This morning I had the pleasure of walking just a short distance to the new train station and catching a nice easy ride into work. Once I arrived at work I was able to study for about half and hour, and the rest of the time I chatted with various people and relaxed. I’m just now starting to think about my first lessons – hmm… what should I do?
At around noon I went outside and met up with Keiko-san, one of the locals that organizes an English conversation every now and again. I was surprised this time to find that we had lots more participants… three more folks came by. I had my hands full keeping everyone in the conversation, but it worked out well. They paid for my lunch, and we even had a Japanese conversation to help with my learning curve. They are a good group of people, and it’s fun to chat with them. They are remarkably frank about some issues, and it’s interesting to get their take on things with the safety off.
I spent almost three hours chatting and eating with them, and then I headed home to change and get ready for my Japanese class in Kobe. The class went pretty well, although there was one concept that I kept getting confused on. The South American guy in the class was heckling me in Spanish while I was trying to make a sentence in Japanese – pretty confusing. At the end the teacher had trouble with a concept, and I think we all ended the class totally confused. I hope that they can pick up the pieces on Friday night. This was one class that did more harm than good.
Usually I stop in at a ramen place that has free kimchee on my way home, but this time I thought I’d try a new restaurant. The place had some delicious looking plastic food in their window, so I went inside and ordered up. The dish was strips of steak, noodles, rice, corn, a soft boiled egg, and bits of garlic all mixed up in a sauce and served in a hot clay pot. It looked great, but it turned out the sauce was almost completely oil. It was damn near the greasiest thing I’ve ever eaten, anywhere. I ate about half and left the rest to coagulate.
Now I’m back home – the weather is starting to pick up and there’s talk of another typhoon approaching tonight and tomorrow. Hopefully it will blow itself out tonight and tomorrow will be a dry day.
Oh, almost forgot, they’re putting in signs in the food court at Ito Yokado and I identified another place – Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors. I’ve got my fingers crossed for a coffee shop in there somewhere.
