Shindoi

No problem, no hangover.  Just a little sleepy. Kuniko made me a fantastic lunch and breakfast, and after that I marched off to work. Kuniko called in sick yesterday to take the teacher’s test, so now she has to go into work today and play the barely healthy teacher role.

More and more teachers are trickling into work, and it’s nice to see some familiar faces. I worked straight through the morning – focusing on kanji and new vocabulary. I learned the word 赤字 (pronounced akaji), which means deficit or ‘in the red’. The kanji symbols make the word easy to remember. The first one means ‘red’, and the second means ‘letter’. Too cool.

As I write this there is a news crew in the next room interviewing some of our students and teachers that went on the trip to Australia.  The principal told me that I should stick around through the interview just in case they wanted to talk to me.  Hopefully I’ll be out of here by 2:30 – I need to meet up with Kuniko in Sannomiya.  We are going to the wedding place again to make some more decisions.

Things are going to be fairly busy this weekend.  Friday night I am going out with Antoine for a boy’s night out, Saturday Kuniko has a business trip but I have a free day.  Sunday Risa-chan and her husband Anthony are coming over for dinner.  They recently got married in Brunei, so I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot of photographs.  I’m going to cook up tacos – it has kind of turned into my signature dish these days.

Just got back from our trip to the hotel in Sannomiya.  Kuniko talked with the hair and make-up person, and they discussed the plan of attack.  It’s a very Japanese way to do things – they just talk about different things and let you look at a lot of pictures.  Very few decisions to be made at this point.  The way they dance around decisions and discuss things is very foreign to me – but that’s what makes it interesting.

After the wedding place we went into Sannomiya searching for a wedding present for Risa-chan and her husband.  We struck out at several stores, and when we started buying stuff for ourselves instead of them we knew it was time to leave.  We went to a sushi restaurant near Sannomiya station that was recommended by the ALT association in my area.

Usually a recommendation from a foreigner publication would be the kiss of death for me, but instead it turned out to be quite good.  It’s a chain restaurant, but there are very few locations, and it has a really cool “So this is Japan” feel to it.  We sat down and ordered and got huge pieces of fish on tiny lumps of rice.  The fish was fresh and delicious, and the pieces were way too big to fit into your mouth.  Some where nearly impossible to eat, and it’s the kind of place only advanced chopstick users should go.  The menu was all in Japanese, and you order directly from a sushi chef.  The chef offered to cut ours into smaller pieces if we liked, but we both got the feeling that it would be like cheating somehow – like having your mom cut your steak.

After dinner we tried a few more stores looking for the perfect gift, but ended up surrendering and heading home.  Now I’m back, I’m tired, and I’m ready for bed.  Tomorrow I’m going to go back to Sannomiya to meet up with Antoine, so it’ll be déjà vu all over again.


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