Sunday came around and Kuniko was off fairly early to take the TOEIC exam. She has to retake the exam every few years to keep her score current. She got a really high score last time, and she’s a little worried that it’ll be hard to match that. The other night she got the results for the private school teachers test that she took a while back. She got the highest score possible, so she was pretty pleased with that. That means that it will be easier to get a job in the private sector if the public school system doesn’t take her next year. We won’t hear from the public school system for another week or so.
I kicked around the house for a while and then went into Osaka to meet up with Yamamoto sensei to see a Ben Folds in concert. Yamamoto sensei had invited a friend of his – someone he met through an online auction. I couldn’t catch her name and she didn’t offer me a business card, so she will remain “Yamamoto sensei’s friend” for the rest of this narrative.
Yamamoto sensei introduced her at first as his ex-wife, and later let me off the hook and told me it was a joke. I spoke in Japanese to her, and only in English to Yamamoto sensei. We did OK, but very often we had to repeat things in one language or another to get it right.
We got to the venue, and it was actually a concert hall attached to a shopping mall. I’ve been to this mall before, and I had no idea there was a concert hall attached. The mall has the distinction of having a dog restaurant. I’m going to let you guess whether it a restaurant that serves dogs, or if it’s a restaurant that serves dog.
We had some iced coffee and then got in line for the show. There were about a thousand people there, and everyone crammed into a relatively small venue. Yamamoto sensei had been there many times before, and scouted out the perfect place for us to watch.
The show was great. It was my first time seeing Ben Folds, and it’s kind of a piano/rock show. I knew some of the songs, but most of them were new to me. Yamamoto sensei knew every song and sang them all. He danced quite a bit, and it is with a little bemusement that I write this as most people reading this won’t know what a funny sight that must have been.
Ben Folds said a “konnichiwa” to the crowd at first, and from then on talked to us conversationally in English, not really caring that most people didn’t know what the hell he was saying. He played an interesting version of a Dr. Dre song set to piano melodies. His bass player sang a song Fred Durst style with so much irony that I almost missed it.
After about two hours, Ben played a particularly lively song, wrapped it up, said goodbye to the audience, and threw his piano stool directly at the keyboard of his piano. It bounced crazily to the side with surprising velocity, and then it was over.
We stopped for a quick bite to eat at a nice restaurant, and Yamamoto sensei treated us to dinner. From there, I caught the train back to Akashi. By sheer chance I bumped into Jane, my upstairs neighbor on the platform, and we rode the train back together.
She recently got serious with her boyfriend, and she asked me all kinds of questions about love, relationships, and timing. Interesting conversation. It made me feel old.
