This morning I bundled up and headed off to school, showing up a few minutes before nine a.m. There were lots of cars in the parking lot, but hardly any teachers were there. I did a few more “Happy New Years” for some teachers, much to their amusement.
I spent my two hour work day taking down Christmas decorations in my classroom and getting some other decorations ready. I have a pretty good stack of postcards from people that have sent them along, and also some pictures of mine that I printed out. The other night I drained my ink cartridges printing so much.
Around eleven o’clock the office lady came in and told Mr. Hayashi that a package had come in for me. I went in there to pick it up, and I found that it had been waylaid by the customs office in Japan. They had levied a duty on it, but it was only 2100 yen (around $17). No big deal – I was just happy to get a package!
Mr. Hayashi gave me a ride to the station, and I lugged my package home. I set up in the living room, and opened presents for a while.
I scored a lot of great gifts – everyone was very generous. I’ve got some warm clothes to wear, a new alarm clock, some great food, new DVDs to watch (the Alien Quadrilogy), lots of great stuff.
Afterwards, I went right back out to the train station and rode to Befu. I had tried to get a haircut over the holidays, but everyone was closed. This time I had to wait about 20 minutes, but then I was in the hotseat. I explained as best as I could in Japanese what I wanted, and the whole barbersop, including the customers, listened carefully to me. The barber had a few questions for me, and then some of the customers had some other questions, but the barber told them to just wait and see.
This is my second haircut in Japan, and it was just as scary as the first. There are a lot of razors and blades flying around, and it takes a long time. I was in the chair for an hour, which is a pretty long haircut. A couple of times I looked in the mirror and thought, “Whoops – that looks terrible”, but then it would improve again, so no worries.
They laid me back and gave me a shave with a straight razor, and then a girl came up and washed my hair for me, and then styled it afterwards. Finally, the barber comes back to give the final touches, and then the girl rang me up and sent me on my way.
I picked up some printer cartridges next door, walked through the supermarket to eat free samples and take some pictures in the dried fish section, and then I went home.
On the way home I picked up some beer at a local liquor shop. I usually buy beer and wine at one of the big supermarkets, but this place was on my way and I occasionally buy wine there. I got 4 big bottles of Kirin, and the guy helping me suddenly burst into English. It turns out that he lived in San Francisco for five years a long time ago. His English was excellent – just like a native speaker. All the other employees came up to listen to him speaking to me, and one of the girls kept giggling – I don’t know exactly why, but she was very entertained.
Tomorrow night I’m meeting Yasu for beers at the yakitori. He was pretty excited about my trip to Australia, and so I want to catch him up and how it was. Thursday night I may go see a movie with Miss Kageyama, and then Friday night may be pretty quiet – I have to get up early on Saturday to do the monthly apartment grounds cleaning. Saturday night I may go out to Takarazuka with Antoine – we’ll see how it goes.
