A long time ago I accepted an invitation to have lunch with the school office manager, Sato-san, at Hamawaki Junior High. She really likes English, and is a member of several Toastmaster clubs. She has a monthly English conversation group, and she invited me to be the guest of honor. I begged off the first time, but I finally got roped into going, and today was the big day.
Kuniko had to teach two classes in the morning, and so I puttered around the house doing some laundry and straightening up, and then just about as soon as she got home I was out the door and headed to Koshien.
Koshien is the area around the Hanshin Tigers ballpark near the outskirts of Osaka. It’s a nice part of town, actually, and I’ve liked what I’ve seen the few times that I’ve been there.
Since I had a commuter pass the trip was largely free, and when I arrived I waited only a few minutes before one of the club members picked me up. She is a semi-retired doctor, and her English was pretty good. We took a bus together to “Rainbow Town” – a huge area of mansions painted in all the colors of the rainbow. The mansions were huge – very tall and there were so many that they blocked out a fair amount of the sky.
The doctor said that when you ask people in Japan how many colors there are in a rainbow, they always say seven – no more, no less. I don’t know why that is, but it was an interesting piece of trivia. I’ll have to try it out.
We got to Sato-san’s place, and everyone else was already there. The place was part of the Rainbow Town complex, and it had a really old feel to it – it reminded me of the teacher apartments that we recently lived in.
We sat down and everyone introduced themselves, and then we just started talking and talking – just in English. The members of the club were quite intelligent, and I think they are pretty adept at using English. Besides the doctor and the office manager, there was a college English instructor, and a college science teacher who spoke not only English but also Japanese and her native Chinese. There was also a retired medical translator, who was the oldest of the bunch but perhaps had the best English.
While we were talking we ate a lunch prepared by Sato-san. I had brought a bottle of wine, and we opened that and poured it around. I got the feeling like they didn’t normally have alcohol at these things, but everybody drank and everybody liked it. Maybe I should have brought another bottle.
Although we talked about all kinds of things and it didn’t seem formal at all, right at 4:30 Sato-san said “Time’s Up!” and everybody started gathering their things and saying goodbye. It was a sudden end, but maybe those are the rules they use. We all went off to the train station by bus, and I shared a train back to Sannomiya with several of the members. We talked a lot more on the train, and by the time I got home I was pretty tired from talking so much.
They invited me to join their monthly group, but I’m a little hesitant about doing it. It’s pretty far away, and giving up one afternoon a month seems like a lot. On the other hand, maybe it would help build connections for the future. They have lots of friends and lots of experience in Japan, and it could be a way to open some doors for me someday. Hmmm….
Kuniko had dinner cooking when I got home, and she served up a delicious healthy dinner of mackeral with a dark savory sauce and some miso and noodle soup that was really delicious. I took a nice hot bath, and I slept like a baby – it was a budy day, but relaxing, too.
