Of Sharkfin Soup and Jellyfish

Yesterday was a busy day. I went to campus to study Japanese with a fellow classmate, perused through bibliographies while looking for sources for my research paper, and then later I had a student to go conversate in English with.

Sho is the biweekly student on account that he is a busy surgeon. He was also the student who, during the trial lesson, stayed for 30 minutes and paid me 5000 yen (~$50). Well, today he was running late and offered, due to this, to take me out to dinner.

Now color me weary. I've been fairly paranoid and at first I thought I should call it off, but then I remembered that if it wasn't a public place, I had told Roxanna to message me every so often so I could use one as an excuse to get out.

After a half an hour of trying to find the meeting spot, we head to the Keio Plaza hotel, which is ritzy beyond ritzy. Lot of 5-star restaurants in there. Most of them were closing when we arrived so we ended up going to the authentic Chinese restaurant. He ordered (since I sure as hell didn't know what to pick) and it ended up being like...an 8-course meal along with wine and desert and good heavens. I ate things like Jellyfish, Sharkfin Soup, Peking Duck...you know, shit that I would never imagine in all my years to be eating.

And it was good, too. I'm going to assume insanely pricey, but very good. Probably the best meal I ate in my entire life.

So we start discussing a various manner of things. Religion, politics, philosophy, sad, sad, sad state of the global economy. At about that time he pays me up front and just gives a happy old man smile.

...It was 20,000 yen. That's pretty much, given what the exchange rate is like, $200.

What. the. hell.

I don't know whether to be okay with this or to be more weary @_@