00:10
Well, we had some great ideas, super innovative ideas on how to make friends or elicit friendships
in the department.
Force.
Yeah, exactly.
Forcing it.
You know, forced or otherwise, it's still the same.
The result is friends.
Right.
So, you know, doesn't matter.
Anyway, so how's your お友達作ろうキャンペーン going outside of the department?
Outside of your work.
Yeah, so, well, unfortunately, I haven't made new friends yet.
I haven't found anyone.
Have you been working too much?
Well, it's...
However, I did meet with some friends, very old friends.
We've been...
Oh, that's nice.
We've been friends since we were like 19 years old.
So we first met at バイト, izakaya no BAITO when we were 18, 19 years old.
And then we were working at the same place for like several years while we were college students.
On and off, like sometimes we quit and then we resumed again.
So those were good...
Well, I'm not sure if we would say like good friends, but we would hang out after バイト
and then we would drink until like next morning.
And then we...
I think it qualifies as good friends.
Good friends, yeah.
And then, yeah, we would get drunk.
And then, yeah, it was like good memories.
I do have good memories about that.
Have you recently reconnected with this person?
So I was in the United States for, you know, like many years.
So during those periods, I wasn't...
I didn't meet with them very often or probably only one of them.
Okay, so it's a group of people.
A group of people, yes.
It's like six of us.
Oh, that's nice, yeah.
And then we reunited after probably more than 10 years recently.
Wow.
Yeah.
But when we get together, we feel like we're still like 20 years or so.
I mean, that's the beauty of like meeting old friends, right?
You can pick up where we left off.
Yeah.
And then, do you remember I consulted you on...
03:02
I wanted to make friends for rock climbing, right?
Yes.
Yeah, what happened to that?
Yeah, I still haven't found anyone.
But during that like meeting with...
Reunion.
Yeah, reunion with my friends, I brought that up.
And then I insisted I need some new friends for rock climbing.
And then everyone...
Okay.
Everyone first said, no, it's not for me.
It's like, I'm scared of heights or like...
Okay.
I injured my back or something like that.
And then...
Sure.
But one of them said, okay, I'll go with you.
Amazing.
Yes.
Great.
You didn't even have to kidnap them.
No, I didn't have to kidnap any of them.
So we went climbing last week.
Oh, fun.
And climbed for more than probably two hours, two and a half hours.
Wow.
That's pretty long session.
Yeah.
So we played each other and it was great.
It was really fun.
And it seemed like he wanted to continue climbing.
So now I didn't make...
Yay.
I didn't make new friends, but I did find a climbing buddy.
You did manage to find your climbing buddy.
Yeah.
Which was the most important part of this whole thing, right?
You needed somebody to go with climbing so that they can delay you and each other.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that's good.
That's one thing done.
It doesn't matter if it's old one.
It's like old friend or not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's funny.
I wanted to mention about your baito friend because we should probably talk about our past baito as well at some point, even though that's not very scientific.
I mean, I did teach science, but that's just for small part of it.
The other part of it, like I also have really good friends from my daigaku jidai no baito.
What kind of baito was it?
So in my case, I quickly found out that teaching English makes the best money for me.
Because if you work at like Macとかスタバとかで働いたら, well, at least from what I remember, JQ was like maybe 800円から, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Or maybe 1000円, I can't remember, but it was something around that line.
But if you did 家庭教師 or 塾講師, it was a little bit more.
And I found a 塾 that they were looking for bilingual teachers.
So that was even a little bit more than the regular 塾講師.
And the best part is that because I was only back in Japan during the summer time,
I can only realistically work for like two months of the year, right?
06:01
But they didn't care because summer is their busiest time.
They have 書期講習, and their usual teachers, especially the 外国人のネイティブ先生は they go on holiday and they don't show up.
So I was basically like a 塾のプロだったの。 I was like subbing for everyone.
And I taught a lot of like huge range.
I did like phonics with three or four-year-olds as well as some like proper TOEFL exam prep with 大学生 and stuff.
But what was fun is that because they had a few 大学生、バイリンガル講師 as well as ネイティブ講師, right?
And sometimes バリンガル講師の方がさ for some students it's a better match, right?
Or like depending on what you're looking to do.
So we had those and it just so happened that a few of us were there at the same time that summer.
We were like in and out of Japan similar time.
We were all like 中学生、小学校、高学年から中学生のその間のどれかで海外に行ってた人たち。
あと、もっとちっちゃい時に海外に行ってた人たちね。 5歳とか幼稚園ぐらいの頃から。
So like we just like overlapped in terms of like what parts of Japanese culture were 抜けてる
and what parts of our childhood is more Western culture.
So like we all watched The Little Mermaid in English,
but どっかのタイミングでディズニーを日本語で見るようになったみたいな。
So like that sort of thing matched.
So we knew we were like so weirded out when you heard Japanese lyrics to like A Whole New World or something like that
because we knew that in English or Lion King in English.
And like そういうところが無駄になんか息が、タイミングが合ってて。
So we would go to Karaoke and just do our like childhood English songs
that they cannot do with their other Japanese friends
because that just sounds like so stuck up, you know?
なんかめっちゃなんか、なんていうか、えらそうじゃないけど、すごい帰国主女感が出るじゃん。
So like you don't want to do that with your other dialectal friends.
09:00
You don't want to sound like a show-off.
But like we loved singing out to like Avril Lavigne, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, like that kind of thing.
And yeah, we had a lot of fun.
And so like I don't even like Karaoke that much, but that was the only Karaoke I would go.
Because like it's just kind of fun.
So it's funny to like have that kind of like bite of friends
Yeah, we have nothing in common other than that bite.
Right, right.
Like we all study completely different things.
We were in different universities.
None of us except myself is from academia, my old friends.
Yeah, same.
But it is just funny because like you share that, you know, moment.
For me, it's just like even the summer.
It's only just like two summers maybe that I spent with them.
Because it makes sense for them because they were like...
That makes sense.
Like I just jumped in for their summers and they still like, you know, we're still connected on like social media.
And every time I go back, I let them know, hey, I'm in town.
They're like, all right, let's get together.
That's nice. Yeah.
Yeah.
In your case, it makes sense because...
When you were young, you didn't live in Japan, you lived abroad.
That's how you connected with everyone, right?
Yeah, maybe.
Like we all experienced to a different degree both the benefits and like the disadvantage of being in Japan.
Yeah, so yeah.
That helps.
That connects, yeah.
Yeah, like the fact that we don't have to like...
You feel free, yeah.
Yeah, like that's kind of fun.
You don't have to suppress anything.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I don't think they even go to karaoke on a regular basis.
But like this one was just like really fun.
Yeah.
Group of people to go with.
Wait, I want to hear more about your vital view.
Let's stop the episode here for now.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us at EigoDeScience on Twitter.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
