Kowaii– Scary!

Just a quick update from today’s events…

I met my home visit sister, Ai, today. She is a really sweet nihonjin no daigakusei (Japanese college student), and I can already tell we are going to have a lot of fun. She brought a friend along, Mai–who is also a blast and half. Mie’s English is pretty good, but Ai and I may have some difficulty communicating. Still, it does give me an excuse to use my newly learned Japanese!

So, we decided we would meet Ai’s speaking partner and find a place to eat out. I’ve been eating mostly rice all week–feeling really good about my food budget–so a 500-1000 yen meal sounded like a good idea. We found a local Indian restaurant that has a lot of different types of curry (oishii desu!!!!).

While we are enjoying our salads there is suddenly commotion in the back of the shop. Our waitress fainted and is currently being supported in a chair, surrounded by ryuugakusei (foreign students), who are unsure what to do.

Ai’s speaking partner jumps up from the table, instantly going to the rescue. Her mother is a nurse, and so she is able to order people about (in Japanese, no less) while we wait for the ambulance. They cool her off with a cloth-full of ice, trying to keep her awake.

The Japanese ambulance pulls up only a few minutes later and we all attempt to squeeze ourselves out of the way since the shop is so small. Three men with sanitary masks come rushing in. They cannot fit the stretcher inside, and so they carry her out on a sheet.

The rest of us are still watching, and there is an exchange of both excited English and Japanese. We imagine that the waitress might be anemic, and possibly dehydrated, overheated and overworked. She’ll be all right, but of course we worry. [singlepic=54,320,240,,right]

In any case, we still received the rest of our dinner…with the inclusion of some free ice cream and an extra plate of rice with our naan and kima curry. I hate to say that I am happy to get ice cream out of a scary event.

…but I have to admit that it was some darn good ice cream–with mango pieces on top.

P.S. I bought a pre-paid phone today. It cost me about 10,000 yen for unlimited emailing and about 50 minutes of talk time. Incoming calls are FREE! Even internationally! Thankfully I won’t be using my minutes so much…emailing/texting sure comes in handy, so this at least seemed like a good deal.