Hey oh y’all,
This is kind of an abrupt change from the somber topic prior
– but today is also our graduation ceremony and sayonara party for the winter
quarter.
And yes, as soon as the cremation was done, my host family
dropped me off at the party.
And they profusely apologized to me for not being able to
attend. As if I needed another reason to feel guilty and whatnot. No, you do
not need to apologize. This is not my “sayonara” and you have much more serious
matters to attend to. But anyways, I changed my tie in the car on the way to
the party.
First we had our graduation ceremony – speeches from the
director, senseis, and one of the director’s journalist friends who graduated
from Stanford. We then all received certificates of completion (funnily enough
the Stanford students’ ones were in Japanese and the Japanese auditors’ ones
were in English).
Then we had our party. Thanks to RJ for being the student
MC. The dinner was great! I’m not sure what the “theme” was, not that I care –
Indian curry, pasta, dim sum, fried chicken, and sushi all served and all good
in my book…The Stanford staff was also nice enough to set a place for Sumi and
one symbolically for my host father.
Then after dinner, we had performance from the students.
Jacob composed his own original song for his ukulele, and Daniel performed a
piano piece. Then everybody got together to sing a song aptly titled “Arigato
(Thank you).” It was a nice performance in my mind – it’s one of those oldies
that the host families all know and has a good message. Props to Jacob, RJ, and
Vince for keeping us all together and sounding good even though we had no backing
vocals. Then we had a super awesome slideshow/music video by RJ. Please check
it out here:
To close, we had Adam give a speech in Japanese recapping
our experiences. He is a great speaker. He spoke so fluently and clearly, and
everyone understood and enjoyed his speech. He even acknowledged Sumi-chan as
an official member of the Stanford program! As we say – get on his level!
After the ceremony, we all went to karaoke as a group for
the last time. Of course our experience would not be complete without paying
homage to some of our favorite songs – Hey Soul Sister, AKB48’s Heavy Rotation,
Marry You, and more!
And so at the end we finally say sayonara! Good-bye!
I close this piece dedicating to the great 11 other Stanford
students who joined me this winter quarter – Adam, Mando, Daniel, Vince, Marti,
Jacob, Matt, Sabu-chan, Nick, Casey, and RJ. Thanks to you and your awesome
antics, this was an amazing quarter. Thanks to Jacob for videotaping our events,
thanks to my neighbor Matt for dealing with commute with me, thanks for the
Marti-call and don-buri and the buyo-buyo, and thank you everyone for the
gaijin smash! I will miss having y’all here. I wish you the best back at
Stanford – especially to the graduating seniors who I may not see back soon.
Sayonara! Gaijin Smash Forever!
-DC
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