EWAN!!

Let me start at the beginning...Many of you know that Ewan McGregor was a spokesperson for Aeon about 5-7 years ago. He did commericals and appeared in a print campaign. I occassionally find bits of Ewan on the back of lesson materials or used to make gameboards. When I teach my lessons I always try to find a way to work in either Ewan or Harry Potter and one day I noticed that one of my students, Tomoko got very excited when I mentioned Mr. McGregor. After class once, she told me how she went to London to see him in Guys and Dolls (me too!) and how she thinks he has the best voice (me too!).


Last Saturday she came up to me after class and showed me a flyer for something that at first glance appeared to be a motorcycle race. It took me a minute to read that it was a documentary narrated by Ewan. She asked me if I wanted to go and of course I said yes. Later that night I kind of made Mateo agree to come with me because I had never been out with students before.


We met at Nagoya station, grabbed some McDonalds (I have never seen two people eat chicken mcnuggets or a hamburger so slowly...it was painful) and then took the subway to the station located near the movie theatre. At this point we had about 15 minutes before it started and after about 5, it was obvious that we were lost. After wandering around back streets, passing some sketchy looking establishments and using maps on cellphones, Tomoko and her friend finally found the movie theatre. Now, when I say movie theatre, I mean 3rd floor, small room with uncomfortable seats and a small-ish screen. We got there just in time, got our numbers and then went into the theatre in order (I loved this - you got to enter the theatre in the order you got there...I was number 20...).


The documentary was called 'The Doctor, the Tornado and the Kentucky Kid' and it was about a motorcycle race in California last summer. I knew nothing about motorcycles (except what I had learned from reading and watching Long Way Round...) and thought I'd just be there to listen to Ewan's attractive, attractive voice. Turns out, the documentary was really interesting and by the end was actually cheering (well, cheering on the inside) for one of the racers.


We said goodbye to Tomoko and her friend (it was kind of awkward because Tomoko is very quiet and then with us she was even quieter and her friend didn't speak English) and headed to the Aeon mall to meet Elspeth and her friend Jeannine from Kyoto. We did a bit of shopping (I bought an electric kettle for $8) and then came back to my apartment to order pizza. Both Elspeth and Jeannine hate talking on the phone in Japanese and the internet order form was insisting that we pick deep dish pizza so we decided to walk and try to find the pizza hut. We brought the pizza back to my place and had a long conversation about everything from teaching in Japan to living in residence to Harry Potter and Lost.


All in all, some good times...