Took my Japanese test today. I’ll write about that tomorrow since it’s too late now to write too much.
Class for me started at 9 and ended at 6 today. At 6:30 or so though, I went to a Chinese restaurant with my classmates and my teacher from my Economics class. My teacher was kind enough to pay for all of us.
This is a cultural thing in Japan. I remember when I was in high school, taking Saturday Japanese classes, they had a bazaar of sorts one weekend. Our teacher wanted to buy us a certain kind of ice cream there but we tried to decline since we didn’t feel comfortable that our teacher would be paying for all of us, since, hey, she’s our teacher. In any case though, she stopped us and told us that in Japan, it’s rude not to accept. In the end, she paid for our ice cream, lol.
My Economics class is in English, so there are quite a few international students there. The people who were able to go to dinner afterwards were me, a Turkish girl, a guy from the Dominican Republic and a Japanese guy. When our teacher told us that she was going to pay for all of us, the guy from the Dominican Republic and the Turkish girl started to protest. I didn’t say anything because I remembered my past experience in high school, lol. Our teacher, in response, just said something like, “No… I’ll pay, this is how we do things in Japan. Just ask him” and she pointed to the Japanese guy and he was like “yeah”.
So, all in all, I got a free dinner. It was a pretty nice restaurant though very small… there were only a few tables I think. I still wonder how all these small places are able to make enough money to support the workers and also stay open. In any case, I had ramen and gyoza there, both of which were very good.