Last week I bumped into a couple of Kawasaki employees at the tachinomi while I was killing time waiting for Kuniko to show up. They were both managers and had some of their staff in my class. We had a good conversation for about 20 minutes, and then I went off to meet Kuniko.
Fast forward to yesterday morning, and I bumped into one of these guys while crossing the road on the way to work. We had another nice talk, and he seemed very happy that I remembered his name. We walked a ways to the office building and then split up to go to our respective offices.
Finally, last night I met up with a couple of the inspectors back at the tachinomi after work, and we spent a little over an hour talking about this and that. And who should walk in, but my new friend and three of his staff – two of which are my current students. We said hello, but since the inspectors didn’t know any of them it was a little hard to try to merge the two parties together. Luckily over time I was able to bring them a little closer together, and I think it went pretty well. My poor students were under pressure in front of their boss to speak English, but everyone was encouraging, and it was fun. Even the manager spoke some English, which is going out on a limb in business culture – a lot of times people think it is better to keep quiet than to stumble in front of your staff.
Anyway, I had a good time with everyone last night, but since it was a school night I left a little early and got home around 8:30. I threw together a quick dinner, and when Kuniko got home a little later we had another mini-party. It was a very good night.
