MONKEYWATCH, 2008

I'm not entirely sure why I feel the need to let you know every time I see a monkey out here. I imagine you can only hear about someone seeing monkeys one or two times before it becomes incredibly boring, sort of like looking at pictures of someone's baby while they jaw on about how much it weighs and how it looks “just like her mother, thank goodness!” This is sort of the same, only these babies are covered in fur, and I can't really vouch for whether they look like their mother. Also, they might try to claw your eyes out if you get too close.

Anyway, I was making my way home from Hikimi yesterday (Don't the cool things always happen in Hikimi?), the weather was perfect, and I was psyched to get home and fall asleep. Only one thing could have made me feel better right about then, and sure enough, there they were. Not one, but two monkeys had ventured beyond the safety of the mountainous forest to—presumably—make some kind of life for themselves on the road's shoulder. I could tell that thus far it had been rough going. After all, it's difficult to find food in a place where plants don't grow. Granted, they could always return to the forest, but that would be like admitting defeat, and they would never be able to look their monkey peers in the eye again. As I drove by, they looked at me solemnly, and their eyes betrayed a terrible wisdom; it was a wisdom borne of folly, the kind gained only far too late.

In other, far less important news, all of my sannensei(san = three nen = year sei = student) graduated yesterday. A chuugakkou (middle school) sannensei is the equivalent of a high school freshman in America, and that's where middle school ends, so today they're all gone. It's a strange feeling. I didn't even see any of the schools' graduation ceremonies because I was at an elementary school yesterday, so today it was like they had just vanished. It's kind of distressing to think that I probably won't see any of them again, especially at Hikimi, where all the students—especially the sannensei—have been awesome.

All the same, I'm excited about the classes moving up to become ichinensei (ichi = one). Again, this is primarily at Hikimi, where I actually teach at the elementary school twice a month, so I know all of the students that will be moving up. They're all a lot of fun in class, and I'm looking forward to having a class at the middle school that I've already built a rapport with. I've always been completely in charge of classes at the elementary school, so it'll be interesting to see how they deal with me kind of taking a backseat and just occasionally reading words for them to repeat. However it works out, I'm excited to be getting them in class. They're no monkeys, but they'll do.