Saturday, May 12, 2018

Friday, April 1st, 1988

Note:  This is a series of journal entries from my two years living in Himeji, Japan (1988-1990).  I'm archiving them electronically through my blog.  Last names have been deleted and replaced with first initial only.  For details on this series of blog entries, see this post.

Well, today has been the first really good day I've had since my arrival.  I had a meeting at school today for all new teachers.  My train was slow and I arrived 5 minutes late, and I think they were all waiting on me, but am no sure since the rest of the meeting was in Japanese.

There were about 10 new staff members added this year. Thank God Jim I. was assigned to be my translator.  He was a big help, and translated all important information, as well as helped me with my introduction. (I almost died- we had to get up and say a few words about ourselves.  I could only say "My name is Jeff S. I live in Fairfield, Iowa in America" in Japanese, so Jim helped me tell them I was studying Japanese and hoped to be able to talk to them soon".

Jim then took me home, and gave me an open invitation to his home some time.  It was good to see him again!  He also offered to help anytime I needed it.  How nice!

That's not really the fun part...Masano called about 2 minutes after I got home.  I had given her the wrong phone number, and she'd tried to call before, but got nothing.  So, once I wrote and gave her the correct phone number- she called right away.

 Masano and her family at Masano's graduation...a few years before I moved to Japan

I was picked up by Nau, her sister, and taken to their new house (basically a mansion). Masano has certainly changed!  Long hair and glasses, and more beautiful than I've ever seen her!  We talked, caught up, and looked at old photos until 6:00, when her English conversation student came.  Okasan and Masano told me to greet him at the door, and it really threw him for a loop! (Speaking of which, it was so good to see okasan again!  She's as crazy as ever, and although I don't understand some of her language (she speaks mainly Japanese) we understand each other very well- love the woman!).

Masano's student's name is Nobuaki M.  He's a policeman in Himeji, and is going to San Francisco to see his brother in July, so Masano gives him two two hour classes a week.  So, for 2 hours he talked and I talked, and was basically, his English teacher for the night.  It was great fun!  He was very nice.  His father is a Shinto priest, and his brother is a Shinto missionary in San Francisco.  I never really thought of missionaries from here going to the states!

After his lesson (and social time) we met Masano's dad at one of his restaurants (he owns two, plus a public pool).  Mr. N. attempted English, I attempted Japanese and one way or another we communicated.  He did magic tricks and it was a great night.

*N's have 5 cats (one named Smokey) and it was neat to pet animals again!  What a day!

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