Training and Thai

At the end of March I went to Hamamatsu, an hour west of Shizuoka City by local train, for a four-day training session for work. Training left something to be desired, but I met some great, fun people and found Hamamatsu to be a pretty interesting city.Hamamatsu Castle was surrounded by cherry blossoms, and the lanterns strung through the trees gave the paths around the castle a sweet pinkish glow.

Hamamatsu is a sister city to Warsaw, Poland, and world headquarters of the Kawai and Yamaha musical instrument companies!

Highlight of the trip: the last night of training, we went out for Thai at a tiny restaurant down a narrow alleyway near our hotel. There was one cute lady running the place, Nina was her name, I think, and the seven of us filled every seat she had. I'm pretty sure she loved us. We loved her. She served up the Singha, stir-fry, and pumpkin dessert, then sat down with us to chat, smiling and laughing and speaking a mix of Japanese, English, and Thai. So cute!

There were photos on the wall of Nina when she was younger, dressed up all fancy: She was such a spitfire, we should have taken her to karaoke with us.Yes, after dinner, we trainees went singing...at a “Karaoke and Rent-a-Car” facility. And the people who walked in the door in front of us were actually there to rent a car, ridiculous.

***There are, however, some people in Hamamatsu who are far less awesome than Nina. Check out this story and Mr. Jiro Kawasaki’s plan to boot Hamamatsu’s foreign workers (the city has a huge Brazilian population) due to the recession: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigrant.html