Sunday I went into Kobe to meet up with a group of people that meet monthly – kind of a discussion group in English. I went about a month ago and enjoyed myself. I was invited to the original party by a lady in our school office, but this time she couldn’t make it.
The place we met was at one of the members’ houses. She lives in the ritzy Kitano district in Kobe, and we walked there from the station into nicer and nicer neighborhoods, until we found her place at the base of the large mountain that dominates the Kobe landscape.
The house was really nice, and decorated in a little more of a Western style than most Japanese homes I’ve visited. It did appear that the owner had a liking for ceramic dogs, however.
Besides myself there were four Japanese ladies that attended, and two Danish doctors that are working for the World Health Organization on a temporary post to Japan. Another member of that organization, kind of a support person that was originally from America, came along with the doctors to join in. Also, an Iranian doctorate student studying in Japan showed up. With this really interesting mix of people we settled down and chatted.
It wasn’t long before the discussion was deep in murky hypothetical waters, and we were throwing around the solutions to the world’s problems sitting among porcelain beagles that watched unblinkingly. It was interesting to see the speaking styles of the different people and sometimes you really wanted to tie it to their culture. The Danish doctor was very forward with his opinions, and he barely let anyone else talk. The Iranian woman turned every topic into a sad view of the world – she was depressing me from the beginning of the conversation. We asked her what her favorite book was and she went off on a long sad story that ended with one of her older brothers dying in the Iran-Iraq war. Yikes.
It was a marathon session over lunch, and by the time we had to adjourn I was ready to get out of there and meet Kuniko for a little sunshine and happiness. I met her in Kobe and we didn’t have much sunshine. The weather was turning awful. We skipped our planned walk along Kobe harbor, and headed back to Okubo instead. We did catch a tonkatsu dinner on the way home though. After changing out of our wet clothes it was nice to take a hot bath and stay warm in the kotatsu. Hard to believe, but this weekend is over.
