Both Friday and Saturday were Culture Festival days at Kuniko’s school in Kobe. The events kept her really busy, and she didn’t get home from the Saturday festival until past 11 o’clock at night! Kuniko took the camera into school and I’ve posted some of the pictures. She also took some video of a performance from her mandolin guitar club, and some other dance performances.
The dance club performance was pretty good, and I couldn’t believe that these girls dancing were junior high students. We were watching the video on the camera at a train station and I felt myself being self-conscious of what we must look like as these girls paraded around the video screen.
Sunday morning we got up fairly early and caught a train to Osaka to attend the Culture Festival at Kuniko’s old school. It was a chance for me to see the school where she worked so hard, had to live for several days, where she and the other female teachers had to cook for the male teachers, and where she constantly did battle with her draconian boss.
It took us almost two hours to get there, and when we arrived we registered at the gate. Everyone remembered Kuniko, and she introduced me as her husband, and we had lots of nice conversations. Soon after we met Higuchi sensei, one of Kuniko’s coworkers from that time. It is interesting to note that all of her coworkers left at the same time – everyone had a hard time with the boss.
Higuchi sensei was a really nice guy – he came across as a really smart guy, too. We walked around and met former students, current students, and teachers. I was impressed with the size of the school. Not only is it a high school, but it’s also a college. There are 1500 students there, much bigger than my school. In addition it is a private school, so the rooms are air conditioned, there is a TV monitor in each classroom, and everything just looked a bit nicer than what I’m used to seeing.
The big part of the Culture Festival is selling food – and each class had a different them. I was drawn to “American Hot League” which was selling American style hot dogs. They were really pretty small, but they had “ketchup sauce” or “chili sauce” to put on. They were pretty good though. We paid 160 yen for each one with a drink, and the little ticket they gave us said that we had paid 160 dollars!
Afterwards I told the teacher in charge that I’m American, and those were truly American style dogs. He relayed the message to the students, and everyone was very happy.
We met some of the ALT’s from that school, private ALT’s who unlike me work for themselves and not the prefectural government. They were all really pleasant to talk to, and they seemed to have a great relationship with the students. The student’s English level is much higher than my school, so it was amazing to see some students having full conversations with native speakers of English.
We ate plenty of food, maybe too much, but we wanted to try lots of things, and the students appreciated it. We got a lot of attention walking around hand in hand, but I’m getting used to that.
A bonus moment was when we got to meet the Dragon Lady boss herself. She looked like a tough woman. She smiled and seemed nice enough, but I could tell that she probably wouldn’t take a lot of crap from anyone. I wish I could have snuck a picture…
Finally we called it a day and took the long train trip back to Nishi Futami. We snuck in a nap during the afternoon, and then had some leftovers for dinner. The final stage for the day was a drive to Okubo to do some shopping and see a movie. We saw “Cinderella Man”, and it was a really good movie. Pretty violent boxing scenes – Kuniko would turn away to avoid seeing people getting the pulp beaten out of them.
Finally we came on back and hit the sack around midnight. Tomorrow we’re having some of Kuniko’s friends over for tacos and booze, so we’re going to clean the house and do some preparations. I’m going to make guacamole again – yum!
