Akita - Japan

Akita and beyond.
Well we basically fast trained it from Kyoto to Akita – it took about 8 hours but it was a really comfy journey and not hassley at all.
We arrived to a happy smiley healthy looking Paul at Akita station at maybe 6pm. He bungled us onto a bus and on the way to his apartment he regaled us with how happy he was to see us. He suggested that maybe months of teaching English and limited English-speaking social occasions had made him somewhat ‘peculiar’.

Paul’s apartment was sparkling clean and very cute. I was surprised and suitably impressed. He has all the mod cons, including an apple mac.. (whooooooo).
We all had a few beers and chatted about what not before deciding to head out for some grub. Paul brought us to his favourite bimba (??) house and we got to half cook our dinner in our bowl and chow down. It was great to see Paul and to see him doing so well.
He had taken the next day off to show us around Akita (pffffffffft .. har har )

So the next day the three of us spent lounging around, drinking beer, waffling and watching episodes of Red Dwarf. Paul then organised a bit of a get together with his other teachy type mates . We all went off for delicious Indian grub and some beers where we got to meet his mates and try and figure out which were the ones he had warned us about. He he

The grub and chat were great and then we went back to Red Dwarf & beverages. Paul had already asked myself & Jim to come into his school with him to chat to the students about our travels. No problem, we assured him. However we were slightly scared when he revealed that he had the ‘lessonplan’ all done and we would be chatting to six classes (i.e. the whole class day). Eek we thought! But there was nothing to fear.

Paul wangled it so we were only going into a handful of classes. Whenwe arrived to Akita Commercial High School on the morrow, we were welcomed like celebrities. All the kids were ooohing and aahhhing at us (and how we were A) Paul’s Sister & B) Paul’s Sister’s Boyfriend. Everyone in the school was so nice & friendly and smiley and they all spoke tres highly of Paul. First we were given a tour of the school by some of the kids, which was gas. I was sweating out of nervosity so much, my slippers kept falling off. After our tour we were brought in to (ahem) watch the Soccer Team being taught Irish Dancing by a slip of a girl named Lorraine. It was very funny. The lads were typical 17 ( - 37) year olds all trying to outdo each other, turning the haon, doh, trees, into the Haka. We all got a few pictures at the end of the ‘seishun’ (see below).

Then it was on to our very own Welcome Party organised by the English Club. (tee hee hee). It was brill. On the blackboard some one had written “WELCOME” beside a picture of Hello Kitty. Worringly though, underneath was written:
1. Welcome note
2. Introduction
3. James & Lisas’ Speech.
4. Game Time
5. Communication time

LOL. WHAT ???! well we did our best. All the kids introduced themselves and told us their hobbies. They all had the same hobbies funnily enough - shopping and listening to music. Tee hee. So then came our lil speech – which was V E R Y W E L L D O N E IN T H A T S L O W W A Y T H A T E V E R Y W E S T E R N E R T A L K S T O N O N E N G L I S H S P E A K I N G F O R E I G N E R S! There was lots of hand gestures and pictures drawn on the board.

Then we were presented with a variety of Japanese snacks – i.e. the most grossest snacks the teens could find in order to intimidate the westerners. We had fermented fish flavour corn snacks (which I quite liked) and then some type of turdy tasting squid on a stick – which I didn’t like at all. However we were quite chuffed at getting our very own welcome party complete with snacks and when we left we had sore cheeks from smiling so much (face cheeks) all day. We were bid adieu with the promise we would return tomorrow to tantalise the higher English students. (One crazy girl wanted me to do a feckin Dunnes ad for her on the morrow – sheesh – what is the deal with the non stop entertainment people get from me recounting some grocery prices to cheesy music.)

Anywho after all that, the three of us needed a drink. (you need some amount of energy to do that everyday – I dunno how Paulio does it). So we headed off home for a while before meeting up with some of Paul’s gang later in an Izakaya. It’s like a pub where you keep ordering drink & food all night. Tis fandabbydozey. Many a crazy dish was ordered and fancy drink drunk.

On Day 2 of Akita Commercial High School, things were much easier going. We basically plonked ourselves in front of a group of interested (we think) 15 year olds and with a mixture of arm gestures, slow talking, pictures on the blackboard and pictures on our laptop, we told them tales of monkeys and whales and puppy dog tales. They lapped it up (we think), well they were laughing and talking amongst themselves so we presumed they enjoyed our stories a lot.

After lunch we were brought to the Brainy English class were we played some games with the kids. We were also taught a bit about some Japanese poems and stuff, which was great. The crazy girl had her eye on me to do the fasttalkingdunnesad, but luckily I managed to escape. I could see the glint in her eye as she went up to the English teacher and was basically asking if I could come back and do the ad. I saw the glint as I was fasthopping it out the school gate. He he he terrible really – but I would have fluffed my lines and I was already sweaty and a bit nervous.

With all our scholarly duties done we were free to make ourselves useless before we headed to Tokyo on the overnight bus. Paul and I decided to have a row and Jim decided to keep out of it. But all was forgotten the next morning when we arrived in Tokyo… (start dream like sequence of events.. didilideh didilideh didilideh..