On Friday I picked up my tiny Japanese car. I’m leasing it from a local shop and the shop owner put on new tires, mirrors, and a new battery which was very nice of him. I drove it around the local streets this weekend and even at night to a restaurant two towns away. The roads are insanely narrow and tight so I still get super freaked out when a car is actually on the other side of the road. It totally looks like we’re going head-on for each other. Luckily there’s a system of pulling to the side to let the other car pass but I still haven’t perfected it yet. The other thing is that there are hardly any guardrails especially by the rice paddies. I keep envisioning my car sliding off the side and tumbling into the rice paddies especially when I’m driving alone. It’s a little easier having someone on the left of me shouting, “too close! Too close!” So far I’ve been doing well, at least my passengers have said so. I’ll admit, I still have moments when I’m pulling out of a parking lot that I forget what side of the street to be on but all in due time.
Last night I cooked dinner at my neighbors’ place. We had a spontaneous pasta dinner with another foreigner from the program who just moved into town a couple days ago, a Brit. After dinner we played a friendly game of Monopoly. We also had a little driving adventure shopping for ingredients. My neighbor had me practice driving and we took a small road and ended up stuck in the middle of a rice paddy! I was totally freaked out and made him finish the drive. In retrospect, it was pretty funny but at the time, totally frightening!
I almost forgot to mention that on Saturday, I was invited to an orchestral concert at our local cultural center. It’s so nice that we have a cultural center in our small town, like a mini Lincoln Center. Now that I’ve introduced myself to the schools, I forget that people know who I am. I saw two teachers that I work with and one called out “Sensei” to me and it took me a while to realize he meant me and that I’m actually considered a Sensei.
The concert was a string quartet from Tokyo. They played a variety of music, some classical pieces (Mozart and Dvorak), a medley from “The Sound of Music”, some Japanese songs and the theme song from “My Neighbor Totoro”. There were some children in the audience so that was a real crowd pleaser. In fact, this little guy in front of us was totally bored from the start and fidgeting around (he even managed to somehow fall head first out of his seat at one point!), but as soon as Totoro started, he sat completely still humming along and he was the first to applaud once the song ended. Hilarious!
After the concert, I went out with my neighbor and some of her friends to an Italian restaurant. I’ve been completely spoiled with excellent Italian food in NYC so in my head I was trying not to be a complete food snob but now I can say that the lasagna was really watered down and the gnocci was overcooked and too oily. Ok, it’s out of my system now! The pasta was really good and the salads though. It was fun to try a new kind of food out here. Still haven’t tried the local diner yet (it’s called Joy Full… yes, not Joyful, Joy Full) but I’m told I’ll have a lot of teachers’ meetings there to look forward to.
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