Today we had the second half of sports day – so this time I was determined to dress a little more relaxed. Yesterday all the other teachers were wearing shorts, sweats, and they looked pretty casual. Today, I wore shorts and a T-shirt, and everyone was commenting on it. “Wow, you look pretty casual!”, or “Is that ‘summer style’ you are wearing?” they asked.
I claimed that it was “Cool Biz”, taken a step further, and they seemed to think I was a little crazy. That’s OK, though.
I played volleyball in between official matches to help warm up the teams, and by the end of the day I was seriously sweaty. I spent the rest of the day in the staffroom enjoying the air conditioning. In the afternoon I went over to Tsuji-san’s place and chatted with her for more than an hour, and then left school around 4:30.
Luckily, Antoine gave me a call – he was finishing up a conference in Sannomiya and wanted to meet up in Akashi and hang out for a bit. It worked out great, actually. I went into Akashi and met up with him. We started by going out for okonomiyaki, then we went to Donkey to play some darts and drink some beer, and then finally we went to the underground sushi restaurant.
It was a lot of fun. The only disappointment was the sushi restaurant. The sushi master showed us a piece of paper at the end of the night with the price of 9600 yen – almost $100! We were really surprised – we hadn’t eaten that much, and we barely had enough money to cover it. We’re thinking he made a mistake, but I’ve had so many cheap/free meals there, that I’m not going to complain.
While I was waiting for the train home one of my former students walked by. She is actually one of the students that was waiting to ask me out once she graduated. The good thing was that she saw me with Kuniko a while back, and so that relieved a lot of pressure.
We sat together on the train and talked all about her college life. It sounded like she was really enjoying it. She is still studying English, but is having a hard time finding somebody to study with. She said that Mr. Hayashi told her not to come back and study with him, so she was a little worried. I gave her my card and said that if she needed help she should give me a call. She seemed really happy, and maybe it’ll be a way for me to make some money on the side.
Now I’m back home and getting ready for bed. Tomorrow is Friday, and I’m looking at a three day weekend. Monday is a holiday, and after that the summer vacation starts. It’ll be study hard every day and stay out of the heat.
