Saturday night out in Hamatown I bumped into a guy who I hadn't seen in over three years. His name was Joe & I had originally met him at the park over here that I regularly go to to play basketball on the weekend. He was from Australia, & he had played basketball at a very high level over there. He was quite amazing to watch on the court. Without a doubt the best that court has ever seen I'm sure. We didn't keep in touch & I never saw him again in this small city so I figured he had gone back to Australia. In actual fact he had but he was now back & married. Actually, Saturday was his wedding day. A whole bunch of his family & friends had come over for his wedding so it was great to have a chat to some Australians again & they were all over 6ft tall.. so I actually felt short! It was a great night & they went on celebrating to the break of dawn. I however opted out early & went home to get a good nights sleep. I was pretty tired of course from working that day, but I needed a good sleep in order to get up early for the Sunday ahead.
I dropped Aki at Shizuoka university in the morning so she could take the TOEIC test. I then went on in to the city to attend my first monthly meeting of JALT. The Japanese Association for Language Teaching. The speaker for the day was Jon Robinson, a representative of Oxford university press. He was there to give a talk about teaching preparation for the TOEIC test effectively & also a small talk about the Oxford graded readers books, which we actually use at ESL-College.
We got a bunch of free textbooks & other stuff & for those of us who hung around after the meeting, Jon took us all to dinner at a newly opened Mexican restaurant. Thank you Jon & thank you OUP!
After the dinner wrapped up Adam & I headed into the city for a few more drinks.
We bumped into two former students of mine, Kei & Misako. They were having a junior high school reunion. Kei is now studying architecture in Osaka & Misako is studying god knows what in Tokyo. We had a small chat & then said our good byes
.
Just as they left we bumped into another old student of mine! It was Saori who had just recently returned form a working holiday in Canada. It was great to see her happy face & bubbly personality again. She was out with two of her friends & we decided to go to karaoke together to get out of the cold, chat some more.. & of course sing & drink!
Adam had a sore throat from yelling at his students all week, but he still managed to blow us away with his gravely renditions of some Japanese & Korean classics.
After we finished up at karaoke I decided I had certainly had enough to drink for one day & then made my way home. Hamamatsu was just getting started it seemed though as that day was the 'seijinshiki' - an annual ceremony held for the youth of Japan who are coming of age. Once they become 20 years old they are then considered adults & can then hit the town & get plastered. Which most of them were doing considerably well. I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of 20 year olds all over Japan who are nursing serious hangovers this morning & have vowed to never drink again... yeah right.
And as a final note... YUM.
I dropped Aki at Shizuoka university in the morning so she could take the TOEIC test. I then went on in to the city to attend my first monthly meeting of JALT. The Japanese Association for Language Teaching. The speaker for the day was Jon Robinson, a representative of Oxford university press. He was there to give a talk about teaching preparation for the TOEIC test effectively & also a small talk about the Oxford graded readers books, which we actually use at ESL-College.
We got a bunch of free textbooks & other stuff & for those of us who hung around after the meeting, Jon took us all to dinner at a newly opened Mexican restaurant. Thank you Jon & thank you OUP!
After the dinner wrapped up Adam & I headed into the city for a few more drinks.
We bumped into two former students of mine, Kei & Misako. They were having a junior high school reunion. Kei is now studying architecture in Osaka & Misako is studying god knows what in Tokyo. We had a small chat & then said our good byes
.
Just as they left we bumped into another old student of mine! It was Saori who had just recently returned form a working holiday in Canada. It was great to see her happy face & bubbly personality again. She was out with two of her friends & we decided to go to karaoke together to get out of the cold, chat some more.. & of course sing & drink!
Adam had a sore throat from yelling at his students all week, but he still managed to blow us away with his gravely renditions of some Japanese & Korean classics.
After we finished up at karaoke I decided I had certainly had enough to drink for one day & then made my way home. Hamamatsu was just getting started it seemed though as that day was the 'seijinshiki' - an annual ceremony held for the youth of Japan who are coming of age. Once they become 20 years old they are then considered adults & can then hit the town & get plastered. Which most of them were doing considerably well. I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of 20 year olds all over Japan who are nursing serious hangovers this morning & have vowed to never drink again... yeah right.
And as a final note... YUM.
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