I walked into work all smiles, knowing that today was just a momentary interruption of six days off. That makes things a whole lot easier – Mondays aren’t nearly as tough to deal with.
I am scheduled to teach three classes on Monday, but Mr. Hayashi said that for the first two weeks there is no need for me to show up. My two week reprieve was up today, so I went over to check and see what I needed to do today for class.
Mr. Hayashi told me that they are still doing exams, so I don’t need to come there until sometime after the mid-term exams finish. It’s weird to have me signed up for classes and then not have me come for six weeks. Oh well.
That left me with only one class in the afternoon, so I hit the books hard. I memorized lots of words, did some grammar review, some reading, and generally slaved away over the textbooks. One of the other teachers came by and asked me if I have an exam soon – he thought I looked like I was working against a deadline.
Ms. Mori came by to talk to me. The other day she told me that she needed to talk to me regarding “the future of our school”, and since I’ve only had two other conversations with Ms. Mori in the last year I was curious to know what was up.
She swore me to secrecy and told me that the school is having some troubles recruiting new students, and we’re not considered a popular school to go to. She is going to get a little more proactive and go teach an English class at some area junior high schools. She asked me if I would be willing to help because I am the foot in the door at these places – a rare opportunity for their students to interact with a foreigner.
I agreed, and she seemed really happy, but she abruptly left after securing my agreement, leading me to wonder what exactly I just signed up for.
At the end of the day I had a new lesson about giving compliments. The highlight of the lesson was when we asked the students to each stand up, and alternating between me and Mr. Hayashi, give compliments. They didn’t completely understand, but the ten boys all complimented Mr. Hayashi, and the ten girls all complimented me. There was no alternating going on at all. The compliments were good – some were funny (that’s a nice eye color you have), but we wrapped up the lesson on time and I think it was a success.
I was out of there on time, and I came home to a pretty warm house. After airing out the place I realized that I had nothing in the fridge, so instead of shopping at Ito Yokado I went over to visit with the master at the yakitori.
Holiday evenings can either be really busy or really dead at the yakitori, and tonight it was dead. We sat and chatted about everything we could think of, the master tried out some new English on me, and we had a good time. I like it when it’s not busy, I can order anything I want without feeling guilty for making the master busy. I feel bad ordering something complicated when he’s got a whole crowd of people to serve.
Tomorrow is the start of Golden Week, and Kuniko and I are heading to Osaka to do some shopping and looking around.
