Internationalising

I was invited to a real Japanese meeting yesterday. It came just after teachers from all of our feed Elementary schools (numbering three- the schools, not the teachers) had introduced themselves. Well, the new ones, anyway.

We split into groups and discussed things. Our group was all about internationalisation. Mighty long word, that one. Alongside a dozen or so teachers, Mari-Sensei was present, who spent two years in Uzbekistan and in whose form-room there is a slogan in Uzbekistani above the blackboard.

More introductions done, gazes fixed on desks, the floor, very-important-things-that must-be-written-with-great-care and other objects that demand absolute concentration like you're you're trying to levitate them like Silent Bob. This kind of reticence isn't unusual in Japanese schools, it's just usually it's the students you're bribing with smiles to speak. Any sense of conviction in the group topic whisked away like rainy season clouds that threaten and don't deliver their payload until far out at sea and out of sight.

Later, Joe and a beer fixed my bike and I and a beer watched on. Wife Heidi and baby Hana (his not mine nor the beer's) came out...a neighbour and toddler Shuu-kun appeared and hung about hunting down rocks and staring up open-mouthed...another neighbour, pregnant, wandered out and cooed over Hana while Shuu tackled walls and mum nattered in broken English and Japanese with Heidi.

And that's where the real exchange was happening, 8km away from the circle of silent teachers and that faint conviction.