Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Tonight's example of "It's exactly like you've heard."

So I wanted a run today, but with Theo out of school for the week, it had to be an after dinner run. By the time I could get out the door, it was just before 8PM.

Along my running route there's a private school, or maybe it's a tutoring center -- I don't know enough Japanese to know the exact nature of the place. Most of the time I'm running past during the day, so I can't see inside, but running after dark I can glance inside as I run past.

Tonight, well after 8:30PM, there was a room of over a dozen kids, probably early high school or maybe slightly younger, deep in thought in the first-floor classroom, while a teacher explains a graph on the dry erase board at the front of the room. There were other kids heading from the convenience store across the street into other classrooms I couldn't see.

This didn't shock me, based on what I knew before we moved here; but it was just another reminder that we are here at a perfect time in our lives and as much as I enjoy our temporary status here, I would not be well suited to living "real life" in Japan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

An excellent example of how we cherry-pick or idealize elements of the places we visit, with little consideration of what it's like to actually be a member of that society.