The culture festival has cast a huge shadow over our day today – and everyone was thinking about preparations. I had three classes today, and everyone’s eyes were glazed over with the thought that soon they would be dancing their hearts out on stage in front of the whole school.
During my seminar in Kobe, I had missed the annual health check up given by our school. Mr. Hayashi tells me that all companies, both public and private, require a health check-up once a year. It is a government subsidized program, and just because I was at a seminar doesn’t mean that I was off the hook. After classes finished at lunchtime, Mr. Hayashi drove me to a clinic in Kakogawa.
The first thing they asked me to do was to go inside a room to change into slippers and a blue robe. I invoked foreigner privilege and skipped the robe, although I did wear the tiny slippers.
I performed the tasks they asked like I was in some kind of medical decathlon. Pee here, stand there, look here, etc, etc. My blood pressure was pretty low, so that’s great news. I weighed in at 82 kg (181 pounds), which is pretty good considering I had a stomach full of sushi. I’m 184.5 centimeters tall (about 6 feet). My vision was measured but it was with some strange system that I cannot relate here, I’m not sure even Mr. Hayashi understood it.
We got out of there early, so we decided to milk the system a little bit and grab some coffee. We sat around and sipped iced coffees until around four o’clock, and then went back to school.
The school was in utter chaos. The students were running the asylum, and some amazing things were happening. It’s a preview of tomorrow’s festival, so I’ll save it for tomorrow’s entry.
My ESS students were working on the display, and it was going pretty well. Unfortunately, one of the students, a part-time member of ESS, was running behind. She was taking frequent breaks to drink Calpis and chat with her friends. Finally, another teacher came to get her, and I think she might have been in a little trouble. She’ll be meeting me at school early tomorrow to wrap things up. Overall the ESS room looks pretty good – I’ll try to take some pictures tomorrow.
I didn’t get out of there until around 7 o’clock, and after a shopping trip in Akashi I stopped in at the yakitori on the way home. I chatted with the master and some of the regulars there, and I swear that I’m getting more comfortable with Japanese. My big challenge, believe it or not, is finding somewhere to speak Japanese. Everybody I bump into during the day wants to speak English. The yakitori is about the only place that I can speak only Japanese and practice new things that I’ve learned.
I’m back home now and getting ready for bed. Tomorrow after the culture festival I’m meeting Antoine in Suma, and then hopefully I’ll be able to see Kuniko on Saturday afternoon.
