Bonenkai

Yesterday I taught three classes to substitute for a teacher who couldn't make it. And in one of the classes I taught a little girl the ABC's. I felt like Mr. Rogers.

Then last night was the Bonenkai for my work. Bonenkai (忘年会) means end of the year party. Actually litterally translated it means a meeting to forget the year. Which probably happens because people just get really drunk. None of the native english teachers could go to the party last night, so it ended up being me and a bunch of middle aged Japanese working people. The adult students of the school were invited. At first they asked me to say something to everyone in english since I was the "star of the party". So I just introduced myself and when I got to my age, all the women said "ehhh?". I'm not sure what was so surprising about me being 21, but it sure got their attention. After I introduced myself, everyone went around and asked me a question to practice their english. It was like, what do you like about Japan and such. But then one guy couldn't figure out how to say it in english so he asked me about my "好きな女性タイプ". (the type of girls I like) Mind you I was with people probably no where near my age group. And then I said something about liking women who are easy going and fun, and the women all said "we are all like that". So if I ever wanted to date some older Japanese women, I know where to go. We had a full dinner course with all sorts of Japanese food. They all would watch me when I ate something to see how I liked it. Everything was good except for this horrible lie of a dish. It looked exactly like peach cobbler with different berries and fruit. It looked like a dump cake sort of. But when I ate it, it was fried fish and strange vegetables. I have no idea how they got it to look like peach cobbler, but it was a cruel cruel joke. Then they wanted me to try 日本酒(nihon-shu), what we call sake. I had never had it before so they were all anxious to see how I liked it. It basically tastes like water with rice flavouring. All the women "ehhh?"'d at me again when I drank it without any problem. Sake has about the same amount of alcohol as wine, but apparently it's really strong to Japanese people. All in all a good time. I'm glad I got to go to a real end of the year party for a Japanese company. You don't get those chances everyday!

Wednesday

Today I got a call from my work asking me to substitute for a teacher. So I ended up doing 2 classes with adults, so it was a good break from teaching kids. Although I feel kind of funny sometimes because I'm use to teaching kids who don't really try. It was interesting to talk to the students though. They thought it was pretty sugoi (great) that I was studying in Japan.

The past few days I have got some really funny emails on my phone. At first I thought it was junk mail but when I actually read it it seemed too personal to be spam. And it sure isn't spam. Here's a rough translation of what I think it is saying. Parts of it is literal since I don't know what it would be in English.

Subject: I'll write you again

Body:
You were putting that on the site which point price and email price are completely from the clerk, but if you put it that way which is direct...the troubling email has a lot of hate does it? Certainly that commmunity is a men and women's community and has no point, also that place is like a place where there is a lot of famous people. But your directness is tasteless. Because it's free, there are a lot of people using it, lots of different types of people can see it. do you want to touch others by your mischief? or is it different than that? really?

Then again this morning I was written by whoever this is:

Subject: well...did you see the site?

Body: Are you ok? did you put that information on the site by yourself? it's becoming a horrible rumour, but I don't know if it's a true one. It's really risky, eh?

Oh Japan. I don't really know how to respond to this random woman's email. (I say woman because she used women words) It sounds like a Japanese soap opera. I probably should tell her she has the wrong email address, but it's so entertaining.

In other news, yesterday I went to this meeting about some sort of symposium thing in Switzerland in May. So long story short, I may have a chance to go to Switzerland representing Hosei in some symposium about the future for Europe. All sponsored by some company in Europe or Japan. So hopefully that can work out, I mean you can't beat a free trip to Europe to rub elbows with important people in the EU.

Japanese (I think...) Church

Today I went to a Japanese church with the people I met last thursday. They had invited me because it was the gospel concert. I'm not sure if it was really but it was good none the less. It was all in Japanese or Korean, but I got the jist of it. At the end of the concert thing, they asked all the first time visitors to stand up and I did, being the lone white person in the audience. Then they sang this song about loving each other. Kind of cultish, but what can you expect. Then after the initial concert thing, my horrible Japanese skills got me to some sort of bible study for "english" speakers. I put english in quotes because I think only 3 or 4 of us were actually native speakers. After that I met the people I had come with, because they had gone to a different place and went back. It was all really confusing because the people I was with were korean, but we were speaking Japanese. And sometimes I had no idea what they were saying. The girl kept on talking about "riyongo" and I didn't figure out she was saying "nihongo" (japanese) until I left. Another funny accent thing was she was telling me something about when we could meet and she said "koji ni au" (meet at "koji") So i asked her where "koji" was... turns out she was saying "goji" five o clock...we'll meet at five o clock. When the common language isn't a native language, things happen like that. It was all interesting, but I'm not really sure what just happened.