Today Andrew was hosting a going away party for himself at the apartment, so Mr. Hayashi arranged to keep me out of trouble. I started out by getting a ride to the train station from Andrew. The train station was a little intimidating, since everything was written in kanji, and I really couldn’t read much. Andrew explained carefully the steps I was to take to successfully make it – I really was going only one stop down the line. After almost making a wrong turn, I figured it out, and was on the right train to Takasago.
At Takasago station, I was met by Miss Kageyama, and we walked together to Mr. Hayashi’s car. We drove to a teacher’s office where the summer session was being held. The summer session is a three day workshop for 1st year high school students to brush up and keep in shape during summer break. Mr. Hayashi went upstairs to talk to some students, and I stayed downstairs with Miss Kageyama to help her with her English. We worked a bit on conversation, and then I checked some work that she had done transcribing a radio broadcast in English. After about half an hour, Mr. Hayashi came downstairs and took me up to meet the students.
Generally the students were curious, and there was a lot of murmuring – I stood in front of about 100 students and introduced myself in English. The teacher then quizzed them on what I had said, and I did lots of smiling and a little bit of bowing. Mr. Hayashi drew a quick map of the United States, and then made marks at Seattle, San Diego, New York, and Miami. He asked the students where San Diego was, and only 4 out of 100 got it right. Most of the students were too scared or cool to hazard a guess. After a few more minutes, we said our goodbyes.
We drove on to my high school, and there we stopped at the small lockers inside the school to change shoes. Miss Kageyama had a great time watching me try to squeeze into the guest slippers. Even after getting them on my feet, every few feet I walked a slipper would flip into the air in front of me. What a goofball.
It was while chasing down a slipper that I met the principal of Takasago Minami High School. We was a very energetic, friendly guy, who made up for his lack of English with enthusiasm and excitement. It was great to talk to him – most Japanese people that I meet are too shy to talk much, but the principal pushed through – he didn’t care if he didn’t get everything correct.
I met several other teachers, all of them very friendly. I even met some that didn’t teach English but spoke it very well. We sat down and Mr. Hayashi gave me a packet of cash representing my pay for the last few days – apparently I started getting paid the day the plane touched down in Tokyo.
Afterwards, we met some of the other teachers, and I sat down at Andrew’s desk, which was the cleanest one of the bunch… it’ll be a tough standard to maintain. After killing a few minutes talking to various people, Mr. Hayashi invited me and some of the English teachers to eat lunch in town. Myself, Mr. Hayashi, Mrs. Tsutsumi, Miss Yamamoto, and Miss Kageyama all went out for some pan fried noodles. The food was great, and like every other store or restaurant I walked into, the people working there gave me the double look, and then watched me carefully to see how I behaved. The teachers all spoke very good English, and we talked about all sorts of things. Every once in a while the conversation would switch to Japanese, and I was left out a bit, only picking out a word here and there. After a minute or two they would remember and switch back to English.
After eating the soba, the server came out and kind of hovered in front of me – I could tell she wanted a chance to talk to me in English. I smiled at her, and then we started talking a little bit – half English, half Japanese. It was a great moment, and I felt like I made her day a bit better, or at least a little more interesting.
After lunch we dropped off Miss Kageyama at the train station, and then Mr. Hayashi and I went to a coffee place, and I bought a round of iced coffees. The decor was American 1970’s, and the servers were all dressed up very nicely. It ended up costing me around $12 for 2 iced coffees, but I felt good about it considering that Mr. Hayashi had already bought me two meals since I had arrived. As we left the serving lady bowed and thanked us for coming – it was the deepest bow I had ever seen in Japan. I left the place feeling special, until Mr. Hayashi said that he thought the high price was really for the bow at the end.
Mr. Hayashi took me to his home, and I met his wife and two daughters. His son is studying to be a dentist, and lives a couple hours north of Takasago. The dinner was sweet and sour pork, fried rice, fried potatoes, salad, homegrown tomatoes, yakuniku (meat skewers), and watermelon for dessert. During dinner we had a great conversation, and Mr. Hayashi’s oldest daughter had lots of questions for me about America. Her English was also very good, and even though she wasn’t very confident using it, she could easily get by in America with her skills.
Andrew came by to pick me up after his party wrapped up, and we came back to the apartment to relax and have a cold drink. At around 10:30 or so, we decided to go for a walk, so we went up the street a few blocks and traced what will eventually be my route to work. Most of the trip is directly underneath the Bullet Train, and as we walked along the pathway, the Bullet Train would occasionally roar out of nowhere and pass above us at 200+ miles per hour.
Finally, we returned the apartment and crashed out – another long day, but full of fun things.
