Today we finally had my listening test, and I stuck around for an extra hour or so to grade the papers from my students. For the most part they did pretty well – I was especially proud of how well they did with giving directions in English. If you are ever in Japan and want to find out how to get somewhere, ask a kid in a school uniform. They’ll totally help you out.
I went home and spent the afternoon packing and straightening things up around the house. Outside the weather has become really windy, and the occasional howling and whistling is a little unnerving.
Around 7 p.m. I was in the mood for dinner, but since I’ve already cleaned out my fridge I decided to check out the sushi restaurant five minutes walk from my house. I tried to go there before, but it was closed, but this time it was open.
I went inside, and got the usual reaction from everyone in there – holy shit! A foreigner! People are wondering, “does he know how to speak Japanese?”, “what will he order?”, “can he eat octopus?”, etc. I sat down, by now used to all the attention, and ordered up a mid-priced, mid-sized sushi dinner.
I was sitting next to two gentlemen, who turned out to be a father and son pair. The father was really hard to understand, but the son’s Japanese was much clearer. They really enjoyed chatting with me, and the father kept ordering me bottles of sake to drink. He also kept me in food once I finished my sushi dinner. The master was laughing as he kept making dish after dish, and I kept eating and saying “thank you”, and “you’re too kind”, and “that’s way more than I can eat”. The master’s wife and her friend came out to chat with me, and all in all I created a big stir in a small restaurant.
We exchanged stories and talked for a couple of hours, and I ate my fill and then some. The two guys complemented me on my looks, my Japanese, and one even asked me to visit his daughter(!). When I told them about Kuniko they were both really happy – it somehow showed them that I was serious about being in Japan. Both of them were named Mori-san, and the older Mori-san was the one that was hard to understand. He bought me a giant handmade roll of sushi for tomorrow’s breakfast, and wouldn’t accept no for an answer when he ordered the sake. I must have drank nearly six small bottles of sake. I poured my sake (paid for by him) for him, and he poured his for me.
In the end I tried to pay the bill, but they ended up covering the whole thing. They both said what a treat it was to meet a foreigner, and how nice I was and they hope they can meet up with me again sometime. I left the place with a belly full of sushi and sake.
The thing is, things like this happen to me in Japan all the time. If you go into a mom and pop type place like this sushi restaurant, or Denya (the yakitori restaurant), you are most likely going to meet someone really nice who will take care of you and really enjoys the opportunity to speak with you (in Japanese or English). It’s fascinating for me and it always reinforces what a great experience I’ve had here.
I’m back home with a little bit of a sake buzz, and looking forward to getting some rest. I’m meeting Kuniko in Sannomiya tomorrow at 12:30 p.m., and then we’ll take the bus to the airport and fly to America.
I won’t be updating the site every day when I’m in America, just because I’d rather spend that time with Kuniko exploring and seeing everything we can. I’ll post occasionally, though, and try to get some pictures up of all the people we’ll see.
So that’s it for now. Tomorrow it’s bon voyage, and I’ll post more later on!
