"I don't want to miss a thing..."

Because March is the end of the school year, it's a month of saying goodbyes.

In addition to bidding my own students farewell and good luck, I also had to say goodbye to my good friend Saya, who moved to college last Friday.

A few days before she moved, I went out to eat with Saya, her sister Moi, and their mom...

We ran out of time to do karaoke, so the next day, I met Saya at the karaoke place so we could sing our hearts out, as we like to do when we're together. Saya is an amazing singer, and I always love listening to her beautiful voice.

After karaoke, we took Purikura pictures, as is tradition. By the way, I learned from Liz that the name Purikura comes from "print club." Interesting.

I love Purikura pictures, I really do. It's so much fun to strike different poses in the photo booth with your friends, and just be goofy. (Not that I need a photo booth to be goofy.) Then your photos come up on a screen, and you can embellish them with borders, writing, sparkles, or all of the above...

It was pretty sad saying goodbye to Saya shortly after we took this picture together.

When I look at my collection of Purikura pictures, I'm reminded of fun times with fun people. My photo collection has grown quite large in the last year and a half, and it continues to grow.

Here's another recent addition to my picture collection...

Dana the apple + Jarlath the orange = a good pear :)

Unfortunately, Jarlath is moving back home to Ireland in just two and a half weeks from now. :(

The other two ALTs from Ninohe--Peter and P.J.--are leaving even sooner than that. I went to Ninohe on Monday for their goodbye party, where we passed around Japanese cards to sign for the guys. When I passed on the cards to Miyuki--one of my Japanese friends from Ninohe--she laughed and said, "This is a special kind of card for funerals!!"

Oh.

Oops.

I told her she should write, "Well, it's been nice knowing you." (!)

Tonight, there's a goodbye party in Kuji for Oliver, Julian and Harriet. Oliver is transferring to a city near Tokyo, Julian is going back home to California, and Harriet is moving to Italy!

While it's no fun saying goodbye, there's going to be a lot of people at tonight's gathering, (including Liz's sisters who are visiting) and it should be fun.

I won't be at all surprised if the night ends at the karaoke place, with everyone taking a group Purikura photo together. :)

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p.s. I'm taking advantage of the three-day weekend here and going on a little trip up north to Sapporo. So my next blog post won't be until Tuesday. But I'm sure it will be full of pictures and tales from Hokkaido, Japan.

p.p.s. I just wrote a new blog post in "Keep Shining." Click here to check it out.