Bowling and frisbee

After work on Friday, I met up with Joe, Kim, and Rose at MOS Burger. We caught up on the latest island gossip, and whispered conspiratorially about the coming end of winter. Afterwards, we went bowling with Joey and a slew of Joe and Rose's teachers: Tachiko-, Shibata-, and Nishio-sensei. I bowled about as well as I usually do--just over 100, enough to do well in 11th grade team sports--and we headed upstairs for some karaoke afterwards. Mayumi, one of Mike's teachers, joined us late.

The next day, I met Joe and Joey for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the ocean. It's at a spot everyone passes every time they drive between Izuhara and the airport, but none of us had ever eaten there. We talked about our Golden Week plans while enjoying our katsu curry and enjoying the view. After finishing, we went out on the restaurant's deck and discovered it was a wonderfully comfortable afternoon. What was going to be a quick peek off the back porch turned into another two hours just talking and basking in the sun.

After that, determined not to let such beautiful weather go to waste, Joey and I headed up to Mitsushima Green Park to play catch and throw the frisbee. It wasn't long before a group of kids passed by. As often happens, they tried to gawk at us without being too obvious about it. We each invited them to join us, in English as well as Japanese, and each time all we got was giggles. (This group happened to be girls, but the only difference that makes is that a similar group of boys would have giggled in deeper voices.)

Joey threw the disc such that I caught it closer and closer to them, and I finally just turned and tossed it to them. They squawked, three of them jumped back, but one of them caught it without flinching. I knew they'd wanted to play! We slowly coaxed each of them into throwing, and they made a valiant effort not to be too obvious about how much they enjoyed it.

After Joey left to drive back up north, I saw one of the girls at Saiki (the supermarket), and she ran up to me and asked my name and what school I teach at. She told me her name was either Sashio or Sachio (I'm bad about hearing the difference in full-speed Japanese), and she goes to Kechi Junior High.