What a weird day. It was a good one, but weird. We had another open high school day, and that meant that the place was crawling with prospective students again. After yesterday’s presentation, everyone was telling me how great it was, especially the part with me in it. I’m in it? What? Today I attended the presentation to watch.

They had an introduction by the jazz band – they sounded great. They did two songs, and then some students came in to do some dance numbers. This morning I was chatting with a group of girl students that were on clean-up patrol in the teacher’s room. They told me that I had to watch them dance in the presentation. They were struggling for the right word, and so they asked Mr. Hayashi to translate. He said “transvestite”, and the girls proudly told me that they were transvestite. When they took the stage in the afternoon, I saw what they meant.

The boy students were dressed as girls and vice versa, and they did a dance number to Phil Collin’s “You Can’t Hurry Love”. It was pretty good, and the girls did dance really well.

Afterwards they did a slide show presentation, which was pretty standard stuff. Watching the show you’d think that school life at Takasago Minami is 90% sports and fun, and 10% classes. Actually it’s probably closer to half and half. They had a section on special subjects, and a couple pictures of me teaching different classes. The voice-over said that “Bryan-sensei is very nice, and makes it easy to learn English. He’s also very handsome.” I hope the students aren’t making a decision on what high school to attend based on how hot the English teacher is.

I knew from the day before that next was a long boring interview with the school principal, so I snuck out to wait with the band. They were outside the east entrance waiting for everyone to leave so they could retrieve their instruments.

I chatted with a group of first year students, who took the opportunity to examine me up close. They all wanted to hold their hands next to mine and compare the size, they all touched my hair, marveling at the softness (like a kitten, they said) and also the color. They didn’t believe that my hair was really that color, and they wanted to know why the five o’clock shadow that I had was dark hair, and the hair on my head was so much lighter. I tried to explain it as sun exposure, but they just laughed. They also were really interested in the depth of my eyes, physically, compared to wear the bridge of my nose is. Their faces tend to be more flat, so they all wanted to feel the top of my nose.

The sound of all the junior high students leaving saved me from further touching and prodding, so I said my goodbyes and got out of there. I went over to my classroom and we had a good lesson on Thanksgiving, with a much smaller class. The students were really quiet and it was hard to illicit a reaction from them, but they all said on their survey that the class was great, and they all took their turkeys home with them.

I went back to the teacher’s room and did some studying for a little while since the staff room was pretty empty. Around 4:30 it was still pretty empty, so I grabbed my bag and hit the road.

At the Takasago station I bumped into a bunch of junior high school girls that had been at my school the day before. They all remembered my name and flagged me down.

It seems that the younger the students are, the less shy they are. I don’t know why, but these junior high students and my first year students are probably the least inhibited of all the ages I teach. Including the adults.

We got off at the same station, and the girls were full of questions. One asked me if I had a girlfriend. I gave my standard answer automatically, “No”, and she volunteered for the job. Some of her friends were spouting English like crazy – “You are tall”, “You are handsome”, “Do you speak Japanese?”. It didn’t hurt my ego any to be surrounded by lots of girls like a rock star, and since they were speaking English I felt like I was actually doing some good.

I arrived at my apartment complex and one of the kids from the area asked me what I was going to have for dinner. I told her curry and rice, and she started ragging on me in Japanese that I eat that too much. I told her in Japanese that I didn’t have much time tonight, so it was a nice easy meal. She laughed and imitated my accent, and it was funny to hear my own words come back at me, exaggerated by a child. I wanted to hire her on the spot to help me out.

I just finished dinner and I’ve got lots of chores around the house to catch up on. Tomorrow things get back to normal at school.

Today was an abbreviated day at school because we were sponsoring an “open high school” day, where junior high students could check out our school and see if they wanted to try to attend it.

I get the sense that our school is not so popular among students. The exam is supposedly very easy to pass, and so it’s not like we’ve got an sort of discriminating taste in what students we are trying to attract.

Mr. Hayashi asked me to hang out with him at the registration desk, so I put on my big smile and said hello to most of the 300 students that arrived. One girl said hello back, asked me my name, and was carrying on so much that I thought she was going to ask for my phone number. Definitely not your standard reaction, but it was fun. All of the students went into the gym to watch a presentation. There was a Powerpoint slideshow, a couple of videos, a dance routine, and to top it all off – an interview with our principal (gasp!). I told Mr. Yamamoto that it’s best to close with your most exciting thing; we agreed that the principal interview wasn’t a good closer.

Mr. Yamamoto and I have been planning a lesson for the prospective students. They came in and sat down, and we jumped right into it. The lesson was on Thanksgiving. I had put the lesson together, Mr. Yamamoto added a few dramatic touches, and it turned out pretty good.

Teaching to students like this is always a little weird. You’ve got no rapport with them, they don’t know what to expect from you, and they are always very shy. I got a few of them to open up. Some of the boys were definitely not having a good time, but I got a couple smiles out of them.

We explained the meaning of Thanksgiving and it’s history in about three sentences, and then we had what may be the cheesiest and possibly most absurd conversation possible, between an Indian and a Pilgrim.

The funniest part was that Mr. Yamamoto insisted on dressing up as an Indian. He had a small headdress that he borrowed from a friend, and I put some war paint on his face, right in the middle of the lesson. I played the part of the white guy. I wasn’t aware that he was going to dress up, but I’ve got my paleface impersonation down pat.

Anyway, after the initial shock of seeing some crazy teacher dressed up as an Indian, the students relaxed and we had them do the conversation as well. They did a pretty good job with it. Then to finish we did a fun activity that I had remembered from my school days – making a turkey from a hand tracing. They turned out nicely, and the students really enjoyed doing it. I brought some pictures of wild turkeys so they could compare with the real thing. I was genuinely surprised how well it went.

We finished up the lesson and handed out a questionnaire/evaluation sheet, and I was pleased to see that our class got, on average, the highest ranking possible. It was the war paint, I’m sure of it.

Another bonus was that one of the students asked if she could talk to me about entering the ESS club at school. I showed her some of the projects that we’ve been working on, and we talked about her background. She wasn’t as shy as some of the other students, and I’m hoping that she’ll be able to enter the club if she enrolls in our school.

At the end of the day the history teacher invited me to a dinner sponsored by him at Amuse in Kakogawa on Friday night. It turns out that it’s a bit more than a friendly invitation. He invited one of the female teachers that he’s currently chasing, and she said that she wouldn’t go unless I went. Now he’s looking for a favor from me to lure her there so he can hit on her when I’m not at all interested but I can’t tell anyone involved in this situation that. Is that clear enough? Wacky stuff.

After school I went over to Tsuji-san’s place across the street and had a nice long conversation in Japanese and English. I’m getting closer and closer to some kind of major Japanese breakthrough. I feel like I’m getting to the point where I go from broken Japanese to just Japanese. Once I get there, I’ll feel a whole lot better and the improvements will just keep getting more and more dramatic.

On the way home I got some stewed pork and had that over rice with a Caesar salad for dinner. I’ve just spent almost an hour and a half updating the site, and I’m still tired from the weekend. Tomorrow will be another Thanksgiving lesson, and I may get out a little early. I’m looking forward to that.

What an interesting day this has been. We left from Shin-Osaka and took the Hankyu train line into Takarazuka. It was an easy trip to the southern part of Takarazuka, and we got off the train and went right into the Takarazuka Hotel.

Why are we going to a bridal fair? Because we’re getting married someday, and likely that’ll happen in Japan. I wanted to get an idea of what a Japanese wedding is like, and so this seemed the best way to figure it out.

There are two types of weddings in Japan, a traditional Japanese style one, which is not so popular, and a Western style one, a “Christian” wedding. The only thing Christian is the reverend, but people love it. That’s the style that Kuniko wants, and I guess it’s appropriate since I’m a Western style person myself. Besides, you should see the weird outfits they wear for the traditional ceremony.

The hotel was hosting the bridal fair to drum up interest in the use of it’s facilities for the wedding. Japanese weddings are pretty expensive, and the hotel offers all kinds of different options, but in the end they want you to get married there. We weren’t expecting the full on treatment that we got, though.

There were about twenty couples, and believe it or not, I was the only foreigner there. Starting off, we had to fill out a questionnaire. I figured they’d use that information against us later, so we put in lots of fake info. One great question was, do your parents know about the wedding? Ha! We took a quick tour of the hotel, and checked out all the special rooms.

After walking around a bit, we sat down and watched a fake wedding performed by actors. They did everything that would happen in a real wedding, except that the audience were all total strangers. People clapped at all the right places, and even did a little prayer led by the foreign pastor. I thought it was funny. The gave us flower petals for the “Flower Shower”, and we sprinkled them liberally on the bride and groom as they left.

After the pseudo-ceremony we went into one of the dining halls for a “bridal fashion show”. We sat down and they poured champagne for us. The real stuff, too. I thought they’d just pour one glass and be done with it, but I went through six glasses. They brought out course after course of food, and we ate up. We dutifully took pictures of each entree – they were pretty good. We had an appetizer, a soup that had a crust baked over the top of the bowl, a big beef filet with foie gras, a mushroom platter, the hits just kept coming. It’s a testament to how good the beef dish was when I don’t have a picture of it. It looked so good we forgot all about the pictures and dove right in.

The brought in another couple of actors who went to the front of the room and each poured some kind of chemical into some glasses – when the chemicals mixed they started glowing, and then our servers came around and poured some chemicals into a special glass in the middle of our table (that I had eyed earlier thinking it might be champagne).

Then the “fashion show” began. It was quite a show, and words really fail to describe it. Luckily I took lots of pictures.

There were a few traditional type dresses, but they really leaned more towards the bizarre. The music was catwalk music and the models all did a good job of being cool and beautiful. Considering we had just eaten a gigantic free meal and I had about a bottle of champagne, we patiently sat through it and amused ourselves with some of the kooky designs.

Finally we got a chance to get out of there. We couldn’t believe that the whole thing was free, though. We’re ready to go somewhere else next weekend and have another party.

After we walked around a little more, we met up with Antoine and his girlfriend Miwako. This was Kuniko and my first time to meet Miwako, and she was really nice. We were really curious since Antoine doesn’t speak and Japanese, and she supposedly didn’t speak much English. How do they communicate? How do they make it work? Turns out Miwako doesn’t speak quite a bit of English, and Antoine did a good job of following our conversations, so apparently he’s getting good at listening to Japanese.

We all went to a restaurant near Antoine’s house that was kind of a bakery/restaurant. Lots of food here, and I was lucky to find a club sandwich on the menu. It was pretty good – chicken instead of turkey, but the best I’m liable to find around these parts.

We chatted for a long time and learned all about each other – Miwako is a student living in south Osaka, and she also works part-time. She has a great personality, lots of smiles and was very friendly. I hope that we get to hang out with them again sometime soon. She said that she’d be interested in poker night, which should make it a more exciting game. Her personality is a nice fit with Antoine’s. Both of them have a good sense of humor. With Kuniko around to translate, Antoine was able to explain to her that he often uses sarcasm, something that she hadn’t been aware of until this evening. How surreal is that?

Finally Kuniko and I headed to the station, we got on the next train. We were both exhausted from the busy day. Kuniko and I headed in different directions at Nishinomiya Kitaguchi, and I finally got home around ten p.m. On a school night, too – I’ll be really tired tomorrow.

Ahh, a day off. I slept in this morning, took care of some household chores, did some laundry, and was very domestic. The weather outside was clear and cool, and I did take a walk in the early afternoon, but mainly stayed home.

In the afternoon Kuniko called and invited me over to her place for the evening, so I gathered up my gear and caught a train to Osaka for the first time in a long while. I took advantage of the train ride to rock out with my music – it makes the trip go by so much quicker. I’ll never get tired of riding trains around – it’s nice not to have to worry about traffic.

Once I arrived in Shin-Osaka I searched high and low for a flower shop, but when I found one the selection wasn’t all that great. I did the best I could, and went to see Kuniko.

She was fighting a sore throat, so we decided to go get some ramen for dinner. She pointed the way to a new place for me, ramen from Kyushu. The noodles were a little smaller, but the pork was the main event. The pork was rolled and grilled, so the inside was super tender, and the outside was almost black, but still soft, salty, and delicious. Oh, yeah.

After a big meal we went home to relax and watch some TV. As my Japanese improves I can start to understand the gist of what people are saying. I’m not saying that I understand Japanese TV – I never will. One show had guys dressed up like famous foreigners (complete with big fake noses) who rolled a dice to see who would be beat up by the others. Wacky stuff. There was also a comedy show, and one of the guys on there was a graduate from the school where I teach.

Tomorrow we’re headed into Takarazuka for a bridal fair. Should be interesting!

At just under ten degrees Celsius you can see your own breath in the morning. Today was the first time for me to see my own breath this season. Soon I’ll be putting on layers of clothing and struggling to stay warm in my own home.

No complaints about today – lots of classes, but a nice mix of different lessons. I’m tutoring students on taking the STEP English proficiency interview. I may even be interviewing some of them – if they take the exam at Takasago Minami I am scheduled to be one of the interviewers next weekend.

After school I went home and relaxed a bit. I downloaded Survivor and watched that, had a traditional(?) hot dog and caesar salad dinner. The caesar salad was kind of an impulse buy because they just started carrying the dressing at Ito Yokado. The dressing is quite good – I give it my gaijin approval.

Since it was Friday night I hit the orange juice pretty hard, in a bid to be 100% healthy for the weekend. We’ll see if it pays off.

I rely on my laptop. It’s my lifeline to news, family, this website, everything. It’s got all my pictures, all my music, all my files. It sits in the middle of my dining area, and I occasionally eat in front of it or around it. Over the last year lots of little crumbs and things have fallen on the keyboard, so I went over to Ito Yokado to get a can of air to blast them out of there.

They must have thought it was strange to have a foreigner inquiring in Japanese about where he could buy air. Especially when I pantomimed the blasting of my keyboard, and tried to explain that it was for cleaning. Eventually they just said no, we don’t got air.

I went over to the music shop, which has not only CD’s and DVD’s, but musical instruments as well. I found a can of air there to clean guitar pickups, and after confirming with one of the employees that it was just air and not chemically treated, I was good to go. The employee was thrilled to talk to a foreigner, and we spent about 15 minutes talking about various things, mainly in Japanese. He had been to the States once, to Detroit. I don’t know much about Detroit, but we talked about music too. He’s a heavy metal fan. We got along well, and I’ll have to drop by next time I’m on the third floor.

In the spirit of visiting people I also dropped by the bookstore to chat with the English-speaking employee there, Megumi. She was finishing up her shift, and we talked for a while. She is planning on joining Jane and some of her friends on a trip to Kobe to go to the Mexican restaurant. I wish I could go – I’ll have to wait until next time, though.

Finally I headed home with my can of air and cleaned the computer thoroughly. The typing is much smoother now. Cleaning up the computer has got me thinking about backing up some of the important stuff I’ve got on here. I’m going to shop around a little for either a DVD burner, a new hard drive, or both. It would be good to take care of some of these things in case something dies.

This weekend I’m headed into Osaka to spend some time with Kuniko, and we’ll both go to meet Antoine and his new girlfriend in Takarazuka, as well as take in a bridal fair at one of the hotels there. I’m going to be interested to see how that is – lots of interesting questions to be answered there.

Today’s classes went really well – only three and they were finished by lunch time. The afternoon I spent studying and avoiding the history teacher. He did catch me long enough to get me to help teach some junior high school kids next week. They are going to be working in the library, and he asked me to drop by and speak with them for a while. No problem!

I also spent some time with Yamamoto sensei today talking about our open high school lesson next week. It will be an introductory lesson aimed at the junior high school students that are interested in going to our school. Apparently there aren’t very many. We are going to do a lesson on Thanksgiving, and so we talked about some of the details. Mr. Yamamoto has quite an adventurous spirit – we may actually dress up like Pilgrims and Indians to do part of the lesson. I’m not sure if he’s serious, actually. I’m guessing that I’ll be the Pilgrim.

After school the ESS club was a no-show, so I started working on lesson plans. At 4:30 one of my students showed up, so I went with her to the classroom and we continued working on the ESS bulletin board. After a while another student showed up, with two boys in tow. She was enjoying the attention she was getting from them, and she kept them busy slaving away. They are just fools for her English lovin’.

Iku-chan, probably the most hard-working new ESS student, brought in some scones that she had baked. She gave me one wrapped beautifully with a note in English that said, and I quote, “Dear Bryan: Please, Bryan eats this scone to heat on microwave oven, and spread butter or margarine, honey or jam. I hope that Bryan had better cold. See you…”

It was very sweet, and I had the scone for dessert later on – delicious. The girl can cook! I followed her advice and had it with a bit of butter and some strawberry jam. Excellent.

This evening I went over to Ito Yokado to look for shirts, but they didn’t have any with my collar size. I’m going to have to expand my search radius a little bit. I did buy some goodies at the grocery store, so I’ll be eating healthy for a couple more days.

Antoine called and I chatted with him about election results. He’s taking things pretty hard. I’m going to get to see him on Sunday with his girlfriend, so that will be fun. Hopefully we’ve gotten all the politics out of the way and we can talk about fun stuff when we meet up.

I’m off to bed – tomorrow is Friday and I can gear up for the weekend.

Talk about an easy day. I spent all my time inside today, with only a few pushups and stretches for exercise. I watched three episodes of the new Battlestar Galactica TV series, and I watched Blazing Saddles in the evening.

During the day I peeked in on the election returns, did some laundry, and just tried to rest. All the relaxation has paid off, though. It’s about bedtime and my cold is just about gone. My knee has turned a beautiful yellow and purple, and I have no pain at all now. Tomorrow I’m going in to work and I should be close to 90%.

Watching the election returns via a website was an interesting experience. The web has come a long way, and now I have many kinds of data that I can analyze any way I want. In the end, I’m not sure it means much. In the end, the winner was still in doubt.

Today Kuniko attended the wedding of one of her college friends. The wedding was somewhere in Osaka, and talking with Kuniko on the phone afterwards was interesting. She was able to see everything and decide what she liked, what she didn’t, and take lots of notes. I even lent her my digital camera to take some spy photos.

One last weird thing that happened yesterday – when I was shopping they gave me my change back and the money was different. Completely different, actually. I asked about it, and they said that it went into effect on November 1st. The money is full of anti-counterfeit devices and watermarks, a little more interesting. I’ve only seen the 1000 yen note, but soon I’ll be able to check out the other ones. I’ve always been interested in money and to suddenly have new bills to play with is kind of exciting.

Well, I’m off to do some studies and then get to bed early. I want to be well rested for tomorrow.

Today was back to school for our students, after a day off yesterday to celebrate the founding of Takasago Minami High School. I had a full schedule of four classes, but they were pretty easy classes. Everybody commented on my cold, and I got a lot of sympathy from both teachers and students.

I learned a new word in Japanese today – 鼻声, “hanagoe”, which literally translated means “nasal voice”. That’s what I have – a nasal voice. I love it. The kanji characters are simple enough – the first one means nose and the second means voice. After a while learning Japanese becomes wonderfully simple sometimes. Another example, the hair on your forehead, what I would call “bangs”, is called 前髪, “maegami”. The first kanji is front, the second is hair – literally “front hair”. I wish all the words were that straightforward.

I managed a little time to study at work today, but mainly I was busy preparing for upcoming lessons. Some students brought in some sushi that they had made in the home economics class, so I scored some free rolls of sushi that were really good.

Mr. Hayashi cut me loose early, so I got home around five p.m. I stocked up on some supplies at Ito Yokado, since tomorrow is a holiday. I figure if I rest all day tomorrow then I’ll be fully recovered on Thursday.

I’m not sure what the holiday is tomorrow, but it’s a national one. Kuniko has the day off and she’ll be going to a wedding in Osaka. I’m going to be staying home, and thanks to the time difference I’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll be early evening on the west coast of the United States. That means that I can follow along on election stuff through the morning as I do laundry and enjoy a slow sunny morning. Excellent!

Sometimes being sick has it’s priviledges. Still nursing a cold I went into work and everyone was surprised to see me, except for Mr. Hayashi. Everyone else had assumed that I’d be taking an official day off to make it a three day weekend. Mr. Hayashi had told me to come in, and so we studied Japanese for a couple of hours in the staffroom.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending) my coughing and sniffing made it hard for us to concentrate on the studies, and finally when we had finished Mr. Hayashi offered to drive me to the station so that I could go home and rest.

I got home at 11:30 a.m. and it didn’t cost me any sick or personal time at all – nice!

I stopped in at Ito Yokado and got a couple of new houseplants to brighten up the place, and also ran into a display of new vegetables that they are getting in – avocados and red onions. I bought some avocados and one red onion, and went home to make guacamole again. I’m on a roll here with the guacamole.

My day at home was not too exciting. The sun came out today and streamed through my place. Normally I’d take that as a sign to go hiking, but since I’m sick I took it as a sign to take a nap. I planted my new houseplants, and then had a very simple dinner of soup, chips and guacamole.

Jane came by in the evening – she was inviting me to go to Mexican food at a restaurant in Kobe, but the time conflicts with my dinner plans with Kuniko and Antoine on Sunday. She also asked me to look at an essay that she had written, so I did some comments on that, but there wasn’t much to fix – she writes very well.

I’m off to bed early again – tomorrow is a full day, but Wednesday is a holiday. What a weird week.

I’ve set up the ability to send pictures from my mobile phone directly to this weblog. It posts automatically from wherever I am. I’ll try to remember to do it every once in a while, but for now here’s a dramatic picture of my kitchen area.

I woke up today with Kuniko sleeping next to me which is the best way I know how to wake up. We had a breakfast from some of the goodies that Kuniko had brought last night.

Kuniko is attending a wedding on Wednesday, so I lent my camera to her to take pictures. We see this as a great opportunity to do some research about our own wedding. I also gave her some homemade guacamole and some plain tortilla chips to take to her family. I made the guacamole spicy and garlicky for me – I hope it doesn’t freak them out. I’m not worried about Kuniko – she’s tough – but I hope it doesn’t give the whole family bad breath.

I walked with Kuniko to Tsuchiyama station so that she could meet her sister and go together to the hospital. I returned home and I’ve been resting again. I did a little laundry, and tried to just stay inside and take it easy. It’s been raining on and off, and occasionally a loud group of thunderheads will blow by. The first one that went by was louder than any thunder I’ve ever heard – it sounded like there was a battleship off the shore of Futami firing right over our apartment.

Ms. Miyake was nice enough to carve a pumpkin for me again this year, and so I’ve been lucky to have a jack o’ lantern again. I don’t think I’m going to get any trick or treaters this year again. I’ve got some candy here, just in case.

Dinner tonight was some Japanese comfort food that Kuniko had brought over – 玉子がゆ, kind of like an egg soup with rice – it was very good.

Right now it’s really raining hard and there’s thunder and lightning every once in a while. I hope it’s clear tomorrow because it’s back to work for me. I think that we have no students at school tomorrow, but I’m not sure why. Could be an easy day!

I spent most of Saturday resting at home, watching movies, and studying Japanese. I had some supplies to keep me going at home, so I didn’t need to go out at all.

In the evening Kuniko called when she got home from work, and I invited her to come over. She made the long train trip because she was planning on visiting her father in the hospital on Sunday. She risked getting sick to come visit me – what a woman!

Before she arrived the guys from the yakitori called up and wanted me to come down and drink with them. I explained that not only am I sick, but I was waiting for the girl of my dreams to show up. They understood, but I got another phone call from another one of the guys about 30 minutes later asking me to come. They are all great guys – I wish I could have been there.

Kuniko arrived while it was pouring rain outside, and she was carrying loads of food and fruits and snacks for me. I had been curled up reading the story of 桃太郎, about a boy born from a peach who kills demons. Kuniko was nice enough to help me with some of the stranger concepts in the story. What’s the sound a peach makes when it rolls? It’s “donburako-donburako”. Try looking that up in a dictionary.

We went to bed fairly early as Kuniko was tired from her day at work and I was tired from being sick. It was nice to fall asleep with the sound of rain outside.

Days at school are always full of unusual events, and I usually chronicle the ones that I remember after I return home – there’s plenty of things that slip through the ever-enlarging cracks in my memory. Today was a pretty normal day as far as classes go. I had four classes, and they were nice easy lessons that I’ve done before, so no problem.

My tutor, Tsuji-san, is qualified to be an interviewer for the STEP test, and so I dropped her name to Mr. Hayashi, and today she came by to meet him and to fill out an application. I went over to chat with them, and it went pretty well. She was so nervous, and there were students running all over the place, and so she had a hard time with the English part of the conversation.

Afterwards, I had some free time and so I sat down next to Mr. Hayashi and we waited for the end of the day to come around. For some reason, today everything that Mr. Hayashi said was rubbing me the wrong way. Usually when this happens it’s because I’m stressed, or in a bad mood – something that I have control of. Today I was totally relaxed, but he was just saying all the wrong things.

I let him talk for a while, and then finally made some excuses to go back to my desk. Hopefully after a couple of days I’ll reset myself and be fine.

Since I have caught a cold everyone was commenting on it today. Mr. Komuri told me that because I take a shower in the morning I will easily catch a cold. Taking a shower in the morning is very rare in Japan – it’s usually a bath before bed. I asked him how many colds I had last year, and he said (correctly) two or three. I asked him how many colds he had last year, and he said two or three. I asked him if he takes a shower in the morning, and then the light came on. He smiled, and said “You win the debate!”

On the way home I picked up some groceries and made homemade guacamole. Along with some miso soup and some corn chips I had a pretty good dinner. I’m still tasting the garlic!

This weekend will be pretty slow – I went to stay in and rest up. I’ve warned Kuniko that she shouldn’t visit unless she wants to get sick, so it may just be me in quarantine for a couple of days. That should be exciting. I’ve got some books that I’ve been meaning to read, so I’ll probably dig into those.

Today I packed up my goodies and walked to the train station with an armload of Halloween paraphernalia. I got lots of looks from the other passengers. It reminded me of what Azusa said the other night. She was invited to a Halloween party, but getting on a train in full costume can get a lot of attention in a country that doesn’t observe the holiday.

I got to school and worked through three classes, and then I had the rest of the day to study and relax. I split my time between the teacher’s office and my classroom, in a blatant attempt to dodge the history teacher.

After school the ESS students gathered along with the cooking club to have the party. We had a good turnout, and Satomi-san had the recipe all figured out. We made some cakes with pumpkin frosting. My aunt Nancy had sent some sprinkles and they were a big hit with the girls. Kuniko had contributed some cookies, chocolates, and candies. I brought along some tiny pumpkins, and they also went nuts over the Pixy Sticks that I had brought from America. It’s pure sugar, and these girls were all over it.

The cooking club girls were great to hang out with, and their group dynamics meshed with ours pretty well. Everyone was struggling with English, but we managed to communicate. I just tried to stay out of the way and help when I could. The history teacher somehow found out I was in the kitchen cooking and came to visit – he startled some of the cooking club students.

The girls asked me about Halloween in America, and we had a mini-lesson talking about it. Everyone was impressed with the holiday – it’s clearly not a big deal around here.

After making the cake we had a mini-feast, and then we delivered the leftovers to various teachers. I gave a piece to the vice-principal in an attempt to curry favor. We’ll see if it works down the road.

Now I’m back home. I’ve caught a cold, despite all the vitamin C I’ve been taking. This weekend will be mainly resting – between my knee and my cold I’m feeling like an invalid. It’ll be nice to get some serious rest time, although it’ll make for some boring journal entries.

Today started unfortunately with a cold. I woke up in the middle of the night with a sore throat and by the time I woke up in the morning it was a full blown cold. Just to spite the cold I went ahead and ate a crab and cheese omelet for breakfast, and then got organized and headed to work.

It was definitely colder going to work today, and soon I’ll have to break out the long underwear. It’s still not to the “I can see my breath” stage, though.

My day was moderately busy, with only three classes. One of the classes was moved and it caught me by surprise. They came into my room one period earlier than usual, but I was all prepared so no problem. It’s actually my favorite class of 1st year students. I give out “participation points” to students that volunteer to give out an answer. The average student in any of my classes has one or two participation points. This particular class, however, probably averages five or six. They are fearless to a man and just the class I’d want with me if I was invading an English speaking country.

Lots of weird English conversations today with students, almost none of which happened in my classroom. I had a heart to heart conversation with four of my boy students over lunch in the cafeteria. We talked for a long time about American women. They wanted to know a lot more than I gave them, but hopefully it’ll be enough for now. I also talked with a couple of girl students at my desk, who asked me “Are we in the way?” in a chorus of giggles. I had no idea what that meant. Finally, after school was over I talked with one of the soccer team members, who came up and had a serious extended conversation with me. He looked absolutely comfortable talking and it made me think that he was winning a bet or something by doing this.

A while back I had the ESS club working on a bulletin board, and I’ve kind of left the project in their hands. Today I went up to my classroom after school and the two girls that have been working on it had recruited three boys to help out. Cool! It helps that there are some cute girls in ESS. Maybe I’ll finally get some boys in the club.

Tomorrow we are having a Halloween party, so today we went shopping for supplies. I joined three ESS members for a walk to Seiyu to buy goodies for tomorrow. There’s nothing quite like going shopping with three giggling Japanese schoolgirls. I was definitely the odd man out. Students from other schools kept a close eye on us, and when my ESS students spoke English to me, I could tell everyone was impressed.

Finally we got what we needed and I headed back on the train. I had a quick dinner at Ito Yokado and skipped my place and went straight to Azusa’s house near Carrefour. We studied there for an hour, and she had pulled out the kotatsu to keep warm. What’s a kotatsu? It’s a table with a heating element built-in. The heater is under the table, and the table is surrounded by a skirt that keeps the heat in. You can just kind of sit at the table and it keeps everything warm. Some people sleep in them, I hear.

Azusa’s lesson went really well. Her L’s and R’s are improving, and she’s getting a little more confident as she gets more comfortable with me.

Azusa’s mom insisted on serving me coffee after my lesson, and it was nice to walk home with something warm in my stomach. On the way home I had one of those weird moments when I am surprised to be in Japan. I was walking along by a small waterway, and we’ve almost got a full moon. It was a clear night and walking through the rice paddies towards Carrefour in the distance, I passed a couple of old tombs that are part of a tiny graveyard.

I guess that eventually I won’t have many moments like this as I get used to where I am living, so for now I’m trying to enjoy them when they come.

I did one last trip to Ito Yokado for a couple of tiny pumpkins to bring to the party tomorrow, and now I’m back home. The day has flown by – I need to take some time to relax tomorrow.