We woke up fairly early Monday morning. Kuniko has a day off, so she was planning on just hanging out around my place until I get off work at 10:30. I got cleaned up and headed out the door in shorts and a T-shirt. Today at school is the second half of the mini-sports day, so it’s casual dress. <\/p>\n
At school Mr. Hayashi and Mr. Komuri were raving about how well the dinner at Graciani’s went. They both said that I missed out on a great opportunity, and they showed me pictures of everyone having a good time. I stopped in later and asked the office lady how it went, and she said that it was excellent. She even got a birthday cake from the staff. <\/p>\n
I hadn’t heard anything more about doing the recording job that my principal had asked me about earlier, but today I found out that I’ll be doing that on Tuesday. This caused a bit of a problem, because by the time they figured out when and where it was, I was already out the door and heading home. In the end, Mr. Hayashi called me at home to ask me to check with the principal, but I could tell he was curious. He’s getting cut out of the loop on this one, and nobody likes it when that happens.<\/p>\n
When I got home, I got a warm greeting from Kuniko. She had bought me a takoyaki grill! What’s takoyaki? Little balls of dough, cooked up with a little chunk of octopus inside, and then served with sauce and some mayonnaise. They’re very good, and pretty popular in this area. Now I can make them at home! Kuniko fired up the grill and showed me how it’s done. They turned out great. She had bought a big chunk of octopus to cut up and put inside, and seeing that sitting on the counter was a real eye-opener.<\/p>\n
While we were preparing the takoyaki, I called my folks and chatted with them for a while. Kuniko got on the phone with everyone, which was her first chance to talk to my family. I think it went pretty well – Kuniko was really nervous, but she did just fine. What do you say in a situation like that? Maybe now the ice is broken and we can have some more chats later on. <\/p>\n
After a big lunch my phone started ringing, and I pretended I wasn’t home. Instead, Kuniko and I went and took a nap that lasted almost three hours. After the nap, we gathered up all our stuff, and headed to Sannomiya. <\/p>\n
Originally, that is, before the three hour nap, our plans were to do some shopping in Sannomiya, have dinner, and then I would go to my class and Kuniko would go home. As it ended up, we skipped the shopping and did dinner only. What a dinner it was!<\/p>\n
Kuniko suggested on the train ride over that we have dim sum. I haven’t had dim sum in years – not since I was working for Synapta in Palo Alto. Kuniko knew a place near the station, and since it was early we sat down without waiting and Kuniko ordered up some 食べ放題 (all you can eat) dim sum. The price was amazing – $15. In a place like that, foreigners can really do some damage. There was a big menu of different kinds of dim sum – you just tell the nice lady which ones and how many. There was also noodles, dessert, the works. Unbelievable. Kuniko was ordering like a pro, and I was enjoying all the food. It tasted great.<\/p>\n
After dinner we walked to the YMCA, and I showed Kuniko where my class was. I saw some of my teachers walking around beforehand, and they smiled at me but didn’t really stop and chat. I think they probably saw me with Kuniko and thought, “So that’s his motivation…” <\/p>\n
Kuniko and I walked down to the end of the street, and we said our goodbyes. I couldn’t believe how hard it was to see her walk away. I won’t see her again for almost a month – it will be tough. I’ve gotten used to looking forward to the weekends and knowing that she’ll be around soon enough. I know people that are maintaining relationships over long distances – seeing each other only a couple of times a year, and here I am sweating it out over a few weeks. <\/p>\n
Class went really well, and we are moving along quickly now. I’m going to miss the next six meetings, so I’ll be playing catch-up big time when I get back. Between that and the jet lag, I’ll have my work cut out for me.<\/p>\n
I got a message from Mr. Komuri – he wants to throw a going away party for me at his favorite sushi place. I’ve been there once before, but a week after we were there the owner found out he had cancer and closed the shop. Now he is opening it up for us because Mr. Komuri is a friend. I hope he is careful with the blowfish sushi – that’s my favorite, but it’s also the most dangerous. Just what I need – a sushi slicer that is looking death square in the eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We woke up fairly early Monday morning. Kuniko has a day off, so she was planning on just hanging out around my place until I get off work at 10:30. I got cleaned up and headed out the door in shorts and a T-shirt. Today at school is the second half of the mini-sports day, […]<\/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-415","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\/pOpl7-6H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415","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=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}