Sunday in the afternoon we met up with Kuniko’s coworker Hanayama sensei and his wife to play a little bowling and then go out to dinner. A long time ago Hanayama sensei came over with some teachers and we all played Wii bowling. He lost the game at the time, and I could tell he was a pretty competitive guy who wanted to show he could excel at the real thing.
Lately he has been asking Kuniko and I to do stuff with him and his wife, and we’re not sure exactly why. Kuniko and I conjectured that perhaps it is because he and Kuniko work together (they are both in charge of the tennis club at their school) and he just wanted to build a little harmony in the group.
We went bowling just down the street at Saty, and had a pretty good time. I usually suck at bowling, and today was no exception. For some reason my fingers are too big for the balls – I always end up holding the ball for too long. Anyway, lots of gutters but I’m used to it and I enjoyed myself despite the lack of beer at the alley.
Hanayama sensei was a good bowler. He stood at the back of the lane, almost in front of the chairs, and then ran at the line, flinging the ball down the lane with a lot of speed. His aim was pretty good, and he got quite a few strikes. It looked like the delivery was pretty tough on his body, though. He was rubbing his side the whole time.
We played for about two hours, and then caught a train and headed to dinner in Nishi Akashi. The restaurant was one of their favorites, and everyone knew them there. I guess they eat out quite a bit. The food was Japanese style, but they had all kinds of things on the menu. We started out with a big plate of sashimi, and then moved on to karaage (fried chicken), sausages, soba salada, okonomiyaki, and butakimchee. We drank beer at first, and then Hanayama sensei called for his “keep bottle” of sho-chu and we drank that.
We drank a lot of sho-chu – we killed his first bottle (it was half empty already) and then we killed another full bottle. That’s a lot of booze. Everyone was pretty drunk, and so we stumbled off to the train station and came home soon afterwards. We did a little bit of drunken shopping (always a bad idea) and then came home and drank lots of water and took some aspirin before hitting the sack. On a school night, too…
