New developments!

So a fair bit of stuff has happened but what's actually worth mentioning is yet to be seen.

As for the English job I was talking about before, that didn't work out. I received the politest rejection letter I have ever seen in my life, they were even kind enough to send me my resume back so I used basically the same thing with a couple of changes and applied for a different job in one of my favourite apparel stores but I won't find out how that goes until next week. Apparently they wanted a girl for the teaching job but I reckon the fact that I have no experience teaching is probably a deal breaker :-P

Well, anyway, I'm only here for another 4 months so I should try to make the most out of the time I have left. I don't know if anywhere would be willing to employ me short term so that's the challenge. But I've committed myself now and I know I'm not going back to the fish market. Great experience, but I'm moving on.

You also may have remembered me talking about participating in a Japanese speech contest, yeah, that's not gonna happen, it looks like I'm going to have my hands full just studying and trying to find a job without having to write a five minute speech, memorise it and video tape it within the next week.

BUT THE TOPIC OF THIS POST IS THE INHERENT SMALL TOWN FEEL OF SHIMONOSEKI!

So it was around 11pm last night and my friends are like, dude let's go eat Yakiniku (BBQ on a hotplate). That in itself is all well and good but being the ungodly hour of 11pm we start driving around trying to find anywhere that happens to be open. Since it's Japan, even in a place as 'country-side' [as it is often called] as Shimonoseki, the majority of restaurants are open until midnight or so. But obviously we want to enjoy our meal and seeing as Yakiniku isn't the cheapest meal in the world we want to indulge ourselves... I guess.

Anyway, due to the fact that everyone has a smart phone these days, my other two mates who weren't driving searched as fast as they could for any Yakiniku place in the vicinity. Eventually we happened upon a restaurant that was open until 5am. It was a bit expensive but DELICIOUS! It cost us about 2500 yen a person which is only about $30-40, for a good quality meal out in Australia that isn't bad, but considering that the average wage in Japan is about 800 yen an hour, it is the kind of place students would be unlikely to frequent. However, what does this BBQ place that runs until 5am have to do with Shimonoseki?

Well first of all, two of the friends I was with work at the fish market. [Since I quit I'm not included] The reason this is significant is because by some ridiculous stroke of luck, my friend's boss from the markets happened to walk into the same restaurant. What are the odds? Now in Australia that's a bad thing, you don't want to be hanging out with your friends and run into your employer by any circumstances. However, the way Japan's system works, employer's overwork and underpay their employees but often treat them to lavish gifts and dinners. So despite the fact I had know idea who he was, Hori-san bought another bowl of rice for each of us and the most expensive item on the menu for us to share. Why? I don't know, but I was just glad I didn't have to pay for it :-P

Now the other point I'm going to make is what made it quite a memorable night. Now when I came into the restaurant, the typical old lady who works in these places came in and greeted us, gave us our tea and when she realised I could speak Japanese, she was more than generous with her praise. At the time I thought nothing of it because Japanese people think the fact that you would take the time to learn their language is the greatest compliment you could give to them so they feel the need to praise you no matter what your level. It varies from sincere to condescending praise depending on the person. However, after we finished our meal this lady idles up to us and she says, I have a favour to ask of you. Being the kind of person I am, I was wondering what I could do for this nice lady. It turns out her niece has been living in America since she was a child and while she has an extended family in Japan she doesn't speak a word of Japanese and the lady who asked my help doesn't know much English so she asked me to translate a letter to her niece.

Obviously, I don't want to screw this up so I took my time and did a thorough job. We were planning to be out of the place and home by 1am but we didn't end up leaving the restaurant until about 2am. The lady said she was so lucky to have me come to her restaurant because obviously there aren't many foreigners, especially ones with a decent grasp on the Japanese language. Plus, I read an example of a translation of something by a friend of her's who speaks English and there is no polite way to say this but the English was far from perfect, but you could work out what he was trying to say. Admittedly, I didn't expect to be translating a letter to the niece of the Yakiniku lady regarding the tragic passing of the niece's husband. As a joke I said, 'What do you think I'm going to get out of this? Probably nothing.' but my friend's said, 'You never know.' Obviously, I wasn't expecting anything because you don't do these things to get a reward unless you're doing it as a proper job. I just hope I could get across what this lady wanted to say to her daughter. I thought to myself, well that's my good deed for the day. In the end, I didn't get anything except that warm fuzzy feeling from helping someone and eating delicious fried meat. Tasty, tasty meat.

What was even scarier was the next day a few of my friends said to me "You went to Yakiniku yesterday, didn't you? Facebook, it's everywhere. I really want to stop using it but I mean I want to keep in touch my with all my friends so I need to find some compromise where I can have it on but only use it when I need to. I waste far too much time reading crap that isn't a good use of my time. Seriously, pretty much everything on facebook is about the same as the drivel I post on this blog except multiply that by the number of friends you have. In my case 480 or so. Today's lesson, let's use our time more effectively!

Quote of the post: Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of it's brevity.
~Jean de La Bruyere

Also, here's a photo of me with my friends at Yakiniku. Sorry for all the text, I can't help but write an essay every time. The funny thing is none of this would've happened if I hadn't gone out with my friends so in a way I'm glad I went and it made me think, if I don't open myself to these opportunities, then these kind of things won't happen. If I hadn't have gone, I wonder how long it would've been before Kiki (the Yakiniku lady) could've sent her letter? I haven't done anything amazing, but I guess I'm glad in some small way I could help.

TASTY, TASTY YAKINIKU! Kensuke is sitting next to me, while Takuya and Yosuke are on the left.