Doing stuff

Nothing much of interest to say, but I'm still enjoying myself. Ever since Pete came I've been doing more stuff socially, we often grab a bite after work, and also, I'm more comfortable asking students to do things when it's with both of us than with just me, especially inviting guys.

This week we had yakiniku after work with the nicest couple. They're maybe about 30, the girl has been at our school for a while, the husband is more of a beginner student. But they're both so nice. The guy turned out to be a good Japanese teacher. Most people, if they address me in Japanese, don't seem to make much effort to speak slowly/clearly/simply, but just fire off a quick, mumbled sentence and then look at me expectantly. But I could understand most of what he said.

I haven't really talked much about food in this blog, except for the strange things I didn't like, but yakiniku is awesome. Actually, though, it's not Japanese food... it's Korean barbecue. You have a small grill on the table and you cook small pieces of meat, dip them in various sauces, it's really good.

Friday night we and three other teacher friends who work near-ish, went to this Indian restaurant. This is my favourite restaurant in Kawasaki. It's not too expensive, the curry is probably the best curry I've had anywhere, and the Indian people who work there are really friendly. One of our party is an Indian/American guy who's a language nut, and he chatted to the owner for a couple of minutes 'in bad Hindi', and to our surprise when we got to the counter he gave us a huge discount on our meals. I've referred quite a few people here now, hahaha.

Last night we and a bunch of students went to an izakaya. I've said this before but we have such, such nice students. There are so many great people. I feel really lucky to be living here. I could just talk to them for hours. In fact, I wanted to stay much longer, but I couldn't. Haha... it was the usual 'last train' dilemma.

We had 'ramen salad' (sounds strange but it was delicious), fried squid, hoke (a ?baked fish, you pull bits of it out with chopsticks), and sashimi (which I still don't like).

For the first time we went to a karaoke bar. This is different to a karaoke room - more expensive. It was like a small bar, really quite cool-looking, and we (a dozen of us) were the only guests, all sitting around the bar, a couple of staff on hand to serve us drinks at a moment's notice. I was one of the first to leave; somehow most of the others seemed to live really nearby and didn't need trains.

I've complained about the last trains a lot before, but they do annoy me, especially because the last train of the night is invariably full of people, so that you always think 'they could really justify running a few more'. I know they need a few hours off for maintenance, but I don't enjoy the dilemma of 'okay, at this point I need to decide - am I going to go home earlier than I want to, or am I going to stay out all night? And does anyone else want to stay out all night? Because I don't want to be left by myself'.

That's the downside of not having a car. But the bright side is you don't need to worry about drink-driving. I'm moderate in my drinking, but in Australia I would still have to be worrying about blood alcohol limits and so on.

On the bright side, though, I finally figured out that the second-nearest train station to me is a mere 20 minutes walk from my house. (It took longer before I inadvertently found the most direct route). A 20 minute walk on a warm autumn night is no hardship, even at 1am it feels perfectly safe. And this last train leaves a full hour and ten minutes after my 'real' last train. So instead of having to leave at 11:45, I can leave at 12:55. Still, there are times I'd love to stay out until 2 or 3...

I've practiced a lot of Japanese this week. At work I don't use it, except occasionally with co-workers, but outside work is a good opportunity for me. ^_^

My Japanese has improved enormously in the last three or four months. So it should; I've been studying really hard. Demo, mada mada desu... (But it's still not good enough yet...) I'm taking the JLPT 3-kyuu and I still have 21 chapters worth of grammar, at least 500 new vocabulary words, and around 150 kanji, to master in the next three months. Hahaha... good luck, me. After the test, I intend to reward myself by a) buying the Tokimeki Memorial 'Girl's Story' game, which is all in Japanese, and b) only doing review and practicing communication for a little while in my Japanese lessons.