Today was an interesting day on a lot of different levels. I woke up still a bit drunk from the night before, and no amount of toothbrushing would get that taste out of my mouth. I also put on an entire kilogram of weight according to my scale, so all this partying has got to stop! Or, at least slow down.
We had our school opening ceremony today, and that was really the only reason the students even showed up. We did a cleaning session in the morning, so I hung out with the students assigned to clean my area, and we talked mostly in Japanese with a little bit of English. We didn’t clean much but we did have some fun.
The school gymnasium is the only place big enough to have an assembly, and today it was super-humid inside. It gets even hotter after you pack it with a thousand students. The staff told the students to hang in there, and they did their best. There wasn’t much else to do but sit through the speeches and remember to breathe. Four students had collapsed because of the heat before the principal’s speech even started, and then about six more collapsed during the speech. One kid fell and hit his head, and so they had to keep him laying there for a while. Maybe it’s just me, but when so many people are collapsing because of heat exhaustion, you are doing something wrong. Other teachers aren’t alarmed by this, probably just because that’s the way it has been done for so many years. Change comes slowly in Japan.
After the assembly I walked over to the post office and sent off my application to take the Japanese Proficiency Test in December. You have a one week window to apply in September for an exam in December. If you miss the deadline, you can pay just 3000 yen more, and then there is no problem. Last year that happened to me, and I’m convinced this is just a way for the test company to make some more money. What’s the deal with a one week window for a test that comes only once a year? Oh well… I’m going to fail the exam, I’m just curious to see the margin of failure.
Around 11 o’clock I went over to Tsuji-san’s place to chat. She had one of her students there who wanted to meet me. Her name is Haruka. She is about 22 years old, and has a hearing problem so she wears hearing aids in both ears and she reads lips. If you’ve never had your lips read it’s quite strange to talk to somebody while they are staring intently at your mouth. It makes you wonder if you brushed your teeth thoroughly that morning. Haruka’s English was surprisingly good. Because of her hearing problem her pronunciation of all words (English and Japanese) is difficult to understand. Still, I could follow what she was saying and for the most part that side of the conversation went well. She had trouble understanding what I was saying, though – partly because she is a beginner and partly because reading the lips of a foreign language speaker is much more difficult. We talked for about an hour, and it was pretty inspiring to see her working hard and against adversity to learn English. She wants to be a teacher someday, so she’s been studying hard to get there.
After the lesson Tsuji-san and I went over to a tofu restaurant and had a nice lunch. Tsuji-san insisted on paying – she felt like she was getting more out of our lessons than I was. During lunch we talked about the upcoming meeting between her parents and her fiancée. It sounds like there is a lot of pressure about to be applied on her fiancée, Mikitoshi. I sense that Tsuji-san is not really happy with how things have been going lately, and she’s really thinking about the fact that she’ll be living with this guy for the rest of her life. I guess they haven’t had many deep conversations, and Tsuji-san may be wondering if they ever will. She was curious about how Kuniko and I handle the deep stuff, and so I gave her as much information as I could think of. Anyway, she’ll be watching Mikitoshi very carefully during the first meeting, and his behavior will be a big part of what happens in the future. He’s really fighting an uphill battle, because Tsuji-san’s dad already doesn’t like him, and they haven’t even met. What will happen? I’ll have to wait until next week to find out all the gory details.
