But I'm thinking about them!
Here's a quick story from today: NHK came to film a segment on tea. It seems it's for the overseas market and they wanted to film foreigners doing tea, so we were all required to wear iromuji (one-color formal kimono) and hakama (fancy pants for men-- the thing that makes their kimono formal), and then we were scheduled to be in Ichi-no-ma at Gakuen, the most formal tearoom at the school with Yamamoto-gyotei-sensei (we have only had one other gyotei sensei--iemoto's highest-ranking deputies--lesson, and that was also for a special occasion). Kokusaibu said they would be providing the scroll and flowers and informed us that Paivi would do temae and Damian would be shoukyaku. I and one more student were supposed to be ready to give an interview also. This is the part that has been traumatic before, but I comforted myself knowing this time I really would be recorded and edited to not sound stupid.
Then the evening before we were informed that Yamamoto-sensei didn't want 11 people in the room, only 6 or 7, so almost half were rescheduled to regular class. The four ichi-b's, plus our German, Mexican, and Brazilian ichi-a's were arranged in the room, but then only Damian and I ended up as guests while the others sat behind us.
Then Paivi made simple tana usucha and Yamamoto sensei taught, which was pretty great to get some gyotei style tips, even when we had to be sweating bullets in front of cameras (and they wandered around and apologized when they wanted to cut through us and change their angles). They stopped us before Paivi was even finished with the closing and then interviewed Yamamoto sensei with us all sitting in a silent row around the 8 mat room, and bowing in unison a closing aisatsu (Arigatou gozaimashita!)
So, basically, this film of keiko they got was nothing like a regular keiko day, so we're all joking that we came to school everyday in formalwear and we get taught by gyotei sensei all the time in the nicest rooms with the best dogu and iemoto scrolls hanging. It's sort of hilarious.
During the ending filming of interview, they put me and the other interviewee first in the room, in case the cameras wanted to turn right to us and ask questions, so I spent that time getting progressively nervouser and nervouser. Then they stopped and decided to interview us separately, and even better, they said the questions would be in Japanese but they wanted the answers in English. Woo!
So crisis averted and then I just wished we hadn't had two Americans being interviewed when we have Romania, Poland, Russia, Finland, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and Germany to choose from too. And then after the first question, the camera man stopped and was like, "Your face is sweaty" and I'm like, well, it's hot and humid isn't it? And he's like wanna wipe your face? so I did with my handkerchief. And I hope I look okay on NHK.
Wacky.
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