Hmm, what’s new? On Saturday Kuniko came over to visit; originally we had planned to go out to dinner and then see Harry Potter 3. I came up with the great idea of firing up the BBQ and doing shrimp skewers instead. So we stayed in, instead of going out and blowing cash at a restaurant.

We had some time to kill before the coals were ready, so I proposed to her. In English. And she said “Yes”. In English.

While I cooked up the shrimp out on my back patio Kuniko joined me and we looked out over the town of Futami and thought about what just happened. We were excited and scared and nervous and glad and, speaking for myself, hungry.

The shrimp turned out great! I painted on a garlic butter sauce, and we also had a green salad on the side – it turned out to be a great improvisational meal.

After dinner we washed the dishes together and giggled nervously, and then we went to Okubo. Our habit is to hold hands when she drives which is going to get us into an accident one of these days if we’re not careful. Once we got there we saw the movie, and we cuddled up as close as possible when seated in two different movie theater seats.

It was cool that we went out and saw a movie, since it was after a movie in November that I first told her that I was interested in more than friendship. Since then I’ve learned a lot about her, and we’ve both been working hard to bridge the language and culture differences that we have.

She dropped me off at home and tomorrow she is going to tell her folks about us. I’ll be staying home tomorrow with crossed fingers hoping that everything comes out OK.

What a strange night… I went over to Yasu’s place at seven o’clock. After waiting about twenty more minutes, we started to get worried that the guest of honor wasn’t going to make it.

After an hour we decided to go ahead and eat, after making lots of phone calls trying to figure out where Melanie was. Yasu and his mom had worked throughout the afternoon preparing a huge feast. I did what I could to help eat and drink, but I felt bad. For some reason Melanie wasn’t there, and it just adds to the mystery surrounding the vice principal asking for her spare key. What’s going on here?

Even though Melanie and her friend didn’t show, we still had a good time eating sushi, three different salads, yakisoba, edamame beans, and drinking beer. It was good to catch up with Yasu’s mom, she is a great lady.

Anyway, we had a good time, and I’m back home early and getting ready for bed. I even got some leftover yakisoba to have for lunch tomorrow… woo-hoo!

I woke up this morning with a grease overdose – I had this awful feeling in my stomach that lingered throughout the day. It wasn’t from booze – I only had four beers. It must have been from all the fried things. Ugh.

At school we had a couple of changes in the schedule that had me hopping from class to class. I helped teach an extra lesson for the kids going to Australia, which turned out to be kind of fun. I pretended to be a flight attendant and walked around asking kids what they wanted to eat or drink. Some of them got into it, and some couldn’t believe how cheesy it was. At least I had fun.

I was coming back from lunch and the principal asked me to come into his office. On the way he asked how my Japanese was coming along, since he can speak almost no English. We sat down together in his office, and I admit that I was a bit nervous. The only other time I had been in the office was for a job evaluation, and that had been with Mr. Hayashi.

I concentrated hard to understand what he was saying, but he spoke really fast. I asked him to repeat a couple of things, and I think I finally understood what he wanted.

Every school in the prefecture conducts entrance exams to keep the quality of students high. Part of the entrance exam is a listening test that is created by the prefectural government and sent to all the schools. From what I could tell, the principal wanted me to work with the prefectural government somehow to make the listening part – maybe I’m voice talent, maybe just advisor. Maybe I’m doing a striptease on Monday in the teacher’s office, who knows? Whatever it was, I agreed to it.

Here’s the weird thing – he said that I couldn’t talk to Mr. Hayashi about it. Huh? He said that the vice principal would meet with me on Monday to talk more about it. Luckily, the vice principal has pretty good English skills. The downside was that he had to give my answer to the government today, and so I was really getting into this without knowing exactly what I will do. I told him that I’m flying back to America next month, and he said that there would be no conflict.

A couple of things – some Japanese guy talked at me for five minutes, and I got all this information. Holy cow – that’s great! I really might be improving. Also, why cut out Mr. Hayashi from the conversation? Why is it a secret? My theory is that there might be some kind of conflict of interest thing if an English teacher knows about it, since the English teachers might advise potential students. Strange.

Anyway, after school the ESS club got together to snap a picture for the yearbook. Everyone was in fine form, and some members that rarely visit even came by to get in on the action.

I just ducked out of school, and now I’m getting ready to go over to Yasu’s house for a farewell party for Melanie. I think that Chris and Lisa might also be there, so I’ll get to say goodbye to a lot of people!

The weather has started to become pretty humid, and the rainy season is in full effect. Although most of the day was dry, things started to get wet in the evening. That makes a big difference if you had planned to sit around in an outdoor beer garden.

My day went really well. We had a short ESS meeting and I spent a lot of time with Iku-chan, one of the new members. She is so shy, and so quiet. If a balloon popped in the next room she might faint. As she gets comfortable hanging out with me, she tends to talk more in English. She also is a great artist, so if she has trouble describing something in English or Japanese, she’ll draw it, and she’ll draw it well.

After school was out, Mr. Hayashi and I caught the train in Kakogawa and went all the way to Sannomiya. We met up with Mr. Kimura and Miss Yamamoto, who is now teaching at another school.

Her English has improved a bit since I talked to her last. Small differences, but altogether our conversations went pretty smoothly. Together we all walked to the entrance to the beer garden and took an elevator to the roof. The sky was cloudy, and rain was threatening. We each paid around 3000 yen for all you could eat and drink.

They had a full cocktail bar, two kinds of wine (sweet stuff, yeck!), and two kinds of beer – a black “stout” (not really that stout) from Kirin, and Heineken. The place was sponsored by Heineken, so their logo was on everything. As for food, they had every kind of fried food you could imagine. They also had some salads to keep the health department happy, but it was all about the fried stuff. The baseball game was on a big screen projected against the wall, and so we just relaxed and drank and drank.

While Miss Yamamoto was loading up on food and drink, Mr. Kimura made a comment that sounded like he was interested in her. Mr. Kimura seems like a pretty shy guy – I wonder if he’ll make the move?

Finally we started to feel sprinkles from the darkening clouds. Luckily we had gotten our fill of booze and grease, so we adjourned to a nearby coffee house to sober up for the train ride back home.

It was a school night, so I didn’t get back so late. Even so, I drank lots of water and popped a few aspirin before I went to bed. Just in case!

Today was a fairly easy day at school – only three classes, and one of them involved watching a scene from the movie Superman with the students and helping them with their listening skills. The other two classes were preparing for the upcoming interview tests. Like I said, an easy day.

At school I had a nice chat with Ms. Miyake. She is going to help me find some books in Japanese in my reading level – which is probably sixth grade elementary school. She said she’d see what she could come up with, and she said her neighbors might have some, too. Nice to see everyone chipping in for the foreigner – we’ll see what happens.

My hair has been raging out of control – and with the sweaty weather lately it’s been a real pain. Today on the way home from school I stopped at the barber and got a nice short haircut. The place was empty, and I tried out my Japanese with the barber that was cutting my hair. I did surprisingly bad, actually. There were lots of times when he couldn’t understand what I was saying – that might have been because I was trying out lots of new vocabulary words on him. Luckily the quality of the haircut didn’t reflect my poor communicative ability.

I went next door for some cheap yakisoba noodles for dinner, and then took the train the rest of the way home. Since I had dinner out of the way, I was able to study for a little while at home memorizing even more vocabulary to perplex Japanese people. I spent almost an hour on the phone with Antoine, who is trying to arrange his re-entry permit back into the country before his flight to America in August. We chatted about all kinds of crazy things, and it was good to catch up with him.

Around 8:30 I called Kuniko, and she was on the train platform waiting for her ride home. She called me back when she got to her apartment – around 9:00. We talked for almost an hour, and it was a really good conversation. We did the first ten minutes or so in Japanese, and that actually went pretty well. It’s nice to be able to do some of the heavy work in our conversation, instead of leaving it all on poor Kuniko.

We’re hoping to spend some time together this weekend. She’ll be in Kakogawa and we’re both hoping to see the new Harry Potter movie that is out this weekend.

I dreamed up a lesson today where our class listened to Coldplay’s “Clocks”. It actually turned out to be a good lesson. The students spent time with a map of England finding where each of the band members originally came from, and they answered questions based on a short biography that I adapted from Coldplay’s website.

We listened to the song, and the students followed along with a lyric sheet. It was interesting how different classes reacted. The afternoon classes almost fell asleep, and the early classes gave a big round of applause afterwards. It was fun.

After lunch I got a phone call from the vice principal of Akashi Nishi high school. Akashi Nishi is the high school right next to my apartment, where Melanie works. The vice principal said that she had heard that I have Melanie’s spare key, and she wanted me to bring it to them at the school.

It was kind of weird for them to call me, especially while I was working. I was curious, but I agreed to drop it off after school. Strange.

Mr. Hayashi had said earlier this week that he was planning a trip to a beer garden in Kobe to have beer and sausages on Thursday night. Today he said that he had invited Miss Yamamoto, the former English teacher from our school. He said that since a woman was joining us, we would be going to a nice restaurant instead.

I told him that I was looking forward to beer and sausages, and so I’d skip the trip this time and go with them next time they go to the beer garden. Mr. Hayashi beat a hasty retreat and said that maybe we’d go to the beer garden after all. So I think I’ll get my beer and sausages on Thursday.

After school I left a bit earlier to give me time to swing by Akashi Nishi. At the school the vice principal happened to be outside saying goodbye to somebody. She came up to me and said “You must be Bryan”. How’d she guess?

I gave her the key and asked about Melanie. She said that Melanie was doing fine and still in the apartment. I think that soon she’ll be moving out though. I’m going to attend a party with her on Friday, so I’ll be sure to get the details then.

I asked about the replacement ALT, and she said that they are getting two new ALTs this year. One is a girl from England and one is a girl from Canada. She wasn’t sure which would be living in the apartment, but it sounds like either way it’ll be female.

Tonight I converted some leftover scraps into tacos, and had a Mexican feast. I spent some time memorizing vocabulary, and now I’m getting ready to hit the sack early. The weather has been really nice lately, and I’m hoping it’ll hold through the week!

This morning was wet, but there wasn’t a whole lot of wind, and I was a little disappointed that there were no gale forces out there waiting for me. All the same, I geared up in my full typhoon gear and walked to the train station.

The station seemed lonelier than usual, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Once I got to Takasago I figured it out – there weren’t any students around. As I walked to school I was afraid that I missed a memo or something. When I arrived at school, the huge bicycle parking lot was empty, and then I knew something was up.

Inside I was told that since the typhoon was approaching they had asked the students to stay home. We stuck around until 10 a.m. and then the principal confirmed that the warning was still in effect, so we definitely wouldn’t have any classes today.

Around lunchtime Mr. Hayashi organized a trip to the local Chinese food restaurant for some lunch, and on the way back he dropped me off at the train station to go home early. Apparently the typhoon was set to hit between noon and three o’clock.

At home I spent time studying, got to call my dad and wish him a happy Father’s Day, and chatted with Kuniko on the internet since she was also home early. During late afternoon the wind started to pick up, and even now as I write this it’s still blowing pretty well. There is no rain along with it, and the sky looks pretty clear.

For dinner I cooked up some pork and rice, with a ginger sauce that I came up with – it tasted great. After dinner I studied a bit more and then spent some time just spacing out – thinking about the future.

As I come to the end of a year living in Japan, I’m spending some time thinking about what I’ve accomplished here, what I might have accomplished in the USA during this time, and what I might be able to do in the next year. I find that a little controlled mental exercise like this is beneficial and helps put things in perspective for me.

Even though I’ll be here for another full year, that time will go quickly. It doesn’t hurt to think about what I want to do after that year ends. My options are limited in some ways by my educational background, ethnicity, and language skills. Strangely enough, my options are also broadened by those same attributes.

This hasn’t been the first time that I’ve given the future some thought. This topic will be bouncing around in my head for quite a while. In the end it boils down to deciding what I want to do next. The last time I asked myself that question I did anything and everything I could to get where I am now. Today was the first step towards discovering my next adventure.

I woke up this morning next to Kuniko – always a great start to the day. Outside the weather was starting to heat up. I got busy in the kitchen making chilaquiles for breakfast – something that was a first for Kuniko. She really liked them – and she even added some Tapatio sauce on top to liven them up a bit. Nice!

We spent the morning watching Finding Nemo on DVD – it just arrived here in Japan. It was just as fun the second time around. Around 11:30 Kuniko had to head back to her home in Kakogawa, so I walked her out to her car. We had a great weekend together and we made tentative plans to get together again next weekend.

For lunch I felt the craving for sushi, so I walked into town to the local sushi boat place for 100 yen sushi. The place was popular, and I had to wait a little while for a spot at the bar. I ate ten plates of sushi, and got out of there for 1000 yen (around $10). As I was walking home it occurred to me how cool it was that I could just walk outside my apartment, walk underneath the bullet train line and sit down for authentic sushi in Japan. I never want to take this for granted – I am really lucky here.

On the way home I stopped in at the shaved ice stand to order up some strawberry shaved ice. I hadn’t been there for a while and so it was nice to talk to the lady that owns the stand. We only talked for a short bit – I think I had interrupted something inside her house. There were some Akashi Nishi students lounging around behind the stand so I chatted with them for a while. They are students of Melanie’s, so I tried to get the inside scoop on her replacement. Unfortunately, they didn’t know anything yet.

During the afternoon I took a nap, and then spent some time on my patio securing loose items – I hear there is a big typhoon coming this way. It just went through Okinawa heading this direction, and it killed three people there. It should hit sometime in the afternoon tomorrow. Scary!

This evening I sauteed up some shrimp and had it over rice. I also opened one of the Fat Tire Ales that my folks had sent me. Wow, was that good. I watched a couple of movies, and really just relaxed. With the weather acting up I’ll probably be inside studying this week, so it was important to take a day to rest up.

I woke up this morning with just a touch of a hangover from all the beers last night. I made myself an egg sandwich, and then set about cleaning up around the house. I got the chance to talk to my folks on the phone, and also to do just a bit of grocery shopping.

Around 12:30 Kuniko dropped by to pick me up, and we drove west in her car towards Okayama. I’ve been to Okayama a couple of times, and it’s definitely a rural prefecture. There isn’t much there, but there is a lot more nature than what I’m used to seeing in my own corner of Japan.

The drive took about two hours. We took the toll road – it’s kind of like a turnpike on the east coast of America. It was expensive – around 3000 yen ($30) to travel about 160 kilometers (about 100 miles). We stopped in at a rest area to buy omiyage and some lunch – sushi, some potato croquettes, and soft serve ice cream. I had black sesame ice cream – a first for me. It was great!

The whole reason behind the trip to Okayama was to for me to see fireflies. Kuniko and I were talking a while back and I mentioned that I’d always wanted to see fireflies, but I’ve never had the chance. It’s been on my list of things to do for years. Anyway, Kuniko’s sister Tomoko lives in Okayama in a town that is famous for the fireflies that appear there in the summer. She arranged a trip, and we were on our way.

We arrived at the tiny town of Hokubo where Tomoko lives and works. It is a really small town – I don’t know what I would have done if I was stuck in a town like this… probably I’d only stay one year, that’s for sure.

Tomoko met us outside her apartment and we all jumped in her car to meet the vice-principal of her school. He was curious to meet Kuniko and speak English with her, because he is a former English teacher himself. Tomoko had told him that they were also bringing an ALT, so he was pretty excited about that. The only problem was I guess they had kind of assumed that I was going to be a female.

I got some strange looks, and Kuniko got some too. I think they were trying to figure out the nature of my relationship to Kuniko and her sister. I didn’t give them any hints, and let them work it out on their own. Surprisingly, there was hardly any English spoken – the vice principal might have been a little nervous about speaking. It was good listening practice for me, though. We had a nice long chat, and his wife brought out tea, cake and sandwiches.

After our chat, we decided to hit the road. The fireflies weren’t due until 8 or 9 p.m., so we had lots of time to kill. Unfortunately, the weather was starting to threaten, and apparently the fireflies don’t come out when it’s raining.

We drove around the countryside for a while, but things were starting to close down. We went to a touristy town called Katsuyama, and I got a chance to do some sake tasting. They had a sake there that had 30% alcohol. It was pretty good, but a bit overwhelming. Their regular sake tasted a bit better.

By now we were all getting a little hungry. Tomoko had offered to buy dinner at a yakiniku place that she knew of, so we went there next. The place was pretty busy. Kuniko and Tomoko took care of all the ordering, and so all I had to do was cook my meat and eat it. I’m a big fan of yakiniku. It’s like grilling indoors. We had lots of different kinds of beef, kim-chee, yakisoba, steaks, and even some frozen strawberries with cream inside. It was a huge feast, but it was starting to rain pretty hard as we left. No fireflies!

Tomoko assured us that there was nothing to worry about. We went back to her place, and lounged about in the living room to watch some TV and give Kuniko a chance to rest up. She has been working long hours, and she was looking at a two hour drive home. At around 8:30, we gathered up our gear and umbrellas and went outside.

That far out in the country there isn’t a lot of light, and so we had to kind of grope through the dark to find the main road east towards the river. It was a little creepy walking around out there among the rice paddies with so much moisture in the air and the crickets making the only noise. Not 100 steps from Tomoko’s apartment, we saw a firefly.

The firefly was making it’s way through an old graveyard that sat at the base of a mountainside. Everybody stopped to check it out, and it flew around us in a circle before flying off into the woods. As we kept walking, and the river got closer, more and more fireflies would appear. I wasn’t expecting to see any because of the rain, so I was surprised to see so many!

At the river itself, it was a bit of a tourist draw. They had closed the road to cars so they headlights wouldn’t bother the flies and people. There were fireflies everywhere, and they pulsed with a strange green light, almost all at the same time. They stayed near the river, not really getting close to the people.

We enjoyed watching them for almost half an hour, and then walked the long way back along the river to see if we could see some more. They just kept appearing, and one even landed on Kuniko’s hand. We passed it around, and it was really cool to see up close. The light from it’s abdomen illuminated your hand as it walked around. It didn’t really feel like flying away, so we just let it stroll around a bit and then we let it go.

I was excited to be able to see something like that up close – it was really cool. Back at the apartment we said our goodbyes to Tomoko, and then began our long drive back. We stopped in at a rest stop along the way. I offered to drive illegally, but Kuniko insisted on staying at the wheel the whole time.

We had planned on her staying the night at my place, so we came back here and crashed out – we were both exhausted. What a day, and what an adventure!

Today was the school’s culture festival. It was my first culture festival, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. The students have been preparing for almost three weeks, and everybody was walking around excited and nervous.

Generally the culture festival is for showing off some non-academic skills, and there was a nice blend of the traditional and modern cultures blended into a day-long extravaganza. I helped the ESS club put the finishing touches on our project, and then went into the gym and sat down with the other teachers to watch the show.

The show started off with some fanfare, and a quick speech from the principal. Soon after that, the koto club did a performance. The koto is a harp-like musical instrument that lays on the floor. The students played two songs, one a modern tune that I recognized, and another song that sounded pretty good – maybe traditional Japanese.

After that, various acts came up and it was like a talent show where everyone had to participate. The acts were different – some dancing, some skits, some attempts at stand-up comedy. There was one styled after Stomp, and another that had some music in the background full of English swear words. I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but the singer said “Fuck” about 300 times during the dance routine.

Since the performances were done in the dark with lighting on the stage, it heated up pretty quick in the gym. By lunchtime it was a sauna in there. We broke at lunch and had a nice big bento lunch in the teacher’s room.

During the three hour lunchbreak students, parents and teachers walked through the various classrooms to see the displays. There were some interesting ones – a castle built out of chopsticks, a giant robot filled with students that you could throw baseballs at, and a nice photography exhibit. While I walked around the students were eager to chat with me and joke around. We took lots of pictures of each other, and had a great time.

Back in the ESS room, quite a few people came by to check out the displays. Since they were all in English people had a bit of trouble figuring them out, but I saw a couple of students translating the posters line by line to understand them.

Out in the quad the jazz band played a set of tunes. Some students had built a giant sign for Pocari Sweat entirely out of soda cans. They had also hung up a giant logo of the school made entirely of origami cranes.

After lunch there were just a few more performances by clubs and classrooms, and then the brass band took the stage and played for forty minutes. It was pretty good. There was an odd moment when they had five girls doing an interpretive dance to one of the songs. The dance moves were really strange, and the girls all looked embarrassed to perform them.

At the end of the day, Mie-san and I cleaned up the ESS room, and I snuck out of there 15 minutes early. I was pretty tired sitting in a hot gymnasium all day, and I was craving a cold beer. Luckily I had plans to meet up with Antoine in Suma after school.

I got there a little early, so I walked around the beach a bit. In front of the beach there was some major construction. It looked like they were building a beachfront bar there. If that’s the case, I’ll definitely be back later on. The place was styled similar to the bars and restaurants on the beach that I enjoyed in Mazatlan, Mexico.

Once Antoine made it, we went to an izakaya for greasy food and beer. We spent the time comparing notes on each other’s culture festivals.

Afterwards, we stopped in to buy a six-pack of beer at the local convenience store and then sat out on the beach and enjoyed the cool ocean breeze while locals fired off fireworks up and down the beach around us. It was a nice end to a busy day.

The culture festival has cast a huge shadow over our day today – and everyone was thinking about preparations. I had three classes today, and everyone’s eyes were glazed over with the thought that soon they would be dancing their hearts out on stage in front of the whole school.

During my seminar in Kobe, I had missed the annual health check up given by our school. Mr. Hayashi tells me that all companies, both public and private, require a health check-up once a year. It is a government subsidized program, and just because I was at a seminar doesn’t mean that I was off the hook. After classes finished at lunchtime, Mr. Hayashi drove me to a clinic in Kakogawa.

The first thing they asked me to do was to go inside a room to change into slippers and a blue robe. I invoked foreigner privilege and skipped the robe, although I did wear the tiny slippers.

I performed the tasks they asked like I was in some kind of medical decathlon. Pee here, stand there, look here, etc, etc. My blood pressure was pretty low, so that’s great news. I weighed in at 82 kg (181 pounds), which is pretty good considering I had a stomach full of sushi. I’m 184.5 centimeters tall (about 6 feet). My vision was measured but it was with some strange system that I cannot relate here, I’m not sure even Mr. Hayashi understood it.

We got out of there early, so we decided to milk the system a little bit and grab some coffee. We sat around and sipped iced coffees until around four o’clock, and then went back to school.

The school was in utter chaos. The students were running the asylum, and some amazing things were happening. It’s a preview of tomorrow’s festival, so I’ll save it for tomorrow’s entry.

My ESS students were working on the display, and it was going pretty well. Unfortunately, one of the students, a part-time member of ESS, was running behind. She was taking frequent breaks to drink Calpis and chat with her friends. Finally, another teacher came to get her, and I think she might have been in a little trouble. She’ll be meeting me at school early tomorrow to wrap things up. Overall the ESS room looks pretty good – I’ll try to take some pictures tomorrow.

I didn’t get out of there until around 7 o’clock, and after a shopping trip in Akashi I stopped in at the yakitori on the way home. I chatted with the master and some of the regulars there, and I swear that I’m getting more comfortable with Japanese. My big challenge, believe it or not, is finding somewhere to speak Japanese. Everybody I bump into during the day wants to speak English. The yakitori is about the only place that I can speak only Japanese and practice new things that I’ve learned.

I’m back home now and getting ready for bed. Tomorrow after the culture festival I’m meeting Antoine in Suma, and then hopefully I’ll be able to see Kuniko on Saturday afternoon.

The countdown to the culture festival continues at school, with students working furiously to finish projects. I have a feeling that homework and study time is suffering because of this. I’ll be very interested to see the final production on Friday.

Today was payday, and what a relief it was to have a fully recharged bank account. I went to the bank in the afternoon. I noticed that I still had some money in there – I didn’t drain it all the way before payday hit. That’s a good sign – things weren’t as bad as I made them out to be, I guess.

After school I met up with Keiko-san, the nice lady that I keep bumping into around town. She had invited me to have another chat in English, so I met with her and four of her friends at the local restaurant near Takasago station. We chatted in English for almost three hours, and everyone enjoyed hearing about my experiences in Japan. Occasionally the conversation lapsed into Japanese, and I struggled to figure out what they were saying. Sometimes they’d ask me things in Japanese without realizing it. I tried not to respond – I wanted to give them the full experience of talking with a foreigner – I didn’t want them using my Japanese as a crutch.

We had dinner, and they even picked up my bill, so I got a free plate of yakisoba – nice! After dinner I went over to the station and made my way home. On the way home a lady pulled over on her bike and chatted with me in Japanese. She was pretty excited to be speaking with a foreigner, and I told her all about my situation here in Japan.

How often do you make somebody’s day? Here in Japan, almost every day I interact with someone, and it makes me happy to see them so excited about it. I’ve gotten a lot of satisfaction from teaching English, but the most satisfying thing is to smile at a total stranger and strike up a conversation. Is there a job where I can just walk around and be nice to people? Goodwill ambassador? I feel like I’ve done more good just walking around Japan for a year than I’ve done over 30 years in America.

Well, I’m off to bed – no more philosophy for this evening. Tomorrow after school I’m probably going to run to Akashi to do some shopping for the weekend.

Tuesdays are usually a busy day for me – I’ve got four classes, and most of the time I have to plan three of them on the fly, because I never seem to get around to it the rest of the week.

I had talked to Mr. Yamamoto about my plans, and he suggested doing a class outdoors. There is a park right next to our school, so he made arrangements for the students to meet up in front of the school, and then we walked over there. The students were really curious about what we might be doing, and they kept trying to ask me about it in English. I kept it a secret until we got there.

Once we arrived I announced that we were doing a scavenger hunt. I let the students form teams, and then gave them a list of things to look for. The interesting thing about the Japanese students was that once they formed the group, they didn’t break it up. They moved as a unit searching for each thing as a group, and then moved to the next thing. I pointed out the observation to Mr. Yamamoto, and he agreed that it was a very Japanese approach.

There are tons of pigeons that frequent the park, and one of the things I had on the list was a feather. I made a disclaimer early on that the students shouldn’t pluck the feathers from a pigeon, but find them laying on the ground. One group couldn’t find any feathers so they nominated one poor guy to chase the pigeons until a feather fell off. It was funny to see the guy chasing around the pigeons while the others searched desperately for feathers.

The students were encouraged to ask me what each item was if they didn’t understand, so I’d try to give out other words – and if they still couldn’t figure it out a pantomime. Then if they STILL didn’t know, I’d tell them the word in Japanese. Most of them did just fine.

I had three outdoor lessons in a row, and it was pretty tiring. Once I got back to the office, I relaxed a little and then went to watch some of the preparations for the culture festival. I observed the kendo club for a little while. They were doing some really cool drills where they tried to stick the bamboo sword right into their opponent’s protected throat. It looked painful – maybe it was.

After school I returned home, and just had some leftovers for dinner. Everyone needs a leftover night now and then. The doorbell rang, and it was a guy with a package from my folks!

Inside there was loads of great stuff – two DVDs (Miracle, and Return of the King), a salami, some spices for tacos, a slim jim, a strange box that made weird noises when you pressed a button, some comics, and even two bottles of Fat Tire Ale. Wow! Fat Tire in Japan! I don’t know what to do with them – I’m pretty sure I’m the only one in Japan who would appreciate them – so maybe I should drink them both. But then, drinking them alone isn’t much fun – maybe I should let someone else try something from so far away. Mmmmmm…. Fat Tire Ale.

As I was putting away the box I noticed the customs declaration form – my folks had declared the two bottles as “Marinade”. Excellent!

I called Antoine also, and we ended up swapping stories for almost two hours. We are planning to get together this Friday. Tomorrow is payday, and I’ll be back in the money. We’re going to meet up on the beach in Suma on Friday night – grab some chow at a local izakaya and then have a couple of beers on the beach. Soon it will be mosquito weather, so we’ve got to enjoy it while we can.

The second beautiful day in row… it was pretty difficult to go to school today. The weather has been hovering at about 77 degrees Fahrenheit, with very low humidity. I get a lot of pleasure out of telling people at school that this is common weather for California.

I had four classes today, and a Japanese class from Mr. Hayashi. My classes went fairly well, and the students were pretty enthusiastic. My last class was taught by the student teacher, and this time there were a bunch of English teachers in the back observing. She had me stand up in front of the class with her, but only asked me to do one or two pronunciations the whole time. I did my best to look eager and ready to do anything, but later one of the teachers watching said that I looked bored. I hope that didn’t reflect poorly on our student teacher.

After school we had a meeting where we all gave our comments to the teacher. It was a strange meeting in that it was held mostly in Japanese, but these odd little phrases in English would pop up. From what I could tell with my limited Japanese ability was that they felt there was a lot of room for improvement. My name came up quite a bit, so I think that they may have wanted her to use me more. It costs a lot of money to fly a foreigner all the way to Japan, put them up in an apartment, and pay them a salary every month. To just use me for a couple of sentences probably isn’t a good use of a resource.

Anyway, I gave my comments, in English, but it was strange. What do I know? I have no formal training, and if I was this poor lady I would be taking what I said with a grain of salt. Some punk from California wants to tell me how to teach?

After the meeting another student teacher invited me to observe her P.E. class. She had a dazed expression, like she had been standing too close to a bomb blast or something. Unfortunately, I had another class so I couldn’t attend.

On the way home I happened to be leaving at the same time as one of the ESS members, Harada-san. We walked to the train station together – normally she rides her bike but because of the rainy season, she’s using the train every day. We spoke lots of English the whole time – it was good practice for her.

Tomorrow is my “Anything” classes, and Mr. Yamamoto said that he’d like to go outside for our classes. I’m trying to come up with some activities right now for things to do while outside. It’ll be nice to take advantage of this great weather!

I got myself out of bed early on Sunday to go catch a train to Osaka. The train ride was not so crowded because of the time, so I was able to sit down and memorize some vocabulary. I arrived about ten minutes early in Osaka, and so I wandered around the station and enjoyed some people watching.

While I was waiting, a college-age guy came up and asked me where I was going, in English. I told him that I was waiting for someone, and he looked a little disappointed that he couldn’t give me directions anywhere. I chatted for a few minutes with him, and we both enjoyed speaking English for a while.

A few minutes later an older foreigner in a tie-dyed shirt and smiley face headrag approached me and introduced himself. His name was Butch, and he was promoting a comedy/magic show in English somewhere in Osaka. He gave me a flyer, and I said thanks. Just as he was starting to stay a little longer than was comfortable, I saw Kuniko come running out of the crowd towards me. I sent Butch on his way and gave her a big hug. Right behind her Miss Tamura and Yuri came over to say hello. Together we jumped on the next train and we were off.

Miss Tamura is a teacher at Kuniko’s old school in Kakogawa. She doesn’t speak much English, but she understands it well. We caught up with each other on the train, and then we went into the park.

The lines were unusually small – and we actually got to walk right up to some of the characters. We even got a chance to see Elmo, Kuniko’s favorite character.

We were able to do almost every ride in the park, and the longest we had to wait was 30 minutes. I was able to do some new rides, like Jaws, Terminator 3D, and Spiderman. Spiderman is a new ride, and was by far the best one. They’ve done 3D shows before, but this is a 3D rollercoaster. There were some things going on in there that were impossible for my brain to figure out. Usually you can see how they do things – this ride was done perfectly. If you ever get the chance, you won’t regret it.

For lunch we ate at Mel’s Diner, and then went on more rides. Kuniko was looking pretty tired, and I was getting tired myself. We decided that the last thing we would do is the Monster’s Rock and Roll Show. Normally it’s a pretty cheesy thing that I would skip, but Yuri actually had a friend of a friend that was performing. It was a lot more interesting when you (kind of) know someone on stage. He was this big black dude with dreadlocks playing a Dracula character. Every character had a song and dance number, and he did “La Vida Loca” which gives you a sense of Universal’s idea of “rock and roll”.

After that we went to do a little bit of omiyage shopping. It was then that Yuri realized that she had lost her wallet somewhere along the way. Yuri is a JET like me, and there are a couple of pretty important documents that we have to carry around – losing those is a major headache. The clerk that was ringing us up flipped a switch on her headset and they checked the central office. The wallet was there, so we picked it up on the way out. She had left it in Mel’s Diner – and everything was still inside, including about 9000 yen. What a relief!

We left the park feeling like we had done everything that we wanted to do, and we rode back to Umeda station together. Kuniko and I decided to have dinner together, and so we said goodbye to Yuri and Miss Tamura. They were really nice to allow me to join their “girl’s day out”.

Back at Kuniko’s place we decided to just order in a pizza and relax. We had some “jelly” made of honey for dessert, and then I got out of there fairly early. I wanted to make sure that Kuniko was able to get some rest before going back to school on Monday. She’s been working hard and under a lot of pressure. I think today was good for her mentally, but physically she’s going to be tired. Me, too, for that matter.

I jumped on the train, and got a seat right away. I fell asleep on the train, something I’ve never done before. Luckily I woke up about ten seconds before my stop and was able to stagger to the door and catch the Sanyo line train back home. What a day!