Kumesen Black

   Let me tell you, I’ve been mulling over how to put this blog together for over a year now and have yet to write a single word. And now that I’m finally getting round to writing it, I’m at a stage in my life where I’m drinking less and less.

   Don’t get me wrong. I still like a good stiff drink. It’s just that I’m finding that I’m starting to enjoy a good night’s sleep even more. Go ahead, call me an old man. I won’t hold it against you.

   Today marks a happy milestone of sorts in my life. As of this afternoon I am no longer an employee of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Sciences and Technology (What a mouthful!), having resigned from my part-time teaching position at the Kyûshû Institute of Technology. (KIT, Kyûkôdai)

   The six years I spent at KIT (I’m practically a grad student) were not always happy ones. The ninety-minute commute by bus, the ghost town the school is located in, the uninspiring campus, the sullen full-time teaching staff, and the miserable students all contributed to making Wednesdays and Thursdays the two most dreaded days of my workweek.

   This past year, however, has easily been the most pleasant, or should I say, least unpleasant of my tenure at the university. Instead of the usual required freshman courses, I was given a slew of elective classes to teach. Elective classes, while involving more effort on the behalf of the instructor (class size is sometimes three times bigger), offer a lot of freedom in how the class is taught and who may take part in the class. So, instead of twenty to thirty self-conscious freshmen, most of whom are boys, you get a group of fifty to sixty boisterous sophomores and juniors, a fair portion of whom are coeds. Let me tell you, the atmosphere is like night and day.

   This year, I was also fortunate enough to have a Nepali in my class. Adi was the antithesis of the typical Kyûkôdai student. Funny, gregarious, flirtatious, curious, and fairly well-traveled, he became the mood-maker of the four classes he attended this year. I so took a liking to the young man that I even invited him to hunt for girls in my classes at another university I was teaching at  which has a more favorably apportioned student body.

   As the second semester was nearing its end, Adi came up to me after class one day and said, “In my country it’s common to give your teacher a present.” And, he handed me a bottle of Kumesen Awamori. When I got home, I immediately opened the bottle and poured myself a glass over ice.

   Normally, I don’t drink much awamori in the wintertime, preferring to drink shôchû mixed with hot water or hot saké (atsukan), instead. Oh, I might have a few glasses if I’m at an Okinawan restaurant, but the potent clear liquor has always been a summer drink for me.

   The first time I had awamori was on my first visit to the island of Okinawa ten years or so ago. My girlfriend at the time and I had checked into a hotel and were waiting in the lounge where we were served “welcome drinks”. Ordering “something local”, the waiter presently brought me a glass of awamori served in Ryûkyû glass. As I looked out at the clear blue sea just beyond the coral beach I took a sip of the drink and my mouth filled with that distinctive awamori fragrance, unlike anything I had ever drunk. I was hooked.

   The gift Adi gave me took me back, as so many glasses of good awamori do, to that hotel on the quiet northern reaches of the Okinawan mainland and all the tension melted like the ice in the glass.

   Shortly after our final class, Adi wrote the following on my Facebook wall: “Thanks for those great classes. It was a wonderful year. At last, there are some teachers who teach life rather than morals and equations. Thanks for everything.”

   “Thank you, Adi,” I said, raising my glass towards Iizuka. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

   Kumesen Black, aged for seven years, contains 43% alcohol by content.

   Rate: ★★★★★

   Oh yeah. Adi, you get an A+.