After our break and renewal of energy, everyone was optimistic that training would continue without many interruptions, useless storytelling or painful arguments-but alas we were wrong. I can't even begin to recount how many of these occurred during the afternoon session, but I think Big B knew she had set herself aflame as an outsider and none of us had the guts to put her out. The chair shuffles, piercing glares, coughs, sighs and whispers back and forth, did not halt her efforts. I couldn't really think about what you could actually say or do in this regimented training environment, it was like psychological military training, to put up with this girl. And by the end of the day my eye started twitching uncontrollably!
Our training group was being split up, which was sad as Karla (our fluent friend) and Toby (the token Australian bloke) we're quite cool and handy to have around (Toby was the only one of us to be able to get a cell phone, as his Japanese girlfriend was able to buy it for him, to get around the never-ending paperwork and documents needed, which I will divulge to you all later in a long-winded rant)! We decided we needed a few drinks after training and to say goodbye. There were originally 13 in the group and 5 of them we're moving up to Tokyo to finish up the rest of the training. Unfortunately, our group was staying in Nagoya (one of my least favourite cities in Japan) and had Big B. The rest of our group for the next 12 days, was a estrogen overload of 7 females and 1 Big B (a species still unknown to scientists). Alcohol was definitely in order!
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| Running through the restaurant street of chaos |
Walking back to our rusty-dusty apartments we came across an unusual sight, lines of men and woman standing outside their stores, yelling out in Japanese. There were hardly any other people in sight and it wasn't a busy street (if you could call it a street at all). All the short-end-of-the-stick restaurant staff, that we're chosen that day to yell outside, turned to stare at us. We were unprepared for the scene we had come upon..it felt like we had to Indiana Jones think ourselves through this . Half running and walking, we bobbed our heads side to side, dodging the flyers thrown in our faces and looked straight ahead, no-eye contact with the employees, who were piercing yells of Japanese that blasted our ear drums. We weaved in and out, as quickly as possible and once we had escaped their line of firing, the noise was deadly quiet. I nervously looked back over my shoulder and the employees remained stationed and quiet, with no other people daring to pass through the narrow street of restaurants, unless prepared to commit to one in particular. It was a polite mob of chaos, for Japan, and the employees were aggressive in wanting us to come inside. I wonder if they only made their wages by getting scared looking foreigners to come in?
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Once again, I had come out alive from my mishaps in Japan, surviving only
through my inspiration from a fictional hero character. |
