Saturday 17th / 18th -
A tale of 2 kitties and a lot of cats. I visited 3 cat cafes, 2 on Saturday and 1 on Sunday after a day working for ECC interviewing kids in English. It turns out that one of the girls I was working with on Sunday, Shannon, knows a couple of people I play frisbee with. I got to know Kitty, Japanese, quite well too- she was scoring the students while I asked them questions. We talked and traded stories between the interview sessions. I also met another Kitty, the substitute teacher who came later to replace someone who couldn't make it. From Hong Kong and brought up in Australia, Kitty was really nice and we seemed to get on pretty well. Work finished, I was kicking myself as I walked away from the interview building for not having had the gumption to invite her along to a cat cafe with me. It would have made for a pretty strange date proposal anyway... So I tracked her down on Facebook and sent her a request to be my friend, but I clicked the mouse a little too quickly before I had a chance to write a message accompanying the request. Didn't hear back. Now I guess I just look like a cheap Facebook stalker.
The cat cafes were fun though. I met Toru-san, staff, at Nekorobi cafe in Ikebukuro. I tried to befriend Haruki the Norwegian Forest, but he remained immovable and unfussed to the last. I met a guy called Masaaki who was videotaping the cats. Between jobs, usually he likes to video planes taking off and landing. A very nice guy but he struck me as a little odd, truth be told, but I stuck to it and befriended him. Meanwhile I asked Toru-san a lot of questions to find out some information for an article I wrote about the cat cafes. I think he might have been gay. To my horror I discovered he knew my name- he'd looked it up after I'd left a message in the guest book. The stalker became the stalkee (?)
Monday 19th -
The Tavern. Man buys me a whiskey. Unwittingly, I order the most expensive. Had a great chat with an oil engineer from Kyoto now settled in Tokyo. Didn't get his name though and didn't get a free drink either so I'm not sure I can call him friend.
Tuesday 20th -
Frisbee night. A couple of Japanese guys from another team, Fuka Fire showed up. I don't get along with them too great. Last time they showed up I marked one of them and we ended up with lots of elbows and cheap shots for the entire night. But then it suddenly struck me- what better friend to make than an enemy? Not in a keep your friends close, enemies closer Godfather kind of way, but in a 'let's bury the hatchet' way. Hold on the wording there isn't quite right. I think you get the point. So I lightened my attitude around those guys and even went for a high-5 as I took myself off the field to be substituted by one of them. He went for it! Maybe this friends thing can change the world after all.
Wednesday 21st Thursday 22nd Friday 23rd -
A succession of bad friend-finding days. I slipped into the routine of finishing work at school, working a bit more with conversation partners, then going home, exactly the kind of pattern I wanted to break. We had our friend Martine round to dinner for Tonyu nabe (a big veggie feast in a pot) though. Definitely up to some friendly activity there.
Saturday 24th -
I went to see Panorama Steel Orchestra with Andy from frisbee. Fantastic gig, steel drums make you happy. Especially when there's 35 of them on-stage. How do you form a band like that?! I meet Andy's wife, Misako. Success, friend. I remember he said she's from Yamagata Prefecture, Sakata I think. I had a lot of friends up there when I lived in Yamagata City. Didn't manage to get much of a chance to chat about it though as I went to meet other frisbee friends in a bar called Popeye near the sumo stadium straight after.
Daytime I had been to see Martine, to take her table and a toaster. She's leaving Japan soon. Next weekend is her farewell and she rightly said if I am pursuing this friends thing I should go along to the farewell. A chance to meet a lot of new people. Maybe I could make up for this week with lots of friends there.
No comments:
Post a Comment