Today I had the only class of the whole week, and it was just practice interviews for the STEP test. Wait a second, didn’t we just have the STEP test? Yes, but Mr. Hayashi had me interviewing again. It was a good opportunity to talk to the students who took the test and ask them how they thought it went.
After that I had two hours to study before an “international lecture”. Mr. Kimura translated the title of the speech as “A Discussion of International Intercourse” which had me giggling. Despite the name, it was a fairly serious talk. The speaker was a college professor here in Japan – she is originally from Poland, and she was talking about her impressions of Japan as a Polish person.
I saw her in the hallway before her speech, and as she walked by I gave her a cheerful “Good Morning!” in Japanese, but she just ignored me and kept walking. That didn’t impress me too much, but her speech was pretty good. She has lived in Japan for 19 years, so her Japanese was really good. Strangely I was able to understand around 80% of what she said, compared to native speakers where I’m about 50-60%.
She talked about fitting in in Japan, and how everyone sees her and expects that she speaks English (she doesn’t). Even though she speaks Japanese people are hoping that they can practice English with her. She sounded a little frustrated, but she’s been here for 19 years so she must be getting something out of it.
It was freaking hot in the gymnasium, and the students weren’t allowed to bring fans in. I didn’t get that memo, so I walked around fanning myself until a teacher told me that it was a fan-free speech. I put it away and sweated big time for the next hour. But we all sweated together, and that’s the most important thing.
The biggest problem I had with the speech was that there was nothing for the students to relate to. Why do they care what a Polish person thinks of Japan? If she’s trying to allude to cultural differences maybe it would be good to give some examples from their perspective. I’ve never seen so many sleeping students. The teachers tried to walk around and wake up students, but they could only get the students around the edges. Like penguins in a storm the ones in the middle slept comfortably.
After school I came home, cooked up a quick omelete to kill off some bacon and onions that I had laying around, and then did some laundry. Not exactly an exciting Friday evening, but it was a lot cheaper than last night. Antoine and I are still reeling over that sushi bill.
Later in the evening my stomach was craving just a bit more, and the master had called earlier to invite Kuniko and I to a house party next Tuesday. I decided I would deliver my RSVP in person and get a stick or two of meat and a beer.
The yakitori was packed – every seat was full but one, and so I snuck in there and grabbed the seat. The master had three part time helpers working with him behind the counter, which is pretty amazing to see – the place is tiny and I can’t believe they were able to move around back there.
Even though it was a packed house one of the part timers that I know came over and took my order right away, and my food arrived within a few minutes, leapfrogging the big backlog of orders that the master was working on. Sometimes it pays to be a regular.
One of the girls at the end of the bar started giving me meaningful looks, with her boyfriend sitting right next to her. He looked at me a couple of times too, but I couldn’t read his expression. There was something weird going on, and I don’t think he was happy about it. I decided to wrap it up after one beer and get out of there. I settled up the bill and told the master that I’d be there next Tuesday with Kuniko, and he looked really happy about it. I think he was also happy to have so many customers, even though he was working really hard.
This week is a three day weekend for me – Monday is Marine Day. I don’t think it has anything to do with the branch of the American military, but the U.S. wrote the Japanese constitution so maybe it is. I’m going to try to sneak off to see some art exhibits in Osaka this weekend, but other than that it’s a quiet weekend. The new Harry Potter book comes out tomorrow morning, so I might run over to the bookstore at Ito Yokado and pick it up.
