Actual Work?!?

I actually did some work today! I mean, like real work. An hour's worth!

For the remaining hours of the morning, after we'd done yet another self-introduction for some important people, Joe, Marisa and I helped out at Lina's school, West Junior High, with speech contest preparations. I worked with a student one-on-one for an hour before she had to go to cram school, but even in that short time, it managed to revive me. Here I was, actually helping someone study English!

So brief as it was, I enjoyed it thoroughly. However, after lunch it was back to the same old self-study. I'm at the part in The Little Prince with the Fox, by the way (tame is kainarasu in Japanese).

After work, I met Joe for dinner at a small ramen shop. The little couple who runs the place were so nice to us which, as a foreigner, is always appreciated. They messed up our order just a little bit, and instead of charging Joe the amount he actually owed, they charged him for the smaller size. Now that's service. Too bad you can't tip in Japan.

From the ramen shop, we headed over to the community center to see if there Japanese conversation classes had started yet. They hadn't because--surprise, surprise--everyone was gone on vacation.

The rest of the night was spent getting a light for my bike so that I could legally ride at night. We made it to Joyful Honda 5 minutes before they closed, bought the light, but couldn't mount it without a screwdriver. I sloughed it off and headed home saying that I'd put it on later. We stopped briefly at an arcade on the way home and then, as we were passing a discount homestuffs store, I thought, well, maybe they have screwdrivers. I ran in the door 7 minutes before they closed and awkwardly asked about screwdrivers. This may surprise you, but I don't know what the word for screwdriver is in Japanese. So I made a lot of hand gestures and they thought I was asking for a scooter (cranking the gas). Finally, we came to an understanding, and once again, the foreigners were shown kindness; they lent me the screwdriver, no charge.