Chad's welcome party

This Saturday was the teacher I'm replacing last day. So the school had a goodbye party for him, and combined it with a welcome party for me. We all planned to meet at the school at 9pm and head to a local restaurant. Well the weather took a turn for the worst around 7:30 and started pouring down rain. Since the party was for me I had to bite the bullet and ride about 1.5 miles in the rain from my apartment to the school. So I was thinking many of the students probably wouldn't show up because most people here either walk or ride their bike at some point on their commute. There is really no where to park cars in the center of the city, which is where the school is. I also left about 15 minutes early since it was my party and I was worried the streets might take long due to the rain. But to my surprise when I walked into the school at least 10 minutes early, all the students were there. Japanese are very prompt and on time. Its very rude to show up late, and if you make a commitment to go, you must go. So we all headed for a the restaurant we made reservations at a couple of blocks down the street.

The place we went to is called and isakia. Its pretty much like a local bar and grill type restaurant. Except its (all you can eat in 90 minutes!) which everyone failed to mention to me. So I was being very money conscious and not really ordering much, until they told me. Then I ordered as much as I could in the remaining 20 minutes of our time.

Anyway here are some pictures of the event...


For appetizers. Edamame and salad. The edamame was severed cold, apparently the US decided to start serving it hot.


Some Chinese soup with these little beef potsticker things inside.


Some Korean food. Never really had Korean food before, but it was really good. Very spicy.


Some tofu wrapped in ham.


Yakitori. It means chicken on a stick. Very famous Japanese food, or so the guy next to me said.


The guy on the right of me is a student of mine named Hideki. Not sure what the other guys name is. Hideki works for Mitsubishi in Marketing over Europe. The other guy works for Toshiba in I'm not sure what. Anyway these guys where who I talked with most of the time. They knew tons about American sports so we talked about baseball and NBA basketball. About ever 30 seconds Hideki would go "Chad-san, Chad-san, what do you think about..." And ask me some question about Why I came to Japan or what America thinks about...


This is the same guy as before except in the middle is Daniel, the teacher I'm replacing. Yes I'm aware the he looks exactly like Dave Shappel. Hes not as funny though.

There are some other students at the school that I don't teach. The girl next to me's name is Miki (as in Micky mouse). I'm actually kind of shocked I can remember so many names, they all sounds so alike its really hard.


A couple of my students...

Not sure what hand gesture I'm giving here...


To the left of me is Sean. Hes the other English teacher in my school with me. He's from Canada. Where supposed to go to Kyoto on Monday to see some sights. But since I don't have a phone yet we have to make plans like, meet in front of the school at 1 on Monday. So hopefully I can remember that...

Also notice the peace sign. Japanese girls physically have to give the peace sign in all pictures. Seriously if a camera goes up they subconsciously put their right hand up.


A few of my older students. I'm really amazed at how many students I have at 40 or over. You'd think by that point they would just be like "I'm going to only speak Japanese and thats it". Very impressive how many older Japanese still want to study English.


This last picture is of the toilet in the isakia. Just thought I would show how luxurious the toilets here are.

Also on a side note, the song Tupac "Dear Mama" was playing on the stereo while I was in there. Another thing I've noticed about Japan is they love American music, but they don't understand it. So you will hear the most uncut and offensive rap songs in places like a kids store. But they don't know the difference, so you will see your foreigner friends kind of chuckle when the hardcore rap songs come on.



Also just before I wrote this I experienced my first earthquake. I was sleeping and all of sudden felt my bed moving back and forth. Kind of like someone was underneath me kicking the side of my bed. So I woke up in confusion then realized my whole apartment was slightly shaking. It wasn't really that big, nothing fell of the wall and the streets didn't crack. Still it was a little freaky. I just laid in my bed for about 30 seconds until it stopped.

So today is my first day off with nothing to do. I'm going to try and make it to Osaka on my own for the first time. Wish me luck.