The culture festival has cast a huge shadow over our day today – and everyone was thinking about preparations. I had three classes today, and everyone’s eyes were glazed over with the thought that soon they would be dancing their hearts out on stage in front of the whole school. <\/p>\n
During my seminar in Kobe, I had missed the annual health check up given by our school. Mr. Hayashi tells me that all companies, both public and private, require a health check-up once a year. It is a government subsidized program, and just because I was at a seminar doesn’t mean that I was off the hook. After classes finished at lunchtime, Mr. Hayashi drove me to a clinic in Kakogawa. <\/p>\n
The first thing they asked me to do was to go inside a room to change into slippers and a blue robe. I invoked foreigner privilege and skipped the robe, although I did wear the tiny slippers. <\/p>\n
I performed the tasks they asked like I was in some kind of medical decathlon. Pee here, stand there, look here, etc, etc. My blood pressure was pretty low, so that’s great news. I weighed in at 82 kg (181 pounds), which is pretty good considering I had a stomach full of sushi. I’m 184.5 centimeters tall (about 6 feet). My vision was measured but it was with some strange system that I cannot relate here, I’m not sure even Mr. Hayashi understood it.<\/p>\n
We got out of there early, so we decided to milk the system a little bit and grab some coffee. We sat around and sipped iced coffees until around four o’clock, and then went back to school.<\/p>\n
The school was in utter chaos. The students were running the asylum, and some amazing things were happening. It’s a preview of tomorrow’s festival, so I’ll save it for tomorrow’s entry. <\/p>\n
My ESS students were working on the display, and it was going pretty well. Unfortunately, one of the students, a part-time member of ESS, was running behind. She was taking frequent breaks to drink Calpis and chat with her friends. Finally, another teacher came to get her, and I think she might have been in a little trouble. She’ll be meeting me at school early tomorrow to wrap things up. Overall the ESS room looks pretty good – I’ll try to take some pictures tomorrow.<\/p>\n
I didn’t get out of there until around 7 o’clock, and after a shopping trip in Akashi I stopped in at the yakitori on the way home. I chatted with the master and some of the regulars there, and I swear that I’m getting more comfortable with Japanese. My big challenge, believe it or not, is finding somewhere to speak Japanese. Everybody I bump into during the day wants to speak English. The yakitori is about the only place that I can speak only Japanese and practice new things that I’ve learned.<\/p>\n
I’m back home now and getting ready for bed. Tomorrow after the culture festival I’m meeting Antoine in Suma, and then hopefully I’ll be able to see Kuniko on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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