Wednesday I went into Nishinomiya to work at a company called Furuno Denki. They make electronics and radar, predominantly marine electronics and GPS stuff for large ships. They are also moving into electronics for medical facilities, and overall they are a pretty big company growing at a rapid pace.
Myself and five other teachers came to their training center in Nishinomiya (they are big enough to have their own training center complete with support staff and full size cafeteria). Unlike previous intensive training sessions that I have done, it was a one day only affair. The students were divided by skill level, and through the luck of the draw I had the lowest level. It turned out to be a real challenge, since the material was aimed at kind of a simple business level it was very difficult for my students who probably could have benefited from a simple conversational level. One of my students was Chinese, and so she had no English education through junior high and high school like the rest of the Japanese people there – she had to struggle with pronunciation most of the time.
The other teachers were interesting to talk to, and I had a good time. I was pretty tired by the end of the day, so knowing that Kuniko was out at a drinking party I stopped in at a local kushikatsu place for dinner. Lately I have been craving kushikatsu. It is a style of eating that I had pretty much ignored for the first few years I was in Japan, but it is quite popular. The place near our house is really good, and the family that owns it is very friendly.
I was the only customer in the place when I went in, and I had a nice chat with the lady that runs it. She was dressed in kimono and was really putting on the hospitality for me. We had a nice chat and she kept me in fried foods and beer the whole time.
One of the curious cultural phenomena that I have observed is the popularity and status that comes with having a beautiful woman waiting on you in Japan. It doesn’t matter if you are paying her to do it, what matters is that you can afford the luxury or that you have the charm and wit to attract the women in question. Japanese guys love to be waited on by a beautiful woman, and they will spend a lot of money and effort to arrange the situation. While I personally see it as an act of vanity and self-delusion, I’ve got to say that I enjoyed the attention last night. For the first time, I can kind of understand why these old guys like to go out and get waited on. I still think it’s vain and self-delusional, especially if you start to think that it is somehow a reflection of reality, but I can understand their perspective just a little bit more.
Anyway, after having my fill of dinner I said goodbye and narrowly avoided a drunk old Japanese guy who wanted to take me upstairs to the karaoke place and sing with me. Talk about a horrible way to end an evening – instead I went home and relaxed until Kuniko got home from her party, and then we hit the hay. It was a long day for both of us.
