What a big day! This morning I hauled all the tacos ingredients in a couple of bags to the train station, and then put them in the home-economics refrigerator for safekeeping. I stashed them in back to be out of the way.
After the morning meeting, the Vice-Principal called Mr. Hayashi into an office, and when they came back, Mr. Hayashi was grinning from ear to ear. It turns out that the school trip to Australia in December was approved, and so it looks like we’re going. Mr. Hayashi will be handling my travel arrangements, but it sounds like it should be no problem. I can probably do a week and a half in Australia by only taking five days of vacation! Nice! It looks like we’ll be in Sydney, and it will be about 15 students and 5 teachers. I’m not sure on the details, but it should be a good Christmas!
After classes, the ESS club met in the kitchen, and we got started making tacos. I noticed that someone had looked through all the bags – I think someone was curious about tacos ingredients. As for the taco brigade, all the members did great, and everyone pitched in to eat and to help with the cooking and cleanup. We had lots of extra tacos, so the girls made some for their favorite teachers and went around making deliveries. I got a few tacos delivered to some people that had asked about them, but they went fast. Two teachers that I had wanted to give them to were left out. I’m planning on making some proper tacos next week with the corn tortillas that my mom sent over, so I’ll hook them up then.
Just after we finished cooking, two girls from the broadcasting club came by to film us in action, but since we had finished, there wasn’t much to see. They had the look of a reporter that showed up late for a big story. I tried to tell them that the next time we do something cool, I would let them know, but I’m not sure the message was received.
Mr. Hayashi had told me earlier that two girls had expressed an interest in joining the ESS club, and today they showed up to see what was going on. They had good timing – they got a couple of tacos without having to do the work. The girls in my club were giving them looks, and the new girls were all over me, trying to flirt in Japanese, which doesn’t work very well if you don’t understand Japanese. I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. One of the new girls was almost out of control… she kept making biting gestures with her mouth and trying to get close to my face. Weird. I made them do dishes and help with cleanup, and that seemed to calm them down a little.
After making all the tacos, I cleaned up the place and went over to the teacher’s office. One of the students had asked me for a worksheet that they had forgotten, and I saw her just outside the teacher’s room door. I grabbed the worksheet from my desk and stood behind her waiting for her to finish her conversation with her friend. Her friend saw me standing there and stopped talking, and the girl turned around. I gave her the handout and told her when it was due, and suddenly her friend started making this low groaning noise as she looked at me – I’m not sure how to describe it. It sounded like a combination of the Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West melting, and an adult film actress that is, well, making noise. I hurried to leave, but heard them telling each other that I was “very cute” in Japanese. I quickly made my exit stage left before anybody started biting.
I was on the same train as Mr. Komuri for part of the ride home. We sat and talked about the hot sauce that I had brought (Tapatio), and I noticed that a crazy guy was sitting on the other side of me. I’ve only seen only one other crazy guy so far in Japan, which I think is pretty impressive. Maybe they are just better at hiding them away. Anyway, the guy was having a conversation, but only later did I see that nobody else was talking with him. At my stop, as I got up, he got up with me, asked me a question in Japanese, and then broke into song. Loudly. Everybody was staring at him, which is a nice change of pace for me, and I jumped out of the train before anybody started biting.
