Lately things have been smelling like a campfire in our teacher’s room. This is pretty normal, actually, but the weather has been such that I’ve noticed it more. Why does it smell like a campfire? Because they are burning garbage on the next street.
It is very common here for people to burn their trash. Usually they collect it into a big pile, and then burn it. I am supposed to sort my own garbage into burnable and non-burnable piles. Even a drive through the countryside finds smoldering piles of trash – the country is so wet that the threat of the fire spreading is minimal. Do you have a lot of crap to get rid of? Burn it, dude.
Anyway, it has been particularly aromatic lately, but if you try to forget that it’s garbage it’s actually quite pleasant.
Mr. Hayashi came bustling into the teacher’s room and asked me for my website address. I gave him the old address, even though I wasn’t sure what he wanted it for. I guess the people in the office wanted to check it out. They were disappointed that there were no pictures, but impressed nonetheless. I’m really glad that I was able to switch locations – my website is the topic of conversation a couple of times a month, even though I haven’t really updated the other one.
I had another easy day today, but tomorrow is back to work with a couple of tough classes. After school the ESS club got together to work on our project. I really didn’t do much but hang out and proof-read a few paragraphs for them. Harada-san and I practiced kanji together, and I helped her with some English. She’s really good at helping with the kanji – she’s got a good sense of humor about it.
The hallways these days are filled with people dancing. The upcoming cultural festival must be a complete dance marathon – I think every single class and most clubs are dancing. Everyone wants a room to practice in, too. Today they were spilling out into the hallways, and I had to duck around twirling people to get from place to place.
I got out of school around 5:15, and as I was walking down the street towards the station, I heard somebody call my name. I turned around expecting a student, but it was Keiko-san, the nice lady who invited me to chat in English with her friends a while back. She was with someone else who she introduced as Ikuko, a lady that lives across the street from the school. She was actually pretty good at English, and teaches English to junior high school kids. She is teaching Japanese to another ALT from England, who apparently lives in Takasago – I’ve never seen him, though.
Anyway, we chatted for a little while. I knew where this was going to go – Keiko was no doubt trying to either get me to practice English with Ikuko or go out with her, maybe both. Keiko asked me if I was free next week to chat a little bit in English, and I said that I was free in the beginning of the week. Keiko said she’d call me and work out the details. Keiko told me how nice Ikuko was – isn’t she nice looking? Yikes.
I said goodbye, and headed to the station – now I’m back home and cooking up some tonkatsu and rice for dinner. This weekend a typhoon is supposed to hit, but not this area. It’ll just be nice and wet during the weekend.
