For the last two days I’ve been commuting into Kobe to attend the Hyogo prefecture JET conference, sponsored by the prefectural government annually. It is usually a pretty strange conference – you really have to work hard to get good material out of it. Most JETs who go use it as an excuse to party at night and see friends that they haven’t seen in a long time.
I met up with Nel, Struan and Antoine at the site of the plenary session on the first day, and we sat through a couple of boring opening speeches. The keynote speech was quite good, however. The keynote speaker was this absent-minded English professor who struggled through a speech littered with digressions and grammatical errors, but was very entertaining and got everyone thinking about how to teach English just a little differently (and maybe, more effectively).
Afterwards we were free for a 90 minute lunch, so we followed Nel south to the station, and then even further south to a cafe that he knew. The cafe was pretty good, but not worth the long walk south. We ate and then had to rush back, and I ended up walking into the first workshop five minutes late. Oops!
The workshops seemed designed to make the Japanese English teachers attending speak more English. They had several exercises that were designed to get them to talk more – usually they are really shy at these meetings. Who can blame them… I can’t imagine holding a discussion as complex as this in a second language. The teachers in my group did well, though, and the native speakers of English tried their best to give them a relaxed atmosphere.
Once the workshops were complete, we rounded up the team. Somehow, Struan ended up bringing three other JETs – I knew one of them, the other two were new this year and I think they were pretty lonely. We set out a plan and followed it – first to the Belgian beer place for a couple of beers, and then we went to Cafe Lois for an Asian fusion dinner.
Antoine and Nel weren’t so excited to have a couple of first year JETs with us – the first years were complaining about this and that, and talking about all the crazy things in Japan which by now are second nature for the rest of us. We listened to their stories with a frozen smile on our faces and I think Struan was regretting his choice of dinner companions by the end of it.
Once dinner was over I made noises to indicate that it was late and we should be getting back, and that effectively broke up the party – I came back home on the same train as Struan, and he actually apologized for inviting the others along. I didn’t mind – maybe shaking things up now and then is a good thing.
Friday we did the whole thing again, with more workshops, more speeches, and a closing ceremony. This is my third and final year on the JET program, and as such there is really a sense of detachment with all the activities that are going on related to the program. I’ve never really used all of the services and support that goes along with the JET program, maybe because I’m older than the average JET, but as things were wrapping up at our last official JET meeting, it was a little sad to think that it will really be the last one.
Struan went home early after the second day of the conference, which left just Antoine, Nel and me to wander the streets. I suggested going for a quick drink somewhere and then walking up to Kitano to House Of Pacific for dinner, and everybody seemed into the idea. We walked by a hot spring right in the middle of the city. They have a little pool in a shack outside the building – you can sit on a comfortable bench and warm up your feet in the water. Nel and Antoine were all excited to go try it, but when we got there there was a homeless guy with his pants rolled up and his bare feet in the water, dozing away. We decided to skip the hot spring.
We made it to a bar that Nel had suggested, and it was inhabited by quite a few foreigners like us. We were looking for places out of the mainstream, but apparently this one was a gaijin bar. The owner responded to my Japanese in English, and so we ended up drinking a quick beer and getting out of there, as more and more foreigners and people that wanted to meet foreigners were coming in.
As a group we walked north for about half an hour into the Kitano neighborhood. Kitano is a really upscale, quiet neighborhood that is busy with tourists during the weekend, but it’s generally calm during the weekdays. We walked up the hill to the top and then turned right and up another small hill. I knew Antoine and Nel were going to love it as soon as they say all the torches lit outside the restaurant. We walked in and the receptionist and I talked about what we would like to do.
The House Of Pacific has great service. We mentioned that we’d like to sip something at the bar, and they took us upstairs and opened up their new bar (new to me) for us. We sat on comfortable chairs in front of a wide polished wooden bar with a view of hundreds of bottles of alcohol in the foreground and a view of the nightscape of Kobe in the background. I ordered a 15 year old single malt scotch, Nel had a margarita, and Antoine had a shochu. They hung our jackets up for us, and we took in our surroundings.
The place doubled as their wine cellar, and as their cigar storeroom. They had a glass case full of cigars and a humidifier running in there blowing full blast. The waitstaff saw that I was the leader of the group, and from then on worked hard to make sure that anything that we wanted, we got. They asked me if we had a car, they would be happy to have it warm and ready in front when we left. I mentioned that we were so sorry that we didn’t make any reservations, but were wondering if they could manage a table in the dining room for later. They had the table ready in a couple of minutes. Everyone was wearing small earpieces and radios, and they relayed messages to each other – “Bryan’s party would like a table in the dining room”, “Bryan’s table is ready”, “Bryan’s party is just finishing their drinks, and will be in shortly”.
We had a fantastic dinner with another beautiful view of Kobe. They had a great special going for dinner – an appetizer, main course, dessert, and coffee for 2800 yen – under thirty bucks. We sprung for a bottle of wine and really had a great time talking and eating.
I had a roasted Spanish pork with pear and apple sauce and a sweet mashed potatoes on the side. Antoine had a monster rib eye steak, and Nel had Chinese style duck. We ate some great desserts, and then hit the road. They had a lady waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs with our coats, as we left the chefs were lined up at the window and they all bowed to us, and the lady walked us to the end of the street to say goodbye.
Antoine and Nel were blown away. We joked about what the other JETs were probably doing – drinking cheap beer in a foreigner bar somewhere and eating french fries and popcorn, maybe. It was a fitting end to the three year experience on JET – now we’re on the home stretch.
When I got home Kuniko was hanging in there – exhausted from yet another day at work and looking forward to some rest this weekend. I’m hoping that we can sleep in tomorrow and relax.
I took some pictures from the last couple of days and put them in the photo gallery.
