This has been a pretty good week, for a lot of reasons. On Tuesday after work I took a train to Himeji to have a celebration dinner with Kuniko, her parents, and her sister and her husband. The reason we were celebrating was because Kuniko’s dad’s insurance policy included a lot of money to take the family out for a party once he got out of the hospital. So we arranged to meet at a nice hotel in Himeji and eat dinner in their restaurant.
Almost all major Japanese hotels have a restaurant inside, and for many Japanese people a hotel restaurant is going to be the nicest (and most expensive) restaurant that they will ever visit. This means that hotel restaurants have a license to be expensive, and I’ve rarely had a meal that was worth the price they charge. In addition, the staff are usually not friendly – just stiff and formal. In other words, it is hard to have a good time at these places for me.
However, despite all of this we had a great time, and most of that was due to Kuniko’s dad’s recovery. The last time we saw him we were more than a little worried – he was having trouble speaking, we were having trouble understanding him, and he had trouble with coordination and eating. This time he was almost completely back to normal. With time and effort he has been getting better and we were so glad to see it firsthand. He was obviously very happy to have the whole family together, and it was a great night. And there was a big sigh of relief from all of us.
Wednesday I finished up my school term, and the rest of the week is just some classes here and there to balance out the numbers for students that were on business trips or absent for one reason or another. I have started thinking about the curriculum for the next term’s new employee classes, and since they are a different format there is some more work to be done. The good news is that I have quite a bit of time to get organized over the next few days.
Also I have a new business English conversation course starting on October 1st, and I was a little concerned because the previous course didn’t have many sign ups. In fact, they had to actively recruit (cajole?) some students into joining the class to fill out the roster. Hard to believe that people wouldn’t want to join a free English course being held at your place of work, but it was true. Luckily this time around there were many more applicants than spots, and it won’t be a problem to give me a full set of new students. Every year around this time I wonder if the company will keep me around, and apparently the answer (for next year) is yes.
Kuniko has some big events this weekend, one of which is the culture festival at her school. Preparations are proceeding and students are getting ready. I think I’m going to take a rain check this year and skip the event. Instead I’ll stay home and try to get some exercise, read some books and watch Survivor. It should be a good weekend!
