Is there still time?

Tuesday, August 5^th

Saitou-sensei’s class today was a lot of fun. She can be unexpectedly strict at times, but in the end she’s really good at making us laugh—and putting us in situations where we make each other laugh. I can’t even remember specific incidents, but today there were just a lot of moments when we were all in hysterics.

The bad news was, I talked to Sang Mook and asked him if people were still up for a nomikai with Fujimura-sensei today, and… they weren’t. Nobody gave any specific reason, they just didn’t want to go. I was bummed out as well as angry; after all, half the point of the nomikai would be to celebrate my victory at the speech contest, which I didn’t do for myself but for the entire class. I was also angry that instead of saying outright, “We just don’t want to go,” they just keep on postponing, like they do intend to go at some point. When Sang Mook said, “Maybe tomorrow, or Thursday,” I realized that it’s probably never going to happen, because people just don’t really want to go.

Luckily, I had talked to Soo Young yesterday, who had suddenly realized that I’m leaving next week, and he complained that there wasn’t enough time left to hang out and get to know each other better. As I mentioned before, because he has a part-time job, he works every night. However, this Wednesday (tomorrow) happens to be one of the few days a month he has the night off, so we had agreed yesterday that we should meet up after class on Wednesday and hang out. Hold this thought for now—we’ll come back to it in a minute.

After class, I did my weekly pronunciation and intonation test, and then I headed over to the main building. Since I’m leaving next week, I have to take an oral exam before I can officially complete the program, and mine had been scheduled for this afternoon. I got lucky; the two interviewers were Kinbara-sensei (the school principal) and Konno-sensei, and I got to have my interview with Konno-sensei. It was very easy; we just talked about my hobbies, things I’ve done in Tokyo, fun experiences and the like. I was a little bit thrown off because Konno-sensei didn’t always use formal Japanese, so I wasn’t sure whether my answers should still all be formal or not. At any rate, I think I did okay, though. Not spectacular, but okay.

After that, I had nothing to do but head home. Once there, I called Soo Young, asking him if he’s still up for meeting tomorrow. He sounded hesitant, so I asked him why. He said, “I don’t think other people are going to be up for it. Would you still want to go if it’s just the two of us?” I told him that I’m fine with whatever and whomever, even if it’s just the two of us. I’m just so sick and tired of doing nothing but going straight home these days. I don’t want to spend my final days in Tokyo like this.

We agreed to meet up in front of the school around 6pm, since I was planning to bring in my laptop tomorrow and discuss the school newspaper with Fujimura-sensei and Takahashi-sensei after class. Happy that I finally have plans, I sat down to do my homework and work on the school paper.

Sometime later, Fujimura-sensei e-mailed me back. I had sent him an e-mail earlier saying there once again wasn’t going to be a nomikai today, and he was also a little bummed out about it. So, I replied, saying, “Well, Soo Young and I are going out after class tomorrow. There’s not going to be many people, but if you want to, you’re welcome to come with us. Both of us would love it.” I fully expected him to decline, since I’d thought he had wanted to go drinking with the entire class, but he surprised me by responding fairly quickly, saying, “Tomorrow? Got it. I’ll try to be done with work as early as possible and come join you guys.”

So I’m cheerful again, since now I’m fairly sure that we’re going out tomorrow, no matter what happens or whether other people want to go. Finally! Yay!

Wednesday, August 6^th

I came to school early to do more of the e-learning, bought lunch, and studied while waiting for the previous class to leave. Today’s class included a conversation test, where we were given different scenarios and had to construct a conversation between 2 people, which we then had to perform in front of the class (without reading scripts). Mi Hee and I were given the scenario that I’d borrowed a camera from her for a day and wanted to keep it for another day, while she needed it back for her own use. I think our conversation went fairly well, although it probably wasn’t as long as it should’ve been. They wanted us to talk for three minutes. After a while, it was hard to come up with anything else to say but, “I need the camera more than you do!” and slight variations thereof.

After class, Fujimura-sensei and I sat down and looked over my work on the school paper with Julie, the other girl who was supposed to be helping with the designing but whom I hadn’t been able to get in touch with because I never see her. Takahashi-sensei came by a little later. Basically, everyone’s very happy with it already, but I still needed the photographs, which I copied over today. There’s also information that I can’t get until Friday—the teachers haven’t been very good at keeping track of who wrote which article, so half the author names are missing. I guess I’ll be bringing in my laptop again on Friday. It’s kind of a pain, because my bag’s already heavy enough without it, but I can’t deny that it’s necessary.

Soo Young waited for me the whole time. I felt kind of bad, but I’d told him that I wouldn’t be ready until at least 6pm, and he didn’t have anywhere else to go, so… yeah. Fujimura-sensei said, “It’s okay. He’s a guy. He’s used to waiting for women.” Hahaha.

After I got done with school paper stuff, Fujimura-sensei had to go to the other building. He said that we should find a place where we could eat dinner, and to call or text him to let him know where we were waiting. But Soo Young had asked sensei earlier how long he’s lived in Tokyo, and sensei answered that he’s been here less than a year, so Soo Young was like, “I don’t want to go too far from the school. Otherwise, he’ll never find us.” So, in the end, we stepped into a coffee shop and had iced maccha lattes while we waited for sensei to finish. It ended up being a good decision, because not too long after, it rained really hard for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, Soo Young finally had the chance to really chat, which was nice. Although we come from very different places and have had very different experiences, we share a lot of the same views on things. Soo Young also taught me a few useful Korean phrases. I really do want to learn Korean at some point.

We were really hungry, and though I had texted sensei to let him know where we were waiting, there was no response. Soo Young tried calling him twice, but sensei didn’t pick up. Finally, we decided to leave the coffee shop and look for somewhere to eat. I said that we could always order appetizers or something while we waited. In the end, though, both of us agreed that because we were still planning on going drinking afterwards, we wanted to spend as little on dinner as possible. So, we had just hopped into a nearby Matsuya, a gyuu-don (beef bowl) franchise, when sensei finally called. By this time, it was already well past 7:30pm.

Soo Young tried to give directions to where we were waiting, but as it turns out, sensei really didn’t know the area very well. It also didn’t help that there are multiple Matsuyas in Shinjuku, so in the end, sensei ended up waiting for us at a different one, and then called asking where we were. Realizing that it was going to be difficult for him to find us or for us to find him, we decided it would be better to head to a central meeting spot. Since the school is the area we all know best, we decided to meet in front of there.

This turned out to be a bad idea. I’m guessing that what happened was that sensei headed back inside the building to wait, or that they saw him approach, because Takahashi-sensei had grabbed him and sat him down for a conference when Soo Young and I got there. They told us to sit and wait. “Two minutes,” they said. Except it turned out to be more like 15. Meanwhile, we got a lot of funny looks from the other teachers, who all seemed to think that it was highly amusing that we were waiting to go out with our teacher.

In the end, though, sensei managed to escape (hahaha), and all three of us being starved and no longer having the energy to walk very far to search for a place to have dinner, we hopped into an Indian restaurant nearby. It’s part of a chain, and sensei goes there often enough that he actually has a membership card and everything.

It was 8:30pm by the time we sat down, though, and though the place serves fairly cheap alcohol, we decided to hold off on ordering drinks until after we ate. Meanwhile, we chatted a lot. Sensei told a lot of stories, about growing up in rural Japan, going to college in Osaka, and then his time abroad in Germany. Soo Young asked him a lot of questions, some a little personal. At one point he asked sensei if he has a girlfriend, and in response, sensei gave him the funniest look ever—I don’t think I’ll ever forget his face. It was a cross between a scowl and a glare, and because sensei is usually almost always smiling, it was so contrary to the expressions he usually has… it was great. Soo Young and I almost died laughing.

Anyway, the answer to the question was no, and when Soo Young mentioned that a lot of girls give him their phone numbers at his work (he’s a waiter at a Korean restaurant), sensei asked him to share them with him. Then Soo Young said that the next time he gets invited out by those girls, sensei should go with him. I almost cracked up at the mental image of the two of them going out together to try to score with girls. They’re just so different. Sensei is so mature, and Soo Young is so… not, ahaha.

At first I was a little worried that sensei might be just a little bit annoyed with me for e-mailing him so many times recently about our failed attempts to go out, but thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, I got the impression he was really happy we asked him to come with us. He mentioned in passing that because he’s only lived in Tokyo for about a year, he doesn’t have very many friends yet. Also, because he’s usually at school until past 8pm on weekdays and even works on weekends, I’m guessing he doesn’t get to go out that often. And he’s only 27. It must be rough. I feel for him.

Dinner was delicious, though it was slow to come, and we were slow to eat because we were so busy talking. We didn’t finish eating until around 10pm, and I needed to head for the subway station by 10:30pm at the very latest in order to be back in time for curfew, so in the end there wasn’t even time to order drinks. I don’t think anyone was particularly upset that we hadn’t gotten around to it because we’d had enough fun talking as it was, but I did mention as we were getting ready to leave, “Sensei, all this time we’ve been trying to go drinking, and now we still haven’t!” to which he responded that there’s still time, and that we’re still rain-checking it.

Because he’d made us wait so long for him, sensei insisted on paying for dinner. Soo Young and I tried to argue that it was fine, and that we could each pay our share, but sensei insisted, and had already grabbed the bill, so in the end our attempts were futile. I felt pretty bad, especially because Soo Young had paid for the iced maccha lattes at the coffee shop earlier, so I’d gone out tonight without paying a cent. That actually didn’t make me happy at all. I absolutely hate having other people pay for me. It makes me really uncomfortable.

We walked sensei to his subway station, which was closer than mine, and then Soo Young walked me to my station. I had to hurry because it was already past 10:30pm. I wasn’t lucky enough to catch an express train, either. In the end, I arrived home about 5 minutes or so after curfew, but it turned out to be fine. The door wasn’t locked yet, so it seems that the dorm mother didn’t care.

Unfortunately, of course, that means no shower tonight, and it was gross-hot today. But at least I can say that it was totally worth it. I had so much fun—and I’m glad, because I’ve been wanting to go out with sensei for such a long time now that I’d kind of been building up high expectations and had every chance to be disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed at all, though. My only regret is that I didn’t talk even more than I did—but it’s hard sometimes, when you don’t know the right words to convey what you really want to say yet.

I just sent sensei an e-mail thanking him for coming with us and telling him that it had made me really happy. He responded almost right away. Apparently he’s completely serious about rain-checking the drinking part. He said to call or mail him anytime I’m free. Does that mean that it’s okay even if it’s just me alone? I’d always expected it to be me and sensei and the rest of the class. Well, I have a week left. I guess we’ll just have to see.

Thursday, August 7^th

I admit that lately I’ve been crying every day, usually in the morning, when I check my cell phone or turn on my computer and realize that I’m one day closer to having to leave. I’m down to one week exactly, and I feel like my heart is breaking. I don’t want to part with this place.

I once again went to school early to use the computer lab for e-learning. After that, I had over an hour left before class started, most of which I spent studying. We had a grammar test today, over grammar which I’d mostly already learned at CMU, but the test was still a little tougher than I’d expected. We also wrote in-class compositions again, and I had a harder time with this one than I usually do. Having an incredibly difficult time finding the words to express my thoughts seems to be a theme for me this week. I don’t know that that’s a good sign. I’m supposed to be getting better, not worse.

Other than that, we celebrated Tanabata during class today. The holiday is officially on July 7^th every year, but class wasn’t in session yet, so we celebrated it today because by the old calendar, today would’ve been July 7^th. It was slightly lame reasoning, in my opinion, because almost everyone celebrates it on July 7^th nowadays, but I guess they were just really determined that we’d get to celebrate it at school. We wrote wishes on slips of paper and tied them to bamboo stalks like they really do on Tanabata. My wish is to be able to do an internship in Japan next summer.

I had no other plans after class, and I’ve given up on trying to get Sang Mook and the rest of the class to go drinking, so I decided to head to a photography museum in Ebisu. This was the other art museum I’d read about that I was really interested in because they display CG graphics as well as traditional and digital photography. They normally close at 6pm, but on Thursdays and Fridays, they’re open until 8pm. Since Ebisu is not very far from the school (a 10, 15-minute train ride), I went there after class today.

The bad news was, the museum doesn’t have a permanent collection; they basically just display special exhibitions, and none of the current exhibitions included CG graphics, which was what I had really come there for. Also, they had three exhibitions in three separate galleries, and they charged per gallery. It wasn’t cheap (though I did get the student discount), and I didn’t know how much time it’d take, so I decided to buy a ticket for only one gallery.

The good news was, the exhibition I chose was pretty damn amazing. I had a choice between a show on insect photography, a show with photographs of America, and a show displaying the World Press Photography Prize winners of the past year. The former two didn’t sound interesting, so I went with the latter. It was a very good decision. I admit I don’t really pay too much attention to press photography, so it was a really eye-opening show. Subjects ranged from the war in Afghanistan to violence in Africa, rape victims in Colombia and poverty in Eastern Europe. Truly fascinating, and stunningly beautiful photographs. Some of the pictures and their descriptions made me a little emotional. Not really having had access to world news for almost two months now, it’s easy to forget about some of the horrible things that are going on elsewhere in the world right now. The exhibition really brought me back to the reality of the world today.

So, despite not finding what I had come there for, it was definitely a worthwhile trip. It was also interesting to get a glimpse of Ebisu, which from what I could tell is a very upscale neighborhood. I looked and felt very out-of-place.

I took the train back to Ikebukuro, where I discovered that the Fukutoshin line, which I always take to get home, had broken down and wasn’t running. Luckily, I can also take the Yurakucho line from Ikebukuro to get to my station, and my commuter pass worked on that line as well, so I didn’t have to pay extra or wait for very long.

Once home, I ate dinner, took a long shower, did homework, and studied for a bit. I also e-mailed Fujimura-sensei about our drinking plans. I said that I’m not at all opposed to going, but with my curfew and his work schedule and the fact that I have only a week left, it’s a little difficult. I asked him when within the next week he thinks he’ll be done with work earliest, and he replied saying Tuesday. I messaged back, “B-b-but sensei, Wednesday’s our big exam!” My own teacher would go drinking with me on the night before an exam…!? Hahaha, the Japanese (and their love of alcohol) are so great.

Anyway, sensei e-mailed back saying, yeah, maybe Tuesday’s not such a great day after all. I asked if the weekend was out of the question, and he answered that he has work and an errand to run on Saturday, but he’s actually free all day on Sunday. I don’t know what that means yet. He asked me what my weekend looks like, so I answered that although there are things I want to do, I have no concrete plans, so anytime is good for me. He hasn’t responded, though. I really wish he would, because I want to start filling in the details of my weekend, and his response might have an impact on that.

Friday, August 8^th

My last Friday in Japan. Last day of Newspaper Club, and last class with Iki-sensei. It all feels bittersweet.

Today’s interesting events included finding myself on the same subway car as Saitou-sensei this morning. I didn’t realize we take the same subway to school every day. More than that, though, it was another one of those strange coincidences where, if I’d gotten into any other car on the subway or come into this car by any other door, I probably never would’ve seen her. It’s weird, especially with 12 million people in one city, but crazy coincidences like this seem to happen quite often here in Tokyo. I love it.

I came to school way too early, but I needed to use the computer lab before Newspaper Club. Still, by the time I’m done in the lab, I’m going to have almost an hour to kill. That’s not too bad though. Gives me time to study for today’s kanji test without too many distractions.

I’m still undecided as to what my weekend plans are. I still really want to go to Odaiba if I can, and I also need to take out half a day or so to do some last-minute shopping, mostly for other people. Since sensei still hasn’t responded after I answered his question about what my weekend looks like, I can’t really fill in my schedule for Sunday yet, and that has an impact on my plans for Saturday. And what I want to do tomorrow impacts what I do tonight. It’s Yana’s birthday, and she wants to go clubbing in Roppongi. I’m not opposed to going clubbing, even if it’s a hip hop club, but I don’t know if I want to be out all night, especially if I might go to Odaiba tomorrow… there’s no point if I’m not energetic. I also didn’t sleep well last night, so I’m already not energetic to begin with. On the other hand, Yana and the others all turned out for my birthday, so I’d feel bad if I don’t go. I just wish it didn’t mean having to stay out until 6am…

Well, I guess I still have almost the whole day to decide.