What it means to waste a Saturday

So I'm working part time as a "consultant" at the restaurant/English library, the Bookworm, that is a favorite hang out for foreigners here. I guess the title is consultant, really I'm just making sure the chefs don't mess anything up on the new menu. Turkey is not generally roasted in paprika and oil. I'm not sure I would put pork meatballs in the cream of mushroom soup (not bad though!).

This means I spend a lot of time telling chefs what to do. Oh no. Nevermind the language barrier, sometimes these guys just don't want to listen. So I take whatever ally I can get. If that ally is the ayi, or lady who cleans up after everybody, I'll chat her up a little if it means she will nod respectfully in a meeting later.

Ayi has a son. Her son, like every other Chinese person from 12-18, studies English. She asked me last Saturday morning if I could teach him English. No. I cannot. If he comes to the restaurant, can you talk with him a while? Well, I'll be off this afternoon and I'd love to meet him, sure.

So 11:30 rolls around there's a chipper young student, book in hand, standing in the middle of the kitchen. After an unceremonious shooing, I establish that I can chat with him later. Disaster stirkes, hours later, when I start with, "what's your name?" and he responds by blushing. "Do you like basketball?" he remains mute.

I tell ayi I'm too busy today, maybe he can email me. Chinese students who can't talk often write quite well. We'll start there. I don't know what part of that she misunderstood, but the poor boy ended up waiting until 5 when I finally finished up. Unable to converse, I gave him an English name (Joseph) as some sort of consolation prize and told him I was done for the day.

I went to join my coworkers in an after-work Sapporo. Two hours later, when I went up to the kitchen to get some fries, who do I mean but a forlorn Joseph, reading his book at his mother's insitence. Apparently he was instructed not to leave until I did. Tough love I suppose.

I just received a nice email, with the subject, "Dear Mrs. Allison." Close, buddy. Enclosed is a kind and loving account of his desire to learn English, I guess, cause he wrote the thing in Chinese. So I'm off to the auto-translator and probably a nice conversation about colors and numbers this weekend.

Next time you're up in arms about your 8-hour day, just be happy you didn't spend it sitting on a bag of rice waiting for a beard-faced laowai to call you Joseph.