Days at school are always full of unusual events, and I usually chronicle the ones that I remember after I return home – there’s plenty of things that slip through the ever-enlarging cracks in my memory. Today was a pretty normal day as far as classes go. I had four classes, and they were nice easy lessons that I’ve done before, so no problem.
My tutor, Tsuji-san, is qualified to be an interviewer for the STEP test, and so I dropped her name to Mr. Hayashi, and today she came by to meet him and to fill out an application. I went over to chat with them, and it went pretty well. She was so nervous, and there were students running all over the place, and so she had a hard time with the English part of the conversation.
Afterwards, I had some free time and so I sat down next to Mr. Hayashi and we waited for the end of the day to come around. For some reason, today everything that Mr. Hayashi said was rubbing me the wrong way. Usually when this happens it’s because I’m stressed, or in a bad mood – something that I have control of. Today I was totally relaxed, but he was just saying all the wrong things.
I let him talk for a while, and then finally made some excuses to go back to my desk. Hopefully after a couple of days I’ll reset myself and be fine.
Since I have caught a cold everyone was commenting on it today. Mr. Komuri told me that because I take a shower in the morning I will easily catch a cold. Taking a shower in the morning is very rare in Japan – it’s usually a bath before bed. I asked him how many colds I had last year, and he said (correctly) two or three. I asked him how many colds he had last year, and he said two or three. I asked him if he takes a shower in the morning, and then the light came on. He smiled, and said “You win the debate!”
On the way home I picked up some groceries and made homemade guacamole. Along with some miso soup and some corn chips I had a pretty good dinner. I’m still tasting the garlic!
This weekend will be pretty slow – I went to stay in and rest up. I’ve warned Kuniko that she shouldn’t visit unless she wants to get sick, so it may just be me in quarantine for a couple of days. That should be exciting. I’ve got some books that I’ve been meaning to read, so I’ll probably dig into those.
