What a day!
An emotional roller coaster were I not DepresseD
Earlier today I shared my experiences with grading the entrance exam for a nursing school. After I finished there, I headed to one of the maids cafes I teach for. All belong to the same company but they have several different cafes. By happenstance I learned that one of my favorite maid students was graduating this weekend. I thought she was Sunday but as I was down town anyway on Saturday, I checked to see if she was working today, she was and I dropped in to say hello and good bye. Glad I did. Today, Saturday, is her last day.
While I do not play favorites with students, I am human and have my favorites. To be a favorite student there are three paths; professional, personal or both. Students who respond to my efforts to motivate them or are self motivated fit in the first category. If there is some kind of personal connection,the second covers them. The third is obviously both. The one graduating today is in category 3. BTW, whenever someone leaves a job, especially if it is in anyway connected to entertainment, they are said to be “graduating”. The graduating today took my class 7 or 8 years ago and again over zoom 5 years ago. This tells me that she either was serious about serving her English speaking customers to best of her ability or that she liked me or both. I’ll go with the first of the three. She was and remains mature in her thinking and worked hard. The fact that she is also very attractive only adds to her other attributes. I am saddened by her departure.
As I stated before, whenever a customer buys a photo of a maid, that maid either gets points towards promotion or, once promoted, a portion of the cost of the photo. Thus, I usually get a photo of all my students, former and current, when I go to the cafe as a customer. Remember, no favorites do I play. But this was special, a former student is graduating. So I took a rare photo of the two of us and another of her with the two students working that cafe at the time that I did not yet have a photo of. She worked at the cafe for 10 years! Not the same without her. Happy for her, whatever she has planned for the future.
Sad she is gone, happy I got to say goodbye I then moved on to other farewell. Due to the pending divorce, I have not attended a single meeting of the matsuri group for a full year. The preexwife had no trouble practicing with the music troop of the same group but I am not able to meet with these friends and keep such a thing secret, especially for a year and with drinking after the meetings. So I did not attend and avoided them whenever I saw them about town. Tonight was the first time to share the bad news. I felt it would be grossly inappropriate to share it last Friday at the wake of one of our members and was scared stiff I would spill the beans when drinking afterwards. I did not, thank God. They know preexwife almost as well as they know myself. Same for our son. They were stunned. Several pairs of eyes moistened upon the news. They understand why it would be difficult for me to participate in the festivals without my son or with my soon to be ex-wife but they all invited me out to drinking and dinner in the near future. They have sent messages on line after the meeting to back these up. One asked for my personal contact info, how long I have lived in japan and my Japanese ability. I suspect he intends to try to find employment for me. A great group of guys. They will be sorely missed once I depart. I asked them to look after my son in my absence.
Glad you connected with Matsuri men. Isolation is depressing, and from what you relate they respect you.
It was sad to read this but so heartwarming to know how the Matsuri group truly care about you. Hopefully you will find even deeper and more meaningful friendships from this and that guy who seems to want to help you find work could be a great asset. Most of my life I have found jobs through just knowing people. I almost never had to formally apply for a job. People know my skill sets and will match them up with other people they know who need them. And my success rate is very high. Usually after being introduced, it tends to be an informal chat where I get to understand what is required and then agree on the terms. I hope that happens in your case. It might even lead to different kinds of work. Last year was the best year I had since the madness began in terms of income and in fact if I calculate my earnings on a daily basis, the rate of pay was about 3 times more than I ever earned before. This was simply due to just knowing someone who knew someone else who needed a reliable guy in this part of the world on a call out basis. In fact I never even had an interview or met the boss of the company. It was all done via a WhatsApp exchange. Make full use of the contacts you have, not in a selfish way but just so they know your situation and I’m sure all kinds of positive things will come from this new dynamic.