We had a busy weekend, and I’m only just now getting around to blogging it. Saturday Kuniko had her school’s culture festival, and she invited me to visit for a little bit so I went into Kobe around lunchtime and met her there.
In Japan the culture festival is one of the big events in a high school student’s life – something like a prom in America in that it is the once a year event that everyone looks forward to. Students put on shows, have classroom displays, and sell food and show off their school to their family and other visitors.
Because the school is a private girls school, there is some element of PR involved, too – the school wants to show the parents that they are getting their money’s worth, as well as promote the school to possible future students. Because it is a girl’s school, admission is tightly controlled to prevent weirdo stalker types from coming in and wandering around. Luckily Kuniko left word at the gate so they wouldn’t turn me away.
As it turned out I knew a few of the teachers working at the gate anyway, so we chatted a while before I went inside and met Kuniko. Together we went inside the school to look around.
Foreigners get a lot of attention in Japan. Tall male foreigners get a lot of attention in a girl’s high school, and foreigner husbands of one of the teachers get an enormous amount of attention. As we walked around Kuniko introduced me to students, teachers and parents here and there, and between the giggles and constant barrage of compliments we were able to take in some culture. We bought ice cream and KFC from Kuniko’s students and sat down for lunch. We had some tea from the tea ceremony club (very formal and very well done), and we saw most all of the classroom exhibits. Kuniko could only take about an hour away from her responsibilities, so after that expired I headed out the gate and back home.
Kuniko thanked me for coming to visit, but it really was my pleasure. It was good to chat with her students and coworkers, and I think making an appearance there really firms up Kuniko’s English language credibility in the eyes of her coworkers. I made sure to chat with other English teachers in English as well to give them some leverage they could use on their students later.
Sunday we spent two hours with an architect dreaming up layouts for the new house. Our lot is pretty small – about 1300 square feet. Luckily Japanese homes are really good about the use of space, and we just have to figure out how we want to use the space we’ve got. We both had some ideas, and we talked them out with the architect who was a really nice guy and had a flexible nature that probably serves him well in his job. We learned a lot in the two hours. The biggest lesson I took home from the session was that the first floor layout really does affect the second floor layout – and the position on the stairs is critical. We came home with a first floor layout we really liked and a second floor layout we didn’t care for very much. Next week we’ll play around a little more and try to finalize something.
On the way home we stopped at an “Asian Cafe” and had some lunch – I had a “Hanoi sandwich” which was really pretty close to authentic Vietnamese, and Kuniko had a chicken and rice dish served “Singapore style”. Haven’t yet made it to Singapore so can’t be sure on the authenticity.
After a nap we headed over to catch a movie (Iron Man, finally!) and then hit the sack. It was a busy weekend, but a productive one.
