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Published: April 18th 2008
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Shy Tsai
Not so shy when he gets a microphone and a willing audience Part I Okiro The doors are flung open, and sunlight rains down on my delicate, sleeping face. I sit up with a scowl, a noise emerging from the depths of my throat that could possibly be described as a growl or a deep rumbling. I wipe my eyes crankily and see a smiling face before me.
"Breakfast!" Sanaes mum cries cheerfully.
I attempt to rid my face of my early morning sneer, and smile at her in thanks, however, judging by her peals of laughter my smile is less of the gracious variety and more of a grumpy grimmace.
I bloody hate mornings.
Part II Hai Sensei I try to sleep in the car on the way to the first kindergarten. It's my first time doing morning lessons, but as it's not yet 9:30am, I'm still cranky about being up and therefore not bothered to be nervous. I have a bit of a sugar kick in the car, and so when we arrive at the kindergarten I'm ready to roll.
Class Number 1: Awwww... they're so cute, and now thanks to me they know the difference between standing up and sitting down.
Class Number 2: I realise I'm not sure how to phonetically say X. Don't think anyone noticed though.
Class number 3: It's funny, I haven't sung "Heads, shoulders, knees and toes" in over a decade, now I'm singing it for the ninth time today.
Classes finished, back to the office to drop of my supplies and then race to the station.... I'm going on a date!
Part III Lunch with Gaijins Yay! I arrive at my old Nihon-go school and see Nicole waiting for me out the front! Yay!! We hug and squeal for a bit, getting in the way of several cranky businessmen. Apparently loads of people are coming to lunch, as when kessy arrived at class she wrote "Lunch with Leah 1:30" on the board and then the teacher incorporated it into the lesson. How cool is that? I'm an english teacher AND a japanese lesson!
Lunch is a raging success as an hour later no one is hungry. We make plans to go to Ueno on Sunday and then the wild ones agree to come with me to karaoke.
We walk down the street and bump into the two taiwanese guys from the Nihon-go class. We invite them to karaoke, one of them, Hung, has plans, and the other taiwanese, Tsai is far too shy, doesn't speak english and is quite scared of us. We hustle around Tsai in a circle and I grab a hold of his wrist. Tsai is coming to karaoke. He has that little smile on his face he gets whenever the teacher asks him a question, so I think he's happy enough to be coming. Bless.
Part IV The artist formerly known as Panda On the way to karaoke we're trying to invite Tsai to come to the zoo on Sunday to see the pandas. As he doesn't speak english he doesn't understand. Everyones drawing pictures, looking words up in dictionaries and confusing him even further. I take off my sunglasses and lumber about groaning and pretending to eat bamboo, Tsai beams a me and says quite clearly "Ahh! Panda!"
It seems, my friend Graham is right. I DO look like a panda.
Part V United Nations Song Fest There are songs in Japanese, Portugese, German, Chinese and English, it's a hotbed of wild and crazy times. Shy little Tsai has turned into a Taiwanese superstar and is howling into the microphone before screaming "Arrigato!, Arrigato Tokyo!" to the applauding room, the german girls are still panting from 99 luftballoons and the madness of Maskau, Bernardo's thrashing out metallica and I'm on the phone to the receptionist trying to order some more drinks.
The next round of drinks come in the middle of Walk like an Egyptian, right in the middle of the guitar part that has Jane and I jumping about "dancing" wildly, with Tsai once more howling into the microphone.
The waitress lady bows quickly and runs back to the door. I don't blame her speedy exit. I'd have done the same.
Part VI Downtown I'm meeting Niske and some others for dinner before dancing so we can set up Yumiko (Sanaes best friend) with Yassu, one of Niskes Japanese friends. I arrive at Shinkjuku early and breathe a sigh of happiness. I love Shinjuku. LOVE it. Its a huge, noisy mess of skyscrapers covered in neon flashing signs, sexy shops, games places, restaurants, bars, advertising drag queens and of course pachinko.
I wander about happily, trying to find a birthday present for a friend back home. Nada. I'm not sure if i should go cute, kitschy or ridiculous. hmmmm. As I'm wandering the streets I'm listening to Downtown on my I pod, it feels so appropriate and I mindlessly sing along to the line "Listen to the rhythym of the traffic in the city" and startle a couple of tourists. Ha, if that scared them, they should definately stay away from karaoke with the german girls. Or quiet old Tsai for that matter.
Part VII Caged I meet up with Niske and Yuimiko, then lead them to a restaurant I'd passed already on my wanderings called mysterious. There's no lighting in here and all the waitresses are wearing clothes bought from one of the nearby sexy shops that glow up brightly under the UV light or whatever its called. We get shown to our table, Its up a metal ladder, in a cage with a low rise table and a pile of cushions. Very cool.
The men join us and Yumiko pronounces Yassu as "cute". Excellent. Good work Niske san.
We eat, we drink, we drink some more and decide to ditch dancing. I pull out the japanese hip hop extremist footwear and show them around the table. The shoes are glowing under the light, and I feel so proud. Everyones suitably impressed. I put my shoes away and realise that If I'm showing my shoes around the table and it doesn't seem weird we're probably a little drunk.
We make our way down the ladder and out into the night, yep. Definately a little bit drunk.
I go home and tell Sanae all about the evening. She fills me in on what Yumiko has already called to tell her (re-iterating on the cuteness) we call Niske and relay the information to her and we all giggle on the phone for 20 minutes together.
I love being a girl.
Part VIII Oyasumi I have class tomorrow morning! I prepare my bed and fall into a dreamless slumber, knowing that when I wake up tomorrow I will be a grumpy ass pain in the neck again.
Good Night xx
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