Wednesday I went off to school, taking the long way on the train system because there is no direct train line from Okubo to Futami. It is a little expensive, but since it is just a few days this week I can afford it. I worked for a couple of hours in the morning organizing my desk, but the whole time I was stressing over the pile of difficult to dispose of garbage on the back porch at home. I was hoping to ask Yamamoto sensei for some help in getting rid of it, but unfortunately his father passed away recently, and he wasn’t at school.
Instead I went and talked to the office manager about it. He is a really nice guy and is just realizing just how much Japanese I can understand and speak. We talked about it for a while and we decided to drive over there and take a look. I showed him how to get there, and when we arrived we looked around at the apartment, mostly empty except for the stuff that I am leaving for my successor.
He looked at all the weird junk and said that we should load it in his car and take it back to the school. On Thursday a representative from the prefectural government was coming to check out the apartment and make sure it was OK. I soon realized that it was more important for the office manager that we have a clean apartment than any inconvenience for him moving crap around. We loaded it all up, and then the office manager asked me to maybe clean up just a little bit more before tomorrow.
We got back to school with my junk and pulled up next to the maintenance worker shack. He was surprisingly not so concerned about us dropping off all my unwanted crap next to his shed. In fact, he got excited about some of the stuff and I was very pleased that someone might get some use out of stuff that I was expecting to have to pay money to get rid of.
The rest of the day was pretty mild, and I went home a little early to get a jump on the cleaning that the office manager had hinted about. I came back to Futami, and bought a few last minute cleaning supplies at IY, and then spent about an hour gathering every last thing and doing some detail work around the empty house.
Kuniko got off early from work, and we worked some logistics and she came over in her car to Futami. We met up in IY where I was shopping for some farewell presents for teachers, and from there we packed her car with the last load out of the old house, and then took off. Before we left we used the last of the points on our IY card to buy some groceries, and then we headed to Carrefour and Midori to look for some good shelves for the living room. Unfortunately we struck out on the shelves, but we did get some cheese, flowers and wine at Carrefour.
That night we stayed home and had cheese and crackers for dinner, and relaxed in the evening. Our repaired Nintendo DS arrived in the mail, so we hunkered down in the air conditioned living room and played games and relaxed. We’ve still got lots of unpacking to do, but it has been so hot and we’ve been so tired in the evenings that we haven’t been able to make headway. Luckily, I’ll be unemployed starting on Friday, so I can get a lot done then.
