Last night I had an odd experience on the way home, and thought I should relate it here. As I got on the crowded train home I was just finishing up a conversation with Kuniko. Usually we message each other, but for some reason this time we were talking on the phone. As I wrapped up the call, and just as the doors of the train began to shut, an old man yelled at me. I wasn’t sure what he was saying because I was finishing up with Kuniko, but everybody in the train looked at him. Once I hung up I asked what was the problem, and he repeated himself, and as far as I could tell he wanted me to watch my manners and not speak on the phone while on the train.

It was a perfectly valid request, because speaking on phones on the train is considered a bit rude, and I knew during the call that I’d have to wrap it up quickly and also I should speak in a lower voice. So I can see why he might have gotten upset, but in reality there was plenty of other “rude” behavior going on around us that he could have yelled about. Because I stand out and because he may have been a little grouchy today he decided to make a big scene on the train.

As for me, I just smiled at him and did my very best to keep my mood perfectly normal. Inside, I was picturing all the situations where I could get even, embarrass him in front of the other passengers, or say something witty as he got off the train. It was surprising how many scenarios went through my head before I noticed that other passengers were still giving him dirty looks now and then. So I decided to put all thoughts of revenge aside, and just concentrate on getting home without bothering anybody… you know, like a Japanese person probably would.

There were no more problems on the train ride home, and as luck would have it the old guy got off at my stop, and it took quite a bit of self-control not to “accidentally” step on his shoe as he got off the train and climbed up the stairs. I awarded myself a mental medal of valor for that one. The fact of the matter was that everyone was watching how I reacted, and I don’t think I could have made much of a positive impression by doing something clever to the old man – in the end I would have looked like just as much of an asshole as he looked. So the other cheek was turned, but it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be.

When I first arrived in Japan I was a participant of the JET program, and the combined experiences of moving to a new country, experiencing a new culture, and working in a completely new environment (a Japanese public high school) made for some very interesting reading on this blog.

Nowadays my job is completely different – training Japanese workers in business English – and it is the most fulfilling teaching that I have done at any level here. However, at this stage of English instruction corporate information, security, and confidentiality become an issue, and although there haven’t been any problems it does severely limit what I can (or should) post in this semi-public place. That makes for quite a few boring posts, especially of late. It is not that funny, embarrassing, interesting and exciting things aren’t happening lately, it is just that I can’t talk about them here.

So I guess my point is to keep hanging in there, and we’ll all hope that something will happen sooner or later that will get the blog wheels turning a little more rapidly in the future.

Just wrapped up a four day weekend that featured a Halloween party, fierce blustery winds, a day of rain and a couple of decent days of sunshine. I spent most of the time at home trying to rest my heel which has continued to be sore lately, and supporting Kuniko who had to work three of the four days I had off. We were able to enjoy the evenings, however, with a steak dinner, indian curried chicken, and hot soymilk nabe.

The weather is officially cold now that the rain has passed, and we’ve had to heat the floors now and then in the evenings. I had forgotten how effective that is in heating up the living room – we just need to remember to turn them off about an hour before bed to be as efficient as possible. Heated floors – so nice.

One of the bonus features of a long weekend is the subsequent short week, so I’ll be working hard for just a few days before another weekend kicks in. I had to cancel a planned hiking trip to give my heel a little more recovery time before I push it in the mountains. No plans on seeing a doctor yet, but if it isn’t much better by the end of next weekend then I’ll consider it.

I’ve noticed that at work all my students seem to be exhausted, and I’m wondering if it is because of a heavy workload recently or because maybe I’ve had lots of time to refresh myself while they have been slaving away. The lessons continue to go pretty well, but I want to saddle more and more of the conversational load on them, and that means I have to resist the urge to interject during long pauses. My American nature is to fill any gaps with conversation, but that can lead to lost opportunities for them while they are still thinking about how to say something. I’m hoping they’ll start to fill these conversational gaps that I’m leaving them, but sometimes we end up staring at each other until somebody laughs. Maybe I’m just a weird teacher.

Tomorrow I’ll be teaching at Kobe University again so it’ll be a late night. I’m enjoying those courses and it is amazing how even though I’m using the same lesson plan the classes vary dramatically. That’s why I like teaching so much – the students provide enough variety to keep my interest even when I’m teaching the exact same thing.

Usually when I go in to work at Kawasaki I have to pass a quick security check in the lobby of the building by flashing my ID card to the pair of receptionists at the desk. After the first month of this I asked the head receptionist if it was really necessary. It is pretty clear that I am still me, and I come in every day – it seemed a little superflous to go through the ritual every day. But I also knew that checking my ID was one of the few positions of authority that the receptionists have, and as I expected the head receptionist was not willing to let that responsiblility go.

However recently there was a change in staff as the head receptionist left the company just before my two week vacation. She said her farewells before I left for vacation, and when I returned back to work one of the other receptionists had (whether formally or informally) taken her place. She smiled as I presented my ID card and assured me that in the future I can just walk straight in. She said the former boss was a little strict, and as far as she was concerned it was no problem. A change in the pecking order seems to have helped me out a bit.

It was nice to be back at work after the long vacation, but it seems like I lucked into a nice situation coming back – this weekend is a four day weekend at Kawasaki, so I’ll have plenty of time to relax before really getting into the swing of things again. I’ll be working Nozaki sensei’s Halloween party again on Saturday, but other than that I don’t really have any plans. I’m nursing a sore heel (how’d I get that?) so the downtime will be welcome to keep off my feet and rest it.

Well, we just wrapped up a two week visit from my parents here in Okubo, and it went pretty well. In contrast to their last visit during our wedding it was a little slower paced, and although we traveled from Osaka to Okayama to Kobe to Kyoto, we spent most of our time home-based out of our place in Akashi.

The trip was full of highlights, like visiting Okamoto-san in Himeji, introducing two branches of the extended family over a feast in Okayama, an okonomiyaki house party at the neighbors’ place, bringing my parents over to Red Spanky (twice), showing them a real Japanese matsuri, and of course lots of eating and more eating.

It was good times, but now it is back to work. I’ll be going off to work tomorrow for a double order of Kawasaki and Kobe University, so I’ll be returning with a big workload, but it’ll be nice to be earning some money again. More later as we pull into the weekend!

Having survived the typhoon that blew through at the end of last week, we were able to suitably enjoy the three day weekend thanks to physical fitness day on Monday in Japan. As for the typhoon – it was a pretty mild one as the main part of it passed to the south of us, and it passed during the middle of the night so I slept through most of it. No damage to the house or the yard, so no problem.

Besides the excitement that always surrounds a three day weekend (especially one based on physical fitness) we had a chance to celebrate my birthday on Sunday. During the daytime we took a hike out to the ocean, and at the shrine there we watched for a while as they held a mini-matsuri. This one was pretty small, but all the more scenic thanks to the beautiful ocean view.

In the evening we went out to dinner near Motomachi in Kobe, and then bar hopped to a couple of places before heading home. Dinner was pretty good, and coupled with a great wine (a 2004 Shiraz from Australia) it was a memorable evening. The best dish of the night was grilled Iberico pork with a homemade mustard sauce – yum.

Monday we went over to visit Kuniko’s parents. Kuniko’s sister and his husband were in town, so we all had lunch together. Kuniko’s mom made sekihan (one of my favorites) for my birthday, and we also had fried shrimp and potato salad. After exchanging lots of goodies we headed home, and spent the rest of the day cleaning house and watching movies.

It was a very relaxing weekend, and now I have just two days of work before my parents arrive here in Japan. Hopefully we’ll have some spare time to blog while they’re here…

We had a nice party the other night with the neighbors. It was nice to invite some of the people over who have invited us to their place before and return the favor. The party turned out to be fairly wild, with the older kids of Yamaji-san attending and drinking with a sense of adventure. We had our hands full with delivering food and drinks to everyone on time, but in the end it was a pretty successful party. I’d really like to get into some kind of routine or schedule hanging out with them – they are all fun to hang out with.

After working through the first few days of this week on a normal schedule today’s students were all abuzz about the incoming typhoon. It has been a long time since a typhoon has hit Japan, and the one coming on is a strong one. While it has been rainy here today, we could see the approaching storm on the web, and the company started to prepare in case of a work stoppage. By lunchtime they had decided to have all the factory workers stay home tomorrow, and by two in the afternoon I was also excused from coming in tomorrow. Good news for me – a typhoon day off. I haven’t had one of those in a long time – not since the days of working at a high school.

My students weren’t so lucky. They aren’t factory workers but managers and executives, and they were sent a memo by the HR guy saying that each person should weigh the risks and decide for themselves whether to come in or not. That’s a pretty ambiguous directive, and while I’m sure most people would play it safe in the USA and take the chance to stay home, my students didn’t want to be the one guy who stays at home, and there was a lot of feeling out of the situation going on around me when I left work. It will probably end up being nearly a normal day for them, with the exception of no factory workers to direct and no English classes to attend.

I’m off to batten down the hatches of the new house. It is our new home’s first typhoon – I hope it holds up.

Today in one of my classes the conversation took a bizarre turn when the student asked me for tips on how to set up one of his female coworkers with a potential husband. I’m not sure why he felt I was the right guy to ask, but he asked me in English in the middle of our lesson. I guess his female coworker is bugging him to introduce him to a potential mate, and my student is not sure how to proceed. He tried hosting a small party to introduce her to one of his friends, but she didn’t respond to the guy during the party, and now they are looking for some more ideas. I don’t know how it got to the point of ‘let me ask my English teacher’ but there we were. I suggested that she be a little more social by picking up a hobby or something that would allow her to travel in different social circles, but apparently she is working way too many hours for anything like that. This is why the birthrate in Japan is so low.

I am lucky to have an internet connection at work and permission to use it before, during and after lessons. The bad news is that it is heavily protected against anything that might be non-business related, and I get the feeling that my movements on the net are being observed. I usually use it to find and download news articles for discussion with my students, but there are lots of other interesting tools and teaching aids out there, and it is really nice to have it at my fingertips. Today I played a 20 questions guessing game with one of my students, and he was trying to guess a famous actress. I picked Angelina Jolie because she often comes to Japan with her husband to promote this or that. The student didn’t recognize her name, however, so I googled her and showed him a picture and it was instant understood who she was. Another student asked me about local beers in America so I hit a few websites to show him my recommended beers based on region. The internet monitors will be interested to see the records of me looking at beer websites and Angelina Jolie pictures during my workday. Hopefully it won’t come back to haunt me later…

This weekend I participated once again in what is now an annual tradition – joining the Denya volleyball team to be slaughtered in the local tournament. We had a couple of new members but it didn’t seem to matter – we lost our first match by scores of 21-3 and 21-2. The other team had uniforms, were doing jump serves and even talking some trash throughout the game. Our team had hangovers and a foreigner, but that was about it. The tournament opened at 9 a.m., and I was home before 10:30.

The week at work is moving along quite rapidly, and I’m still enjoying the teaching at KHI. The variety of students makes the classes more interesting because everyone has particular goals and challenges, so one hour I may be teaching simple pronunciation and then the next I’ll be holding a mock presentation question and answer period to put students’ skills to the test.

This morning Kuniko and I kind of overslept and we didn’t have time to make lunches to take to work. I took the opportunity to follow a tip from one of my students and I went to a local sushi shop. For 800 yen I had a big plate of 8 different kinds of nigiri sushi with red miso soup and hot green tea – a pretty good deal. The ambience of the place was great – a real hole in the wall local place. It was nice to get away from the classroom to relax in the corner of a dim sushi restaurant while it rained outside and enjoy a well-prepared meal. I’ve heard that there is a similar style of sushi restaurant a few minutes walk from our house, so when the time is right I’ll have to go check it out.

We had a great couple of days off Monday through Friday, and lots of guests over to party with us. On the last day we pulled out all the stops for Chu-chu, Ai and Chiemi. I was a little too busy cooking and making drinks to take many pictures, but luckily Chiemi took some and posted them here. Enjoy!

For a couple of different reasons I didn’t bring a bento lunch today to work, and consequently had a mini-adventure during lunchtime. I had planned originally on walking down the street to the supermarket and grab some sushi or something. Instead I decided to investigate a “hidden lunchroom” that was described to me by one of my students. He likes to go there because not many people are there compared to the cafeteria, which serves about 1500 people a day during lunchbreak.

He showed me on a map of the facility where the lunchroom was, so I walked out there today to check it out. My security clearance got me on to northern part of the factory complex, and I walked around until I found the general area. There were no signs saying “hidden lunchroom” anywhere, so I asked a passing worker. He was a little surprised but pointed to a door marked “no entry” and so I opened it up and went in to find a tiny cafeteria there. There were only eight or so employees having lunch, and they looked just as surprised to see me as I was to actually find the place really existed.

I grabbed a table and ordered a bowl of tempura soba from an older lady working in the place. The food was simple, good and cheap, and everyone pretty much left me alone while I ate and looked around. It looked like a converted portion of a warehouse, with lots of junk laying around in addition to various snack-type foods for sale. It was a far cry from the huge cafeteria in the center of the factory, but I just couldn’t figure out why it was operating – why not make the eight customers a day walk 10 minutes to the cafeteria that serves everyone else? With my stomach full and my curiousity piqued I headed back to my classroom.

On the way back I got my first chance to see a train nerd (called a “Tetsu” in Japanese) taking pictures of some of the trains from outside the complex. He was taking lots of pictures of the bullet train that the crews are finishing up. According to my students the Tetsus show up all the time and have been security problems in the past. The interest in trains in Japan is pretty intense, and these guys will do anything for a photograph of the latests trains being designed and tested at the factory. While I’ve seen plenty of Tetsus at train stations around Kansai, apparently they are also into stalking the train factories. It kind of dawned on me today that I work in Tetsu heaven – talking with train designers and executives all day about their work might be a train nerd’s wet dream.

Back in class I asked one of the executives about this mysterious restaurant. He had heard of it but had never been, and he promised to do some asking around to find out the history of the place. This guy is pretty high up in the organization, so I’m expecting good results.

This article does a great job of summing up the challenges facing the new government of Japan as they take office today. Speaking as one of the “temporary workers” described in the article, it will be interesting to see how Hatoyama and company pull off this balancing act.

The last two days have cooled down quite a bit, and we’re officially looking forward to the beginning of fall. A couple of weeks ago some of the autumn-centric products started to appear in stores (oden, seasonal beers, etc) and the last two nights were cool enough to use blankets on the bed. While I’m not a big fan of summer in Japan, Kuniko is, and she’s a little bummed out that winter is drawing closer. I’m just happy to be able to go to work and come back without being covered in sweat.

This week is a full week at work, but next weekend is a five day weekend. Thanks to a lucky alignment of holidays we’ll have Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off. We’re looking forward to hosting some folks over here a couple nights, and I have to sit down and spend some time creating lesson plans for another course I am going to teach at Kobe University.

I’m also looking forward to the start of some of my favorite guilty pleasures – Survivor and the Amazing Race are starting this month, and I’ll be able to download those and follow along pretty soon. With Lost not starting until next year and only Mad Men to watch these days, I’m jonesin’ for a reality TV fix…

It is Monday morning and I’m off to work pretty soon. The weekend was very relaxing, and both Kuniko and I have plenty of energy to get through a pretty routine week ahead of us. No special events this week.

On Saturday I traveled to Kakogawa in the evening to cover a couple of classes for Nozaki sensei. She was at a conference in Osaka, so she asked me to take her two Chigasaki method English classes. The students did pretty well with the classes. The classes aren’t conversational English classes, but I did manage to get them speaking and discussing the articles, and that was a nice feeling. By the time I wrapped up the second class Nozaki sensei had made it back to Kakogawa, and she even drove me home.

I met up with Kuniko at Okubo station as she was returning from a mini-party at a coworker’s house, and together we went over to Red Spanky for a couple of cocktails before going home. The gang over at Red Spanky were in full swing, and two teachers from the local kids English school came in for drinks after work. It looked like they make it a habit of stopping in after work – they knew everyone in the place. Very cool.

Sunday was slow and easy. We did a little shopping, some gardening, and watched a couple of movies. Low key is good for Sunday – I’m glad we hadn’t planned any parties.

Well, I’m off to work soon. I have a computer and internet at the job but security is tight and I don’t have a lot of time to blog while I’m there… for now it’ll be sporadic updates until I settle into a routine.

So I’ve started a new job recently in Kobe, and that will involve a daily commute and “real job” full-time hours. Yesterday was my first day, and I spent the whole day getting to know my new students, and getting to know the lay of the land in and around the office.

The lessons are individual lessons in 45 minute blocks, so just as you and the student are warming up to each other it is time to go. I’m used to teaching 90 minute and 120 minute classes – so this is something I’ll need to get used to.

Since we’re both working all day Kuniko and I have re-instituted the morning bento making, and it is really nice to have a homemade meal in the middle of the day again. So far, so good – more updates as classes continue this week.