You Learn As Much As You Are Able To Believe

Ahhh. It’s been a week.

This is Ben’s last week and the feeling around The Kaisha is one of shock and disbelief. That’s not Ben, that’s the rest of us. Tonight is his going away party and more than one-fifth of the students at The Kaisha will attend, which is just unheard of. Most teachers never get that popular. I certainly won’t be.

Ben has been here for three years though, and he’s telling them that he is leaving Japan for a new job, which is true, but they ask me, and I say that three years is a long time to be away from home. I wonder which reason is more accepted. By that, I mean that here, company loyalty is still the norm, but many of our students have traveled abroad (which is why the reason many of them study English) and they know that it can be a difficult experience, no matter how much you enjoy it.

Tonight is Ben’s party and though it is my day off, of course I will go into Ginza to attend. The party is being held in a pub near The Kaisha, and it is rumored to hold 80 people and 100 or so will attend. It’s going to be packed like the last train out of Shinjuku, baby. And, too, my immediate supervisor has hatched a plan in which she and I work together to introduce a game: She will speak English and I will--gasp--translate it into Japanese!

Yeah, we’ll see how that goes, right?

Later:

Ah, it’s done...I’ll write more later. Only this morning found me rolling in the door from a club in Roppongi. My first all-nighter in Roppongi!

Yawn.