Leaving Japan. January 31st, 2007.

Cast of Characters:

Me: You probably know me personally.

Kristy: My fiancé.

Josh: The Arkansan who adopted our turtles.

First thing that morning Kristy and I took the train one stop to Namba station to drop off our bags. Later we'd be leaving from here to go to the airport and neither of us wanted to lug all our shit around all day. We clown-carred both bags into a tall slim locker, jammed the door shut and crossed our fingers that the thing wouldn't burst. Then Kristy went to work.

I had some errands to do. Namely, mail what remained of our things to England and give the keys to the apartment to our landlord and explain the hole in the wall next to the bathroom mirror (light punch delivered by me out of mild frustration with our hot water heater. Our walls weren't made of paper but they might as well have been). These chores went off without a hitch and then I was off to meet my friend and co-worker Josh Hicks.

Josh sounds just like Bill Clinton if you ever had the chance to get Bill Clinton drunk at a barbecue and convince him it was o.k. to swear. He describes his mustache as Dali-esque but I prefer Dalinese. He is the only person who I don't mind going to karaoke with sober. He adopted our turtles.

Josh and I descended into the cavernous city-beneath-a-city that is Nambawalk in Osaka. Because of the lack of space (and their apparent hatred of the sun) the Japanese build enormous shopping malls entirely underground. It's possible to spend an entire day out and about in Osaka without spending more than 2 or 3 minutes outside (depending on how close you live to a subway station). It's amazing and a little scary but Josh knew of a good kaiten (rotating) sushi shop down there.

We found the sushi and it was good. I didn't exactly understand the color-coded plate pricing system and so spent 2500 yen but it was delicious so I didn't care at all. Everything was feeling very last-timey which made me excited and sad. It seemed I was already missing the place and I hadn't yet left.

Next on the list was karaoke. Customarily I would have anywhere from a few to a fair few drinks before doing karaoke but Josh and I rocked it sober. Extreme, More than Words; John Denver, Country Roads; Bill Withers, Ain't No Sunshine. It was a good last karaoke. I didn't rock my all-time favorite karaoke jam, Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush but I didn't think I could hit all the high notes. We left after 2 hours. Sated.

And it was time to get Kristy and get out of Japan. I met her outside work and we went for a last izakaya drink with some folks we knew. We stayed too long. We dashed to the train station and just caught the last train to the airport. We said goodbye to Japan.