Spring is here, bringing life again to our home here in Amakusa, as it has for the last two years we've been here, as it has for countless years before us.

Spring comes suddenly, here, before you know it. One day, the cold, wet winter air is blown away by warm breezes and cloudless sunny skies. The earth warms, sprouting young flowers and greening the tips of tree branches. Spring brings us out again, letting us breathe with the outside again.�@�@We move freely outside and inside, with out fear of the winter cold getting under our layers.�@ Our windows stay open all day and just a crack at night, and voices are heard after dark. We see the old people going into their fields again, harvesting the winter produce, and preparing it for the fresh taste of spring sumono (pickled vegetables). Everywhere drying cabbages lay atop moss-splotched stone walls surrounding their old homes, skinny white radishes trade places daily with bleached laundry, both hanging on the line, soaking in the drying rays of the sun. Spring seaweed is also harvested again, and while it dries its brilliant green sparkles in the sun and decorates stones and rocks and walls.

For Dan and I, spring keeps us up at night later. Sometimes we take long walks after dark around Hondo, often meeting groups men in suits stumbling out of restaurants, bowing clumsily as they say goodnight to each other. Sometimes we get lost in the old part of the city-the maze of tiny, narrow roads hardly wide enough for two to walk side by side, and and of homes stacked disorderly around us. In homes where the windows are open and the lights are on, we see old men in pajamas, sitting on the floor drinking beer or sake in front of the TV or women in pink aprons washing dishes after dinner or children playing video games. Sometimes we go past dark parks and see our students holding hands.

Soon sakura (cherry blossom) trees will bloom their pinkish white flowers. Parks with sakura will be bouncing with people and food and beer and songs, making nights long and loud. And during the day parents will bring their children to these same places under the sakura and play simple games and eat rice balls. They call this season "Hanami" which means flower viewing. It's one of those things that spring calls its own.

It's like the beginning of a new year here, when spring comes. In school, too, we start anew. Students graduate in March. Teachers are transferred to different schools, randomly and often against their will, but things are done from the top down here, so no one resists because they know they have no power. We have wild goodbye parties for these teachers, our friends-parties that don't show any signs of sadness or regret, except for the elegant words in the speech given before the party actually starts-a speech which was written a long time ago by someone to be used by everyone in times like these. Then new teachers come and sit at the desks where our friends used to. And we imagine our friends doing the same in a new school. And I pray for them-that they might find a new community in their new places. Because everyone knows if you don't have community at the workplace your life is a lonely hell. It really is "your life" and not only "your work" because here in Japan your life is your work; your work, your life.

Anyway, then we have a wild welcome party for all the new teachers, which is similar to the goodbye party given only a week before. And after this party it seems most people have forgotten already who those past teachers were and where they went. Except for the really close friends. But even those fade fast, because what you once had in common-workplace-you no longer do and you really don't have much of a life outside the workplace; you don't have time. I guess it's not dissimilar to what happens anywhere. Life everywhere is about saying hello to a relationship, enjoying that relationship, and then saying goodbye to that relationship. The only difference is that in Japan, the saying goodbye is not usually one's choice but one's duty.

So, I've gotten a little dark in the midst of spring, but with new beginnings comes endings and endings are always a little dark.

There is about two weeks between the end of one year and the beginning of the next. It's called spring vacation, but the teachers must come to school and for about half of it the students must come too, for kagai (extracurricular classes). The teachers don't teach really; they just supervise the students and force them to take practice tests or do self-study all morning. And then in the afternoon most of the students have practice for their club, whether it's sports or traditional art or music or whatever. So really it's almost like normal school days during about half of this vacation. Then there are a few days when most everyone respects the meaning of vacation and stays away from school, but still the school stays open, the lights on for the few eraishito (respected, diligent people) who work on as ever. It's not long before everyone rushes back as if staying away too long might be . . . I don't know. . . bad or something. And so the last few days of vacation they spend preparing for the new year with renewed energy.

The students come back soon after, along with the new freshmen-girls wearing the uniform skirts at the proper length, below their knees (It takes them but a few days to figure out the miraculous mixture of a belt and a few folds after they realize the blind eye teachers show to skirt length) and the boys with shiny, wet ears sticking out from bald heads from the last buzz cut their junior high school required (Their polite innocence lasts about as long as their hair does to grow over their ears). And together we all start the new year, in this beautiful season called �t in Japanese.