Non-Work Work
June 16, 2003
Well, work is becoming busy. Actually, I think it’s fair to say that being busy is the norm now. 7 today and they all showed up. Those bastards. The nerve of them, to pay hard-earned money and then show up!?!?!
The interesting part came after work. Me and a couple others went to this place called Shakey’s Pizza. It’s this shitty little pizza parlour smack in the middle of Shinsaibashi (a busy hub of shoppers and all sorts of shit). They had pizza tabehodai for 600 yen. Tabehodai means all-you-can-eat. I mentioned about this yesterday. The pizza is not too bad for the price - it filled me up even though the crust is super thin and the toppings are carefully grafted on. They had interesting flavours to say the least. Still, I enjoyed it because I got to ask a friend some interesting questions that I wouldn’t normally ask other people.
After both of them left, I was stuck in Shinsaibashi alone so I decided to go to this English Cafe place I saw in some ads. The place wasn’t exactly a cafe. It was more like an apartment with chairs, tables, sofas, and a lot of drinks, freezers, ice, and that sort of stuff. Of course, at first the gaijin girl thought I was Japanese and started to tell me about the covers/fees. It wasn’t until I said, in perfect English, “I was under the impression that native English speakers get in for free.” Ahhh, everything clarifies at this point. I take my seat with these two older Japanese people and begin a nice chit chat. It was about 5:30 and there were only the 4 of us. At about 8, when I left, I think there were almost 20 people there. I met one dude also from Vancouver. The people were divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced tables and just chatted away. I noticed the native speakers speaking a lot which was interesting… I thought they’d want to let them speak more. So when I was at the table alone, I just asked them general get-ta-know-ya questions to get them talking. It was really fun. It was like work but not really - it was meaningful and personable. For the first time ever, I felt like a teacher.
I’m definitely gonna go back to that place - lotsa human interaction there. Also, I haven’t met many people in Osaka so it’s a great opportunity. Yeah.
