After school today I met with my afterschool club, the English Speaking Society, and I had four students show up. That was actually quite a few, and I was happy to see them. Today I brought in a bunch of American candy for them to try. I didn’t realize it, but inside there were some Atomic Fireballs, which are pretty intense. One of the poor girls popped one in her mouth and started wigging out. The Japanese are generally not into spicy things – this must have been a sensory overload for her. She started giggling in pain, and that set me off giggling, and pretty soon we were both unable to talk in either Japanese or English. It was quite a scene.

I’m hoping to cook tacos with my ESS club next week. I have the tortillas – I just need to pick up some ground beef and some toppings at the store. I’m going to ask the home economics teacher if we can commandeer the kitchen for a while. I’m hoping we get to do it.

On the train ride home I sat next to one of my students, and we were talking in Japanese for most of the train trip. At his stop, he got off and said “Goodbye” in English, and I said “Goodbye” in Japanese. I turned to my left and someone that just got on the train was looking at me like the world had just turned upside down. I suppose it was a strange thing to see. I just smiled at him and said “Hello!”.

Once I got to the playground, some of the kids playing there pulled me aside and started asking me a ton of questions in Japanese. I spent a minute or two talking to them, and then one of their mothers came over and talked with us, too. One thing led to another, and the kids invited me to play in the playground with them. I went upstairs, changed into some play clothes, and came downstairs, while all the kids jumped up and down and cheered. As I walked towards the park, they circled me chanting “Gaijin, gaijin” (foreigner, foreigner). The neighbor kids came out and pretty soon I was surrounded by ten or fifiteen kids between five and nine years old. I found that I was able to communicate pretty well with the five year old kids, which tells me something about my level of Japanese 🙂

Anyway, we played in the playground for about twenty minutes, then it got dark, and I headed in. The mother that I had talked to said that she is a big hiker, so I may be invited to their next family hike.

Today was an interesting day – I taught with one of the English teachers for the first time, was tempted by tacos, and tried the Japanese version of moonshine all in one day!

While going to teach one of my classes, an English teacher that I haven’t really talked to much came up to me and told me that I was going to teach a class with him. According to my schedule, I was not teaching with him, but it turned out that he had flipped around the schedule to suit him. He gave me about an hour’s notice, so I ran back and put together some worksheets for the class. The class turned out great, I was very happy with it, despite the short notice.

Miss Kageyama is interviewing on Sunday for a job in Osaka, and so after classes were finished, we did a mock interview, with me asking the questions, and she responded in English. She did a great job, but I think that she had memorized the responses. If they ask questions that are not on her memorization sheet, she’ll be in trouble. She could answer them well, she just doesn’t believe that she could without memorizing. I sprung a few random questions on her, and that got her thinking a little bit. I hope that it goes well. I’ll get to see her one last time before the interview on Friday. She is coming in a little more to get extra lessons from me and Mr. Hayashi.

After school, Mr. Hayashi was driving me to the train station, and then he announced that he knew a place that had tacos! We decided to go check it out, and my stomach started to growl. I was seriously craving tacos. Mr. Hayashi drove up and down a street in Kakogawa, insisting that he knew where it was. Unfortunately, after a half hour of driving, he gave up, so he dropped me off at the train station with my stomach making loud noises. He promised to do some research and find out about the tacos, so maybe tomorrow I’ll get to try some.

On my way home, my stomach was freaking out, so I couldn’t walk by the yakitori place and cook my own dinner. I went inside, and had a great meal of beef, chicken, and pork on skewers. The part-time employee came in and brought his English-Japanese dictionary, so that worked out great. I was finally able to communicate with the staff and talk about some more abstract things. The master invited me to watch their softball game on Saturday, so I’m looking forward to doing that in the morning. We were having such a good time that the master broke out some plum sake that his mother makes at home, and it was excellent. It was a little sweet, but it tasted great after the big dinner that I had.

Today was a holiday for me – the Autumnal Equinox. I got a phone call this morning from Sara, and we got a chance to catch up and see how everything was going. It was good to talk to her, but I admit I was still a little groggy – she caught me sleeping in.

After getting up I cooked a big breakfast of hash browns and eggs, and then got my hiking gear together and hit the trail. I had heard from Mr. Hayashi about hiking Mt. Rokko, which is one of the large mountains above Kobe. The weather was cool, but it wasn’t raining – perfect weather for hiking.

I had some trouble finding the trailhead, and although I could have asked someone, I wouldn’t have been able to understand the response. After some exploring, I found it, and started climbing up the mountain. There were lots of people coming down, but nobody (but me) going up. I think I was at the right mountain, but who knows? It was about a 45 minute hike to the top, and it was fairly steep climb. It felt great to work my legs hard again.

At the top, I ran into a giant wasp, and I tried to take a movie of it, with marginal success. Check out the movie here (2.5 MB), and you can see what I mean.

Afterwards, I was climbing along the ridge of the mountain away from Kobe, and stumbled upon an old amusement park, and explored that area for a while. All of the equipment was showing it’s age, and wasn’t really protected from the elements.

I’m not sure when it was popular, but it had this sad, nostalgic feeling combined with a weird creepiness. When I first got there it was empty, but people started showing up while I was taking pictures, and that made it seem a little less spooky.

It turns out that there was a more direct way to get to the amusement park from Kobe, so I followed that way back towards the train station. I was able to stop at a small restaurant and have lunch on top of one of the hills, near an observation building. They also had a coffee shop up there, and plenty of beer. This makes two out of three mountains that I’ve climbed in Japan that have had beer at the top. That’s a very pleasant trend, I think.

Stinky, sweaty, and exhausted I jumped back on the train and headed back home. The hike turned out great, and I’m hoping to do it again on a nicer day. Tomorrow it’s back to work for me.

So today was going pretty well, until my worst nightmare came true.

My teaching schedule at Takasago Minami is pretty complex. Every week I teach the first year students, but each class of 40 is split into two classes of 20. That means that we alternate weeks. The second years I teach in classes of 40, but they only come every other week. There are many times that they cancel classes, and so I need to keep track of the class that was cancelled, and then be ready to move my lesson to the next time we meet. With so many things going on, and with several holidays and school events going on, it gets a bit tricky.

Mr. Hayashi had to go this afternoon to help with a judo event, so he asked me to teach his class alone. Again, this is supposed to be against the rules, but things seem a bit lax around my school. According to my notes, these students had already sat through my first introductory lesson, so I printed out worksheets and notes for lesson two, and then went up to teach the lesson.

The first indication of trouble was when I tried to collect the homework from the last lesson. I got a totally blank stare from the students. I’m used to blank stares, I actually get them a lot here in Japan. As you’ve no doubt guessed by now, it turns out that this was the first time that I was teaching this class. Now I was standing in front of some expectant students with the wrong lesson plan, no handouts for my introduction, no Japanese teacher of English, and 45 minutes to kill. Ouch.

I ended up going through my introduction very quickly, and then jumping into my second lesson. It actually worked out pretty well. The students were a rowdy bunch, especially since there was no teacher to talk them down in Japanese. One of the students was intent on arm wrestling with me, and it was a pretty hectic scene for a while. The only good news was that there were none of my teachers there to see the train wreck.

Tomorrow I’m going to put together a spreadsheet to organize my classes and lessons. I don’t want to get burned again.

I just got back from my Sunday night 7-11 run to watch the high-pitched clerk in action. She’s on to me now, though, and recognizes me because I’m the big white guy that comes in every Sunday. Instead of staring down at the register keys and avoiding eye contact, now she looks at me.

Outside there were a bunch of kids just hanging out and smoking. The scene was remarkably similar to the 7-11’s in America.

Tomorrow I have a regular day of classes, then on Tuesday it’s a public holiday for the Autumnal Equinox. Nice! I haven’t decided what I’m going to do. Melanie upstairs wants to go out and try the yakitori place with me, so I might do that. I’m thinking that if this weather stays like it has been, it might be a perfect day to go hiking.

I’ve posted a couple of movies I took with my camera from Sports Day. Some of the movies can be quite large and take a while to download, depending on how fast your connection is. Just click on the name of the movie to download and watch it. I apologize in advance, I’m no Steven Spielberg.

Morning Exercises (3.3 MB) – This is a little moment of Zen for you. One thousand students doing strange stretching exercises before they compete in Sports Day. At the end of the movie you can see that even some of the teachers and parents are doing the same thing.

Kibasen Warmup (4.3 MB) – This is the part of the kibasen when the “horses” circle around each other in preparation for the big fight. It’s the white hats versus the orange, and if you look closely at the end you can see two “horses” starting to get into it.

That’s all for now. I occasionally have other movies, and I’ll post them when I can!

Sports Day was today, and it was quite an experience. The weather cooperated for the entire day, and it didn’t start raining until I got home. The kids did great, and it was a lot of fun to see the flags that they had created for each class. The amount of creativity and detail that went into them was amazing.

They had the typical track and field type events, but then they had some other unusual relays. Some involved wearing the uniform of their sports club, and I felt sorry for the kendo guys that had to put on all their armor and run around the track beating each other up.

One event took me by surprise – the event was called “bouhiki”. The girls split up into two teams of about 100-200 people each. Each team stood on one side of the field, and between the two teams, a number of large bamboo poles were placed on the ground lengthwise. At the sound of the starter pistol, 400 screaming Japanese girls charged to the middle and started trying to drag the poles back to their side. They were pulling these poles all over the place, with sometimes 20 or 30 girls at one pole, pulling it in opposite directions.

The event I was looking forward to, “kibasen” is like some kind of strange sanctioned street fight, and was a lot of fun to watch. For this event, it is only the boys that play. Three boys support one other boy on their shoulders, and walk him around. Kisaben roughly translates to “cavalry” in English, and the rider wears a hat that must not come off no matter what. There are many “horses” in the first round, and while they play “We Will Rock You” by Queen in the background, the horses circle and finally start to scuffle. Once a player loses his hat, he has to leave the field. After the first round, the remainder take each other on one-on-one.

All together Sports Day was a lot of fun. I got a free lunch – a bento box from one of the nice department stores in town, and it was delicious. Much better than the cafeteria food I’ve had before. After the long day out in the sun, I was looking forward to the party that night.

About a week ago, the Hanshin Tigers, usually the bottom dwellers of Japanese professional baseball, clinched the Central Division title. The Tigers play right near where I live, and so the whole area is excited about their success. The train line I take to work everyday also owns the Hanshin Tigers, so I see advertising all the time on the train, telling me how great the team is and how I should be buying season tickets for next year.

I went to Akashi and met Mr. Komuri and friends to celebrate the Hanshin Tigers victory. He had a giant “keg” of sake, completely made out of wood. Mr. Komuri is a huge fan of the Tigers, and he bought the keg to celebrate. The sake takes on a bit of the wood flavor, which I guess is part of the appeal. We met at a bar that served Guinness on draft, and had three dart boards. The name of the place was “Donkey”. Not “The Donkey Bar”, or “Donkey Pub”, but “Donkey”. I went to “Donkey” last night.

The keg needed to be broken open, and there were several large hammers to use. Mr. Komuri had taped the game when the Tigers had clinched, so he replayed that, and at the moment of truth, he cracked open the keg. Everyone cheered, and then they sang the Hanshin Tigers song, which has two lines in English so I could only join in briefly. We passed around cups of sake. The cups are also made of wood, and for some strange reason, they are square. Drinking a lot of booze can be hard enough, but then putting it in square cups really ups the challenge level.

Everyone had a great time, and there was plenty of food to eat – shrimp, sashimi, sandwiches, and quiche, of all things. Another foreigner from Texas came in, so I talked to him a little bit. He’s got a teaching gig in Takasago that he wants me to take over, but I think my timing would make it impossible. He has been living in Japan for quite a while, and he’s going to move back to Texas.

About half the party took off, but I was still hungry, so I joined a couple of the other teachers and we went to get some okonomiyaki. The little Japanese pizza-type things are delicious, but very hard to eat with chopsticks. The restaurant that we went to was a bit of a locals only place, and everybody watched me carefully. The owners of the restaurant were very impressed that I knew how to use chopsticks, and they were very patient with my limited Japanese.

After the restaurant, I went back on the train with one of the teachers at my school who lives in the same apartment. He’s a computer teacher, and he speaks only a word or two of English. It was a real challenge to converse with him, but I think we managed. He seems like a genuinely nice guy. He called ahead and his wife was waiting for us when we got to our station, and she drove us home. His wife was extremely outgoing, and I think she was really excited to meet a foreigner. I got home relatively early, thanks to the ride I got, and so now I’m looking forward to a domestic weekend – doing chores, laundry and cleaning house. I’ve been running around so much lately, this will be a relief.

This weekend I was leaning towards catching Tomb Raider, but Miss Kageyama called and had to bail, as she found out that she had passed the first stage of a job interview in Osaka, and this weekend she is going in to interview in the next stage. Miss Kageyama is a part time teacher, and so that means that she doesn’t have a lot of job security.

She has been applying at different schools, without much success. This is the first time that she has gotten a bite, so she’s cautiously excited. The school is supposedly one of the top English schools in Osaka, which means a lot. I get the impression that Miss Kageyama is a big city type, so hopefully she will land that job. It seems like a good match for her.

Today I spent helping translate a speech for one of our students who plans on entering a speech contest. I had fun with the translation – if she doesn’t make round two, the contest must be rigged. I am hoping I’ll get a chance to watch her deliver it and cheer her on.

Today I came into work wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and I even brought ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ just in case it got really boring.

It turns out I didn’t have to worry about that.

It is pretty clear that Sports Day is taken pretty seriously around here. All the kids march into the field area during the practice, and they stay out there until lunchtime in the heat. The poor kids had to sit out of the field and cook during the day, while the teachers got to sit under a tent. The weather hasn’t been as hot lately, but it’s still tough out there. All the kids knew how to march, which surprised me. They marched in their teams around the field, and then stood marching while the band finished up the tune. On Friday I will bring my camera and get some pictures of the official event.

Sports Day is going to be pretty exciting on Friday, judging from the events that I saw today. The students do some traditional sports in the track and field vein, but they also do some really strange ones. My favorite involves a couple of boys carrying another on their shoulders, and then attacking another set of kids. The object is to tear the headband off the other team. They didn’t actually do battle today, so I’ll have to wait for Friday.

I also got to walk around and chat with the kids. All day long I walked around and chatted, and the kids were great. I posed for pictures with some of them, and had some good talks.

One of the girl students came up and tried to say hello, but couldn’t stop giggling. Mrs. Tsutsumi (one of my English teachers) was there and was laughing too, and I couldn’t figure out the joke. Mrs. Tsutsumi talked back and forth with the student for a bit, and then the student said to me in clear English, “I love you.” I don’t know what the proper response is in America, and I certainly don’t know what it is in Japan. I think I just smiled and said “Thanks.” Mrs. Tsutsumi didn’t think anything about this was unusual, so I just kind of played it off like this happens to me all the time.

Later on I was talking with Mr. Hayashi near the offices and the school nurse came running up and spoke urgently with Mr. Hayashi – and the next thing I knew we were both running towards her office. They gave us a stretcher, and we walked out onto the field, where a girl was kind of passed out on the ground. She wasn’t unconscious, she just couldn’t get up. Some of her friends got her positioned on the stretcher, and we lugged her across the field back to the nurse’s office. I guess she was OK, because I saw her competing later in one of the events.

Towards the end of the day four boys were caught playing poker in one of the classrooms instead of being outside with the rest of the school. One of the teachers was yelling at them, and even slapped one of the kids around a little. At the closing ceremony, they each stood under the flags so that they had to look everyone in the school in the eye as the flags were lowered. I got kicked out of the library for playing poker when I was in Junior High School, so I kind of empathized with the poor kids. Maybe I can get them to join my poker group! (just kidding)

Tomorrow it’s back to regular classes, and then the big day on Friday. I’m going to try to see Tomb Raider 2 this weekend with Miss Kageyama, but it may be very busy, as this weekend is opening weekend for Tomb Raider 2 in Japan.

I just got back from dinner in Kobe. As you probably know by now, my master teacher Mr. Hayashi is crazy about expensive restaurants. He is always going into the Kitano area of Kobe and eating out, and knows a bunch of restaurant managers and owners in the area. Every couple of weeks he comes up with some new deal where we can eat at a five star restaurant for about half price. Tonight, he drove four teachers and himself to Kobe to eat at Kitano Club.

When we got there, the manager came out and said that they had unexpectedly booked up that night, and asked us to eat at their sister restaurant, Port Of Pacific. We went in there, and you could tell they spent a lot of money on interior design. The food did not disappoint, and I was finally able to get my first taste of Kobe beef. We had a four course meal with Kobe beef, foie gras, and plenty of beer, and it came out to just about 4000 yen ($32). I don’t know what strings Mr. Hayashi pulled, but it worked out great. I was resigned to the idea of paying $60-70 for Kobe beef.

As for the beef, it was excellent. The size of the portion was OK, and the tenderness was perfect. It was a small filet, but the taste was intense all the way through. Mr. Hayashi drove us all home, and now I’m getting my act together for tomorrow. We have a Sports Day rehearsal, so I have no classes. In fact, they said that I can wear shorts and a t-shirt since I will be lounging around outside all day long. Sounds good to me.

Today I woke up around 9:30 from as restful a sleep as I have ever had. I’m serious – I woke up feeling incredible. I’m not sure why – today was a holiday for me, and I had no big plans, and so I just slept in and my whole body felt refreshed.

My big goal today was to get a haircut and buy an alarm clock. I looked up a few words in my dictionary and then went down to the train station. Two stops down the road is Befu, and there I found a big barber shop and got my first haircut in Japan. For 1500 yen ($12.50) you get a haircut and then a shave. They have a shaving specialist that walks around after the barber is finished with you and shaves you the old fashioned way. I skipped the shave since I had just done it at home, so the haircut was only 1000 yen. The barber was able to understand my limited Japanese, and I’m pleased with the cut.

I also picked up an alarm clock, but strangely, I found only one that let you wake up to the radio. Mine makes an annoying beeping sound, which will certainly crank me out of bed each morning.

I cooked up some curry and rice for dinner, and was working on my budget and finances when Melanie called down and wanted me to come up with my laptop and watch a movie with her and Jenny, her friend from Ireland. I brought up my computer and we all watched “Almost Famous” on the laptop while munching on salty, fishy snacks.

Tomorrow I’m supposed to head to dinner at Kitano Club in Kobe. I guess I can’t wear shorts, though.

Today Antoine and I awoke to screaming children in the playground, and my community announcement, which always makes me feel like I’m waking up in prison. Not that I know what that feels like. Anyway, my folks called soon after, so I got to talk to them and also had a great conversation with my Grandma.

I took Antoine back to the train station, and then called Miss Kageyama. We decided to go out to a coffee place that she knew and study English and Japanese. We spent a couple of hours in the coffee shop, talking back and forth. I tried out some Japanese, and she was really good about correcting me in the right places. She had taken an exam as part of a job interview in Osaka on Saturday, so she told me all about that – it sounded really difficult. I don’t think I would have done that well, and English is my native language!

Afterwards we went out to eat at a new ramen shop that opened up near my place. We decided what to order, and Miss Kageyama ordered the food. Then the server asked question upon question, and it became apparent to me that I am missing a lot of things by not understanding the servers. Miss Kageyama described it just the way she wanted it, and it came out great. I just would have said, “Two ramens, please.”

Now I’m wrapping up my laundry and thinking about next week. I’ve got short classes because our school is preparing for the annual sports day. The entire school participates in a sports festival, so I’m eager to see all these hyper kids in action. Mr. Hayashi wants us to go out to dinner on Tuesday at Kitano Club, one of the top three most expensive restaurants in Kobe. It sits atop a hill overlooking all of Kobe. Originally we were going to a local restaurant that serves ostrich steaks, but at the last minute it sounds like Mr. Hayashi changed his mind. Lucky that Tuesday is payday – I think this is a pretty swanky place.

The falls above Kobe were pretty spectacular, and it was a pretty good hike up some serious steps to get there. We started at the bullet train station in Kobe, and went right up the hill behind the station to find the falls.

Melanie was a trouper climbing up the steps. She’s a smoker, so I thought she’d have a tough time, but she did fine. At the top we enjoyed a pretty good view of the falls, and then climbed some steps to enjoy the view right above the falls. We were pretty bushed by then, and so we sat down on some rocks and just spaced out for a while.

There was a trail that continued up the mountain, and we were debating whether to continue up, or just head back down and go back into Kobe. We decided to go ahead and go up, and after about a two minute hike, we turned the corner to find a tiny little bar at the top of the mountain surrounded by jungle and rocky terrain. We went in and sat down, and enjoyed the view from the open air building out over the waterfall, while drinking beers and relaxing even more. It was the best payoff for a hike that I’ve ever had.

The little bar was almost empty, but there was a foreigner in there writing in her journal over a big bottle of beer. She stopped by and talked with us, and it turns out she is from Tennessee and participating in the Semester At Sea program. It was interesting to hear about her experiences. She was just finishing up five days in Japan, and now she is headed to China for another five days. It sounded like a lot of fun, and so we exchanged e-mail addresses to keep tabs on each other’s adventures.

After a few beers we went back into Kobe and stopped in at a ramen shop for a bowl of noodles. They had an interesting system where you bought a “meal ticket” at a vending machine on the side of the restaurant, and then handed the ticket to the server. Kind of strange, but they had pictures and numbers associated with each dish, so we could figure it out on our own.

After the noodles, we stopped in at a bar that had a Belgian Wheat Beer that Melanie was raving about, so we had a few there, and then we walked a bit around Sannomiya station, enjoying the crowds and live music. There were a ton of people there, and it was fun to see all the action running around there.

After getting home, I did some errands around the house for a while, and then called Antoine, and we decided to meet up at Like, Like for a couple of glasses of wine. We met in Kobe at around 8 o’clock, and then split a bottle of wine and talked about week two of teaching. I invited him to come over and check out my place, and head back to Takarazuka the next day, so we jumped on the second to last train of the night and pulled into my station around midnight.

I went down and did my clean up duty around the apartment this morning. It was pretty light duty. I’m not sure how everyone knew what to do, but I just picked up a rake and dragged it around for a while. I helped pull down a small tree that they were trying to cut down. My height was helpful for that.

Afterwards, we signed a little book to prove that we were there to help, and they gave us a free soda to say thanks. Yasu’s mom, the one who helped us out when Andrew went to the hospital, invited Melanie and me over for some juice. Juice turned into a four course breakfast, and we only just got out of there. She is such a nice person.

We’re gearing up to go to the waterfalls in Kobe right now.

I’ve just uploaded some pictures for some of the previous entries, so make sure to dig through the archives and check them out. I have lots more, so if you see a subject you like, make sure to let me know.

Right now the typhoon has pushed a storm along the coastline to the south of me. There is some serious thunder and lightning going on. I managed to get a picture out my back window of the lightning, but since it is so cloudy it didn’t turn out that great….