At school today my kids were all on goofy pills or something. Everywhere I went there were some shenanigans going on. I would walk with my teachers right by two boys struggling to pull each others eyeballs out of their sockets, and then five minutes later they are giving each other hugs.

My classes reflected this weird behavior a little bit. The lessons seemed a little more free-wheeling today, and we had a bit more improvisation. I taught with four different teachers, and all of them react to improvisation a little differently. Generally, it’s not a good reaction, though.

I haven’t been up to play ping pong with the team lately. Due to some scheduling conflicts, their practice begins later in the day, and I’m usually gone by then. In fact, I haven’t been able to visit any clubs since Sports Day.

Most of my free time was spent studying up on vocabulary, and I’m keeping right up to speed, learning about 5-10 new words a day. At home I’m using the Nintendo DS to work on writing kanji, and that is just about the best way ever to learn it, short of attending elementary school in Japan. I’m loving these new ways to study a language – technology is making it a lot easier.

Tonight we’re having some pasta that we smuggled home from Italy, and I opened up a bottle of wine to taste while I’m waiting for Kuniko. The pasta looks delicious – I can’t wait for her to get home.

We’ve got a three day weekend coming up – Monday is a national holiday. I’m looking forward to getting some down time. We may get a chance to meet up with Antoine and Miwako, and hopefully Kuniko will get a day off in there somewhere.

As expected, it was really tough to get out of bed this morning. We dragged around in the morning, but finally ended up making it on time for train, and we spaced out together until it was time for Kuniko to get off at her stop.

By the time I got to work I was fully awake, and greeting all my students is a great way to get the day rolling.

I had two third year classes, and then two first year classes. The third year students did pretty well – we alternated between them making presentations and reading about “Whale Rider” from their textbook. The first year students are learning a new game called “Punch Game”, where they punch in a certain direction, and that direction corresponds with a form of “X is”. He is, we are, you are, I am, etc. It’s fun to do, but I just learned the game myself, so I was a little slow. I’m sure after teaching the lesson over the next two weeks I’ll get it down.

There is a speech contest coming up in a couple of weeks, so I’m helping coach two students who are interested in doing it. Our school can only send one, so I don’t know who is going to win out. We’re spending a few minutes a day on pronunciation practice, and they are supposed to decide who is going to represent our school by the end of the week. It’s interesting to note that the students who want to compete aren’t necessarily the best speakers or the most confident, they just seem to be the most brave. There are a few students that I would like to see compete, but for one reason or another they aren’t interested.

I left work on time, and came right on home to clean up the dishes from our hospitality Sunday night. Kuniko has a meeting after school, so she’s expecting to get home late. I’m going to try to cook a healthy meal tonight – all that greasy (yet delicious) food from last night is going to cause some permanent waistline damage.

Kuniko and I pulled off a really relaxing weekend. Saturday Kuniko had to go in to teach in the morning, but she got back at a reasonable time and so we went out to rent some movies and catch dinner.

For dinner we went somewhere that I’ve been wanting to try – Big Boy. It is apparently the same restaurant as the Bob’s Big Boy restaurants back in America, so we went there hoping for some real American family-style restaurant food. Unfortunately, other than the atmosphere and drink bar, it was completely different. The main dish they served was hamburg. It’s really popular here in Japan, but I don’t like it because it’s so greasy. Take a burger patty, and fry it on a hot skillet, and then serve it up on the same skillet, so all the grease is still floating around on the bottom – yuck.

The had a variety of things that could cook on the skillet, and so we got a combination, and enjoyed the free drink bar. The chicken was actually really good, though, and they served it with a yuzu pepper paste on the side that was delicious. If it wasn’t for the chicken, it would have been a big strike out.

After the rental place we decided to go on to Carrefour and Ito Yokado, to take care of all our import food needs. We scored lots of good stuff, and came home kind of late. That didn’t stop us from watching one of the movies we rented – Adaptation. That turned out to be a pretty crazy movie, but oddly entertaining.

Sunday we lounged about most of the day. Kuniko got her hair done and right after that we met up with the Denya gang minus the master, who was stuck at work. We all met at Gochisomura, the family-friendly-large-size-izakaya-style restaurant right next door to our place.

It was fun to see everyone, and we drank and ate way too much while talking and sharing stories. There was an incident where we found some floating bits of black plastic in some of the beers, so we returned them all and got a free round on the house. The food was pretty good though.

After drinking there, we brought the whole gang, twelve people, over to our place, and crowded into the house to check it out. Before everyone said that they could only stay for 10 minutes, but by the time the tequila, sake, iced coffees, and cold beers were through they had stayed for more than an hour. We had fun sitting around the living room and playing with the kids, too. They had a lot of energy and were really enjoying the exploration of a new house.

We walked everybody back to the station, and then did some drunken (on my part) shopping before heading home to crash. It was a lot of hospitality for a Sunday night – and tomorrow we’re back to work so I’m sure it’ll be tough getting up.

On Friday I had the usual four classes in the morning, although I got my new schedule and it looks like things will get a little shaken up in the near future. I should have about the same amount of classes, but a few afternoon classes. My body is already used to opening up my bento lunch at break and knowing that my day is essentially over.

During my break in the afternoon one of the English teachers, Higuchi sensei, came over and chatted with me for about 45 minutes. She is nice on the surface, but you soon realize that she is one of the most pessimistic people you’ll ever meet. Today was the first time that I noticed that it lasted for more than a few minutes. It is actually part of her personality.

For example, she started out the conversation with “Well, you must hate it here already!” From there it was me putting a positive spin on everything, and her looking at the same thing from the worst possible viewpoint. I felt bad for her – it must be exhausting to look for the bad part of everything. After a while I tried to think of things that nobody could argue a bad side for – but she was just unwilling to look at anything positively.

Today was the last working day of the month, so I had to turn in the paperwork for the company I work for. It was my first time doing it, but it went pretty smoothly. Now I should get a paycheck in about two weeks and then I’ll finally see the fruits of my labors.

I came home and opened up a bottle of sake to enjoy while I waited around for Kuniko to get home. She got home on the late side, tired from a long day at work and we hit the hay pretty early – she has to go right back to work on Saturday morning.

One universal truth about sports day in Japan is that the day after all the students want to do is sleep, all day. They don’t want to learn, they don’t want to listen, and they certainly don’t want to explore the in’s and out’s of English conversation for hours on end.

It was into that situation that I walked on Thursday morning, with four classes in a row filled with sleepy students. The first class was nearly asleep within ten minutes, despite my most exciting stories of life in America and my side-splitting tales of cultural mistakes that I’ve made in Japan.

Luckily the second class I had went much better. I was teaching two nearly deaf students, and I went to their special classroom and really just hung out with them for an hour. They were the last two students in the school to officially meet me, and we had a good time looking at pictures and talking about their interests. The girl in the class is really good at sports, and she really tried hard to speak English. The boy didn’t want to be left behind, and so he tried really hard to get through to me. Their speech is tough to understand, but we were communicating, and that’s the goal of the class, I guess.

My third class was super-sleepy. The teacher in that class (who will remain unnamed to protect her identity) came up with a really boring, passive lesson plan, and so we had to just grind through it. I felt bad for the students – and I promised myself to work on this teacher a little bit in an effort to jazz things up a little bit.

The last class was pretty good. It has the highest level of English in the school, and the students did presentations today. They were all great, and some were excellent. I can’t get over how well some of the students speak, and they are still just in junior high.

Since I have some experience working as an interviewer on the English proficiency exam, I spent time working with one of the students today. She was really nervous, but I had Harada sensei with me, and together I think we made her feel comfortable. We’ve got to get her ready for the exam coming up in two weeks, so I’ll be helping out here and there after school.

After school I was sitting at my desk studying, and a student came in and looked distressed to find only me in the immediate area. He hesitated only a second, and then came up and asked me in English for some chalk for his classroom. I asked him what color, and he listed what colors and how many he needed of each. His English was perfect, and I think he kind of surprised himself how well he communicated. I jumped up to get the chalk. I don’t know if we’re even supposed to give the students chalk, but if he asked for the keys to my apartment in perfect English I would have handed them over. I wanted to show him that he communicated perfectly by instantly fulfilling his request. It’s times like this when I really enjoy doing what I’m doing.

The commute home was a piece of cake. Tonight we’re going to have kind of a “clean out the fridge” night. I’m going to make a salad, and we’ll just kind of snack. Tomorrow is already Friday – I can’t wait to catch up on sleep this weekend.

I was off to work today to participate in the school sports day. It was my first sports day at my new school, and my first junior high school sports day. I was eager to find out how it would be different from my old school.

Mainly, it was pretty much the same. There were races and relays, and a few kind of weird games to play as well. I was surprised that there were actually dances, performed by different groups of students. The baton club did a dance, and each school year’s boys and girls did some exercise routines. In my high school sports days, it was just events – no dancing around.

I really didn’t have anything to do, so I walked around and talked to various students, parents, and teachers. Everyone was really nice, and as usual it was a good way to talk to students who are normally too shy.

One thing I thought was interesting was that they did some of the exercises with the handicapped students. They even built a makeshift frame that went around the wheelchair-bound student, and another student stood on top of the frame at one point while the other students paired up and stood on another student’s shoulders.

Even Habatan, the official mascot for the upcoming prefecture-wide sports festival, made an appearance. It was the cheesiest Habatan costume I’d ever seen. Maybe homemade. Some of the P.E. teachers were goofing around in the costume, and they got a lot of laughs from the students.

We had a surprising amount of guests at the event. The school was surrounded by cars, and people filled up the seats to watch the events. Students from a local kindergarten came by to watch for a while, too. They were really cute – even my students were fawning over them.

I even got a chance to run in one of the events. There was a teacher relay, and I ran only about 100 meters, and passed the baton on to Kawai sensei. It was fun and easy, and the students were impressed. They said I was the fastest teacher, but they must be mistaken – maybe it is just an illusion because I am tall – I’m sure I’m not fast. No teachers were injured, and we came in last place behind all the other students, so it was considered a success.

The day ended with a victory for one of the first year student classes – a big embarrassment for the second and third year students. There were lots of speeches before and after, and then we all pitched in to help clean up the grounds. I helped put away chairs, we got everything done by 5:30 or so.

At six o’clock the teachers boarded a bus for a post-event party in the nearby town of Ashiya. It was at a Japanese traditional-style restaurant. The food was pretty good, and they had a new fall seasonal menu that I really liked. My favorite was your own bowl of nabe, with just a bit of parmesan cheese over the top. The old-fashioned teachers were thumbing their nose at adding cheese, but I liked the flavor. But, I love cheese no matter what it is in or on.

I drank happily with my new co-workers, and talked with some people that I don’t normally get a chance to talk to. It was fun, and they asked lots of questions about me and life in Japan. I get the slightest sense or disappointment from the teachers that I’m not a totally green foreigner. Part of it is that they want to see me experience things for the first time, and part of it might be that they enjoy the dependence I would have on them. In my workday I rarely ask people questions because I’ve already been through most of this at my first school, and all that experience has paid off. Maybe at this school they are used to people coming that don’t have a clue.

We wrapped things up with closing comments, and a closing ceremony. When you have a closing ceremony for a drinking party, you must be in Japan. If there was an opening ceremony, then you’re gonna need a closing ceremony, no matter what condition the participants are in. They finished the evening with everyone standing up and singing the school song. They really belted it out, too, and I looked on with some bewilderment because I don’t know the words. I think most of my teachers didn’t really want to sing the school song, but since the principal and vice-principal were there, they had to go along with it. Just my sense of the situation, though – I could be wrong!

I got home around 10:30 in the evening, and Kuniko was still up trying to write a letter of recommendation for one of her students in English. I helped her jazz it up a little bit, and then we hit the hay. Spending all day out in the sun really wore me out.

Pictures from the day here.

Today everyone was busy getting ready for sports day tomorrow, but we managed to squeeze in a few classes. I had just two classes today, which is a lot less than usual. I had lots of extra time today, so I got some good study time in. Lots of students came by my desk to see what I was up to.

The students are not shy about walking up and seeing just what exactly I’m doing. Some of them will sneak up on you and put their arm around your shoulders, others will pat me on the back as they walk by, and I think on a whole junior high school students are more touchy than high school students.

Towards the end of the day I went outside and helped kids pound stakes into the ground with a sledgehammer. The students followed me around, asking me questions about Kuniko and about my life in Japan. Two girls wanted to pull out one of my eyelashes as a souvenir. What is it about hair as a keepsake with these guys?

I had a very smooth commute back home and I’m just relaxing and watching the Tigers game on TV. Last night we got a TV stand over and Saty, and we brought it home and put it together. Now the TV setup looks much better. Instead of sitting low on the floor it is quite a bit higher. For some reason it makes it look bigger. We’ve got two DVD players (one that plays only Japanese DVDs and the other that plays DVDs from anywhere), and a VCR. We don’t have any tapes to test it out, though, so I’m not sure if that will work or not.

Dinner’s ready, so I gotta run. Tomorrow is sports day at school, and a party afterwards. Hopefully I’ll have a ton of pictures to post!

I was back in action at school after a relaxing weekend. Kuniko had a chance to sleep in, and she only had to work half a day today, so the end result was me going to work alone.

I had four classes in a row in the morning, just like most of last week. The students were especially full of energy today. I had one tough class second period. A boy in that class is mentally retarded, but he still comes to class. The other students discovered a few words that would set him off, and so the whole class they were whispering the words to make him freak out. The teacher I was with, Harada sensei, had to deal with it, but it made for a distracting class – it was tough to teach in there, and it was tough to learn. It really seemed like a bad idea to have that student in the class – sure he is with other students and is part of the group, but he wasn’t really paying attention and he was hurting the ability of the other students to learn.

I had a lot of hallway conversations with students that I ran into at the matsuri Friday night. They were impressed with Kuniko and they feel a lot closer to me somehow. Some of them were staring into my eyes to see the color, and a couple of girls requested a hair from my head as a souvenir. Sorry, I need those.

In Kuroda sensei’s class we had a bomb of a lesson. The activities that I dreamed up took much longer than we expected, and we couldn’t do all the things we wanted. We have the lesson again tomorrow, so we’ll make some modifications and hope that it goes better.

At lunchtime, the broadcast club put together a show all about me. I had filled in a survey, and so they read my answers to the questions, and then read a Japanese translation of what I said. They played a couple of the songs that I brought, but just the Japanese ones. I was hoping they would play some foreign stuff, too, but no luck. The Japanese stuff I picked out was a little on the wild side, and I was pleased to rock out the school during my lunch.

Finally in the afternoon, they had more marching practice for sports day on Wednesday. The students are really getting worked up for this. I spent the time sitting on a bench in the shade watching them march around. They are missing a lot of classes for this, but I guess it’s part of junior high school life. The P.E. teachers have to have something to keep them busy, and they are working really hard to make it a successful event.

I headed home right on time, and was shopping for groceries across the street from our place by 5:15. Kuniko was already at home making up dinner, and we cracked open an alcoholic beverage and ate a couple of big om-rice dishes.

Tonight we’re headed to Saty to pick up a TV stand, and then I’ll spend the rest of the evening putting it together. I hope it’s easy, with lots of pictures in the instruction book.

Tomorrow I have some relief with just two classes. I’m going to try to catch up on my Japanese studies, and maybe get some time in doing some research on the web. T minus two days to sports day.

Today since Kuniko was off at her school’s sports day event, I took the chance to head for the hills and do some hiking. Since I have a commuter train pass I can take the train as far as Sannomiya for free – so I took the train to Suma and hiked the mountain there.

It was a beautiful day, and the views were great from the top of the hill. I could see as far as Wakayama, Osaka, Awaji Island and even out to Shikoku. I took some pictures, enjoyed relaxing in the sun, and ate a couple of rice balls at the summit. On the tail end of the loop I cut back into town, and bumped into a large group of older people hiking together.

Hiking is pretty popular among older people in Japan. I’m not a big fan of the trend here. If you say hiking, people think of meeting at a certain place at a certain time, to hike with a group of people to set checkpoints, getting a card time stamped – it’s like a sporting event or a race. When I hike, I want to go alone or with a very small group of people, go at my own pace, and just enjoy nature.

Anyway, the trail at the end was clogged with old folks who were talking and having a great time, but I had to figure out a way to pass them. In the end I left the train early and went back into Suma.

All was not lost, however. I stopped in at a liquor store on the way back. From the outside they had a lot of high end beers lined up in a big refrigerator, and upon further inspection I found a bottle of English cream stout. I bought two and brought them home, and now I’m back relaxing and enjoying the relatively cooler weather.

Later this evening Kuniko will come home exhausted from her day, so I’m trying to figure out something interesting to make for dinner. Inspiration is bound to arrive any minute.

During one of my classes on Friday morning a large bee came swooping in one of the windows and all hell broke loose. I’m used to this – nothing disrupts a class like a bee coming in the window. The students run away from the bee like it is hunting them down, and the teachers generally just try to keep everybody calm until the bee leaves the way it came in.

Today the bee (and I say bee because it is the best way to describe it – it’s quite a bit bigger than any bee from California) flew around freaking the kids out for a few minutes, and then found a place on the roof and just sat there hanging out until the end of class.

The students kept looking behind them as they studied English, and when the bell finally rang they jumped up and ran to the broom closet, and picked someone to try to get it out the window again. The kid chickened out, though, and Matsunaga sensei hinted that maybe I should take care of it.

The students gathered around me and one of them handed me the broom, and so I pulled up a chair near where the bee was sitting around, and then swung the broom hard in a sweeping motion towards the window. The bee was sent across the room and smacked into the closed part of the window, and by the time he recovered we had slid the window around the bee, and it was erratically flying away.

The students were impressed. They were singing my praises the rest of the day, and rarely have heroes been so exalted. I gave everyone high fives, and then finally made it out of the classroom. Bryan, the Bee-slayer.

At lunchtime the teacher in charge of the broadcasting club asked me if I could bring in some music that I like for the club to play. They are working on a segment for the lunch radio broadcast at school called “About Bryan”, and they want to play some of my favorite music. I had told them a few songs before, and they went out to the record store to buy the CDs, but (not surprisingly) they couldn’t find the music I like.

After school ended I changed my clothes into something more casual, and then headed to the station to meet Kuniko and Antoine. On my way out the door all the students commented on my casual dress – it was their first time seeing me in shorts.

Antoine was running late due to some problems with his website, so Kuniko and I did a sneak preview of the Nishinomiya matsuri. As it turned out, today was the kid’s matsuri. I had never seen one before – it was really cute. They parades little mini-mikoshi shrines that they built through part of the city, starting and ending at the Nishinomiya shrine.

The parade was led by my students. There was the baton club, and also the brass band. There were some people carrying a full sized mikoshi at the front of the parade and another at the tail end.

When Kuniko and I arrived, we got a chance to see many of my students lining up. I also got to introduce her to Matsunaga sensei and Higuchi sensei. They were there to support the baton club. We also met my school’s principal, and he said lots of funny things to Kuniko and had her laughing.

Finally, after everyone took off on the parade we walked back to the station and soon met up with Antoine. Together we made our way back just in time for the end of the parade of kids.

While we were there we bumped into a whole squad of my students, and they crowded around us and wanted to know what the story was with Kuniko and Antoine. I introduced Kuniko and everybody yelled out her name. Kuniko was trying to hide behind me, Antoine was just smiling at everyone and probably wondering if there was something more interesting he could be doing on a Friday night.

Some of my girl students were talking to Kuniko, trying to get tips on how to marry a foreign guy. Finally, we were able to extract ourselves, but it was so much fun talking to all the students. They were very cool.

We made our way to a yakiniku restaurant in the station and had some beers and relaxed over all-you-can-eat meat. The food was pretty good, and we had a lot to catch up on. After talking and eating I think we decided that we’re going to have a movie party at our house in the near future with Antoine and Miwako. Hopefully we can pull it off soon.

Kuniko and I said goodbye to Antoine and headed home from the station. Kuniko has sports day at her school on Saturday, so she has to go into school and sit around in the hot sun all day. Luckily she gets Monday off for compensation.

Pictures from today are here!

At school today I had another set of four classes in a row throughout the morning, and an afternoon free. My students had to endure a pretty brutal class with Harada sensei. She was especially strict, and I was surprised how often she yelled at them. They were doing presentations, and I think she ended up making them more nervous than when they started.

Later she came by my desk and said that some of the students had complained about her, and she acknowledged that she was pretty tough on them. I’m still new here, so I’m not going to get too involved – just stay back and see what the lay of the land is.

In the afternoon I sat around the staffroom and chatted with some of my teachers. One teacher, Kawai sensei, is really curious about America, so I talked with him in Japanese about America. Another teacher, Matsunaga sensei, is an English teacher and knows quite a bit about American culture – she was really interested in the conversation as well. She insisted on speaking only English, so I had to have a conversation with each of them at the same time and switch languages back and forth between them. It was a good experience, but I noticed that my Japanese was really rusty, especially talking about heavy subjects.

I tried to play a few games of ping pong at the end of the day with the table tennis club, but just a few minutes into playing they adjourned to do strength training – so I took my cue and left. I had a nice easy trip home and made up some Mexican chicken and beans for dinner.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Nishinomiya matsuri. I’m meeting up with Kuniko and Antoine and we’ll check it out together. Not sure what the matsuri will be like, but I’m looking forward to checking it out.

We got a late start this morning, and arrived a bit late to catch the usual train. Instead we sat around at the station for a few minutes and caught the next one. I got to work just a little bit later than normal, but nobody really noticed.

At school today I had the first four periods full of classes, but then the afternoon was free. The highlight of my day was working with the first year students. Part of the lesson is to sing “Country Road” with the students. Everyone has a lyric sheet and pronunciation guide, and we listen to a tape and sign along. The students really like it, and I’m getting pretty used to singing the song by now.

One of the noisy students in my class was belting out the song, yelling the lyrics rather than singing them, and enthusiastically sang “West vagina, mountain momma…”

I looked around to see if anyone else heard it, but nobody caught it. I was laughing, and I had a little bit of trouble getting back under control. The second time we sang the verse he sang it correctly, so I was relieved that it was just a random pronunciation mistake.

In the afternoon I went out to watch our students marching around the grounds in preparation for the sports day coming up next week. I sat in the shade with Harada sensei and a student who had sprained his ankle and enjoyed the show. The student had lots of questions for me, and Harada sensei wanted to vent her office politic-based frustrations. I ended up quite busy for the 90 minutes I was out there, and to be honest I was just as ready to go back inside when the bell rang as all the students were.

On my way back I bumped into Shiokawa sensei, who is the teacher in charge of one of the disabled students. They try very hard at my school to give the disabled students every possible chance to have a “normal” junior high school experience. For some of the students it is possible to come pretty close. Other students are in wheelchairs and are barely conscious of their surroundings. Shiokawa sensei’s student, Kohashi-kun, is one of those students. He is in his wheelchair almost all the time, and cannot speak or communicate in any way. He is entirely passive, but that doesn’t stop Shiokawa sensei from rolling his around with the other students on the marching field.

Shiokawa sensei offered to let me push Kohashi-kun back to his classroom, so I took over and walked slowly through the students through the school. Kohashi-kun’s mom comes to school almost every day to help out, and she was there today. I met her once before, and she remembered me and said hello. When we got to the elevator and went upstairs, she met us at the top and snapped a couple of quick photos of me pushing her son through the school.

She seemed really happy to have me help out, and I’m glad she was happy. It wasn’t like I have a deep relationship with her son, but because I’m a foreigner the moment was photo-worthy. Still, it was a good way to wrap up my day.

Kuniko got home early tonight, and I heated up some newly purchased Rosarita refried beans and made tacos, along with a salad and some leftover curry. Now we’re just relaxing and enjoying the evening – it’s unusual to have so much free time together.

We bought tickets to America last night, and as soon as the tickets are confirmed we can start thinking about making the trip. It’ll be at the end of December/beginning of January – it seems like a long way off.

Kuniko left even earlier than normal today, but not before she made a bento lunch for me. I showed up at work to find a nice surprise there – one of my teachers went to Costco and filled my request for refried beans and a big block of cheese. I scored eight cans of refried beans for just about 120 yen a can. I pay about 360 a can at Carrefour, so I saved big bucks. The only trick was lugging them back home – they were heavy!

My morning was pretty free, but I picked up an extra class with Harada sensei, and then had three other classes in a row. The class with Harada sensei was all about pronunciation, and she made just as many mistakes as her students. It illustrated how important it is for a native speaker to teach pronunciation. Hopefully her mistakes illustrated this point for her students.

I taught an English class with two disabled students. We didn’t do much English learning, mainly we sang songs and did basic conversations. The students got really excited about the songs, and I had to learn the songs quickly and act them out with the students. Some of the songs involved saying parts of your body in English, and it was apparent when I didn’t know the next verse – everyone else was touching their nose and I had my hands on my knees or something. It was teaching English at the most basic level. This will be approximately the level that Antoine will be teaching every day. I don’t know if I could do it every day.

There were three English teachers and two aides to help teach one 45 minute class to two disabled students. That’s a lot of manpower to use up, but I will only be teaching those students once a month.

I spent lots of time chatting with students today – it’s a lot of fun. The students constantly test me on their names – they say it quickly and then come back a couple of hours later and ask me what their name is. It’s tough – I miss more than I hit, but I’m getting better at it. The look on their face when I remember is worth it, though.

I’m back home now and relaxing around the house. Kuniko is going to cook up some eggplant pasta tonight, so I’m boiling the macaroni in preparation. We want to get New Year’s plane tickets to America wrapped up this week. Nobody was working over the holiday weekend, so we’ll have to work on it this week. Can’t wait!

We had a long weekend here, and managed a lot of relaxation time. The event to watch out for was a typhoon that was approaching, but at the last minute it headed north out to sea and we just caught the edge of it.

It was a noisy night – the wind was whipping through but it never really got too crazy outside. Everything that started on our patio stayed on the patio, so that was a relief. When were walking around Okubo the next day we did run across somebody’s wig on the ground, so there were some casualties.

Kuniko and I used our free time to do some clothes shopping, and got some supplies to keep the house running through the week. We spent an evening over at Kuniko’s folks catching up with them and picking up some rice for our bento lunches. Also, we got signed up for the rice harvest. Since we helped plant it, I guess we’ll help harvest it too. I’m eager to see the next step in the process.

Tonight we had some leftover curry and watched “Dead Poet’s Society”. It was nice to just relax and take in a movie. Tomorrow it’s back to work for both of us, but Kuniko has another two-day weekend to look forward to. A couple of two-day weekends in a row is something very rare recently.

I had another busy day at work, but I did score some fresh vegetables from one of my teachers, Kuroda sensei. I gave her a taco the other day, and so she must have felt a little guilty and wanted to return the present. The veggies were grown by her mother, who apparently has retired and pursuing gardening as a new hobby.

My classes went without a hitch. Every time I walk to my next class I pass students all rushing around killing time before their next class, and everybody calls my name in passing to say hello. I do my best to answer them all, but sometimes there are way too many people saying hello. It is still a little overwhelming – I just haven’t gotten used to it.

I took the train home, but instead of going to Okubo, I got off at Akashi and then caught a train to Takasago. Tonight was the welcome/farewell party for me and Brenda, and so I got to go back in time a little and revisit my old school.

At Takanan I said to hello to my old co-workers, and sat around talking with Brenda. She is settling into her new job and it seemed like she had a lot of free time at work. I was in the same situation, but I used that time to study Japanese. She is spending that time right now surfing the web on her computer, which I guess is a good time-killer.

One interesting thing was that she came up with the idea to give her first year students Western-style names. She downloaded a list of the most popular names in America, and she had the students choose from the list. It sounded a little weird – somehow to me it seemed like a bad idea, but I’m not sure why. I know that when I learned Spanish I had to pick a Spanish name (Pancho). I was amused to hear from Mori sensei that the most popular name among boys was “Bryan”. Ha!

Brenda also talked about how she has had trouble keeping the history teacher away – something I know a lot about. I got a chance to talk with some of my students as well, and it was fun to talk my ESS students, who are all in the process of choosing colleges. Time flies – I remember when they were just a bunch of scared first years peeking in my classroom door nervously.

We walked from the school to the restaurant, and there was a really big turnout – around 20-25 people. I sat in the middle next to Brenda on one side and the principal on the other. The food was pretty good, but I was there for the conversation. Mostly I was stuck talking with the principal, who really enjoys the fact that he can communicate with a foreigner. We talked about all kinds of stuff, and the more he drank the more obscure the topics became. I was also on the hook to translate to Brenda, despite being surrounded by English teachers.

Some teachers chipped in and bought a big bouquet of orchids for Kuniko. They were beautiful, and I really appreciated all the nice things that everyone said about me. It was really good to see everyone again, and think that even though I’m having a great time at my new school in Nishinomiya, I wouldn’t mind at all working at Takasago Minami again.

The school nurse, Yamamoto sensei, offered to drive both Brenda and me home, along with the baseball coach Morita sensei. It was really nice of her to do – since I’m a little farther away now, and I had orchids to carry. In the car on the way back I translated for Brenda and we talked for a long time. I think she is just starting to speak to the teachers, but the language barrier is pretty tough. I hope that she will be able to make progress, though.

It was a really fun night, and everyone seemed to have a good time. I came back and gave Kuniko the flowers, so now we have some color in the house again. Kuniko got me a present today – a neck massager to work on my still sore neck. I don’t know what I did to it, but the neck massager works pretty well.

I’ve got the next three days off, since Monday is a holiday (Respect for the Aged Day). Time to relax!