The biggest thing to report about Wednesday was that suddenly on Thursday night I started to get a sore throat, and then I woke up properly sick in the morning. The sore throat was bad, and I was already sniffling and coughing. I’ve never had a cold come on so fast.
Despite being sick I went ahead and went into work. I had some good classes, and they gave my voice a workout. In a couple of them I had to read some long passages, over and over again. I kind of hoped the teacher would take my condition into account, but no such luck.
At the end of the day we had an award ceremony, and it went on and on. It seemed to me that nearly half the students in the school won some kind of award or another. I usually stand in the back for those kinds of things, but I found myself sitting along with all the other students after the first hour or so.
Finally, we went and did cleaning, and during the cleaning there were some crazy kids across the way screaming out English phrases. At Takanan it was hard to get anyone to even speak English, but here they are screaming out English unbidden. I enjoyed listened to them shrieking out things like “Jelly is delicious!” and “Koro was disappointed!” The other teachers were a little concerned, but in the end they just let them go for it.
After work I met up with Kuniko in Kobe. There was a grand opening of a new Hanshin department store in Sannomiya (oddly named “Mint”) and so we went over together to check it out. It was fun to look around. There were lots of people doing the same thing we were, and it took a while to cover the place. We found some interesting restaurants on the top floors – including an oyster bar and gumbo place, and a branch of a ramen restaurant that Kuniko and I used to like to visit near her old place in Shin-Osaka.
We came on back and had ramen at home, in an attempt to save money and soothe my throat in one shot. The ramen totally hit the spot, and not long after that I went to bed and crashed. Kuniko is really covering a lot of the household chores while I’m sick, so I hope I can get well soon to pitch in and help.
