Shino Koyama San met me from the Narita airport coach. She speaks beautiful English - quick, idiomatic and graceful - her ease with the language put me entirely at ease. Her mother, father and sister are English teachers and she had intended to be an English teacher but got diverted into working for the past ten years for Senshu University's International Office. I like English teachers. I'm an English teacher at my core - whatever other fancy titles I may claim or abstruse subjects I lecture on - I know I'm really an English teacher.
She took me to my new home 2-11-19 Higashimita: 3 weeks here and I still haven't got around to figuring out what those numbers mean. I now realise I don't even know where are the boundaries of 'Higashimita': I don't know where it becomes another place. I couldn't quite take in the house: My mind kept replaying the strange motion of taking off my shoes on entering and putting my feet into the house slippers kept in a rack by the door. There were two rooms downstairs: one Japanese room with tatami rice mats and rice paper screen doors. There was a western-style living room and a galley kitchen. A bathroom with the deepest bath I had ever seen. A toilet in its own discreet closet. Upstairs was another toilet closet, a small study, a western bedroom with two large beds and another Japanese tatami room: that would be my bedroom. We left the house to go to the University and as I padded down the street I realised that I was still in my slippers: 'my first cultural mistake' as I said to Shino San.
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