S-san's Drinking House

Friday was a rare day at the office because people in our department were actually in! So we all had lunch at Oirase-ya (the soba place across the street).













I hung out at AH’s place after work and then everyone—AB and J—met up with us so we could go together to S-san’s “drinking house.”

It was a lot of fun; there was an abundance of food and alcohol (having learned my lesson from the lemon sour, though, I only drank ½ a glass of beer). We had kimchi nabe (stew), grilled eggplant, fish, sausages, steaks and onions, and scallop sashimi. S-san introduced us to a Towada sauce that’s really good with meat and vegetables. I tried it on a grilled onion and it actually succeeded in making the onion taste decent! I mean, I HATE onions, but I managed to eat the small slice I was given, thanks to the sauce.

Towards the end of the night, S-san’s daughter, KA came home, so we got to talk with her for a bit. She works at the Aomori bank and she’s around the same age as AH, J and I, so it was fun to talk with her. Hopefully we’ll be able to hang out sometime.

Homemade Okonomiyaki!

Wednesday was another half-Kirita, half-office day, but this time I went to Kirita first. Only two (out of the four) students were asked to come in for practice, so I was finished before lunch. Back at the office, AH and I went off on our own for lunch at the soba place across the street, Oirase-ya.

After work, I really wanted to go to taiko practice again, but we (AH, J and I) had to “teach” at an English conversation class (eikaiwa). That was fun too—we met S-san (a former All-Japan soccer player!) and other nice people—but just hearing the taiko practice going on outside made my hands itch to grab some sticks and to drum.

Thursday AH and I went together to Sanbongi JHS to help the students with their speeches for the contest. T-sensei was supposed to pick us up from the school (to take us to get our gaijin cards and to open our bank accounts) afterwards, so I decided to walk.

Luckily I left a LOT of extra time, because I actually managed to get lost!! For some reason, I thought the school was further south than it actually was, so I overshot it and had to ask for directions to get there. As I started going back north, I decided to ask someone for directions, just to be safe. Well, that turned out to be a bad idea since the first person I asked was an elderly lady who didn’t really know where it was. When I talked to her, I thought she was giving me rough directions, but it turned out she was actually just suggesting that I look for someone else to ask!

Of course, I didn’t figure this out until I’d walked a fair distance back south (the way I’d come—the wrong way) and finally saw another person, whom the old lady then told me I should ask. Thankfully the lady (a storekeeper) knew where the school was and was able to give me directions that I could actually understand.

So I ended up going back up north, but a little more west. Thankfully I made it just on time.

We were supposed to finish around lunch time, but we ended about an hour and a half early—just about 10am. Not knowing what else to do, we called our office (well, I asked AH to call since I hate phoning!) and made arrangements for T-sensei to pick us up from AH’s house.

T-sensei took us out for lunch at a restaurant in a downtown hotel. We all had the unagi special—yummy! Then AH and I finally got gaijin cards and opened our bank accounts! It was quite the process, since you can’t make any changes/corrections on a form, AH and I ended up having to re-write our forms a couple of times.

AB and RB had invited us to their place for dinner that night, so AH and I made plans to meet up at J’s place, but I was late because I missed the turn off of Route 4 and ended up going WAY far south. (Yes, I made the same mistake twice in the same day!) On the plus side, though, I found the Uniqlo!

Anyway, we (re: I) eventually made it to A&RB’s, where we enjoyed homemade okonomiyaki! The way RB made it was different from the restaurant in Aomori in that she didn’t mix the egg in with the batter, but just cracked it on top and let it fry that way. It was really delicious—even better than the restaurant’s!

Day of Firsts

Tuesday was a day of firsts. It was my first (half) day in a school. All of us (AB, AH and I) went into the office in the morning, but I went to my base school, Kirita Junior High School in the afternoon to help some students practice for the Towada English speech contest. It was also my first of many taxi rides to Kirita.

At first I had no idea what I was doing, but after listening to the comments the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English), N-sensei made, I started to figure out what I was supposed to be listening for in the speeches. The students were great, too. They really paid attention to what I was saying (even when they weren’t 100% what I was saying) and tried to make the changes I suggested.

That night was also my first taiko practice! It was a lot of fun, and I mostly had the rhythm down by the end of the practice, but I definitely wasn’t hitting the drums with as much force as I was supposed to.

Oh, and I rushed home after taiko practice and made it back just in time to watch the "Hanazakari no Kimitachi e" drama on TV! (Another first!) I didn’t realize it before I started watching, but the male lead character (Sano Izumi) is played by Oguri Shun, the same guy who played Hanazawa Rui in Hana Yori Dango! Unfortunately I didn’t really like his portrayal of Sano. In the manga, Sano is a cool but slightly aloof character. In the drama, however, he seems more like an anti-social jerk. And I’m not sure how much of that characterization comes from the drama’s scripting, and how much comes from Oguri’s reading of the script, because I definitely got a “Rui-like” feeling from “Sano.” =/

Small Kindnesses

Monday was back to work at the office. I rode my bike to city hall and took the bus to work. It was a very slow day at the office, and it was pretty warm/humid in the office. Even the rain didn’t help much to cool things down!

Ally and I really had no idea when were supposed to leave so it was a good thing that Mi-san was there to look after us (neither AB nor T-sensei were in that day) and to take the bus back with us. On the way to the bus stop we walked through the Oirase Brewery area. There were a number of food places plus a market. Mi-san also bought us ice cream sundaes (strawberry).

Since it was raining, Mi-san showed me a stop closer to my house where I could get off (and I left the bike at City Hall). When I was nearly at my house, one of my neighbours stopped me and asked me if I had cooked dinner yet/if I liked potatoes—or something along those lines! I really had no clue what she actually said (again I was so flustered to be speaking to someone in Japanese one-on-one that I wasn’t able to process what was being said), but the gist of it was that she was going to drop by with some potatoes for me later on.

I had been planning to head back out to the ¥100 store and to pick up my bike, but I waited for my neighbour. She came to my door about 15-20 min. later with a bag of potatoes and tomatoes! It was really very nice of her!

Then as I was leaving (for the store and my bike), a guy from Towada Gas pulled up randomly. Again, I had a hard time figuring out exactly what he was saying, but I figured out that he wanted to come in to replace something and not to collect money or anything. So I went back in and he checked out the outlet where my fridge was plugged in. I already had a new plug (or whatever) for the fridge, though, so it turned out he didn’t need to do anything.

Finally I was able to go out to the ¥100 store and to retrieve my bike!

Later that night, my mom called (from work). I also talked to my coworkers from the bank since apparently my mom was calling from Distribution—my old department. It was nice to hear how things were going at Scotia.