USA Travel, Closing Ceremony and Rain Day

Hello!

I am back in America briefly to visit and to take care of a few things.

To get back home, I took a night bus from Osaka to Tokyo. Overnight buses are common in Japan, you board in the evening and then arrive the next morning at your destination.

For the bus I took, there were several different levels of comfort available. Since it was my first time taking a night bus and I was going to take an international flight afterward, I opted for the most comfortable variety. In this bus, you can recline your seat to an almost fully horizontal position, making it easy to sleep.

I will include a picture of the seat in this week's photos.

To make space for all of these seats, there was no bathroom on the bus, but the driver stopped several times throughout the evening at rest stops.

Travel the rest of the way back to Chicago was fine, no issues.

Getting back to Japan might be another story. Japan still requires that inbound travelers present a negative COVID-19 test, so I will have to be careful while in America.

But, Japan did make changes recently that make it easier to get a valid COVD test. Before, you had to fill out a form that a doctor signed, attesting to your COVID test. Now, there is no requirement for a doctor signature.

Also, hopefully, the border situation between Japan and the US will not change. At the moment, there is no need for quarantine for arrivals into Japan from the USA.

If you arrive from certain countries into Japan (aside from the US), you do need to quarantine but Japan waives that quarantine requirement for some of those countries if you are up to date on your vaccinations.

You might have heard that Japan has recently allowed tourists back into the country, but Japan only lets those accompanied by a tour guide visit. Individual tourists are not yet permitted.

Tough to say when the country will open to normal tourism - usually travel-related COVID issues seem to pop up during the winter time, so I would expect Japan to remain somewhat conservative when it comes to visitors until next year. But things can change at any time.

As I mentioned last time, I had to give a short good bye speech at one of my schools since my assignment will be changing come September.

All Japanese schools have a "closing ceremony" before the summer vacation. This coincides with the end of the first school semester, which started in April. During the closing ceremony, the students and staff reflect on the semester and teachers who are changing schools (like me) will address the students.

Besides me, there was one other English teacher who was wrapping up his assignment. He is heading back to the United Kingdom in the next few days. There were two other Japanese teachers who were moving on - one is a music teacher and the other, I am not sure what her assignment was. At my "main" elementary school, I know that one teacher is taking maternity leave.

I believe possibly due to COVID and the size of the school, the closing ceremony was held virtually. The elementary school has a broadcast room - they have a camera setup and video from that room is broadcast onto a TV in every classroom.

After the ceremony, the departing teachers also said several words to the staff room. For me, I will be coming back to the school a few more times in August, so it is not yet my "final" good bye.

Outside of the closing ceremony, another interesting thing that happened the other week was that we had school cancelled due to rain. At first, the start of school was just going to be delayed a few hours, but due to continued heavy rain, school was cancelled.

From what I hear, this happens from time to time in Japan. In Kobe, instead of snow days, they will have "rain" days. Teachers still go to school on these days but students do not.

Until next time,

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Photos from this week!

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