Today I was in a rush to leave this morning and I totally forget my cellphone and my handheld computer at home. That meant that I couldn’t do flashcards, and I was out of contact with people all day. It was kind of refreshing.
I had an appointment to return a book to Tsuji-san in the morning, so I went over there and she looked nervous about the upcoming wedding. She gave me some presents to say thank you for helping her with her English, and her parents even came out and admired my Japanese and to say thank you. It was the first time that I could speak to her father for an extended period of time. He is a stern looking guy. Her mom is always smiling, though. I’ll probably have some pictures of them after the wedding on Saturday.
Classes went smoothly today, and since I wasn’t cramming vocab into my head I spent time looking for good hotels in Venice and Florence. I also spent a while writing emails to Brenda, who will be taking over my position at the school. I detect just a little concern about the protocol among the teachers, and one teacher asked me hopefully if I could be around to help out with the transition. I said that if I was free I would be happy to, but of course if I’ve got a paying gig somewhere else I’ve gotta do that.
I was home at a reasonable hour today, and surprisingly so was Kuniko. She cooked dinner for us, and in the evening I watched “Mr. Baseball” in preparation for a class that I am doing on Thursday. The class is about cultural differences and culture shock, and that movie is full of them. I recommend the movie if you get a chance to see it. It was a lot more surprising when I saw the movie years ago – now Japanese baseball is not so unusual.
Since Sunday when we went to the crazy apartment company, they have called every night to let us know what is going on. They call and urgently ask for Kuniko, and even if she is right next to me I hem and haw and subject them to my bad Japanese, play stupid sometimes, and generally just frustrate the guy. Then when they call back later Kuniko gets on the phone and it turns out they are just letting us know the status of the process. Relax guys, we trust things are going fine.
I’m off to bed a little early tonight. Tomorrow I’ve got lots of flashcards to do to make up for my forgetfulness today.
