Opening Ceremonies

As opening ceremonies go, the ones for my daytime Japanese class were a bit of a disappointment. No modern dance, no children singing in chorus, and no parade of nations. What we did have were a few middle-aged gentlemen making speeches about the value of friendship and learning Japanese.
We were also told that this was a propitious time to begin learning Japanese since the new express train linking Tsukuba and Tokyo has just begun its service.

My class is big – about 40 students. There are four teachers, but we didn’t do the small group thing. Instead, everyone went around the table and introduced him/herself, and then, well, class was over. The class is slightly more men than women, and people are from all over: Mongolia, India, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Canada, Thailand . . . I also made two friends that I’ve been emailing a little about my knitting group: one from Switzerland and one from (ta-da!) Seattle. The Seattle one is actually an elementary school teacher from Shoreline, and her husband just received his Ph.D. from UW. We plan to have them over for dinner soon.