I booted around the flat today, cleaning up and such. Then I went for a little jaunt around the block..I hesitate to call it a run, but technically I guess that's what it would have been. Then I got all gussied up because........
I went to Taeko's for dinner tonight. She's the awesomest receptionist (the one who had to do the cleaning up after "The incident") at Kita. She also invited two other teachers, who I talk way to loudly and quickly with, mostly over tofu donuts at Mister Donut, and two other students of mine. So, here's how it goes, this is the family tree of the evening. Taeko is a receptionist at the school. She works Fridays with me and Carrie. She works Saturdays with Michelle (the other one). Her best friend is Akiko. Akiko is one of my students on Friday mornings. Akiko's son owns the bar where Taeko, Masanobu and I went for drinks a few weeks back. Taeko is also one of my students on Wednesday night. She became friends with Masanobu in English class, the one that I now teach to both of them. Carrie and I work together on Fridays and have totally connected really well. Michelle and I work together on Thursdays and totally connect too. Carrie and Michelle are close friends and live near each other. So essentially, everyone was connected to everyone else and it's just a grand ol' time. There's the characters of the story, and characters they are.
The plot of the story goes something like this: I head off on my bike to try and find Taeko's house that is in a random neighbourhood a ways from here. I'm half way there and have just crossed the railroad tracks when I go to get my little map out of my pocket again and...it's not there. It's a very windy night. It has blown out of my pocket (I loose more money that way...!) and blown away. I stop and turn the bike around to see what I can find, otherwise I'll have to head all the way home and call Michelle (the other one)'s keitai and just pray to God that she answers. I go to head back over the tracks and this car sits and my path and starts to hook at me. What the heck? It's Taeko, who has just picked up Michelle (the other one) and Carrie from the station. FABULOUS!! I'm saved!!! So I follow them on my bike, no easy feat may I say, to Taeko's house.
Her house is lovely. It has these round smooth stones as the front "porch"/"walkway". There's so many things here that are hard to explain as they don't exist in North America as they do here. I would call it the walkway up to her house, but that would imply that there's room from the street to the front door, when in reality is about three feet wide and then a giant concrete wall that goes directly onto the street. No sidewalks. No space to really have 2 cars pass. It reminded me of some streets in Italy and in Mexico. So the stones continue into her front entrance inside the house where you take your shoes off and step up to the wood floor. We saw Akiko hard at work in the Kitchen and the three of us ladies wanted to go help, but we were quickly ushered upstairs into the main sitting room. Oh my what a sight. On the floor were these little black lacquer tables, two per person, full of these tiny beautiful dishes. Each dish had one or two things in it. A little roll, or piece of fish, or a collard green in peanut sauce. Everything was small but beautifully and intricately done. We snooped about the room a bit, looking a pictures and out the windows at the road and houses beside us once Taeko left us and generally oooh-ed and aah-ed at all the little niceties around us.
We started dinner without Masanobu, but he arrived shortly. Wine was poured, no one pouring their own of course, and dishes were enjoyed with a bit of explanation. She even had the menu printed up for us. Not that we could read it, but it's beautiful none-the-less. There was a total of 15 dishes!!! That included some of the deserts, but not all. There was too much food for me to remember and it just kept coming. At first it looks like there isn't going to be enough, but little bits and little bits end up making for very large bits, and big protruding tummies. We had cold noodles (not Udon and not Soba, so I don't know what they were) and they made us Michelles and Carrie slurp our noodles. Carrie won and is now referred to as Number One. Michelle (the other one) was next in line and this Michelle has far too many British sensibilities in her to slurp (read: she fears godly retribution if table manners are not up to the Queen's standard of dinning etiquette) and so I'm now Number "mm" with three fingers held up. They won't even speak the words, it's just (point at me) "Number mm" (hold pinky, forth and third fingers up with a distain on your face and then laugh). That's my new name. The company was awesome. And by awesome I mean funny and intelligent and a mix of Japanese and English and often completely inappropriate and lots of personal attacks and harassment and delightful in every possible way. By the end of the night we had vocabulary lists. On theirs was: rob the cradle, cougar (as in the Cdn usage, not a mountain lion), more cushion for the pushin (that one was Carrie's, I was scandalized, although we won't tell them what it means and have told Masanobu and Taeko that they have to find out on their own by asking other teachers but it's too inappropriate for Akiko, who is a very proper woman, so we told her she's not allowed to remember it), and puke. On our list is: giri and gari. Not to be confused. See Michelle (the other one) has this thing with popsicles. She thought the word was 'giri giri' and taught Carrie and I the word. We're all using it. Blah, blah. Michelle (the other one) uses it at the convenience store all the time "Giri giri wa doko desu ka", 'Where are the popsicles?'. So we find out tonight that the word is 'gari gari' as the name for a certain popsicle. Oh, funny. Oh dear we've had it wrong. No big whoop. Later on in the evening, Masanobu finally lets it drop that 'giri' is actually a real word in Japanese. Oh really? Well, so what does it mean? Diarrhea. Well then. And how many times have we used the word 'giri giri' thinking that it was referring to 'popsicle'? Hmmm. Michelle (the other one) then gets very quiet, which is disturbing in and of itself much like the eerie calm before a large quake (no birds), and she's now laughing hysterically thinking of all the people that she's asked 'giri giri' for. We stayed, laughing and joking, until about just after 10 and then decided that it was about time that we get back home as we all work tomorrow. It was quite a trek home and I'm really glad that Masanobu had to walk up to the train tracks to meet his wife, otherwise I would have gotten lost FOR SURE! A delightful evening. I just can't even describe it properly.
