Life takes you to strange places.
Now for the whole story:
Monday morning, my last day in Japan. The schedule looks like this; Post office (send my modem back to the ISP, and send a box filled with books and papers I don't wanna carry with me on the flight since I'm already way over weight), next it's city hall (finish my health insurance payments), then to the bank (close my account and leave with a big wad of dough), to Yodobashi-camera in Chiba to buy last presents, back to Yotsukaido to meet moselle and let her take some of my stuff and then take a cab with some of the stuff to her place and some of it to the second hand shop (don’t forget that everything that's in contact with Japanese people has to be done in Japanese), Now it's DoCoMo's turn (close my mobile phone account). OMG it's already 17:30 I have to rush back to the apartment for last cleanings, 18:20 Jack comes over to say good bye (a friend who is one of the directors in the company), at about 19:10 Jon comes over to inspect my apartment and give me my last paycheck (he was very professional and nice).
The moment he left my apartment it was the moment I actually understood that that's it, and I'm leaving the next morning - that was the last thing. The bills are paid, all my stuff is either packed of gone, the apartment is clean and I my last paycheck. Nothing is tying me here.
So, I went to meet up with moselle, and we went together to Various - a WAY WAY WAY cool arcade, if you can call a place so unbelievably cool, fun and versatile by just "an arcade". You pay by the hour, and you can play whatever you like - tones of video games on free-play, 4 bowling lanes, 12 pool tables, a mechanical bull (which I'm not too bad at), did I mention video games?, darts, ping-pong game, archery, baseball pitching game, and we didn't even go upstairs to the third floor where you can play basketball. When we were done, we were surprised that we were there for four hours (it's cost was about 1,700JPY=68NIS=15USD), and we left totally exhausted but with a smile on our face - was SO much fun. I got home at about 1:40AM and decided to take a shower and get a little sleep before the taxi comes over to pick me up to the train station at 7:30.
The next day I woke at about 6:30 and couldn't get any more sleep, so I got up and done some last things, and went downstairs to meet the cab which was already there at 7:25. Good, this left me some time to go to McDonalds and get some Egu-Meku-Mafin Setto. Train to Narita Airport and then a two (!) hours wait for check-in only to find that I can check in only 20Kg and 10Kg on board (I had 10Kg carryon and 47Kg Check-in). "OK Sir, you can take all of this but it will cost you 99,000JPY=4,000NIS=800USD", so after a bit of crying they were nice enough to let me take 15Kg on board and pay only 60,000JPY... the hell with this... I went to the Post Office counter and sent one luggage strait to Israel (what? I should pay overweight to Holland and then again to Israel?!) that cost me almost 20,000JPY for 18.5Kg.
At least I don’t have to lug 57Kg with my sore muscles from last night various (which was quite a workout).
Now comes the "easy" part - 11 hour flight. I dropped like a log right after takeoff thanks to a sleeping pill my dad gave me - I slept most of the flight, but had a headache after it... Got to my sisters and went to sleep at about 22:00 dead tired.
Woke up today at about 4:00AM, but tried to keep on sleeping until about 8:00. Now I'm writing all of this in the American School where my sister teaches in Holland, while listening to the CD of the Yotsukaido O-Bon festival music (traditional music on MIDI, can't get any weirder), looking at all of those teenagers from America and other countries still in a country that I can’t speak its language. BEIN SHAMAIM VA'ARETS.
Japan was awesome, but I can already feel that The Netherlands air feels better for me...
Israel here I come (in a few days).