I’m still limping through my cold. Today I was at the phlegm stage, and tomorrow or the next day I should be at the coughing and hacking stage. Something to look forward to!
At school I had four classes in the morning. In one of my classes, Harada sensei, the slight crazy teacher, had attached name cards to the students’ desks so that I could call them by name. We were talking about it while the students were working on a project, and she said that a professor friend of hers from America said that “real teachers call their students by name”, and Harada sensei wanted me to try it out. I thought it was great – and I wish that I had this system back when I started instead of having it a month before I leave the school.
I’ve always had a tough time remembering names, and this school is especially difficult because they don’t have a picture/name chart laying around. The students aren’t used to be being called by their first names – and so it made for a very interesting class.
On the way home I was walking through the Hanshin department store because of the rain outside, and a couple of people working the shumai booth were quick with a toothpick and offered me a free sample, in English. He even translated the ingredient (shrimp). They were really happy to offer some free food to a foreigner, and I was happy to get it. It’s experiences like these that make me really happy to be living in Japan. I could have broken into Japanese, but since they started it in English I went along with it and everyone was happy.
During the commute home I was thinking a little bit about the people walking around me. When I’m going home I have to walk pretty briskly through Sannomiya station and I’m always dodging people and moving around people going slower than I am. I’m not running or anything, but everyone else seems to be going slower than me.
It makes me think about a lecturer I heard a couple of years ago. He was a foreigner that had lived in Japan thirty years or so, and he was lecturing JETs on long term life in Japan, and getting used to it. He said that whenever he’s walking up the stairs and he gets mad because people are walking down the wrong side – that’s when he knows it’s time to relax a little bit and relieve the tension.
Today I had to dodge and weave a little more than normal. People would stop on the escalator, blocking the stream of people trying to walk up, an old lady walked through the ticket gate and then stopped right in the way to put away her ticket blocking all the people behind, and there were several people walking around with their head in the clouds not noticing what is happening around them.
The trick is not to get frustrated about it. Japan is an aging population, and it’s only going to get older. I’m going to be putting up with bumbling old people for a while to come. Maybe I’ll even be the bumbling old guy someday.
Back home I made up my first batch of oyakodon – and Kuniko was nice enough to give it a positive review. I’m off to take a bath and try to steam out the cold.
