A reminder

Last Thursday night (on a weeknight!) I went out for dinner and drinks with a friend from work and her friend who had come over for a visit from India. We went to a great little "izakaya" in the city called Yuzuan. They have THE Most Incredible chicken wings on the planet. Aside from the great food we spent three hours just talking and hanging out. It was my friend's girlfriend's first time in Japan and that of course leads to a lot of conversation about first impressions and all, but the nicest thing was getting to talk with someone who is smart and doing really interesting work (she is an artist who works with film as a medium) and most important of all has absolutely NOTHING to do with my work or my school other than her connection with my lovely colleague. It was so fabulous to get to talk about her history, life and plans. It is a real perk in Japan to get to work with people from all sorts of backgrounds. The college where I work at has teachers from over ten different countries but usually we end up "talking shop". I had forgotten how wonderful it is to talk about the world with someone else who has had a fair share of experience in it. Anyway, this is not a very exciting post, but I wanted to write down and hopefully remember that there is more to life than working, teaching, planning lessons and correcting essays. There is a big, big world out there and while I get a glimpse of it through the blogs I follow and read, it is wonderful to get to converse with it face to face over nice drinks and yummy things to eat.