Cleaning House

Cleaning office, actually. As the school year winds down and (believe it or not) the workload gets lighter, I have taken it upon myself to clean up the office space a little. I share a staff room with 13 other teachers. The office includes a fridge (broken for longer than I have worked there), three archaic Japanese word processors, several bookcases filled with books published back when I was in high school (OK, some are as recent as 2-3 years ago), and just WAY too much clutter for it to be a friendly place to work in.

The cost of getting the fridge out of there is somewhere in the neighborhood of $50, and the word processors might cost $10 each to get rid of, but it'll be worth it! Less clutter = a happier atmosphere! Anyways, Teppei and I took action yesterday and today, getting rid of probably 150 pounds of books! We brought them to Book Off (a secondhand book store), hoping to get a bit of money so we could go out for yakiniku with Kenney and Yukky for lunch.

The result of all that hard work was... a whopping 330 yen! (If you're not familiar with the exchange rate, let's just say it's enough to buy 3 sodas from a vending machine.) So we couldn't exactly cover lunch, but we went anyways... Kitaya is an inCREDible place to enjoy meat... and meat... and kimchi, curry, and meat! I didn't get any pics of the inside, because I was too focused on eating... but check the last pic - Teppei smirking at their careless English on the sign outside. "Well Come" and "Diner time" along with a somewhat scary looking lady! Anyways, good thing I ran 7km this morning - I run hard so I can eat hard! And eat hard I did!!!

この頃、文系の職員室の掃除に取り組んでいます。長い間、古い教科書などが保管されていて本棚以外にも、机にも多く置かれたりしてちょっと雰囲気が。。。まぁ、とにかく故障してる冷蔵庫、時代遅れのワープロを処分して、使われていない本を捨てようと英語科の先生方に提案した。冷蔵庫やワープロは５年間以上同じところにそのままホコリをかぶってる。教科書は本棚や机に同じくホコリをかぶってるだけ。

職員室を心地良くするために、教科書をひもで結んで、ブックオフ小禄店に運んだ。量は量ってないけどおよそ７０キロぐらいあったと思います。哲平に「料金でないかもしれないけどやってみよう！」と言われて、今朝その教科書を僕のイストに乗せて出発！着いたら店員に手伝ってもらってカウンターにもってきた。しばらくしたら店員に呼び出されて、あんな山からたったの７冊を３３０円で買い取ると言われた。「えぇぇぇ」と思いながら愚痴を言わずに金貨６枚をもらって沖尚に戻った。

４人で教科書のお金で焼き肉を食べに行く予定があったのに、それぞれにジュース１本でさえ買えなかったことに気が沈んでいたけど、結局は「きたや」というとてもおいしい焼肉屋に行って大量のおいしい肉を食べながらケニーの話を聞いた。

まだ４０キロ弱の教科書が職員室に残ってるけど、近いうちそれもブックオフにもって行って、２００円ぐらいもらえたら哲平と二人でジュースを飲みに行く。なんて悲しい！（苦笑）