I went out after work for a couple of drinks with two of the inspectors from the factory last night. These guys have been in Japan a long time, and are interesting to hang out with. While we drank they had a TV in the corner showing the news, and the inspectors kept trying to guess what each news story was about. I helped them a little bit, and it was really interesting to see how much I take the language thing for granted around here. I often give myself a hard time about not studying enough, but until I hung out with these guys I didn’t really realize how much I am understanding.

It was a little tempting to tease them by making up crazy stories for the news scenes they were watching – but I took the high road and only teased them a little. “That guy in the hospital? Attacked by bears. There’s a couple of them running loose in the Kobe area. Be careful on the way home tonight…”

Tonight I will avoid the bears by drinking with some students and enjoying kushikatsu. I’m not sure which students will be attending, but it should be fun to chat. Sometimes this particular group can get interesting – karaoke/hostess club/snack interesting. Hopefully it won’t get out of hand, because it is a school night…

I came home yesterday evening to find the soil in the indoor herbs completely dried out, and the greens already starting to wilt. I left them soaking wet yesterday morning, and in one day they drank all that water and wanted more. I soaked them again, and we’ll see what the situation is tonight. I may have to rethink this indoor herb thing…

Weather is getting cooler, and that means a much more comfortable experience going to and coming back from work. Fall is definitely here, and it feels great!

Today I’m going to possibly meet one of the inspectors for a couple of drinks after work. He is taking an early flight to Singapore tomorrow morning, so we’ll see about whether we go drinking or not – he’s still got to pack for the trip. Kuniko has a half day of work today, so I think she’ll have a relaxing afternoon at home, and there might even be some okonomiyaki waiting for me when I get home…

Saturday and Sunday were a couple of pretty relaxing days, and going into what will be a busy week socially, I’m feeling more rested than I have felt in a long time.

Saturday morning Kuniko was off to teach four classes, while I drove to the home center and did some shopping. It was a successful trip – I came back with some gardening supplies and some herbs to attempt to grow indoors. I’m not sure how well it will work, especially once it gets really cold and the sunlight during the day starts disappearing, but I’ll give it a try.

Kuniko and I cooked up some chicken on the BBQ, along with some grilled asparagus and shiitake mushrooms. The whole dinner cost less than 800 yen.

Sunday we drove over to visit Mr. Inoguchi in Miki. It was our first time to drive there, and because their address is pretty obscure, the iPhone wasn’t able to guide us to his door. Instead we got to the neighborhood, and luckily were able to remember where his place was from the last time we were there.

We had a delicious lunch there – spaghetti with sun dried tomato and olive sauce, lasagna stuffed with ricotta and a white cream sauce, along with plenty of green side dishes to keep things balanced. Mr. Inoguchi is really a good cook – we were lucky to get an invite. Next time they come over he requested Tex Mex, so I’ll have to start thinking about that.

His wife has been chosen to make a short address in English at an academic conference in Hong Kong, and so we talked about that. She sounded a little nervous, but I think she’ll do fine. I’ve never heard her say one word of English, so it should be an interesting adventure. We tried to encourage her while we were there, and if possible we might meet up before the conference in December to coach her a little bit.

The final stop for us was a shopping trip at the local shopping center for some supplies for the week, and by the time we finished shopping and organizing our household we ended up going out for 100 yen sushi. We didn’t eat much, but that’s the beauty of 100 yen sushi – you can choose exactly what you want to eat and how much of it you’d like. We walked out of there having only eaten 12 plates of sushi, and people were looking at us like we were crazy.

As I said before, I’ve got a busy schedule this week. Tomorrow I’ll go to tachinomi with a couple of the inspectors from work, Wednesday I’ll join some students for some kushikatsu in Sannomiya, then Friday Yoshi and I will go for pizza and beer in Kobe and Saturday we’ll join the Fukumi’s and Yamaji’s at the Fukumi household for a bon voyage party for Yuuki Yamaji who will move to Italy to study how to become a chef. Hopefully Sunday I’ll get some downtime…

During the first part of each course I spend some time trying to get students used to small talk. It is one of the things that is significantly different between cultures, and if I don’t work on that then I can expect a one way conversation for the remainder of the course, and that is both hard work and unrealistic.

So I push the students to carry their side of the conversation. I teach them the question words, about turning a question around on their speaking partner, and using “why” questions to buy themselves more thinking time. It takes a long time for them to get used to this style, but usually by the end of the course they are much better at pulling their weight in simple conversations. It is a skill that isn’t measured by TOEIC or Eiken, but it is very apparent when they sit down with vendors or customers from English-speaking countries.

One of my students from last year was really surprised how much small talk actually goes on. He was hosting some people from America for more than a week, and he had prepared just two topics for small talk. Those wrapped up pretty quick, and he spent the rest of the visit hoping he wouldn’t have to speak to any Americans. He said that the Americans were small-talking all the time – walking to meetings, after the meetings, in the elevator, around the factory, even in the bathroom. I got the idea that they pretty much exhausted my student with all the small talk. Comparatively, in Japan it is usually a few lines about the weather and then it is on to business. Big difference.

Friday is here, and I’m looking forward to the weekend. I was pretty tired out coming home yesterday, so I think I need to get some rest this weekend, maybe do some gardening if the weather is good, and just relax. We’ll see how that plan works out…

We’ve been busy planning all kinds of parties and events the last couple of days. Normally, we’re pretty antisocial and stay home to play video games, drink wine and listen to music in the evenings. For some reason, however, we’ll be a little more busy the next couple of months. Not sure why, but it may have something to do with the end of summer and cooler weather.

Next weekend we’ll meet up with Inoguchi sensei and his wife for lunch, and they always are very good at throwing a party. More fun stuff coming up soon after…

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks playing phone tag with the Denya master. Starting with a phone call from him while we were traveling in Germany and finally ending yesterday with an evening phone call. He has been trying to work out how to arrange my attendance at the Futami matsuri. Usually I join wearing a normal happi that I borrow from somebody, but this time the master and another guy wanted me to join a special ceremony and perform some sacred ritual.

I was a bit ambivalent about it, because every time I go to the matsuri it is more about drinking and fighting and lifting dangerously heavy objects, and less about celebration. Also, my schedule for that day is double booked, so it was going to be tough anyway. And finally, now that I (permanently) live in Okubo, and being a property owner I think maybe I should go and check out the local matsuri here.

So after playing phone tag forever, we finally chatted last night and worked out that the special sacred ritual role isn’t for me, and I’ll try to drop by during the day just to watch. That will free me up for another event that I’ll attend that evening, so I guess it works out. I just hope that the master didn’t get in trouble with the matsuri organizers for the last minute change.

Last night Kuniko and I polished off the lasagna leftovers from the other night, and maybe tonight we’ll kill off the last stragglers of the feast. Then it is back to healthy dinners for us the rest of the week. After last weekend I have some weight to lose – it was pretty high on calories.

Somehow I managed to celebrate my birthday all three days of last weekend, which was fun but a little exhausting on the whole. It started with a great dinner on Friday night at an Indian restaurant that opened up in Okubo called ‘Swaad’. The curries and naan were great, although the cheese naan bread wasn’t quite as good as our usual favorite restaurant in Shin-Osaka. Still, excellent flavors, good price, and great service. I’d recommend it to anybody in the area. If anybody in the area reads English and reads this blog. Which is probably unlikely.

Anyway…

Saturday we attended the yearly concert for Kuniko’s school, and this year had some interesting variety – a lot more vocals than I remember, some great pianists, and a jazzy saxophone/piano combination that was pretty good. After the show we headed to Befu for a dinner at Orvieto. It had been two years since we’ve been, but the owner was the same guy, and the menu was much the same. As always the food was great, (especially the homemade porcini pasta) and the owner is a very friendly guy who does well at entertaining his guests. We were hoping to buy a bottle of Ridge Zinfandel for this special occasion, but unfortunately he wouldn’t sell it to us – maybe he is saving it for some other occasion. He did recommend an OK Italian red, though.

Sunday night Kuniko’s parents, sister and brother-in-law came over for dinner. It was Italian food night – Kuniko made lasagne, appetizers, a salad, and I cooked up some pork loin using some dry rub that my folks had sent for my birthday from their friend Jerry Holt in Texas. The rub was excellent – a perfect match of spice and salt. We drank wine and talked and talked, and I had a great time. Kuniko served homemade tiramisu for dessert, and Atsushi and Tomoko gave me Super Mario Brothers as a birthday present. Kuniko’s parents left around 9 pm, and we partied much longer, playing with the Wii and rocking out to music.

The next day Kuniko wasn’t feeling great – but despite that we went out to visit the family farm to watch them harvest the rice. The rice harvest is going in several stages, mainly because of the weather and some new equipment that they bought that should save some steps in the process. Unfortunately when we arrived the new equipment wasn’t working very well, and combined with the muddy conditions it seemed like there wasn’t much harvesting going on. Kuniko finally said enough was enough and so we cut out of there and headed back home. We spent the day resting at home, and I started reading a new Lee Child book that my folks had sent.

So in the end we relaxed on my birthday, and it was a quiet, peaceful affair. This week is a little shorter thanks to the holiday, so I’m already looking forward to the next weekend, with maybe a chance to visit with Inoguchi sensei for lunch.

The weekend is pretty much here – I just have Friday’s classes to get through and then I’ll be ready to enjoy the time off during this three day weekend. Because October 11th (Monday) is “Physical Fitness Day” I’ll have my birthday off of work. That’s pretty nice – and somewhat ironic considering the state of my physical fitness (hint: opposite of fit).

Tonight Kuniko and I have plans to meet in Okubo after work and try an Indian restaurant that opened a couple months back. Tomorrow Kuniko has to work at school, so we’ll go out after dinner to our favorite restaurant in Befu, and then Sunday Kuniko’s parents and Tomoko and Atsushi will come over to celebrate as well. Luckily we’ll have Monday to recover slowly and get ready to go back to work. I’ll just be doing it as a 39 year middle aged gaijin. Ha!

Almost as if in preparation for all of this good living we’ve been eating pretty well this week. Last night we had a stir fry of cabbage, onion, mushrooms, konyaku and bean sprouts laced with basil and hot sauce. Turned out pretty good, and I realized that we haven’t eaten meat in a week. Maybe that’ll help later on this weekend.

Last night we abandoned the Thai dish that I had planned on and instead made tamagokakegohan, which is the easiest dish in the world to make – so easy that it is guilt-inducing. You just prepare a bowl of hot rice, crack an egg over the top, put a splash of soy sauce in, and then mix and mix and mix with some chopsticks until it is frothy. So good.

At first the raw egg might be a little spooky, but the taste is so good that you quickly forget about it and enjoy the dish. Good stuff, and it surprisingly goes well with red wine. I selected a Primitivo that we recently ordered online. Yum.

The rest of the evening we spent listening to music, making fun of Japanese TV shows, and talking about Kuniko’s job, and how tough it has been lately. She has good days and bad like anyone else, but when you work 14 hour days every day sometimes it feels a little claustrophobic. Just not enough down time for her to reset and relax, I’d guess, but who am I to diagnose? After a relaxing evening last night she seemed like she was OK to go back out there and kick ass.

Last night on TV there was a three hour special edition of the “Bacademy Awards” – and since I was free I watched about an hour of it. I went into great detail about my feelings about this show here, but it is a rip-off of America’s Funniest Home Videos, without the Saget.

The same annoyances still applied, so I’m not sure why I watched it, but I guess if you filter out the audience’s reactions it is entertaining enough. A lot of the scenes were copped from “Jackass”, but the way they were shown it was as if it was common practice in America to do this kind of stupid stuff. Huh.

Since I brought home lots of Japanese pickles from Kyoto we’ve been having a steady diet of Japanese food so far this week. Rice, miso soup, some varieties of pickles, and some nikujaga (hold the niku, please) making this a healthy couple of days. Tonight we might have to change it up a little… Thai food, perhaps?

Off to work now to meet the last group of new students – always a good time (at least for me).

I began teaching a new round of students yesterday, and my first impressions were very good. Most of the students seem to have a good attitude, and are looking for tangible improvements in their speaking skills, so I’ll have my work cut out for me. Today and tomorrow I will continue to meet new students, so I’ll have a better picture of all of them by mid-week.

Last night some wine that I ordered over the internet arrived. It is really so easy to order wine these days – the only problem is finding the ones that you want. California wines (at least the good ones) are way too expensive – sometimes 4 or 5 times more than Costco. Fortunately, Italian wines tend to be undervalued in Japan, so I’m able to take advantage of that. Last night’s order contained five bottles of Primitivo, so we’re getting our Zinfandel fix one way or another.

Kuniko once again mentioned that I should start a company. This time, she thinks I should start an internet wine shop. I think back to my parents sending the BBQ and receiving the imported shipment, doing all the paperwork, paying the customs fees, and then imagine doing that every couple of weeks – Ugh. But it would be nice to be able to recommend and sell decent California wines in Japan. I’d probably end up drinking most of my stock.

During the four day holiday we managed to relax most of the time, but I did sneak off to Kyoto for a little bit of hiking. I started off with a bus ride to Ginkakuji, and spent about half an hour wandering through the grounds and spacing out. It was a good way to relax and take my mind off of work.

After looking through the grounds I followed a pathway behind Ginkakuji that lead slowly and steadily up the mountains. It was about a 30 minute hike uphill, but since I was so out of shape from hiding in air conditioned rooms all summer, I got some pretty good sweat going.

At the top it took me a little bit of time to realize that I was looking at Daimoji, which is a giant kanji symbol for big (大). From the ground it is a little hard to take in, but from google maps you can see it here. The pattern was made up of concrete blocks, and once a year they pile flammable material on top of the blocks and set it on fire at night. This was my first time to see it up close, and it was a little different from what I had expected.

After drying off in the sun at the top of the mountain, I headed back down the hill to grab some lunch, do some shopping for Kuniko, and then head home. It was a 3/4 day trip, and it was nice to get away from the regular routine.

Today I am headed back to work, and I’ll start with mostly new students. Three of my students had the pull/connections to manage another six months of English classes, so good on them. I’m looking forward to meeting the rest this week.

Today and tomorrow I caught a couple of days off. I don’t want to brag, but they are with pay as well. Turns out that the contract I signed for this job had a few loopholes, and I’m sailing through them right now.

Next term’s students begin class on Monday of next week, and this term’s students finished yesterday. So in between I have no students to teach. I’m staying home for the most part today since the weather is rainy, but hopefully the weather will improve tomorrow and I can get a day trip in. Haven’t decided the destination, but the sky is the limit. I’m considering Kyoto right now, but nothing is set, and I might end up going the other way towards Hiroshima. Either way I’ll take along my camera and get some good pics while I’m out.

This is also a good time to let my brain reset a little bit. Teaching nine classes a day can wear you down after a while, so these breaks are a welcome rest from the normal routine.

Yesterday I only went into the office to participate in the orientation for new students. Starting next week I’ll be teaching a whole new group of students, and this week I am saying goodbye to the old group.

The orientation went pretty smoothly, but I have been fighting a cold lately, so I felt a little out of sorts most of the day. Despite this I made a short introduction in English, and I think everything went well.

Afterwards I sat down with the sales person from OTC (my staffing company) to discuss the flow of the class, and soon afterwards we went off to Sannomiya to meet with another OTC person and then have dinner and drinks. I guess you could call it a kickoff party for the third round of classes. The restaurant was a seafood restaurant/izakaya. They had a lot of fresh fish, so we concentrated on that – and it was pretty good. They had three kinds of soy sauce to use in various situations as well. It was kind of fun to experiment with the different flavors.

Finally we called it a night and I got home around eight o’clock, which is pretty early for a party night. Kuniko was already home and we caught up on each other’s day and talked about the rest of the week, and then finally hit the sack.

Today I’ll have my last class of students from the previous term, and then I’ll have some time to get my act together and refresh before the next term starts. I’ve got a few things I want to do (one of them is hiking) before classes start up, so I’m looking forward to the rest of the week.

Yesterday we attended a wine tasting held by the Italian Sommelier Association of Japan in the Osaka City Hall building. Our friend Chiemi often frequents an Italian wine bar and has developed a deep interest in Italian wines, so she invited us along and we were happy to accept.

The place was riverside in Yodoyabashi, and very quiet on a Sunday. We walked along the river and then waited a few minutes for Chiemi, Ai, and a friend of Ai’s to show up. Then we went inside and started tasting.

The event was well attended – and well-staffed. There were about 60 wines being poured – all Chiantis. There isn’t a lot of diversity in Chianti Classico as the blend is generally set, but we could find some interesting wines out there. The best part was a small piece of paper that you could take with a color picture of the label, the price, and all of the important information about the wine – winery, vintage, etc. Now I have a pile of papers and I can search the internet to try to get the bottles delivered.

It has been a long time since I’ve been to a wine tasting. The workers were very pleasant but not too talkative, at least to me. The age-old problem of people crowding the tables and not moving after getting a taste is still around… move aside, people! It was good to be back tasting, and I’m hoping we can do an event like this in the future.

Next stop was an Italian restaurant for dinner. The place was near Umeda, and it turned out to be really good. There were a couple of Italian guys working there, they served giant plates of antipasti, and the pizza oven was a traditional brick oven that turned out great pizza. We met up with Chu Chu and her boyfriend for dinner, and it was my first time to meet him. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and we promised that we’d try to do some hiking in the future – I guess he is really into hiking as well as motorcycling.

We were pretty bushed after staying out so late on a school night, so we caught a super rapid home, and got to bed before midnight. I think we’ll be lagging a little today, but it was worth it.