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Published: August 5th 2007
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Yoshimi
Hosting "Chokotto Monday" Here I am, finishing off my holiday Monday with a melon soda and some computer time. Our school's culture festival is taking place this Friday and Saturday so our school gave us a holiday in exchange for our attendance on both days. I'm exhausted even though I was supposed to use this extra time to relax and prepare for my departure.
Living in the countryside, it's not always easy to find exciting things to do, especially when you're the only one on holiday - but I don't seem to encounter this problem very often. There always seems to be something exciting on offer, this weekend being no exception.
The fun started on Friday afternoon with dinner and drinks at Satoko's house. She lives in a beautiful and enormous house attached to a Buddhist temple in the middle of a town even smaller than Shibushi, called Sueyoshi. I was at there last weekend for a dinner party but was whisked away early by the friends I arrived with so I was invited back so I could have more time to chat with she and Eriko, her sister-in-law.
Satoko is a great host and an amazing cook. Everything about
the evening was perfect from the food to the music selection. Satoko prepared almost the entire menu on her own and it included a delicious smoked salmon salad, three different kinds of rice with either beans or vegetables mixed in, fish sashimi, chicken sashimi (yes, they eat raw chicken here...they also eat raw horse meat, which is delicious), sushi, cheese, sausages and potatoes.
For company we had Eriko, Satoko's mom and her niece and nephew who had been dropped off for the evening. Though I always worry that my Japanese isn't going to be good enough to communicate, we always manage to find something to talk about using a mix of broken English and Japanese. We chatted until 9:30 then lit some fireworks, ate dessert and went to bed. I stayed overnight as they have a no-tolerance policy on drinking and driving here, and I came back to Shibushi Saturday morning.
I took one day to relax then went to Kanoya to visit my host family on Sunday. I had access to a car this weekend because a friend of mine had his license suspended after receiving his second speeding ticket (the speed-limit here is 50km/h so let's not judge too harshly) and he was kind enough to lend it to me. I hadn't seen my host-family since New Years so I decided to take advantage of my new-found mobility.
I arrived at their house on Sunday at 4pm with the expectation that I would stay for a few hours and come back to Shibushi for dinner. However, when I arrived, my host mom, Yoshimi, informed me that I had some speaking engagements the next day. I hadn't planned anything for today so I decided to stay, even though I was completely unprepared.
As usual this ended up being a great decision. My host brother, Kyoshi, was so glad to see me he decided to sleep in my bed with me (and cried when he found out I wouldn't still be there when he got back from school). Then I got to have two experiences I would never have had otherwise.
Mondays are very busy for Yoshimi. After shipping the kids off to school she spends her morning reading to the students at Kyoshi's elementary school, cleans the house, then heads to the local radio station to record her own show called "Chokotto Monday." Today I got to shadow her for the morning.
At 8:30 I read an English story called "Harry the Dirty Dog" to a group of wide-eyed first graders. Yoshimi and another mom then read some Japanese stories which I tried to understand while sitting with the students. By 9:30 we were on the road back home for cleaning time and an episode of Yoshimi's favourite Korean drama. At 10:30 we headed back out, this time to the radio station to prepare for the show. I was charged with doing the introduction (in English).
Yoshimi's show starts at noon and lasts 30 minutes so if anyone was listening to that station in our area they would have heard me announce, "It's time for Chokotto Monday, information on raising children and a little gift of energy." This was the best translation we could come up with for Yoshimi's regular introduction. Afterwards I got to sit by and listen to the interview with the real special guest, a mom who had moved to Kanoya from Tokunoshima, one of Kagoshima Prefecture's southern islands. I even did some impromptu talking in Japanese when Yoshimi asked if I had ever been to Tokunoshima (unfortunately I haven't).
Famished at 12:30, Yoshimi and I headed for lunch at a family restaurant before I came back to Shibushi to freshen up and grab my shoes for my freestyle dance class that starts at 8.
I know I've done a lot of exciting things since I arrived her but this was by far one of the most interesting days so far. I highly recommend it for a random Monday off.
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Dana
non-member comment
That sounds like an AWESOME day off for sure :-) Gee, having a license suspended after two speeding tickets that is harsh (unless your friend went like 30 above the limit which I doubt) - for how long do they usually suspend it?