Sunday, April 20
Went to Tokyo for the first time for the G**S International Festival. The train ride was long (JR, not shinkansen) but finally I arrived in the company of my coworker Scott, who was going to be teaching at the festival, and Yuki, his student. (We were joined by his girlfriend Satomi at the festival.) The buildings are huger and more amazing than they look in pictures and I tried to capture that with my camera, but who knows what I ended up with.
We stopped at the G**S School near Ikebukuro, where the festival was being held and checked it out. It’s a big school and it looks really nice. I wanted to transfer. Anyway, after that we walked to the building we thought it was being held in, got confused due to strange written directions from the head office and a map that didn’t really match them, and finally were rescued by a teacher who was just leaving the festival, who told us we had to go underground between the buildings to get there. We had already been across the street to the place we were supposed to go, and back again, so we took the underground passage anyway and felt dumb for going back. Finally we got there and got our badges (Mine said staff even though I was wearing jeans and serving no official purpose). Mostly there were booths set up for different countries where we have schools so that students can travel the world while studying English with us. I saw Robin, who picked me up at the airport when I arrived, and then I saw Rita, the sub who observed me on the 15th, but they were both busy and couldn’t talk long. There was a coffee chat kind of area that I got roped into talking in for about 5 min., a speech contest that we caught the end of, a spelling bee, and also language classes going on. Yuki and I were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to take a sample Italian lesson! Yay! She wanted to take a Spanish lesson but it was over long before we made it to the festival.
After that, we split up and Yuki talked to people at the booths about studying abroad while I watched Scott’s Business English class and took pictures of him acting silly. I also people watched after I got bored with listening to “What do you do?”, “Where do you work?”, “How can I help you?”, etc.
There were definitely some inappropriate suits there…well really just one I noticed but I thought it was really slutty. The skirt had a slit in the front instead of the back and the girl had on these 4 inch wedges with a ribbon tied in a bow at the heel and it just looked so…awesome, yet so wrong for work. I tried to get a pic of the girl, but alas, I was unable to. After the Business English lesson there was a salsa dancing lesson, and Yuki and I opted to explore the mall while Scott and Satomi danced.
So it turns out the building the festival was held in was like a shopping mall/aquarium/planetarium/huge massive place that has everything in the world in it. We ended up at the aquarium which was the best decision ever. It was small but awesome. AND there were penguins! There was also something I’ve never seen before, a sunfish. Google it, it looks like it shouldn’t be physically able to swim. It’s a huge white fish with a very blunt tailfin that ends really abruptly and makes the fish look like it was squished. I took a lot of great pictures and bought a keychain, and almost bought a small stuffed penguin but opted to eBay for it first.
After the Aquarium we went bowling with a huge group of teachers and students from the fair. I did ok, about avg, 115 and 107, nothing special. After 2 games we had to leave and try to make it to our hostel that we’d gotten reservations at by the skin of our teeth. It closed at 10, we left the bowling around 8:45 and got on the train…then the trouble started. After we got off the train, we got crazy-lost. We called the hostel so many times and they said they would stay open for us. After at least 3 wrong turns, we were walking in the right direction and a guy from the staff actually intercepted us and showed us how to get there. So we checked in finally, I had to show my passport and give them all my information and stuff because I was the only one who brought my passport. I should mention at this point that I hadn’t eaten anything all day and it was past 10:00. We finally had time to get food. So we went to Lawson’s (convenience store), which wasn’t all that convenient. I got some sort of hot, delicious noodley thing and then some Oreos, which I saved for later. From Lawson’s we got a taxi and rode to Scott’s friend’s bar/hostel and everyone had a few drinks, I had a Shirley Temple, and everyone practiced English or Japanese, whichever they needed to. When we finally left it started raining so we got another taxi back to the hostel and ate my Oreos. There was internet there for 100yen/20 min and I couldn’t resist. Then we stayed up talking a little longer, and went to sleep.
The hostel was really nice, by the way, and cheap. It was called K’s House, and if you can find it, it’s worth staying at. It’s a classy place - clean and the staff is friendly and helpful.
