I’m about ready to hit the sack, but I thought I’d sneak in this entry before I did. I was scheduled for a busy day at school, but one of the teachers called in sick and I got out of one of my classes because of it.

The classes that I did have were some of my favorite classes. The second year class I taught was full of curious and competitive students, and it was just the right mix for a three activity set that I dreamed up a while back. The students at my school know that I usually play games and have fun, so whenever I walk into the class just before the bell rings, there is often a huge round of applause and cheers. It feels good to go to work and have forty people so happy to see you that they break into applause.

I had just one first year class, and the teacher showed up late. I was there with the students after the bell rang, and they were all sitting there waiting for me to entertain them. I started the class just the same as if the Japanese teacher was there, and got things going. The teacher, when he showed up, looked a little perturbed, but quickly forgot about it. I apologized afterwards for starting without him, but by then he didn’t seem to mind as much as his face showed earlier.

The other two classes I had were with third year students. These students are used to having me with another teacher, Harada sensei. She was the one who called in sick, however, so they got to see me teaching with another teacher, Takagi sensei. Their styles are completely different, and I think the students were really surprised how little I do in Takagi sensei’s class compared to Harada sensei’s class. That’s part of my job, though – adapting to the different styles of all the teachers that I teach with.

Somewhere along the way today I developed a hardcore headache, and I’m nursing it even now. For some reason I’m trying not to take aspirin, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not. I took a hot bath with Kuniko and she tried working out the knots in my neck – hopefully things will loosen up overnight.

A few minutes ago Yamamoto sensei from Takasago Minami called out of the blue and told me that he was at Okubo station. A couple of days ago I asked if he could get some paperwork for me from school for my taxes, and he said he’d look into it. The next thing I know, he’s calling me at 9:30 at night telling me that he’s at the station. I threw on some clothes and ran down to the station, and he handed over the paperwork. We spent a few minutes catching up, and establishing that I owe him at least a couple of drinks, and then he took off.

Before he left he gave me a little bit of gossip from Takanan. Apparently the history teacher got into a little bit of trouble with one of the female students, and she complained. I don’t know more than that, but I do know that I wasn’t surprised to hear something like that about him.

I’ve got to head to bed soon. Kuniko bought some bread for us to take to school tomorrow, so we can sleep in a little bit instead of getting up at 4:50 a.m. to make bento lunches. I’m looking forward to that little bit of extra sleep.

Not much to report from the work front today. My classes went smoothly and nothing super exciting happened during the day. This week seems to be flying by.

Tonight I made up a simple dinner of miso soup, rice, tofu and kimchee, and Kuniko topped it off with some natto (yuck!).

The rest of this week will be a little heavier with classes, but I should have a full weekend to relax. The good news is that Kuniko might be able to take at least one day off this weekend, and maybe both days. I’m hoping it works out – she’s looking pretty tired these days.

We both got up around the same time this morning, and I got a chance to fill up my brand new bento lunchbox with tons of food. The bento fits in my man-purse, so I don’t have to go to work with my little lunch bag anymore. That means one more free hand I can stuff in my pocket and keep warm.

At work today I had a heavy schedule – five classes out of six. I did preparations for the classes early in the morning. They all went great but one, a new lesson that I had dreamed up. Actually, Kuroda sensei and I think that the lesson itself wasn’t bad – it was the student attitude that sucked.

The class was one that Kuroda sensei really dreads teaching. Not because they are behaving poorly – they are very quiet. Not because they are not smart – they have the highest test scores in the whole school. It’s because they don’t work well together. There is a lot of tension in the room whenever we teach. Some students have complained about others, and there are always people that won’t speak to other people. There are only about five students out of forty that will answer questions, and so that makes it pretty tough to get them excited and have a fun lesson.

Other than that class, everything else went smoothly. All of the students that I had coached to pass the STEP test ended up passing, and that made me very happy. They were really excited to pass that milestone, and hopefully next year in high school they can pass the next level.

I’m back home right on time, and I’m getting ready to cook up some yakisoba for tonight’s dinner. I’ve got a noodle craving…

Sunday I went into Kobe to meet up with a group of people that meet monthly – kind of a discussion group in English. I went about a month ago and enjoyed myself. I was invited to the original party by a lady in our school office, but this time she couldn’t make it.

The place we met was at one of the members’ houses. She lives in the ritzy Kitano district in Kobe, and we walked there from the station into nicer and nicer neighborhoods, until we found her place at the base of the large mountain that dominates the Kobe landscape.

The house was really nice, and decorated in a little more of a Western style than most Japanese homes I’ve visited. It did appear that the owner had a liking for ceramic dogs, however.

Besides myself there were four Japanese ladies that attended, and two Danish doctors that are working for the World Health Organization on a temporary post to Japan. Another member of that organization, kind of a support person that was originally from America, came along with the doctors to join in. Also, an Iranian doctorate student studying in Japan showed up. With this really interesting mix of people we settled down and chatted.

It wasn’t long before the discussion was deep in murky hypothetical waters, and we were throwing around the solutions to the world’s problems sitting among porcelain beagles that watched unblinkingly. It was interesting to see the speaking styles of the different people and sometimes you really wanted to tie it to their culture. The Danish doctor was very forward with his opinions, and he barely let anyone else talk. The Iranian woman turned every topic into a sad view of the world – she was depressing me from the beginning of the conversation. We asked her what her favorite book was and she went off on a long sad story that ended with one of her older brothers dying in the Iran-Iraq war. Yikes.

It was a marathon session over lunch, and by the time we had to adjourn I was ready to get out of there and meet Kuniko for a little sunshine and happiness. I met her in Kobe and we didn’t have much sunshine. The weather was turning awful. We skipped our planned walk along Kobe harbor, and headed back to Okubo instead. We did catch a tonkatsu dinner on the way home though. After changing out of our wet clothes it was nice to take a hot bath and stay warm in the kotatsu. Hard to believe, but this weekend is over.

Kuniko is off at work today, so after I nursed my hangover I spent the day watching downloaded TV shows, doing laundry and doing some shopping over at Saty.

At Saty I bought a new bento lunch box. I’ve been putting it off for a long time. The old one has lots of hard to clean areas, and it doesn’t seal correctly – especially if there is a lot of food in there. If it doesn’t seal it starts to give off aromas, and the furoshiki that I wrap it with had absorbed all those smells. While it didn’t smell bad, it didn’t smell clean, no matter how often I washed it.

So, it’s a new bento box for me. The new one looks like a traditional old-fashioned Japanese bento box, but the inside is all modern and airtight. I like it, and I can’t wait to put it into service on Monday.

On the way back from Saty I did some grocery shopping for dinner at Vivre, which is one of the supermarkets in that shopping area. They have more upscale items. It’s fun to shop there, but usually we do our shopping at Jusco near our house.

Since it is the weekend there were lots of shoppers out. The store had people giving away samples of food and products around the inside of the store. In Japan there seems to be a strong feeling that if you take a free sample, you should really buy whatever you took. I’m not sure why, but I’ve gotten some funny reactions whenever I take samples and try them. Some people don’t care if you buy it or not, and some people give me a strange look but keep smiling.

There is a really pushy older lady that occasionally works the sample areas. Last time I took a sample from her she got into this big deal about trying to get me take the product – I think it was chicken breasts. Today I saw her again and thought it would be a great time to rile her up a little bit. Today she was serving hot dog pieces. I walked by and took one, and before I even had it in my mouth, she was pointing at the product on the shelf. I smiled at her and chewed up the hot dog. It was pretty good, but the price was too high – I could buy it cheaper at Jusco across the street from my house.

I told her thanks, and said it was delicious. I put the toothpick in the trash (you aren’t allowed to keep the toothpick) and started to walk away. She was having none of that, though. “If it’s delicious, why don’t you buy one?” she asked. I smiled again and said “no thanks”, and that just pissed her off even more. She kept telling me to buy a package, but I politely refused and moved on with my shopping. She shook her head and started looking around at the other customers in the store to see if anyone had seen it. Nobody really had been paying attention, so muttered loudly to herself and walked away.

Here I am, on the front line exploring Japanese culture. Maybe I’ll go again tomorrow and ask her first how much the hot dogs cost before I take one.

Kuniko will be getting home around seven or eight tonight, so I’m going to get dinner ready for when she arrives. I’m sipping Tecate beer and I’m tucked into the kotatsu right now – which is an odd cultural combination. Tonight it’s Chinese food – mabodofu and gyoza.

Friday students from our school competed in a speech contest. Since I didn’t have classes all day, I went to the competition with them. Speech contests can be a little weird. There is a lot of very unnatural English being spoken. Also, students often try to use gestures to help liven up the material and as an aid to help them memorize it. The gestures frequently go over the line into “unnatural” territory. Too many gestures and you aren’t watching a speech – you’re watching a talking mime.

It was held in a large hall, and I sat up in the back near my school’s principal. A couple of the ALTs that I know from other schools came by to root on their students, too. A couple sat next to me and started goofing off during the presentations, making me a little embarrassed. They settled down after a little bit, though.

Our students did pretty well, but they didn’t have enough points to win. It’s pretty scary to go up there and do your speech – but they did it well, and I was really proud of them. I walked down and encouraged them before and after their speeches which seemed to keep them cheerful. I’m certain that I would really be freaking out if I was in their position.

After all was said and done, I headed into Sannomiya to meet up with Antoine and Kuniko. Antoine and I met up first and headed to a beer hall designed in a German style and owned by Sapporo. The beer there is very good – they have actual small lot beers and they are kind of unusual for Japanese beers. After a while we got a message from Kuniko saying that she couldn’t join us – she was feeling a little sick.

We went out to catch dinner at a Spanish restaurant in the new Kobe “Mint” building that was built in the center of Sannomiya. It was tough deciding where to eat, but that seemed like the most interesting selection. We sat at a nice bar in front of a giant pig leg attached to a stand with a bolt going through the lower ankle. The was even a hoof still on it.

The food was pretty good – we had a wide selection of cheeses and meats, and we even talked the chef into slicing off some of the pig meat for us to eat straight. It was really good – a spicy prociutto flavor that just kind of melted in your mouth. We had a bottle of Spanish wine, too. Overall it was great, and I’ll have to go there again with Kuniko sometime.

We made one last stop before heading back. The Belgian beer place was pretty busy, and we each had one drink “for the road”. I had a Cuban rum served straight up, and Antoine had a sho-chu tea. It was the first time I had heard of it but it sounded pretty good.

By the time I got home I was pretty tired and still a little drunk. Kuniko was zonked out, and I zonked out right next to her.

I came into work today to find the first year teachers buzzing about yesterday’s exams. I guess a student was caught cheating, and he had a couple of assistants helping him out. The teachers had to go to the student’s home and tell the parents, and by the time the teachers got there the student had already given them a different story. I guess it was a late night for almost everyone, and it was a good reminder why I’m glad I’m not a Japanese teacher.

Today, like yesterday, I had no classes because the students are taking exams this week. I spent the day studying Japanese, and chatting with other teachers. In the afternoon I helped some students get ready for the speech contest on Friday. One of the teachers that is helping the third year student prepare really laid into her for not having the speech totally memorized. She went on and on, and I could see the student slowly changing from someone who likes English to someone who doesn’t, right before my eyes. I tried to keep her smiling and enthusiastic, but this teacher was all about winning, winning, winning.

The good news is that I am going to go to root for the students in the speech contest on Friday. Maybe I can do something to help them relax before and after the very stressful event.

After work I cooked up a simple Chinese chicken and pepper recipe from a package and we had a nice easy (and healthy) dinner when Kuniko got home. Kuniko is going to be cooking with her students this week. She’s the only female in the first year teacher’s group, so she is automatically the one who will have to supervise. We went out tonight after dinner to buy supplies. Now she’s in the kitchen doing a test run, and hopefully I’ll be the guinea pig.

Tomorrow is my third day in a row without classes, and Thursday is a holiday for us. No plans yet, but we’ll see how the weather is. I’d like to get out and do something active.

Kuniko and I celebrated our first anniversary Monday night by meeting up after school and having dinner together. I had a really easy day at school – no classes – and it was nice to take my time coming back and wandering around Kobe a little bit before Kuniko showed up.

We had originally wanted to go to Graciani, one of our favorite Kobe restaurants, but it was apparently out of business. Instead we went to Tapas, another one of our favorites. We ordered lots of food from the menu and a bottle of Spanish wine to go with it.

While eating we spent the time talking about the last year and how things had gone. It sounds like we’re both really happy with things, and year one went just as well as you could expect. We spent lots of time telling stories and laughing about memories from when we first met, from sneaking around together on dates, and about our wedding and party.

The dinner and dessert were excellent. They have a very unusual menu, and you can try all kinds of weird things. It isn’t really an authentic Spanish restaurant, more of a Spanish-style restaurant. It was delicious.

We walked back to the station from the restaurant, buzzing just a little bit from the wine, and then caught a train home. On the way back we stopped at Nishi Akashi to try to find a new bento box for Kuniko – her old one finally broke. We struck out there, but later found one at Saty closer to home.

We got home kind of late, and squeezed in a hot bath together before going to bed. It was a fun evening together. We’re both kind of concerned about how much we’ve been eating lately, though. Maybe it’s the weather – I don’t know. We officially are going on a diet together starting tomorrow.

Not much to report this weekend – it was pretty slow for me, but Kuniko was plenty busy. On Saturday she had to go in to school. She got to sleep in a little bit, and luckily I got to sleep in a lot.

In the afternoon on Saturday I went into Himeji to take some pictures of the leaves starting to change color around Himeji castle. It turned out I was a little early – the leaves had just begun to change. Also, the weather wasn’t so good – it was cloudy and threatening rain. The only reason I went out there was because there is rain in the forecast the rest of the week, and it seemed like my last chance.

While walking around Himeji I suddenly started to feel itchy all over my body. It came on quite quickly, and soon I was covered with what looked like mosquito or flea bites. They were all over, though, and I think they were actually hives. I cancelled the rest of my trip and headed home, with lumps all over the place. The was a nice big lump on my forehead, but everything else was under my clothes. By the time I got back home they were disappearing, so whatever it was it was temporary. I must have walked through something. Weird.

Sunday was really mellow. Kuniko went into Kyoto to meet up with some of her old college friends, and I stayed home and cleaned and did laundry. I watched a little TV and pretty much just lounged around the house all day. Rain came and went, so it was a good day to be inside.

Kuniko got home late, but she brought back lots of omiyage from Kyoto. We went to bed soon after she got home to get some rest for the week ahead.

The big event for me Friday was the observation of one of my classes by a person that works for the staffing company that I use. I wasn’t really sweating it, because the person that was coming was just hired a month or so ago, and she doesn’t have much experience. I had heard from other people that she had just watched the classes and then left, without sharing any advice or anything.

And that’s just about what happened today. Before the class I sat with her as she asked the vice principal and three of the English teachers if I was a good worker. Of course they said yes – he’s a great guy, the student loves him, and did you know he can walk on water? Of course they said this, because I was sitting right there. Note to staffing person – ask them when I’m not around if you want a real answer.

But later I realized that she probably doesn’t want a real answer. I think she wrote down the comments, and then someday when it comes time for the staffing company to renew a contract or bid on a new one, lots of positive reviews of their employees will only help. It was pretty embarrassing to hear the teachers say how wonderful a job I was doing though. After each comment the staffing lady would say “Oh, that’s great. Thank you!” As if she was the one doing all the nice things. Maybe just a culture issue.

The lesson itself went really smoothly. It was the perfect lesson to be observed – I created the lesson plan myself, and it was an easygoing lesson for the students right before exams. It was with Kuroda sensei, and I think I probably teach the best with her out of all my teachers. Everyone enjoyed it, and there weren’t any problems. Afterwards, the staffing lady said good job and went running for the door, so I didn’t get any more feedback than that. Weird.

Due to a quirky schedule, the students didn’t get out of school until 4:00 – exactly at the same time I left. That meant as I left the gate there were lots of students milling around, and every single one of them wanted to say goodbye to me. As I walked down the street surrounded by students, students leaving the classrooms upstairs opened up the windows and called out goodbye. Imagine kind of a Pied Piper situation, with schoolkids instead of rats. By the time I made it to the station I still had about eight kids walking with me. Unfortunately all the chatting made me miss my train, so I had to wait around and I got home a little later than normal.

Kuniko was stuck at work late again, so I hung out at home and watched Survivor. I made up some dinner, a simple pot of nabe, and then around 10 p.m. went out to meet Kuniko at the station. We came home and had a super-late dinner. She was still full of energy and stayed up watching TV, but I was tired and hit the sack. I’m so ready for the weekend.

Lots to write about today. Kuniko and I slept in a little bit this morning, and as a result we almost missed our usual train in the morning. Luckily we made it without having to sprint to the station – I hate doing that.

At school I had the first period free. It was nice to have the time to review vocabulary and get psyched up for classes. I talked to a few of the teachers that were also free, and checked with them about upcoming classes and lesson plans.

My first class was during second period. It was a third year class, and I taught it with Takagi sensei. She has a completely different style compared to her counterpart, Harada sensei. Takagi sensei has a thick accent to her English, and she talks super fast. Her idea is that the faster you speak, the faster they will learn. She really flies through the lesson. But surprisingly (and the students know this very well) if a student brings up a humorous story or unrelated topic, she’ll go right off the rails of her lesson and joke around with the students, still at breakneck speed.

Since next week is exams, the teachers are working hard to get all the material covered in time. That means there is not a whole lot for me to do in some classes. Whenever that happens I walk around and help the students individually, and practice listening to the spoken Japanese in the classroom to make sure I can understand most of what is going on.

After class ended, as usual I waited for Takagi sensei to gather up all her paperwork, and get her stuff so we could go to the next class and teach that one together. I helped by erasing the board and pulling down the magnetized flashcards that she had used to teach vocabulary.

And that’s when I noticed that some girls in the back of the classroom were taking off their clothes.

At my school students change into their gym outfits in the classroom. Boys go to one classroom and girls to another. They close the curtains and change, and then run out to the field for physical education. The boys are pretty lax about shutting the doors and curtains, but the girls are always very careful that everything is shut tight before they change. For some reason, today some of them didn’t notice that I was still in the room.

For that matter, Takagi sensei was oblivious too. When I figured out what was going on, I made a beeline for the door, but I had to open the curtains to get out, and that might have been just as bad as being in there in the first place. In the background I could hear some of the girls telling the ones that were disrobing that Bryan was still in the room, and a couple more started calling out my name to get me to look. That was when I ducked under the curtain and got safely outside.

Takagi sensei came out a minute later, and she seemed to have not noticed anything at all. I decided not to mention it, and together we went to the next class. That’s my second “Could have been busted wrongly for being a pervert” moment this week.

Our second class went much smoother, and my third class was with Harada sensei. When I arrived there, Harada sensei was talking with another student who seemed really concerned about something.

A while back we started a lesson on Martin Luther King Jr., and during the introduction to that lesson Harada sensei had asked me in front of the students if I had experienced discrimination in Japan. I said yes, I had experienced it, anticipating that Harada sensei would have me tell the class about it. But instead, she moved on in the lesson and my story was left untold.

The student today was really depressed that something like that could happen in Japan, and she came to class early to ask Harada sensei and me about it. I was happy to be able to explain that I often see positive discrimination here in Japan. Many times I find myself being treated differently just because of the color of my skin. I listed a few examples, free sushi and yakitori, smiles and flirtation from total strangers, extra friendly service at supermarkets. Harada sensei was able to confirm this – she had spent time with a foreign boyfriend from America and noticed that he was treated like semi-royalty. But when she was hanging out with friends from China or Korea they were treated a step down from Japanese.

I was really impressed that the student cared enough to follow up and ask more questions, and I told her so. She is going to enter the speech contest soon. She wrote a really good speech about “Using the Sixth Sense to Save the World”.

During fifth period I taught with Matsunaga sensei. She is getting more and more confident teaching with me, and we’re enjoying the classes. Today’s class finished up early, so we had the students study on their own. That gave me a chance to walk around and chat with students. The first year students have an extremely limited English vocabulary so I am limited in what I can talk about. I mix in a little Japanese though, and that helps a lot.

Finally at the end of the day I helped out two other students who will be competing in the speech contest. That kept me at work late, so I missed my regular train and caught the one that came eight minutes later.

Surprisingly, the train was much more crowded that the one I usually take. A look around at the passengers and I could tell why. Most of the people on board were college students. There must be a girl’s college nearby, because the train was packed with girls coming back from a day at school. I’ll admit that I enjoyed the experience quite a bit, but not enough to make that my regular train.

I’m back home now, and I made some pasta sauce from scratch, and I’ve got some tortellini that we brought back from Italy ready to cook. I’ve also got a bottle of French red wine that we bought from Carrefour, and I’m working slowly on that until Kuniko gets home. Hopefully there’ll be some wine left for her.

Speaking of Carrefour, Kuniko heard from someone that it will be closing soon. About a year ago it was bought from the French company and a Japanese company started running it, with the same name and mostly the same merchandise. Apparently they are making the cut, so they are closing for good sometime soon. Kuniko and I went to visit recently to see if they were giving away stuff cheaply, but sadly most sale items were 10% off at the most. As we walked through the mostly empty aisles, I couldn’t help but remember coming to the store on the day it opened in 2004. I wrote about it here.

With Carrefour gone, we’ll take a big hit in the foreign food availability department. Where will it hurt? The big wall of imported beers is what I’ll miss most. I love picking up a couple of bottles of unusual beers and trying them out. Also that wonderful wine section will be gone – bummer. Good cheeses will become that much harder to find. Other than that, most of my needs are covered by other stores. None of them are as convenient as a short drive over to Carrefour, but I can at least find things. It could be worse – I could be living out in the countryside far away from everything.

At school today I had four classes in a row in the morning, but the afternoon was free. There was lots of gossip around the office today, but about nothing in particular. Harada sensei had been arguing with some other teachers, and there were some parents coming in to conference with some teachers about their kids.

Luckily, there wasn’t any fallout today from my unzipped incident yesterday. I was worried that the students would be talking and the stories would have spread all over the school.

Our school has a lot of disabled and otherwise challenged students. They take a huge amount of effort from their already-busy homeroom teachers, and not only do they not get the attention that they need, they often distract the other students.

One of these students at my school has been getting into a lot of trouble lately. He makes it his mission to try to get into the staff room, even though right now students are not allowed. He’ll come and ask at the door if he can come in, and he’ll ask every single teacher that he sees hoping for someone to say yes. He is teased by other students in the hallway, and sometimes he just spits on the floor or in his own pencil case.

Most of the parents of these students want them to be in a regular class with regular students, and I can understand why. But it is tough on the teachers and I see them getting stressed out about it every day. I don’t know what the best solution is, but it seems to be the big topic at our school day to day.

Today I lived one of the episodes that will be sure to make it into every “teaching highlights” story that I tell from now until I expire. I had a busy schedule today with four classes – and we had lots of guests today walking around the school because it was an “open school day”, where parents could drop by and visit the classes to see what their students were up to.

During my third class with the first year students, I noticed that there was a little more giggling than usual. A couple of students at the side of the class were laughing, and I saw one of them stealing a glance at my crotch while I was teaching. Oh, no – my teaching nightmare! Could I be teaching with my fly open?

Teaching with your fly open is one of those stories you tell all your friends at school – can you believe that Mr. So-and-so is so old and unaware that he didn’t notice his zipper was open in class? Was this my fate too? Had I been teaching that long that I was insensitive to the status of my zipper?

Thank god they have podiums in front of the classroom. I did a quick sidestep behind the podium, and waited a little while before casting a quick glance down at my textbook, and then continued my glance down to my pants, and sure enough – the zipper was O-PEN!

My next move was good. I waited until Mr. Harada stepped to the back of the class to ask a kid some tough questions, and then I casually reached down past my textbook and zipped that thing up.

Final damage report: minimal. The way my slacks were designed, even if they are unzipped the front flap overlaps the back in such a way as to provide a lot of coverage. The students probably only saw the plastic strip of the zipper at the top. Also, only one or two students noticed, other students were asking later what happened, but since nobody saw me zip up the general consensus was that the students that saw it were just making it up. Still, it was a scary moment, especially with all the pervert problems that Japan has.

More good news was that the incident happened before any classes that had parents attending, so that was a relief. Later in the day I did have a class with Harada sensei, and a pretty good crowd of student mothers showed up. I double-checked the zipper before I started that class.

Other than that, my day went pretty well. I had a light lunch today, and I think we’ll probably be having a light lunch when Kuniko gets home. Hopefully she’ll be home in time to watch one of our favorite TV shows, “London Hearts”.

Today at work I had only two classes. Both classes were with physically disabled students. They are fun classes. The level of English is quite low, but the students’ interest is quite high. Today with the deaf students my teacher told them that I had been studying Japanese for about the same amount of time as they had been studying English. They demanded a writing sample, and so I wrote a little bit in Japanese on the board. Then they tried to write it in English. They had mixed results, and I think they were really feeling like they needed to study a little harder.

I didn’t mention that I could limit my studies to just Japanese – they have to study a ton of stuff. Also, I’m living in Japan, and they aren’t living in an English-speaking country. Still, they really wanted to do better.

Other than my two classes I didn’t really have a lot to do. I did some studying, and I planned a lesson that I’ll do with Kuroda sensei starting on Wednesday. Matsunaga sensei had made a trip to Costco over the weekend, and she bought me a big package of bagels and a refill of cheese.

I was supposed to meet Antoine after work today, but due to a strange illness, I had to cancel. By pure chance I met Kuniko on the same train home, and together we did a tiny bit of shopping in Sannomiya before coming home. Kuniko cooked up a bunch of leftovers into a really good soup, and we ate that while watching TV and staying warm in the kotatsu.

School tomorrow will get much busier it looks like. At least we’ll get to start our morning with some bagels tomorrow, though.

The tail end of the week was much less busy than the first three days. I only had five classes the last two days of this week, compared with fifteen classes during the first three.

Thursday was a pretty mellow night, but Friday night Yasu and his mom came over for dinner after work. They arrived by train, which meant that there was no problem drinking a lot and having a good time.

We had fun catching up around a big bowl of nabe. They are really nice people to hang out with. I noticed that Yasu was speaking almost exclusively Japanese now – I think it has been a long time since he’s used English. We shared pictures – they had pictures of Yasu’s brother’s new baby, and we had pictures to show them of Europe. We watched a little bit of a movie to test out the big screen TV, too. Back when we left the teacher apartments, Yasu had given me a sake/sho-chu dispenser as a gift. Last week we brought it out for Antoine to use, and we also used it tonight. Yasu’s mom enjoyed the self-serve, drink all you want format.

They headed back around 11:30 or so, and Kuniko and I stayed up late to watch the rest of the movie. We finally went to bed late. Kuniko has to work both days this weekend – but I’m going to convert the house into cold weather mode. Bring out the kotatsu!