It’s the end of Golden Week here in Japan and Kuniko and I have celebrated by not doing anything special. Kuniko was working, I was studying, and we both avoided travel and public places. Japan can be a big headache doing Golden Week – all the hard working people finally have a chance to take some time off, with predictably high fares for travel, crowded hotels, and jam-packed tourist destinations. It’s like going to an Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day – people come out of the woodwork and ruin the fun.
Instead we’ve got some tentative ideas about doing some fun things coming up while everyone else is stuck back at work. This week we’re going to tour the new IKEA store in Kobe (only the second store in Japan). Kuniko’s school has a special day off to commemorate its founding, and so we should be able to miss most of the crowds.
This week I’m going to cover three days of classes for Nozaki sensei, so it’ll be back to the little guys for a little while. I also will teach some junior high and high school classes, and on Wednesday I’m helping Nozaki sensei with one of her English classes at the Kakogawa International Relations Center. The class is being held in a very expensive city building built to foster international relations by offering support service for foreigners as well as teaching Japanese adults how to speak other languages. Nozaki sensei teaches there once a week, and so I’m going to help out a little bit this week.
Tonight Kuniko and I are hunkering down for a wine, cheese and movie night. We’ve got just a little bit of Delice d’Argental to kill off with a bottle of Malbec from Argentina. The movie is “You Only Live Twice”, featuring Sean Connery as James Bond in Japan. That should be an interesting cultural experience for Kuniko.
