A Week

On Monday I had the first of 2 going away parties for my British neighbor and good friend, Sam. I wore a yukata for the first time.

On Tuesday morning I was woken up by a level 3 earthquake, the strongest I have felt thus far. It scared me to imagine having to throw myself over my double bass to protect it from something.

Tuesday night was a school drinking party held at a hot spring. Lots of great food and games followed by a naked dip in the hot spring with the other teachers, but I and a few others couldn’t drink because we had to drive home.

Drunk driving laws in Japan are far harsher than in the U.S. and it is very socially unacceptable. I could have drank, called Daiko [代行], which is a service where two men come in a cab, and one man drives you home while the other follows in the cab behind your car, but my home is quite far from the party’s location and it would have been expensive.

On Wednesday I had my usual 7:30am-9:30pm day including adult English Coversation in the evening, and there was another going away party for my friend Sam. I surprised myself by crying, after realizing he was really leaving. I really depended on him as my fellow English teaching friend, and I hadn’t realized it until then.

Thursday morning was my driving test, which had been postponed because of the earthquake last week. I failed it.

I took the test with a Russian woman at the same time who also failed it. When the tester told her she failed because she drove too fast, which she did, she flew into a rage and screamed at him in Russian, because she didn’t know English or Japanese. Typical foreigner, unfortunately.

On Friday I was asked to help interpret for a group of foreigners who were going to a coppersmith’s studio to make plates. I was there as a helper rather than as a hired interpretor per se. It went quite well and the coppersmith family gave me 3 bottles of coffee and 3000 yen (~$25). The family was very charming.

On Saturday I went to the hot spring near my home to relax. When I was in the outdoor bath, a young girl walked up and sat down right next to me and stared point blank. When I said to her “What?” she continued to stare with no change, while her mother said “sumimasen [sorry]” over and over. It was the very first time something like that had happened, because usually mothers will try to stop kids from staring at me by pulling them or calling them over. I went inside to the other baths, fuming.

In an attempt to really relax, I stopped at an Italian restaurant overlooking the ocean and the rice fields which was lovely and delicious, the first of its kind I have seen.

On Saturday night I went to the jazz bar where I might play in Sanjo with my friend. My friend, the guitarist from before, and I then went to a second bar that was straight out of an American hipster’s wet dream.

Among the bizarre photographs pinned up in the bathroom, there was a postcard of Andy Warhol kissing John Lennon on the cheek.

The bartender and I chatted, and I didn’t need to ask him to repeat himself over the din of the bar. He also didn’t comment on my Japanese, but rather talked to me like a normal person. Perhaps my Japanese has gotten better recently.