I had another busy day at work, but I did score some fresh vegetables from one of my teachers, Kuroda sensei. I gave her a taco the other day, and so she must have felt a little guilty and wanted to return the present. The veggies were grown by her mother, who apparently has retired and pursuing gardening as a new hobby.<\/p>\n
My classes went without a hitch. Every time I walk to my next class I pass students all rushing around killing time before their next class, and everybody calls my name in passing to say hello. I do my best to answer them all, but sometimes there are way too many people saying hello. It is still a little overwhelming – I just haven’t gotten used to it.<\/p>\n
I took the train home, but instead of going to Okubo, I got off at Akashi and then caught a train to Takasago. Tonight was the welcome\/farewell party for me and Brenda, and so I got to go back in time a little and revisit my old school.<\/p>\n
At Takanan I said to hello to my old co-workers, and sat around talking with Brenda. She is settling into her new job and it seemed like she had a lot of free time at work. I was in the same situation, but I used that time to study Japanese. She is spending that time right now surfing the web on her computer, which I guess is a good time-killer.<\/p>\n
One interesting thing was that she came up with the idea to give her first year students Western-style names. She downloaded a list of the most popular names in America, and she had the students choose from the list. It sounded a little weird – somehow to me it seemed like a bad idea, but I’m not sure why. I know that when I learned Spanish I had to pick a Spanish name (Pancho). I was amused to hear from Mori sensei that the most popular name among boys was “Bryan”. Ha!<\/p>\n
Brenda also talked about how she has had trouble keeping the history teacher away – something I know a lot about. I got a chance to talk with some of my students as well, and it was fun to talk my ESS students, who are all in the process of choosing colleges. Time flies – I remember when they were just a bunch of scared first years peeking in my classroom door nervously. <\/p>\n
We walked from the school to the restaurant, and there was a really big turnout – around 20-25 people. I sat in the middle next to Brenda on one side and the principal on the other. The food was pretty good, but I was there for the conversation. Mostly I was stuck talking with the principal, who really enjoys the fact that he can communicate with a foreigner. We talked about all kinds of stuff, and the more he drank the more obscure the topics became. I was also on the hook to translate to Brenda, despite being surrounded by English teachers. <\/p>\n
Some teachers chipped in and bought a big bouquet of orchids for Kuniko. They were beautiful, and I really appreciated all the nice things that everyone said about me. It was really good to see everyone again, and think that even though I’m having a great time at my new school in Nishinomiya, I wouldn’t mind at all working at Takasago Minami again. <\/p>\n
The school nurse, Yamamoto sensei, offered to drive both Brenda and me home, along with the baseball coach Morita sensei. It was really nice of her to do – since I’m a little farther away now, and I had orchids to carry. In the car on the way back I translated for Brenda and we talked for a long time. I think she is just starting to speak to the teachers, but the language barrier is pretty tough. I hope that she will be able to make progress, though. <\/p>\n
It was a really fun night, and everyone seemed to have a good time. I came back and gave Kuniko the flowers, so now we have some color in the house again. Kuniko got me a present today – a neck massager to work on my still sore neck. I don’t know what I did to it, but the neck massager works pretty well. <\/p>\n
I’ve got the next three days off, since Monday is a holiday (Respect for the Aged Day). Time to relax!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had another busy day at work, but I did score some fresh vegetables from one of my teachers, Kuroda sensei. I gave her a taco the other day, and so she must have felt a little guilty and wanted to return the present. The veggies were grown by her mother, who apparently has retired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-hQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}