Lunch with the President of S&M

Today all 4 of us interns were taken out to lunch by S~ Kaicho, kai means company and cho is head. He’s the head of Sanyo Sales and Marketing, one of the top guys in the whole company for sure. He seems very not busy and the entire staff of hundreds of SM is in Osaka, while he works in Tokyo with only a secretary. But he’s very bright and it’s quite an honor for us to be hosted by him. He is quiet and has a sense of humor, and always pays. Once at a nomikai (drinking party) I told him how much I like eating oyako donburi and he said he knew a specialty shop for it. Today he took us there. There were 2 items on the menu: regular for $10 and hi quality for $15, meaning free-range eggs and better chicken. It was really excellent, and there were large jars of takuwan, or daikon pickles, on each table. But the atmosphere was pretty stodgy compared to my other favorite oyakodon specialty shop, Kawanakajima. I’ll talk more about that later.
The new intern, an Indian girl of 20, seems not to know much about Japanese language or culture even though she’s lived here as a student for 3 years. She was talking to S~ like he was at her service, and also during the meal stuck her chopsticks in the rice. That’s a top level cultural blunder, done only at funerals. Then we walked the grounds of Tokyo U (Todai) and finally around Ueno park, all in 35 degree weather. We were so hot and sweaty that we couldn’t really work for the rest of the afternoon. But I had a big night coming up, so I drank my Pocari Sweat, finished work, and headed out to Asakusa to meet my Masako.