Wednesday and Thursday are my easy days, with only three classes each day. Today all my classes went really well. I’ve decided that in the class that I teach alone, I will try to use more Japanese to explain some concepts. I used quite a bit today and it worked really well. The students paid a little more attention and were more patient with my English questions.

During my first year class, one of the boys in the class was impressing his friends by drawing a picture of a naked woman, and the attention to detail was startling. He asked me what I thought of it and I explained in Japanese that drawing something like that was not appropriate for the classroom. He looked nervous but still kept at it. After class I mentioned it to the very stern Ms. Terano, and she said she’d have a talk with him. He’s going to love that little chat.

I spent a lot more time today walking around and chatting with students instead of hiding in the teacher’s room studying. As usual it’s good for the students to have a chance to chat in a non-classroom environment, and it’s good for my ego to leave a trail of giggling girls everywhere I go.

After school I stopped in to do a shopping trip at my local grocery. It’s probably one of the last few times that I’ll shop there. Ito Yokado will open up in a couple of weeks, so the little grocery store will be obsolete. Don’t shed a tear for them, though. Today they were out of orange juice and chicken. I made do with shrimp and grape juice, but it’ll be nice to shop at a place that has what you want, every time.

It was shrimp (instead of chicken) curry and rice tonight, and some listening comprehension homework for dessert. I did a little cleanup after the big storm yesterday, chatted with Kuniko via e-mail, and had a nice quiet evening. Tomorrow is another easy day for me, and the weekend is fast approaching.

Today was the big day for the next typhoon. In Japan they give them names and numbers, and this one was number 18. It was billed as bigger than the last one, which rearranged everything on my patio. Not surprisingly, students didn’t have to come to school today. Unfortunately, the teachers did.

Everybody was happy about the typhoon, because that meant that we didn’t have to teach classes. The students are happy, the teachers are happy, and because it’s a “natural phenomenon” we don’t have to make up the day later on. Excellent!

The bad news was the the dirt from our baseball and soccer field (fields are sand, not grass) was kicking up in the heavy winds, and a neighbor complained. The principal announced that we would take steps to try to reduce the dirt flying around. His plan:

We were to go out on the field carrying a firehose and try to wet the thing down in typhoon force winds. Yeah, good idea. One teacher even objected out loud during the announcement, something that is very non-Japanese. The other teachers looked at him like he had snapped.

We went out there and did our best, drenching each other in the process and I’ve still got sand in my hair, ears, and eyes. Yuck. We walked around with a couple of hoses for about fifteen minutes, hopefully appeasing the neighbor. Then we all went inside and had a staff meeting to talk about October’s events.

Mr. Hayashi suggested that we go over to the local coffee shop for lunch and kill some time over there. By the time we got back, everyone was leaving, and the winds were getting even stronger. They said that Sanyo train line had stopped running, so Mr. Hayashi drove me home. What a nice guy!

I arranged some things out on my patio to prepare – I lashed down my wooden plant rack with an extension cord to keep it from leaving the balcony area. I called my folks and chatted with them for a while. It had been a while since I talked to them and it was good to catch up.

During the afternoon I studied transitive and intransitive verbs, watched a movie I had downloaded from the internet (Liar, Liar), and talked with Kuniko on the phone. Throughout the evening the wind was howling outside, and a couple of times it got louder than I thought it could ever be. Not much rain, just heavy, heavy wind. I went out on the patio twice to recover some things, but most of what was going to blow away went during the last typhoon.

I’m headed to bed – it’s extremely humid right now so I’ve got the bedroom chilling and drying – can’t wait to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow will no doubt be a cleanup day at school.

Today was back to work and everybody was talking about the earthquakes. What’s better, tomorrow a new typhoon is supposed to blow in that is as strong or stronger as the last one. Nobody is sure if we’ll even have classes tomorrow, but my prediction is that we will. The typhoon seems to be moving slowly enough that we should be OK.

I had a busy day with four classes. They went pretty well, and the students were paying fairly good attention considering all the distractions that nature has been providing lately. Some of my students said that they had seen me with a girl at a movie theater, and they asked if it was my girlfriend. I played dumb and said that it might not have been me, or that maybe it was an ALT friend. I guess they didn’t identify Kuniko, so her identity is protected.

Mr. Hayashi told me that a student’s mother had seen me with a girl somewhere, and he asked me all about that. A couple of weeks ago he was sure I was gay, now he’s sure that I’m hiding something good. He seems to be patient about rooting out the information. I think he figures that time is on his side, and he’s right.

After school I went across the street to practice Japanese and English with Tsuji-san. She helped me with some new verb conjugations, and I helped her with pronunciation. Next week she’ll be in Hokkaido sightseeing, so I’ll have next Monday off.

I got out of there around 6:30, and went home to rustle up some dinner. I made koyadofu for the first time, guessing from the back of a box and trying to read some of the Japanese. I ended up doing OK, but there’s something I’m missing. The flavor was good, but the texture was a bit too firm. I’ll try again tomorrow night.

I finally caught up on some e-mail, and now I’m headed to bed. Tomorrow may be an easy half day to weather the storm, or a regular day with a wild windy night. We’ll see what happens.

Just had another earthquake here as I was trying to fall asleep. This one seemed longer and stronger than the other one. Everything is OK – hopefully no more before tomorrow!

We woke up early, but then went right back to sleep and managed to stretch out the morning until about 10:30. We had a breakfast of granola and orange juice, and then listened to an English radio show on NHK. Kuniko listens every weekend, and also tapes it to practice with later. I wish they had something like that for Japanese learners!

After the show we decided to go into Osaka. We were both looking for some books, and they have a gigantic bookstore inside the Hankyu building in Umeda. We jumped on the train, and then took a short walk over to the Hankyu building. Umeda was crowded, and as usual it was tough to walk around with so many people. Kind of like walking around in Disneyland, except it’s everywhere.

We went to the bookstore and found the books that Kuniko was looking for, but I struck out in my search. I decided to try to find them online. We both started to get a little hungry while walking around, and Kuniko suggested a sushi place that her co-workers took her to a week ago. I agreed – I’m always up for good sushi.

If you’re ever in Japan, the best experiences you’ll ever have will come when you allow a Japanese person to show you around. Kuniko took my hand and we walked through busy shopping malls, down strange alleyways filled with neon and noise, and finally to a busy street that had lots of restaurants. We ducked into a certain sushi place, and sat down at the bar.

We ordered up some beers, and I asked what Kuniko recommended. She told me about the choices, and she said that they have some exotic sushi there that is kind of rare. The one that got my attention – horse.

A long time ago I had heard a story about a guy that ordered sushi based on pointing at the menu and had gotten horsemeat. I always thought it was an urban legend, especially since I’ve never seen horse on any menu in any sushi restaurant that I’ve been to. Kuniko pointed to the menu, and there it was. 700 yen for two raw pieces. Sure, order up!

We had lots of other sushi first, and then the guy came over with the raw horsemeat on sushi rice. In my mind I had expected a bloody chunk of flesh, but it just looked like a piece of beef. It wasn’t quite raw, either – it had been cooked ever so slightly. I picked it up with my chopsticks, dipped it in a little soy sauce, and ate it.

Hmmm… actually, it tasted a lot like beef. The flavor was a little different, the meat was tender because it was uncooked, and altogether I gave it a thumbs up. I’m not sure I’d order it every day, but it was tasty. I told Kuniko later about what happens to horsemeat in America, and she was impressed that I had even tried it.

After that we had some more sushi, raw shrimp, crab rolls, and tuna. We were pretty full, so we settled up the bill and hit the road. Back home we were both so tired that we laid down to rest for a few minutes and ended up sleeping for about an hour.

I helped Kuniko by checking her transcription of last week’s radio news, and then I packed up my stuff and made for the station. It was a great weekend, and since next weekend is likely to be very busy for her, it might be a while before I see her again.

On the way to Shin-Osaka station it started pouring rain – seriously pouring. I got caught in it, and ended up getting on my train dripping wet. Luckily I got a seat right away and sat next to a very friendly guy that didn’t mind chatting with me in simple Japanese.

Just after the train passed Sannomiya station heading west towards my town, we suddenly stopped. The train rolled to a complete stop, and I was surprised how jerky the stop was. We were stopped, but the jerking of the car continued – people started murmuring in alarm and I looked outside and realized that we were having an earthquake.

This was a pretty good sized earthquake. Usually when there’s an earthquake you can run for your life, but in a train car your options are limited. I just kind of watched what I could see outside in the dark – the buildings weren’t moving, but the wires and trees were shaking quite a bit. After about thirty seconds of shaking, it stopped.

The conductor of the train came on and gave an announcement, but I could only understand a little bit. These are the situations when not knowing enough Japanese really hurts – he might be saying that we’ll be spending the night in the train car and I wouldn’t know.

Luckily, the nice man next to me told me that we would have to wait for about 15 minutes so they could check the rails and make sure that everything was OK. I wondered vaguely how they check the rails – there’s a lot of mileage between stations. However, 15 minutes later we were on the move. No problem – I caught the Sanyo train line from Akashi and now I’m home safe. The first thing I did was call Kuniko, and she said that she really felt it. She’s OK, but she was worried about me.

The website that I read said that it was a 6.8 on the Richter scale, centered somewhere in the Kansai area. I’ll probably hear more details tomorrow at school.

I got plenty of rest last night, and woke up refreshed and ready to eat in the morning. I made myself a big Denver style omelete, and got ready to head over to visit the old man in Takasago that I had agreed to meet. Before I left I stopped by Jane’s apartment and helped her move some furniture around. We managed to get things the way she wanted, and I made a few phone calls for her in Japanese to arrange her internet connection. Then I had a quick lunch and headed to Takasago.

At the station I met the lady who asked me about this initially. We soon were met by another lady who drove us to pick up yet a third lady. As we were driving around collecting people I started to wonder if I understood correctly about chatting with an old guy. Was that just a ploy to get me in the car? Am I going to be sold into white slavery?

Turns out the next stop was at a private home, and when we went in, I met the old guy in question. He had a stroke about a year ago, so half his body wasn’t working too well, but he spoke a little bit of English and he wanted to try it out on me. We sat down around the table and chatted.

Everyone was very nice, and they kept me eating tea, coffee, fruit, cookies, everything. The wife was bustling around in the kitchen keeping us set up with food and drink while we chatted in the living room. He had lots of questions. We even pulled out the Japanese calligraphy gear to do a little calligraphy. It was fun to try it out – I’ve never really done it before. Everyone said “oooohh” and “aaaaahhh” while I wrote kanji like 高砂 and 教職.

We had a great time, but as we continued we started getting into more difficult topics like Japanese whaling and birth control (two separate topics, actually). The more complex stuff meant that they had to resort to Japanese to explain their ideas to me, and that was just too tough to understand. After about three hours, I apologized and said that I had to get going.

They dropped me off at the station, and everyone was really happy with how it went. I thought it was fun, something that made everyone happy.

Kuniko gave me a call after she got home from work, and invited me to come over and hang out at her place for the weekend. I was on a train ten minutes later and pulled into Osaka one hour after that.

She was exhausted from working on Saturday, and so we decided to get a pizza (spicy jalapeno pizza!) and watch a movie that one of her co-workers lent her, The Rock. It’s kind of a body count movie, and watching it again through Kuniko’s eyes was an interesting experience. I would cringe as the bodies would stack up.

We were off to bed after that. I think we were both so tired for different reasons.

Friday means a whole lot more when you’ve actually been working all week. Today I had three classes that I taught, and one Japanese class from Mr. Hayashi. It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do a lesson, but I think it went better than usual. Still, I found some words that I should have recognized but didn’t.

The classes went well, but I was definitely ready to hit the road around five o’clock. I went to my last YMCA Japanese class in Sannomiya, and learned a couple of new tricks. The class is down to just a couple of people, a far cry from the big group we had when we started. They have one more class on Monday, but I’m starting a regular lesson with Tsuji-san, so I’ll be busy.

I skipped the usual ramen stop in Sannomiya and went home instead. I changed clothes and walked down to the yakitori. I had a good chat with the master, lots of chicken, and a couple of beers. His big sign over the front of his shop was torn off during the last typhoon. He said that this weekend he’ll be getting it replaced. He also invited me to a volleyball tournament that several of the regulars are participating in. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go – it’s pretty far away and only accessible by car.

He also said that they broke down and opened the bottle of wine that my mom had sent along from Bartholomew Park, a late harvest zinfandel. He said it was great – he opened it with some of the members of the softball team. The image of a bunch of athletic Japanese guys sitting around a yakitori quaffing Bart Park zin is stuck in my head – too funny.

Around midnight I got home and had a glass of port before hitting the sack. Tomorrow I’m going to meet up with an older guy that wants to practice English in Takasago. Should be interesting.

Today I got a late start for school because my bed felt so good. The good news is that my late is still other people’s early, and I had plenty of time to spare.

At school I got a chance to chat with Ms. Miyake, who is always fun to talk to. After giving me some advice about proposing to Kuniko, she’s been dying to tell people about it. I’m a little worried that she might let it slip. Talking today she told me that she almost told Andy’s (my predecessor) wife Michelle about it. Andy is still in touch with lots of teachers here, so that will almost certainly spill the beans. I explained that we’d like to keep it under wraps for just a few more months, and I hope she’ll be able to do it.

Because we had exams for some of the students, I had only one class today. I spent most of my time preparing for tomorrow’s busier day. After lunch I had finished what I needed to do, so I spent the second half of the day, about four hours, studying Japanese.

I also got to chat with one of the part time teachers that I don’t know very well. I haven’t talked to her since well before summer, and she mentioned that she thought my Japanese had improved since last time we talked. I was happy to hear that – lots of hours without some positive feedback once in a while is tough. It occurred to me today that I’ve been studying Japanese for two years now. That seems like a long time, considering I still can’t speak it very well.

After school I caught the train home, and then knocked on my neighbor’s door. During the typhoon lots of their junk blew onto my patio, so I put it all in a box and delivered it to them.

The funny thing about knocking on a door in Japan is that people will ask who is there and want to know more information before opening the door and greeting you. The result is that part of your conversation is clearly heard by your neighbors.

Anyway, the wife speaks a little English, so we chatted in English for a while. She was excited to get the chance to talk. I still can’t get over how great it feels to be able to make so many people happy by doing something as simple as smiling and chatting.

It was leftover night tonight, but tomorrow is my last Japanese class at the YMCA in Kobe. I don’t have lots of money to buy a Kobe steak to celebrate, but maybe I’ll get the big bowl of ramen instead.

Today was my first full day back at school. It was a little hard to get used to sticking around for the whole day, after a whole summer of abbreviated workdays. All the students were in today, but they didn’t have classes – just a couple of homerooms, a cleaning session, and a long ceremony full of speeches and sub-ceremonies.

I worked for about an hour of my day on class preparation. I chatted with various people for about an hour. The rest of my day was studying Japanese. I’m hitting the books hard in preparation for the big test in December, and today was pretty useful. Japanese adverbs are pretty tough to get my brain around.

Around four o’clock teachers started sneaking out – it’s their last day to do so before school really starts. I had plans to meet my new Japanese tutor at 5 p.m., so I just watched them go. I swear they even looked a little guilty.

I met my new teacher, Tsuji-san, outside the gates to my school. She lives right across the street, so it’s easy to drop by when I get off work. I’ll be visiting for about an hour and a half each week on Monday. She’s a private English teacher, and she’s hoping to pick up some American English from me. In fact, we worked out an arrangement where we would switch languages back and forth, and that way I don’t have to pay her for her time.

We sat in a very Japanese style room, surrounded by kids books since she teaches elementary school and junior high school students part time. Her English is quite good, better than some of our teachers. She’s 31, and got her major in Portuguese. She is also studying Spanish, as well as English. I wish I could remember some more of the Spanish that I knew, but so much is gone. Maybe I’ll pick up a Spanish textbook sometime and see what happens.

Anyway, we spent about an hour and a half chatting, and during that time her father and mother made an appearance to say hello. The mother brought two iced coffees for us to drink while we were working, and some assorted chocolates to snack on. Wow! I think it will be useful to be there, since my YMCA classes are ending soon.

I had a semi-traditional Japanese dinner tonight, rice and some green vegetables and Nagano chili peppers soaked in some soy sauce. To make it more non-traditional I had a side of kimchee with it. Tomorrow is my first class, and then on Friday I get really busy.

So I went off to school this morning, walking around the debris all over the ground. Some intrepid homeowners were already out cleaning up, and the Ito Yokado construction site was already being repaired and replaced. What a mess!

At school I arrived early and got assigned to a cleanup crew. We worked outside for an hour or so, and during that time some strange looking mosquito bit me on the face three times, and the arm twice. I went to the nurse afterwards for some ointment, and that seemed to do the trick.

Today at school there were still no classes, and none tomorrow either. The students didn’t come today, but they’ll be there tomorrow for the opening ceremony, the speeches, and a homeroom class. My first classes will be on Thursday.

We did have a staff meeting today, and it was a perfect illustration of the Japanese meeting. We all went inside and sat down, and the principal, vice principal, and other staff stood up in turn to make announcements and speeches. I’ve been to a lot of these meetings, and it’s always the same. The teachers don’t hide their boredom, and the speakers don’t seem to care if anyone is listening or not.

The best part about today’s meeting was about halfway through, the groundskeeper was cleaning up outside the open windows, and started up a chainsaw to cut up some bigger branches that had fallen. Nobody could hear anything – maybe not even the speaker. I waited for him to stop and go ask the groundskeeper to hold off for half an hour, but he didn’t. He just kept on talking.

What’s better, the reactions of the teachers didn’t change at all either. Listen to a boring speech, listen to a chainsaw, either is fine.

Anyway, there’s this whole idea in Japan that it’s not the content of the meeting, it’s that there IS a meeting. It’s not the amount of work you do, it’s the fact that you showed up. Meetings seem to be largely ceremonial, and they certainly won’t let something like a chainsaw get in the way of getting the meeting over with.

I got to leave school a bit early, thanks to Mr. Hayashi, who told everyone that we were going back to the doctor (even though it was really just him and Mr. Komuri). I went home and called Kuniko, who was getting ready to leave school and go home to watch a DVD somebody had loaned her. I kind of invited myself over to help her eat dinner and watch the movie, and so we had a great evening in Osaka. I got there around 5:30, and left around 9:30. It’s an expensive trip for me, but every once in a while you’ve got to do something a little wild on a school night.

I should really be getting to bed – I’ve got to be up early tomorrow!

It’s Tuesday morning, and I’m still here! My power went out last night until around 2 a.m. so I was working by candlelight. The streets are a mess, and so is my patio. I have to go to school now, so I’ll have to clean it up later. I’ll write more later!

We woke up early this morning because Kuniko had to go to work. We were both kind of hoping that the typhoon would come early and she’d get a day off, but it was running late, so she had to go. Bummer!

I headed up on the train to Kobe, and then had a snack at McDonald’s while I waited for the CD store to open. When it did I exchanged my CDs, and headed back to Kuniko’s empty place and slipped the new CD in her mailbox. At least she’ll get to listen to it tonight.

From there I headed back, well ahead of any signs of typhoon. The skies were calm, and it was just a bit windy, but nothing to worry about.

I talked to my folks on the phone, and spent the afternoon relaxing and doing some pleasure reading. I secured some items out on my balcony, just in case. For dinner I made three or four rice balls that turned out nicely.

Then the typhoon arrived.

Holy crap! Even now it’s blowing harder than any wind I’ve ever seen. Lots of junk from my neighbor’s balcony is landing in mine, and every once in a while you can hear sirens from emergency vehicles. I went outside on my porch to check it out, but I could barely get the door open, and when I was out there, lots of leaves and branches were flying around. I think I’ll stay inside until things calm down.

I sent off a message to Kuniko to see how she was doing – I imagined her holed up in her place like me, but she had gotten off work and was going drinking with some of her co-workers. It’s just a typhoon, nothing to get worked up about. I guess I would probably act the same about an earthquake.

Well, it’s blowing like crazy and I should probably save this entry before the power goes out. See you in Oz!

Today I slept in big time. I slept in from the depths of my soul. In Japanese, slept in is described as “sleeping slowly”, and when I arose from my bed around nine in the morning fully rested, I felt like I had slept slowly all night.

I fixed a bit of breakfast and spent the morning doing laundry and studying. Just after noon Jane came down and rang my doorbell. She asked me to do a little bit of translation for her. Her grandparents and uncle were up in her apartment, and she wanted me to communicate a few things. I went upstairs, and with a big smile and a bit of luck managed to translate for her. It was fun to do – it’s a mental challenge to translate something so quickly, and answer questions from both sides. I still have a long way to go – I definitely am not anywhere near able to do it professionally.

Around three o’clock I went into Kobe, because at four o’clock I was supposed to meet Kuniko there to see a movie. I went a bit early to buy the soundtrack for the movie, a Japanese movie called “There’s No Love In The Center Of The World”, or something similar. Japanese movies always seem to have one big hit song, and I wanted to get that for Kuniko in case she liked it. I had the CD wrapped, and then I stashed it in my backpack for later.

I met Kuniko at JR station, and we walked together over to Starbucks to catch up over iced coffees and review the answers for an exam she had taken in the morning. It was really tough – one of them I couldn’t figure out myself. Kuniko was the one that finally got it. I can’t believe they expect people to figure these out when a native speaker is stumped.

After coffee we killed some time around Kobe and then went to see the movie. There were no English subtitles for me, so I really had to concentrate. Even so, I could only understand about a third of what was said. I certainly wasn’t picking up subtle nuances – just the gist of conversations. Still, it was enough to know what was happening and to follow the plot. The movie was a bit of a tear-jerker, at least to the people that could understand – I think I was the only one with a dry face.

As we walked to the restaurant after the movie, we talked about the movie. Kuniko said that she loved the music. I asked her if she had the CD and she said that she didn’t – but she wanted to pick it up sometime. It was looking really good for me – I’ve got the CD giftwrapped in my backpack as we’re walking.

While we ate dinner I gave her the CD, and she opened it – very surprised. I was thinking what a perfect moment, and in the midst of patting myself on the back she noticed that the CD was in fact the soundtrack for a TV spin-off of the movie, and her song wasn’t on there.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I re-examined the CD, and sure enough, it said something about TV series, and even in English in one part it said TV. Man, I felt stupid. She just smiled and said she was sure she’d like it anyway, and I insisted on taking it back to exchange it.

Sometimes life in Japan can be tough – this is a great example. It’s the little stuff like this that is so easy to pull off in your own language, but a monumental task in another.

We caught the next train back to Osaka, and since we were both wide awake we looked through one of Kuniko’s more interesting study books – filled with lines that foreigners might use to pick up Japanese people. They were hilarious – and I was amused to note that some of mine were in there. I didn’t take her by surprise – not for a minute.

It was a good day. Monday is a holiday for me, and there’s a big typhoon coming, which is rumored to be one of the biggest to hit Japan, ever. Woo-hoo!

I had to get up at the mind-bendingly early hour of 5:30 this morning, in order to make it on time for the Hyogo prefecture teacher interviews. The interviews are there to choose new teachers for the various openings every year. Mr. Hasegawa, the prefecture director, had asked six ALTs to help out with the interviews.

It was held pretty far away, so together with Chelsea and Struan we made it there by train and subway. After that, we just followed the trail of nicely dressed Japanese folks. The location was a prefectural college campus, and we were ushered into a secluded room where we were given our final instructions. We were each partnered with a honcho from the prefecture, and I didn’t know if it was a good thing or not but I was working with Mr. Hasegawa himself. This is like working together with the equivalent of the California Superintendent of Education, so I was a little nervous.

We set up shop in the room and Mr. Hasegawa gave me a couple of last minute bits of advice. My role was to moderate a thirty minute discussion in English between three prospective teachers. Mr. Hasegawa was behind me taking notes and evaluating the teachers. The process was rather complicated, and I had to listen carefully to the sometimes unintelligible responses, and create more questions on the fly to keep the discussion going. My goal was to have everyone talk for the same amount of time, so I had to work hard sometimes to coax something out of shy people, and to keep quiet the outgoing ones.

We had all kinds of people interviewing, from the bubbly cute girls that crossed and uncrossed their legs trying to distract us, to the old fashioned “Force Feed English” type teachers that were looking to move to a new prefecture. It was a tough job, and hard work. If somebody was shy and clamming up, that meant I had to ask them more questions to get them to talk, and it felt like I was kicking them while they were down.

On the other hand, working with Mr. Hasegawa was a challenge that I enjoyed. He gave me good marks for my questions and flexibility, and I hope that I made a favorable impression with him. You never now what a good word from him might drum up down the road.

After each group of interviewees, Mr. Hasegawa and I would discuss our impressions, and I was surprised how much weight my opinion carried. Several times what I said seemed to make or break candidates. Ostensibly Mr. Hasegawa had full responsibility for evaluation, but I felt like I was part of the process too.

We finally got out of there around four o’clock. I caught a train to Akashi and went inside the park to see the Akashi matsuri – a town festival that was in full swing by the time I arrived. One of the JETs that I had dinner with the other night in Harima had done a live show earlier that I missed. He was the lead singer for an ACDC cover band. The rest of the band was Japanese, and I would have loved to see that. Instead, I walked around and just enjoyed checking out all the booths.

As I walked by a booth I saw a sign that said, of all things, VALLEJO. Akashi is the sister city of Vallejo, California – something that I had indicated on my application and one of the ways that I picked where to live in Japan. They had a whole booth there showing pictures of Vallejo, selling T-shirts, and pouring Delicato wine for 100 yen a glass (around $1).

I stepped up and they started telling me all about Vallejo, and I told them that I used to live right near there. The lady got all excited, and we talked in English for a while – she had quite good English skills. She had gone to Vallejo six years ago and met the mayor. The pictures of Vallejo that were hung up were heavy on the vineyards, and light on the heavy industry, but they were Vallejo all right. It was fun to talk to her. The glass of wine for a dollar was the best deal on booze in the whole festival, so I walked around the place with a glass of red wine the rest of the night.

As for food, the lines were huge – out of control. Instead I walked across the street to a okonomiyaki place that I know, and had tonpeiyaki (pork and egg okonomiyaki) and negiyaki (green onion okonomiyaki). The master of the place is always really nice, and a friendly guy. His wife did all the work, and it was delicious.

After dinner I got back on the train and continued home. Now I’m just getting ready for an early trip to bed. Tomorrow I’m going into Kobe to meet Kuniko, and I’ll likely stay in Osaka Sunday night. Monday is a day off for me as a trade for my workday today. I’m trying to enjoy these last days of summer – soon enough I’ll be busy teaching classes again.

My day at school was a breeze – there was a volleyball tournament during the day, so I went over to the gymnasium to root on our team. Unfortunately, they didn’t play until late in the day, so I had to leave before they played. Still, it was cool to say hello to them, and I think they were glad to get the support.

Mr. Komuri brought in some hot peppers from Nagano that he wanted me to try. They are really good! He gave me a sample and said that he can provide more if I’d like. They are hotter than jalapenos, but a little milder than habaneros. Really tasty!

After school I went home to do a couple of loads of laundry, and clean up the place a bit. At five o’clock I was out the door and headed to my class in Kobe.

Today was a really good class. The teacher that was in charge repaired a lot of the damage done from last time, and we learned a few new things that seemed to make sense. It was probably the most useful lesson that we’ve had. There were only four students this time, and so we all got a lot of attention, and were called on quite a bit. That seemed to help me learn.

After class I went to the ramen place that I like, the one with the free kimchee. After last week’s dining disaster, I’m back to the old standby. It was delicious! I got on the next train out of Sannomiya, and was home just before ten o’clock. A nice easy day – tomorrow will a bit more difficult with the prefectural teacher interviews.