a0 The school was comprehensible, and friendly.\u00a0 The staff talked to me about interesting things.\u00a0 No one ever forgot about me during lunchtime.\u00a0 The vice-principal and I basically became a two-man comedy team.\u00a0 The children were exceptionally, astonishingly good.\u00a0 I knew their names.\u00a0 I knew I was appreciated when I visited this school, so I went the extra mile for them.\u00a0 With eight staff and 41 students, my efforts could hardly be diluted.\u00a0 I dressed up as Santa Claus and no one tried to undress me.\u00a0 I dressed up as The White Rabbit and no one tried to tear off my tail.\u00a0 I always felt lucky to come to this school, and I think the students are lucky as well.\u00a0 Huge classes and large grades at large faceless schools turn out average citizens.\u00a0 There are standouts in every group, but somehow the kids at Kamikaifu all stood out.\u00a0 It’s hard to explain.<\/p>\n
It’s quite hard for me to really smile.\u00a0 It’s quite hard for me to really cry.\u00a0 I relish a good cry, because it’s like a rare treat that I cannot willfully order.\u00a0 Today I came pretty close.\u00a0 At the end of the 1st and 2nd grade class, I sat down and told them thank you, how much fun I had with them, and that they please do their best after I leave.\u00a0 They had a gift for me, a yearlong calendar, starting in August.\u00a0 There are 12 students in the combined class – six first grade and six second grade.\u00a0 Each student drew a picture for one month of the year.\u00a0 I almost melted when I realized the simple significance.\u00a0 The 3rd and 4th graders sang me a song.\u00a0 It put me in the mood that popular dramas like Lost and the House M.D. do during the closing montage, in which a popular song wafts loudly through crossfades of the characters’ dramatic circumstances.\u00a0 It was like watching a movie, all of the happy, lively, intelligent young faces that have really brightened my day so many times right there in front of me to reflect on for three whole minutes.<\/p>\n
I came to realize today that the Goodbye has a bad name.\u00a0 Unfairly so.\u00a0 A well done, proper Goodbye at the right moment can be fulfilling and rewarding.\u00a0 A Goodbye is a testament to the effort invested in a relationship, in a community, in a friend.\u00a0 I will have many more to do in the next 20 days; some will be labored, some will be awkward, some will be a relief.\u00a0 But my last day at Kamikaifu makes up for any of that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I said goodbye to Kamikaifu Elementary, my very favorite school in Murakami.\u00a0 Over the past year, I have visited the school 17 times.\u00a0 This is far less than any other school, but it only has 41 students.\u00a0 The school was comprehensible, and friendly.\u00a0 The staff talked to me about interesting things.\u00a0 No one ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11,15,17,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elementary","category-english","category-japan","category-jet","category-murakami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}