Table Talk

I know, I know, I know.  When I last left off, I said that I would discuss the great time we had on Sunday, but yesterday was one of those days that was just too great to put on the back burner.  The highlight of my day was lunch time conversation, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself, so here’s the whole story……

Ian and I booked our flights home way back in January.  My BOE will reimburse me for the flight, but I have to give them a receipt.  After we booked our flights, I forwarded the confirmation email that I got from the airline to my supervisor.  However, she said that she couldn’t accept that because she needed an official receipt with an inkan.  (An inkan is a unique formal seal that each person has.  The Japanese use them on all official documents and often are used in lieu of a signature.)  Since inkans don’t exist outside of Japan and we booked our flights with a non-Japanese airline, I was absolutely stumped as to what she wanted.  I asked Ian to call American Express (who we booked through) to see if they couldn’t produce………something. 

Ian and I both put this issue on the back burner, but he finally called about it last week.  As suspected, American Express said that they couldn’t produce anything like an inkan and actually stopped giving out official receipts over ten years ago.  Awesome.  Ian was able to make a more official looking receipt than just the confirmation email, so he printed that out and gave it to me.  I translated a bit of it so that my supervisor could read it and determine that it was indeed what I said it was.  When I handed it to her, she flipped the two pages back and forth and finally looked up at me.  “Inkan?”  she asked.  I said that there wasn’t one.  She then turned to the older, more experienced guy who sits next to her and asked what to do or if she could accept my receipt as an official document.  They talked quickly back and forth, but I finally heard him telling her that in America they don’t have inkans.  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH??????”  She said, completely shocked.  After that, she turned to me and said that yeah, that receipt was fine.  Ha!  If I had known that’s all it took, I would have told her a long time ago that America doesn’t have inkans!  Now we will soon have an almost $2,000 reimbursement coming our way!  Hurray!

My next stop of the day was to my nursery schools.  I love my nursery school classes, but I especially love the kids this year!  Each and every one of them seems genuinely excited for English time, and so far I haven’t found any problem students…..yet.  I loved my class last year, too, but they were just so quiet and timid at first that it made playing games a bit more of a challenge.  Plus (this has nothing to do with the rest of the paragraph) my first nursery school, Jikou, has been going through a remodel since late last fall.  A new building is being constructed, and yesterday I saw the most glorious thing attached to the second floor: a slide.  The slide starts on the second floor and ends up on the first floor.  GACK!  If I was a kid at that school, I would be ridiculously excited about that!!  I’m hoping that the new building is complete by August so that I could potentially have the opportunity to go down that slide.  *SMILES*

My last stop of the work day was to my JHS.  The only class I had that day was 2nd grade, and after class I decided to eat lunch with them.  I have a love/hate relationship with my 2nd grade because there are only seven girls in that class of thirty-eight, and JHS boys are definitely…..something else…..especially this class.  Sometimes I feel like all they are doing is mocking and making fun of me.  At these times, I hate them all.  Other times they are funny and say the craziest things.  That class is definitely the most talkative in the JHS, so when I eat lunch with them, I usually get at least a half-hearted conversation.  Yesterday did NOT disappoint!

I sat down at the one empty spot, which happened to be at a table of boys that I like.  The conversation started out rough.  When I opened my Tupperware, they all peaked inside to see what the crazy foreigner was eating.  Spaghetti with cheese.  One of the boys declared his disgust of cheese, and I gasped.  How can you HATE cheese?  (Okay….I kind of understand him.  Japanese cheese sucks.)  I asked him about cheeseburgers.  He said no.  I asked about cheesecake.  He said no.  I couldn’t believe it!  I asked if they had plans for Golden Week, but they said they had to come to school and practice club activities.  I said that I was going to Korea, (which is a big deal for me!) but they reacted indifferently.  Then one of the boys asked me the most random question….if meat in America was good.  I said yes, that it’s delicious.  I said the beef is very good.  Then I asked if they had eaten rabbit.  They looked at me with disgust, and I said that rabbit is very delicious.  They couldn’t believe that I had eaten rabbit!  One of the boys said that he ate frogs and that they were good.  I agreed with him.  Frog legs are delicious!  Then he said, “Melissa-sensei, joke, joke.”  He was joking about eating frogs.  Yeah……me too………

After that, the boys also said that they ate snakes, but I wasn’t sure if they were joking or not, so I reacted like a normal person would.  “Snake?  EEEWWWWWWW!!!”  Then they asked if I ate cats and dogs.  I should have said yes, but I wrinkled my nose and said no.  The final kicker of our food conversation was one boy who told me that he ate miso soup made with frogs, clouds, spiders, and humans.  Quite the imagination this kid has!! 

I told them that I did eat deer and that it was yummy.  Most of the boys shook their heads and disagreed with me, but one nodded and said that deer WAS delicious.  I made a gun motion with my hands and told them that my brother hunts, and we eat the meat.  Anytime guns are mentioned, they are blown away and wanted to know more details.  How big was the gun?  How many did he have?  How many deer has he killed?  Did I kill a deer with him?  By this time, lunch was dwindling, and a few students were up and moving about.  One of the boys who is always a big jerk to me came over, pointed at my water bottle, and said, “Delicious?”  I looked at him and replied sarcastically, “It’s water.”  Water tastes like water.  The other boys at my table laughed and started making fun of the kid for asking if my WATER was delicious. 

Last night when I got home, it started raining, which allowed us to be lazy for the rest of the night.  We curled up in bed together, sipped tea, and watched TV while listening to the rain fall on the roof.  Honestly….is there anything more soothing than that?