Mrs. Takahashi

When I quit GEOS and started with my new job at a small eikaiwa, I remember sitting in my apartment and thinking, "This is it?" It was worlds apart from GEOS. I had classes three times a day窶俳ne in the morning and two in the evening, leaving me huge amounts of free time. All this for 250,000/month. No renewal campaigns. Zero BS. The town newspaper even did a story on me.

But I felt like I was in a rut. It was a small school. No professional development, nobody to talk to. Just me and the walls. The only time I'd see the owner was on payday, or if she had signed up a new student. I wondered how long I could keep doing this. It had come to the point where my gut feeling was, "OK Shawn, you had your fun, the party's over. Time to get on with your life. Time to go home."

There was one student however, who really took my mind off things. Mrs. Takahashi ran a sushi shop and was a regular traveler to Bali. I don't think she was ever interested in seriously studying English. She knew enough English to get by and I had this feeling she thought that that was enough窶敗he was more interested in cross-cultural issues. In one class, we talked about the Japanese education system for the whole hour...in Japanese. I tried to direct her to the text but she insisted on continuing our discussion. I wasn't gong to argue.

So, when I told her that I loved sushi, she came to class with a bunch of fish and dried seaweed and she taught me how to make maki zushi, or rolled sushi. The icing on the cake was when she came in one January night about an hour before her class.

"Do you know Seijin no hi"
"Yeah, it Coming of Age Day in English."
"My daughter had her Coming of Age ceremony and we're having a celebration at my shop. Would you please come?"
"I'd love to but what about your class and the 2 classes after yours?"
"Forget about my class. I'll bring you back in time." And with that, we drove to her sushi shop. Her daughter was absolutely gorgeous and was dressed in a kimono. After a few photos together, the family, friends and I sat down to a huge feast of sushi-- I'm talking thick cuts of toro (fatty tuna) and tai (sea bream) plus all the booze in the world. I don't even want to think of how expense the spread was. They spared no expense.

I knew better than to drink while I still had classes to teach, but in Japan, the only way you cannot drink is to either have a note from your doctor or a fatal allergy to alcohol. Further more, when you drink in a group, the custom is to do so using small glasses pouring for the people around you.

The next thing I knew, I had a glass of beer, a thimble of sake and glass of ume-shu(plum liquer). I drank it all down carousing with Mr. Takahashi and his daughter's friends. After all, I didn't want to be the wet blanket of the party. I don't know how much I drank in the two hours I was there, but it was a lot and I was drunk. Luckily for me, me second class had cancelled, leaving me an hour to sober up some.

I'll never forget Mrs. Takahashi's kindness. Our roles were in fact reversed窶敗he was the teacher and I was the student. It's people like her that make life in Japan an unforgetable experience.