I woke up exhausted from the concert last night, and dragged myself to the train station. I had to wear nice clothes since I was going directly from school to Himeji for the big party to welcome new teachers and say goodbye to the old ones.
My schedule had three classes – a first, second and third year class. The second and third year classes were fun because they were with students I had last term. The third year class was with Mr. Hayashi, and he runs these classes on his own. I’m just there to help with pronunciation and to correct sentences that the students write on the board. This is nice for me – I don’t have to plan a whole lesson every week. This is the third class like this that I’ve taught with Mr. Hayashi and he has an interesting habit that I’ve noticed – he only calls on girls to answer questions. The boys are getting a free ride. Usually he asks students questions maybe ten times in a class, but it’s never a boy. I’ll keep an eye out and see if the theory holds in future classes. Strange.
On our way out of that class a student in the next class stepped out in the hallway to say hello. She is one of the ones that has a crush on me, and Mr. Hayashi and I said a quick hello and moved on. Once we turned the corner, he told me that she had asked him how to approach me to ask me out for a date. Mr. Hayashi had given her the whole “he’s a teacher, you’re a student” speech, which I was very happy to hear. He did tell her that once she graduates she’s free to take a shot – he thought that was funny. Thanks a lot.
I taught a class with Ms. Tsutsumi and she said that we had four new students sign up for ESS yesterday – wow! That pretty much doubles the size of the club. Next week we will have a welcome ceremony and they will have to introduce themselves in English. That’s scary enough that they might quit right there.
I snuck off the to cafeteria and got some katsu-curry. The cooks there know me enough to give me the big sized katsu without me asking – nice! As I sat down a second year girl’s P.E. class walked by and everyone came in to watch with fascination as I ate my lunch. I knew quite a few of the girls in the class and so we talked in English in between bites of katsu. It’s the times like this that I feel like I’m having the most impact on English learning in this school. The students were in a comfortable setting with a foreigner and able to have a full conversation. The classroom setting is OK and we have fun there, too. It just seems like the casual out-of-class conversations give the students a lot more confidence.
After school Mr. Hayashi drove Mr. Komuri and I to his house to drop off his car, and then Mr. Hayashi’s wife drove us to the train station. It was great to see Mrs. Hayashi – she’s a really nice person with a good sense of humor. We jumped on the train and we were in Himeji in fifteen minutes. We were almost an hour early, so Mr. Hayashi and I introduced Mr. Komuri to the English term “front-loading”.
We pulled into an izakaya and ordered three large beers. These mugs were huge – almost two liters of beer in a heavy glass mug. It was hard to pick up. We also ordered some greasy food to absorb some of the alcohol and sat around talking. Mr. Komuri and Mr. Hayashi traded barbs in English about their various personal problems, laughing the whole time. Mr. Komuri had apparently gone to a special clinic to deal with a prostate problem, and somehow heard that Mr. Hayashi had been there for an erectile dysfunction problem the day before.
I’m not sure either of these guys expected these personal maladies to be published on the world wide web the next day, but I had to sit through the painful conversation, and I might as well share it here. Apparently Mr. Hayashi got caught about five years ago with a woman in Korea, when he was supposed to be in Hokkaido at a teacher’s conference. He thought that he had his bases covered, but one of his co-workers called his home to ask a question, and got his wife instead. Busted! Ever since then, he’s had problems performing.
We joked for almost an hour about their (very) personal problems, and then got out of there. We walked a couple of blocks to the hotel and stepped inside. They had ushers guide us to our seats, and to my relief I was sitting between Ms. Tsutsumi and Mr. Hayashi. Miss Shigata was safely at the other side of the room sitting next to the new P.E. teacher.
Thanks to our “front-loading” we had a nice buzz during the opening speeches – each teacher that was leaving made another speech – about forty minutes of speeches in total. Finally, we made a toast, and then everyone started drinking. They had a Japanese bento type thing in front of us, but they also had a fork and knife. I enjoyed using a fork when I really should have used chopsticks, and talked with Ms. Tsutsumi for a long time.
Every once in a while a drunken teacher would come up to pour something for me, and even the new principal staggered up to pour. His face was pink, and turning red fast. He expressed his love for me through Mr. Hayashi, whose political capital has gone up enormously with the changing of the principal and vice-principal. I just smiled, nodded, and kept drinking.
Towards the end of the evening I was happy to point out to Mr. Hayashi that Miss Shigata and the new P.E. teacher were getting along pretty well. They were laughing together and leaning a little closer to each other than was normal. Mr. Hayashi agreed with me that it was pretty good news for me – I hope this means that the pressure from that direction is relieved.
Mr. Kimura and I were heading to the same station, so we made the trip back together. We talked high-tech on the way home- one of Mr. Kimura’s favorite topics. I pulled out what gadgets I was carrying so he could check them out. He loves electronics.
I walked home from the station and got back around 11 o’clock, and went right to sleep. I’m hoping to catch up on some rest this weekend. Whew!
