I had Thursday off of work, but Kuniko had to go in like usual this morning. I spent the day cleaning house and studying Japanese, reading a book (in English!) and I watched a movie on the big screen plasma TV. In the late afternoon the phone rang, and it was Kuniko. Some teachers were having a farewell party from her school, so they invited me to come along.
This is kind of a big deal because generally spouses aren’t really invited to events like this. My case is kind of an exception, because I’m foreign and different and everyone wants to get a look at me in action. Still, maybe that will put some cracks in the age old tradition of excluding spouses from parties. I took them up on the invitation and caught the next train for Kobe.
The place they met was a Chinese restaurant near the school. I had walked by it a couple of times, and Kuniko had been there once and gave it a good review. I actually got there before Kuniko did, so I sat down with two teachers that I had never met and we introduced ourselves and talked about this and that. Soon after Kuniko and the others started trickling in.
We ate and drank big – it was a good dinner. They had a refrigerator up there, right next to the dinner table so you could just pull out a beer when you needed it and pour around. That’s a dangerous thing having all that cold beer within an arm’s reach. They also served us some traditional Chinese liquor. The Japanese version of the Chinese name was 紹興酒 (shoukoushu). It tasted like a weak sherry to me, but it was OK. I had a couple glasses of it on the rocks.
The food was traditional Chinese. It was really tasty – usually you get some pretty bland Chinese food dishes in Japan. The best dish was a shrimp, egg and rice dish they brought out towards the end. Everybody was pretty tipsy at the end, but we made it down the stairs, put our shoes on, and said goodbye outside the restaurant. The owner of the restaurant and his wife followed us outside and said goodbye as well.
We walked back towards the station but I was still just a tiny bit hungry and drunk enough to want to go snack somewhere. Kuniko had enough beer to agree with me, and so that was how we ended up at a counter in Osho – a Chinese fast-food restaurant – eating gyoza and fried chicken. We split a beer with it, and had a really nice conversation with a drunk older gentleman sitting next to me. He was really interested to be sitting next to an international couple and had lots of questions. At the end of his meal he insisted on paying our bill. Over our protests he did, and said goodbye. The clerk at Osho gave us a funny look like “Why are you protesting? Take the free dinner!”
After our free post-dinner dinner we walked around a little to get the calories burning, and then caught a train ride home. We were both tired out – and went right to bed, totally forgetting about all the laundry hanging out on the patio.
