Mr. Hayashi was at a judo match today, so I took over one of his classes alone. I had some worksheets for them to work on, and I also gave them a short quiz. I was surprised that after I passed out the quiz, a lot of the students tried to cheat by looking at their books. I walked around and made faces at the ones I caught, and some of their textbooks were confiscated temporarily. They were just trying to see how much they could get away with, and I’ll report back to Mr. Hayashi later on. He’s probably not too concerned.
The history teacher came by to talk with me and we had two long conversations about the role of the state vs. the federal government in education (his topic) and also about his lack of success with girls (my topic). I’ve been hard on the history teacher in these pages and I will probably continue to be hard on him – he takes tons of my time and then when he feels guilty about it he buys me dinner to buy another few months of conversations. Other teachers have told me that they stay away when the history teacher is around, otherwise they’d like to talk to me. Students also are scared off when he is around.
It struck me today while I was walking down the hallways that in any given week I spend more time talking to the history teacher than I do Kuniko. There’s something wrong with that.
What do I do about it? Nothing, for now. What would you do? I’m sure a bright idea will come to me someday. For now, I will endure. I just think that not only is he taking up a ton of my time, but he is hogging up a resource (me) that is intended for the whole school.
The mystery of the New Belgium box is solved. My dad e-mailed me and said that he had met a representative from New Belgium, one Dave Macon, who was nice enough to send the package to me. Thanks Dave! I’m going to wear the T-shirt today and maybe the hat tomorrow in Kyoto.
I went to the yakitori with Yasu tonight, and we had a big dinner and lots of beer. There were a lot of regulars there, and so I got to chat with everyone. The guy that works at the liquor store across town came by. He speaks great English – so he was happy to get the chance to talk. He was wondering why I don’t walk by his store anymore, and so I explained about the new train station.
Yasu and I trucked out of there, and we staggered down the road towards the apartments. Yasu told me about a new word he learned in English – “reeling”. He said that we were “reeling” along the sidewalk. Good usage Yasu!
Tomorrow I’m headed into Osaka, and Sunday Kuniko and I are going to take the short trip to Kyoto to do some sightseeing. Should be fun!
