We’re in the thick of Golden Week here in Japan – an eight-day period containing multiple public holidays. Many workers go on holiday for the full Week, but at Yamasa we didn’t even get to observe Showa Day on April 29: it was class as usual. We will, however, get tomorrow and Tuesday off. Although it’s supposed to be quite rainy on Tuesday, tomorrow I’m hoping to go on an excursion with some of the students I introduced in my previous blog. If that pans out, you’ll read about it next weekend.

It was raining very hard on Friday too when I caught the bus to Okazaki station to take the train to Nagoya to meet Ryusei, a friend I made on my first trip to Japan in January 2024. He’s from this prefecture originally, and like many in Golden Week went home to visit family and friends, so it was a nice opportunity to catch up. Miraculously, the weather fined up as I pulled into the station, and we set out unhurriedly into the surrounding neighbourhood. Our first stop was a cosy old cafe where we had ogura toast: red bean paste spread on thick slices of toasted, buttered white bread. Here it was topped with a thick dollop of whipped cream and a little helping of homemade jam. It’s a local specialty and it was delicious. Afterwards we went to Noritake Garden. Noritake is a Japanese tableware company that also happens to have a long-established subsidiary in Australia. Their former factory grounds in central Nagoya now host a museum, art gallery, restaurant, shops and a well-tended garden. We browsed the art gallery and shops and walked around the garden, in which a line of big carp streamers had been set up for Children’s Day on Monday – although with no wind at the time they were unfortunately a bit limp. Then we headed back to the station and parted ways, having chatted happily the whole time. Hopefully I’ll see Ryusei again in Kyoto (where he currently lives) later in the year too.

Something else interesting happened on Friday – in class, I switched fully into Japanese-language mode for a short period of time. My English-language internal monologue went offline and I was processing everything the teacher was saying without needing to translate it first. I was both shocked and excited: it felt like I was finally successfully performing a new skill I’d been practicing every day for the past month. Fingers crossed it’ll begin to happen more and more often.

Today I went bouldering at Play Mountain again. I’ve been going consistently twice a week like I did in Sydney. However I’m quite tired at the moment (not sleeping early enough) and I climbed disappointingly poorly as a result. Even though I managed to repeat a hard problem I topped last time, I wasted all my forearm strength on a different one which I failed to complete despite the fact it was supposed to be two grades easier. But I totally forgot my frustration when the staff member on duty came over and struck up a conversation. I ended up having the longest impromptu chat I’ve had with anyone in Japanese. He spoke to me pretty simply and accommodatingly, but even so I was surprised at my ability to express myself and be understood in turn. We talked until he was alerted to the presence of customers waiting to be served at the front desk. I felt very grateful for this kind gym employee who made an effort to reach out to me. Between this interaction, my catch-up with Ryusei, and my budding friendships at Yamasa, I’m starting to get the sense that my appetite to socialise is not merely being satisfied, it’s being stoked.