The countdown to the culture festival continues at school, with students working furiously to finish projects. I have a feeling that homework and study time is suffering because of this. I’ll be very interested to see the final production on Friday.
Today was payday, and what a relief it was to have a fully recharged bank account. I went to the bank in the afternoon. I noticed that I still had some money in there – I didn’t drain it all the way before payday hit. That’s a good sign – things weren’t as bad as I made them out to be, I guess.
After school I met up with Keiko-san, the nice lady that I keep bumping into around town. She had invited me to have another chat in English, so I met with her and four of her friends at the local restaurant near Takasago station. We chatted in English for almost three hours, and everyone enjoyed hearing about my experiences in Japan. Occasionally the conversation lapsed into Japanese, and I struggled to figure out what they were saying. Sometimes they’d ask me things in Japanese without realizing it. I tried not to respond – I wanted to give them the full experience of talking with a foreigner – I didn’t want them using my Japanese as a crutch.
We had dinner, and they even picked up my bill, so I got a free plate of yakisoba – nice! After dinner I went over to the station and made my way home. On the way home a lady pulled over on her bike and chatted with me in Japanese. She was pretty excited to be speaking with a foreigner, and I told her all about my situation here in Japan.
How often do you make somebody’s day? Here in Japan, almost every day I interact with someone, and it makes me happy to see them so excited about it. I’ve gotten a lot of satisfaction from teaching English, but the most satisfying thing is to smile at a total stranger and strike up a conversation. Is there a job where I can just walk around and be nice to people? Goodwill ambassador? I feel like I’ve done more good just walking around Japan for a year than I’ve done over 30 years in America.
Well, I’m off to bed – no more philosophy for this evening. Tomorrow after school I’m probably going to run to Akashi to do some shopping for the weekend.
