Friday afternoon I taught just two classes, and then headed to the train station. I did a little back and forth trick to catch the fastest train, and ended up sitting at the bar at the Belgian beer place an hour and ten minutes after my last class ended. That wasn’t so bad, really.
Since I woke up in the morning I have had a tickle in my throat – the sign of an oncoming cold. Not sure why I’ve become so cold-prone in Japan, but that’s the breaks. I had already made plans to meet Antoine, so I figured I should just plow through and hope for the best.
Antoine and I sat at the bar and had three or four rounds of drinks, talking about his new job (going good), his girlfriend (going not-so-good), and about my job (going really good).
We walked all over Kobe to find some dinner, and ended up going to an old favorite that we hadn’t visited in years – Like Like. It was full of salarymen, and we took the last two seats at the bar – right in the middle of the salarymen.
As it happened these guys were drunk enough to want to speak English, so we talked with everyone almost exclusively in English. The master of the place had his two daughters working there, and they kept giving cute smiles to the salarymen – these guys were in love. So Antoine and I chatted with a salaryman on either side of us, and pretty much just used English. One guy had lived in Toronto for five years and he had awesome English. I talked hockey with him for a while.
We had some interesting food for dinner – kimchee pilaf, taco pizza, and fried chicken. The taco pizza was pretty spicy but almost Mexican – I liked it. A little greasy, but that’s the kind of food you get in heavy drinking establishments like Like Like.
Around 11:30 we got organized and got out of there. It was good timing – Antoine was talking casually with a completely drunk salaryman who was bragging about his sword collection. Time to go…
I caught a train and got home around 12:30 – Kuniko was sleeping so I just slipped into bed and conked right out. Kuniko has been pretty tired out lately, so I want her to get as much rest as possible. Working her homeroom class has been pretty tough lately.
