It was hard getting my tired body out of bed early this morning. There’s been lots of running around this weekend, and it caught up with me at 5 a.m. when the alarm went off.

Luckily at school I had only one class, and an afternoon meeting. I spent the day relaxing at my desk and doing Japanese listening drills in my classroom. Normally I would spend some of this free time planning my next first year lesson, but after the last time when I went to all the trouble last time only to have it slashed by Mori sensei, I decided to see how the meeting goes.

I was all ready for my class to show up, and the bell rang, and nobody came. I waited a few minutes because maybe they were coming from a PE class, and they were changing out of uniforms, but… no luck.

That’s a tough time – you start to doubt whether you have the correct info – what’s really happening? I ran down to the staff room and couldn’t find my teaching partner for the class, Nozaki sensei. There were no changes on the schedule, so what was going on?

Finally I went up to the homeroom class of the students I was supposed to teach, and by chance Nozaki sensei came flying out of the classroom having just realized the class was in the wrong place. She apologized like crazy until we got to the classroom with the students, and she was apologizing pretty much all day after that. She’s a new teacher, though, and it’s to be expected.

The meeting with Mori sensei went as I kind of expected. She laid out what she wanted to do, but this time I just went along with everything she said. She had a couple of activities that concerned me a little bit, but this lesson I’ll hold my tongue and see how it turns out.

During Mori sensei’s self-introduction to our class, she makes a point of mentioning how many countries that she has visited (and it’s quite a lot), and then at the end she switches to Japanese and apologizes to the students that maybe her Japanese language isn’t so polished since she has been speaking so much English these days.

The reality is that she is really uncomfortable using English, and she keeps trying to switch to Japanese to explain things. I try to hold her to English though. Today she was trying to explain a passage in the textbook that was written in Japanese. She had some trouble, and so she said that since I can probably read the Japanese I should read it later. I smiled and told her that my job at the school is not just to improve the students’ English – I’m here to get the teachers using it too. That kind of flustered her a bit, but my feeling is that if you are going to talk the talk, you gotta be able to walk the walk. Or something like that.

As you can probably see I’m not a big Mori sensei fan. Luckily I’ll only have to work with her until summertime and then I’ll be out of there. I feel sorry for the poor soul who takes over for me. But maybe a little structure early on might help my replacement get started on the right foot.

Tonight we’re taking it easy and ordering in pizza for dinner. Kuniko is even more exhausted than I am, so hopefully we’ll have a low impact evening and be ready for tomorrow.

I met up with Antoine and Miwako in Sannomiya Sunday to go on a little day hike in the mountains over Kobe. We met up and then headed up the side of Rokko mountain. It was the first time for both of them, and so we could enjoy the waterfalls and the views even more.

We spent about three hours hiking around the hills, and I guided them to a few of my favorite spots. The weather held up nicely the whole time, and once we got to the top the sun really started shining. It was a great hiking trip.

We came down off the mountain around five or so, and then headed to a bar to wait for Kuniko to get free. Once she got loose we all walked over to Tapas, a great Spanish style restaurant that Kuniko and I have been to one time before. It was just as good this evening, and we ate plates and plates of food – and it was a pretty reasonable price. I think my favorite was the gnocchi with a pumpkin sauce, but there were lots of other tasty things to try as well.

We headed on back after dinner, while making a brief stop for dessert – crepes from “Dipper Dan” Crepe Factory. Mine was good, and I got stuck eating Kuniko’s since she couldn’t finish it. All in a day’s work.

Pictures from the hike are posted right here.

Kuniko was up early today for her friend Tomomi-chan’s wedding. She got dressed and was out the door early, and I was left to sleep in, eat a big lunch and do some laundry. Not so exciting, but I was invited to the second party, so around 2:30 I headed out the door to go to Osaka.

Since I had finished all my flashcards I listened to music on the train with my mp3 player. It’s a bit old and bulky, but it holds 20 GB of music – plenty of tunes for just about any occasion. I was listening to the new Tool album on the trip down. It sounded pretty good.

First in Umeda I walked through Yodobashi Camera in search of an adapter for my new cell phone. I found it pretty quickly, and then walked around and just enjoyed some people-watching. There was a good mix of shoppers there. Lots of foreigners, too – come to check out the latest in Japanese electronics. In a bit of perfect timing Kuniko called me as I was leaving, and we made plans to meet at a nearby subway station. I caught the train without any trouble, but on the other end I wasn’t sure which exit to take to meet up with her.

Subway stations usually have many exits – Yodoyabashi station has 12 exits. I went up one that looked like a major exit, but couldn’t find Kuniko. Right then she sent a message saying she was at the northeast exit. Where the hell is that? I went back downstairs and looked at a map, and then according to the legend found exit 4, which seemed to be the most northeast exit. When I got there, I found out that it was in fact the wrong exit – no Kuniko. Finally we figured out via a series of phone calls where each other was, and we met up and headed to the place for the second party.

Kuniko was on the hook to do reception for the party, and it was pretty expensive. Women paid 6500 yen, and men paid 7500 yen. Once that was settled up I went inside and sat down with some complete strangers to chat while Kuniko was working outside.

The people I sat with were curious about me and it was easy to strike up a conversation. Most of them were visiting from Tokyo – I could easily pick up their standard Japanese… it was like right out of a textbook. We soon became fast friends and were pouring each other drinks and telling stories. They asked me all about my married life and work life and social life and drinking life and American life – I was really getting a Japanese language workout.

Finally things wrapped up outside so I said a quick goodbye to them and took my bingo card and beer over to sit with Kuniko and some of her old college friends. It was my first time meeting them, and they were really nice. They kept me in beer and we asked each other lots of questions. There was never a time were I was bored or standing around hoping to talk to someone. Everything just meshed nicely.

The place was a really nice upscale place, and the food was pretty good. It was drink-oriented food – not to say that it was bar food, but it was all food that goes great with beer. Having dropped 7500 yen at the door I wanted to make sure to get my money’s worth of refreshment, so I attacked it with gusto. Most of the wedding guests had just had a big meal at the wedding reception. I just had cheese and crackers at home, so there was plenty of room.

The format of the second party was a bit more organized than our own last November. They had lots of speeches and a couple of quizzes, and bingo. Bingo was really being talked up, and I realized why when they said what you could win – they announced that you could win some bottles of wine, cakes and candies, and even a couple of iPods were on the roster.

The first person won bingo and they had a serious gauntlet of things they had to do. First, they drew a number, and that matched up with their prize. Then, they listened to a trivia quiz about the bride or groom, and if they guessed the right answer then they pulled a lottery stick out – the lottery prize could be anything, from a butter knife all the way up to an iPod.

I was surprised to find that I was close to bingo early on, and then soon after that I pulled out a bingo. Another guest had won as well, so under the principles of “ladies first” she pulled a prize, and won a bottle of white wine. Then, I pulled a paper out of the hat. To be honest, I was more worried about the upcoming trivia quiz – a real test of my Japanese.

But, good news, I pulled out a paper that had the number “1” on it, and that corresponded to the top bingo prize, and iPod nano. The emcee congratulated me and handed it over, and announced that since I won the iPod, I probably shouldn’t take a shot at another one and I heartily agreed with him. That got me out of the trivia quiz, so I went back and sat down and got a round of applause from our table.

Suddenly the money I paid to get into the party seemed like a pretty good bargain. The bingo suspense continued, and eventually Kuniko won, too. She picked up some cakes which looked pretty delicious. Also, we walked over to the bride and groom table and said hello and took some pictures. They looked a little tired but very happy. It was my first time meeting Tomomi-chan’s husband, and he seemed like a really nice guy. Hopefully we can have them over for dinner sometime soon.

Just before we left I reconnected with the group of Tokyo guys that I had sat with before. They were just sitting around as a group of guys, so I collected the single guys and took them to a table of women just sitting around. I introduced myself, and then the guys introduced themselves. I got them talking to each other and it was going pretty good – I’m hoping that somebody got a phone number in there somewhere.

Kuniko and I headed back to the station and were lucky enough to get a seat for the long trip back. Finally we got home and were exhausted. We crashed out and went to bed right away. Lots of walking around today.

I’ve posted some pictures from the wedding (Kuniko took those) and the second party, so you can check them out here.

Friday night we had the going away/welcome party for the teachers affected by the transfer this April. That meant a trip to Himeji, to the Himeji Castle Hotel for a good meal and lots of speeches.

The speeches this year did tend to go a little long for my taste. Luckily I was sitting at a table next to Arai sensei, the P.E. teacher. He speaks quite a bit of English and so we chatted about various things while people droned on in the background.

The party was a little more wild this year. The new math teacher sitting to my left, Moriguchi sensei, was a big drinker. Every time somebody came over to pour some beer for him he would drink the whole glass. Pretty soon it caught up with him, though, but he stayed on his feet the whole night.

The former vice principal made an appearance and a speech that had everyone laughing. I guess now that he is a principal at another school, there’s no reason to be diplomatic, so he told some good stories while keeping a straight face. He was a big hit, and there was a line of eight or nine people waiting to talk to him afterwards.

Finally it came time for the lights to come on, and they started playing loud annoying music to let even the most blasted teachers know that the party was over.

Outside in the lobby a couple people had gathered, and Watanabe sensei was busy trying to avoid being sexually harrassed by one the drunken groundskeepers. I gently held him back, making it into kind of a joke and his ardor seemed to calm down a bit.

On my way out I found that Kimura sensei was waiting for me. He wanted to take the trip back together, so we caught a Sanyo train back and spent that time speaking English. He really tries hard to speak English – I admire his effort. I can tell that he misses Takanan already, but I’m sure he’ll settle into his situation soon.

I heard from Kuniko that she was shopping at IY, so I met up with here on the way back, and together we headed home. I was tired out from a long day and all the partying, so it was to bed early for me.

All day long it was really windy, both here in Futami and at work in Takasago. The wind today blew off pretty much every last cherry blossom hanging on the trees. As I was walking home the nice carpet of white petals was gone. I’m not sure where it went, but it ain’t here no more.

I had a busy day, but the highlight was teaching with Okamoto sensei, one of the new English teachers at my school. He was visibly nervous whenever we spoke, so we haven’t much. I thought he would crash and burn once the class started, but it was just the opposite. He was an English superstar! He did a great self introduction, and talked about his love for music. The students watched with their mouths hanging open.

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. I had a lesson with Tsuji-san at the end of the day, and I gave her a box of chocolates and an Easter card from Nancy and Lynn, and she was really happy to get some presents from America.

On the way home I shared a train ride with a very talkative lady who I used to see every morning on my way to work. Since my schedule changed, I don’t see her as often. She seems to be under the impression that I can understand everything she says in Japanese, so I get a full shot of it with no English backup. It’s a good way to learn a language.

For dinner we just had cheese, salami, bread and some meat that I picked up at IY – it really hit the spot. We had hot pepper cheese from Sonoma Jack – delivered by Mark on his recent visit.

Tomorrow I’m headed to a farewell/welcome party at the end of the day, so I’ll try to take some pictures. What happens this weekend will really depend on the weather. I’m hoping it stays nice.

The cherry trees are turning from white to green as the blossoms are giving way to the surprisingly robust new green leaves. As the blossoms start to fall there is a nice effect of the petals floating through the air like snowflakes. There’s a Japanese word for it, 花吹雪 hanafubuki, which means “flower blizzard”.

It is a really beautiful thing to see, almost as impressive as the blooming itself. A lady on the way to work commented to me out of the blue about how beautiful it was. The ground is sometimes carpeted with blossoms. Later I was talking with one of the groundskeepers of our school, and his perspective was great – he said that they were just something he’s going to have to sweep up soon. Practical guy.

I had a full load of classes today. My two first year classes had previously scheduled interruptions for the students to – according to the Japanese teacher – “have their organs examined”. Sounds like fun.

Although I had just a short time with the new classes, they both showed their personality pretty quickly. The first class was quiet, barely cracking a smile and looking completely miserable. They will be my most challenging class, I can tell. The second class was full of giggling girls who told me how handsome I was during the walk to the nurses room, who giggled at everything I did or said, and blushed when I looked at them. The boys, for their part, did some blushing too – they had some trouble answerign some pretty simple questions.

I had two second year classes as well. One of the classes is the top level students – all gathered in one room. The English teacher with me was Yamamoto sensei – he’s a little self-conscious about his English ability, and he was very nervous today. Once the class was over, he was very relaxed, though. It went much better than he expected, I guess.

Part of the lesson has the students walking around looking for people that meet certain criteria on a list that they have. For example, they have to find someone that lives in Futami, and have them sign the paper. I purposely put some tough ones in there so that they would have to come to me for a signature, but my plan backfired when nobody else in that class lived in Futami. I was like a celebrity being swamped for autographs – I tried to back away from the mob of students, until they finally cornered me. A taste of paparazzi attention, I guess.

Between classes the history teacher asked me to participate in a new curriculum that they are trying out this year. There are seven students taking an “International Understanding” course, and as part of that the history teacher wants me to attend several of their classes. Some of the classes are about Japanese cultural things like tea ceremony, and flower arranging. I’m going to try these things out with the students, side-by-side. Then, at the end of the year I will do two lectures on how it felt and my thoughts on experiencing Japanese culture as a foreigner. Part of the fun for the students will be able to not only try out some these things themselves, but watch me struggle through them.

It sounded like a lot of fun, so I said that I would be happy to do it. I’m really looking forward to my first class, at the end of this month. I’ll be participating in a tea ceremony, which is a pretty involved thing.

After school we had an ESS meeting, and most of the third year students came (but none of the new third years, hmm…) and both new first year students came. We did self-introductions, and the hardcore third year ESS members kept a running support group going with cheers and applause for the new students, and plenty of heckling for the veteran members. When I brought out the Peeps candies from America, everyone really liked them. I don’t really like eating them, but I had to ration them out to the students. I explained what Peeps meant, and made it into a little mini-English lesson.

One of the new students told me after the club meeting that she doesn’t like English very much, and does pretty poorly on her English exams. I was struck by that, and it reminded me of an article I read recently that talked a little bit about that phenomenon. Japanese students (and even adults) see a weakness in their learning or skills, and they work hard to bring that skill up. I can’t imagine somebody who hates English voluntarily seeking out a club or group to put extra time into it. It’s commendable, and maybe I should use a little bit of that strategy myself for Japanese study.

Last night Kuniko got back late so she went with a beef and vegetable stir fry. The benefit of getting home late is taking advantage of the cheaper meats that are marked down over time. She stole two big plates of beef for half price. I got my meat fix, and I was a very happy guy. Tonight she’s going to try out the recipe that she didn’t have time for yesterday. As they say at McDonald’s, I’m lovin’ it.

Today I had two classes – one during first period and one during the last. My morning class was no sweat – doing interview practice with third year students. After that I wrapped up some lesson planning for later this week, and then did a little bit of studying through until the afternoon.

My sixth period class was with Mori sensei, and I think we’ve got a pretty good system working now. I can see that she is struggling with not being in charge of the classroom, but for now she is dealing well with it. The students in today’s class were a little shy, but there were some really sharp girls in the class – they responded well to my questions and weren’t afraid to speak out.

Continuing on that theme, after school we got a new cleaning squad, and so I cleaned my room with a couple of students I don’t usually talk to much. I like talking to the students in English, but I try to balance that with silence, too – I don’t them to be afraid to be in the same room with me for fear of having to do a full-blown conversation.

Afterwards we all gathered and signed off their sheet, and it was great to joke around with everyone. There are a lot of dynamics at work in these situations, some of which are the emerging recognition of the opposite sex. The hormones are starting to overwhelm the shyness factor. You can see a glimpse of it now in the third years, and it should be in full gear by graduation.

We had registration for clubs after school, so I went to the classroom where we were taking registration and hung out. The class was filled with some of the students that I’ll be teaching tomorrow, and I hung out with them chatting about this and that. After about 20 minutes ESS members started showing up. We had only two new first year students, but we had one new second year student and about ten new third years.

Most of the new third year students are interested because they will undergo English testing on their way to college. Hayashi sensei thought that they’d show up at first and then disappear once they take the test. I was happy to see that some of the regulars were there to support the club. They are the ones that show up every week, came to my wedding, and try hard to keep the club going. They may not be the most popular or cool students, but they are the heart of the club. I’m hoping that we can get some more like for the future.

One of the new first year ESS students came up and started speaking to me in English, and she was going for broke. She must have some experience speaking with another teacher or maybe at a language school. She was talking up a storm in English, and kept on speaking it even after I said goodbye. The other students I think were a little worried that this might amp up the pressure on them. I hope it does, to tell the truth.

Lastly, when I sat back down at my chair at the end of the day I there were two new first year students talking to their homeroom teacher, Nishikawa sensei. He urged them to talk to me a little in English so I chatted with them a bit. They said that they couldn’t possibly say a word of English. Nishikawa sensei asked them about the ALT from their junior high spoke mainly just in Japanese. Scary thought, but the board of education is paying someone to come all the way from some Western English-speaking country and the guy is teaching the class in Japanese. Ouch.

Tonight Kuniko is going to cook up dinner and I’m in suspense about what it might be. I’ll try to remember to post what it was tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ve got a full slate of classes… actually, they’ve changed my schedule this week so I’ll be really busy. I’m looking forward to it – I think I’m ready.

Today I had just one class – during fifth period. It was with some new first year students, but because of a hearing and eye exam they had to take, the class was slightly abbreviated. I taught the class with Yamamoto sensei. It has been four years since the last time he did a team teaching first year class. He was a little nervous, but he did just fine.

The students were pretty quiet – only two or three of them showed some signs of personality. I think they were a little intimidated with the format at first.

After the class I talked with Yamamoto sensei and made arrangements to go home a little early, since I didn’t have any more classes in the afternoon. He said no problem, so I was out the door. I picked up some sakura mochi on the way home, along with some ingredients for a healthy dinner. While I was waiting for Kuniko I worked on getting MP3 files into my new phone, and I had to find some ways to bypass all the digital rights management software they have in there. Finally I managed to get one going, so that was very good news.

Kuniko got home late, late, late – so we ate big when she got here. We had miso soup, tofu, sauteed bean sprouts, and then the sakura mochi for dessert. Tasty. We just got back from returning the DVD we rented the other day, and now we’re headed for bed.

After a fun-filled Friday night, Saturday and Sunday were pretty unremarkable. But, I’ll give it a try.

Saturday Kuniko and I went out to run errands. First we went to the nearest Vodafone shop to get me a new cellphone. The old one was doing OK, just a few disturbing power glitches. I’ve been itching to upgrade for a while now, and so I picked up a new model the day it came out.

While the old one had a TV built in, it became obsolete the day Kuniko moved in and brought her TV with her. This new one has lots of interesting new features – some of which are useful. It has a built in GPS unit, so it can guide me to where I need to go, which may be handy in the future if I’m looking for a particular address for a job interview.

It has a motion control sensor, so it can tell what position the phone is in. That’s kind of cool because it makes the games more interesting, and there is one application that works as kind of a mini-planetarium. It knows where you are, and then shows you a guide to the stars above you, that moves as you move the phone around.

It also has a VGA screen – so it can show those complex Japanese characters just as well as my laptop. It really makes a huge difference – I’ll never be able to go back to a regular phone again.

Anyway, I’m still finding out new features – so if I find something else cool I’ll write about it here.

We also went over and rented a movie, and then picked up some gyoza on the way home and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. What a weird movie. The oompa loompas were great, but I’m not sure how I feel about the rest of it. I definitely like the original better.

Sunday Kuniko went off to see a student off at the Osaka airport, so I stayed home and studied, tried to keep my computer running (it is getting slower and slower), and in the evening I heated up some sho-chu and I’m sitting here sipping it while I type. Kuniko should be getting home late this evening, and we’ll have a little soup and then probably go to bed early. I’ll have my first full week of classes next week.

Today I had three classes of first year students, and I spent one class working with Miyake sensei, so it ended up being four morning classes in a row.

The first year classes were fun. Two of the classes had students that weren’t so shy and were pretty comfortable with me right off the bat. The last class had a pretty quiet class who were a little intimidated. Still, even that class had students that were talking to me at the end.

Two of my classes today were taught with Mori sensei, who seems to overprepare for everything. She worked hard on her self-introduction, and it went pretty well. She timed every single activity that we did and really tried to control the flow of the class. That’s usually something I do, and so I kind of wrestled control from her early on and didn’t give it up. In the beginning of the first class Mori sensei was telling the students in a stern voice, “This is English class. You… will… have… FUN.” I prefer the more natural approach, so I kind of steered it that direction. I was pleased to see that the activities that I had suggested went well.

Not to jump all over Mori sensei, but during her introduction she was listing all the countries that she had visited, because she likes to travel. She said, “I have ever been to France. I have ever been to Viet Nam. I have ever been to…” I think I physically flinched every time she misused the phrase, like somebody was whipping me. The worst part was that she has been to a lot of countries, so she was saying it over and over – really branding it into the kids’ English learning. I know better than to correct her in front of the students, so I had to wait and mention it to her between classes, and then it got straightened out. I hate to think what she is teaching in her other 15 English classes.

The other teacher, Nozaki sensei, was a pleasure to teach with. It turns out that she has been featured on television for her skills on the abacus. She showed a picture of one of her appearances on a variety show (on a segment called “The Super-Housewife Next Door”). It was cool to see her talk about the abacus and how much she loves using it. She reacted well to the flow of the class and at the end said she really enjoyed it.

After my classes finished I headed back to the staffroom, and passed by a few of the first year students that I had taught during first period. They all smiled and said hello to me, and I could tell that before long I’ll have a lot more students that are more confident using English.

I was free in the afternoon, and by the time I had lunch and rested up a bit it was already the sixth period. Time flies when you have a bunch of classes.

After school I went into Kobe to meet up with Kuniko and Antoine. On the way I walked through Akashi park to take pictures of cherry blossoms – it was still quite beautiful even though the weather was cloudy.

Antoine ended up having some trouble arriving on time – he had another engagement that he couldn’t escape right away. When he arrived we walked down the street to a Mexican restaurant that I had heard about for a little while but hadn’t tried yet.

It turned out to be quite good, and quite affordable. We ordered a Mexican salad, some appetizers, two burritos, and two tacos, and the whole thing was only around 5000 yen with drinks. The food was great – very tasty and very fresh.

Afterwards we walked along the Motomachi to Kobe station, and then wandered around Harborland until we found a dessert-type restaurant that was open. It was a cheesecake place, but we had no idea until our order arrived that they were being very literal when they said “cheesecake”. It was a small round white cake, with fondue-like cheese melted over the top. Nobody could decide if it was good or not – certainly one of the stranger things that I have eaten. This coupled with our waiter who was not completely masculine – turned out to be a weird night.

Kuniko and I got home exhausted, and we went right to bed. What a long day… I posted some pictures from today here.

It’s good to be teaching again. Today was a good reminder of why I like doing what I do. I had two classes, one with third year students and one with second year students. The third year students know me very well, and so we got along just fine. In that class I worked with a few students to practice for the interview exam of the upcoming English proficiency test.

The other class was with second year students, and so I came up with a lesson and taught it with Tsutsumi sensei. She is really easy to teach with, and knows just when to interject a little Japanese to keep the lesson running smoothly. I could interject it myself, but I don’t want the students to start relying on me speaking their language.

One of the activities we did in that class was an introduction of new/strange English vocabulary. I mixed one fake word in with two real words, and then explained them all. The three words were “barnstorming”, “cheeper”, and “blog”. I told them that one word was completely made up, and then took a vote after I had explained what each one meant. The students mainly didn’t believe that people would fly planes through buildings. One enterprising student found the fake word “cheeper” in their dictionary – it apparently is something that people call small birds. I didn’t see that one coming – I’ll have to prepare more diligently next time.

After school I met up with Tsuji-san and spent and spent about an hour chatting with her. Her wedding, honeymoon, and new house plans are making a lot of progress since I talked to her last. She seemed pretty happy about how things are going, so that was good to see. I gave her a present that my folks had sent along, and she was really excited about getting it. She said that it was just the right present, and I told her that my mom is a pretty good shopper.

Kuniko requested a healthy dinner tonight, so when I got home a did a veggie stir-fry: tofu, sprouts, two kinds of Japanese mushrooms, and onions mixed in a Malaysian chili sauce. The Malaysian flavor didn’t really come through in the end but overall it turned out pretty nicely.

Tomorrow is Friday and I have three classes with the brand-new first year students. This will be the exact opposite of today – they’ll all be scared to talk to me. It’ll be my job to make them as comfortable as possible, and also make my teachers comfortable as well. It’ll be the first time for them, too. After work I’m meeting up with Antoine in Sannomiya to catch up – should be fun!

Today once again I had no classes, but it was really just a quirk in the schedule – starting tomorrow it will be back to normal. There were some classes going on for other teachers, however, and the staffroom was jumping with activity once again.

We had two new part-time teachers come to school today. One was a computer teacher that I had met previously – he’s one of those really young nervous guys who would get down and polish the floor with his dress shirt if you told him to.

The other guy was an older gentleman who used to be our new vice-principal’s principal. It was a weird connection. They got along great, and the new VP introduced me to him – in English. That was a twist – the new VP is a math teacher by trade, so a full scale intro in English kind of threw me. As for the new part-timer, we had a long talk in Japanese. He was really interested in me because he has a daughter who married a foreigner – an Israeli living in Kobe.

He mentioned that although his son-in-law can speak Japanese well enough, he can’t read or write it, and he was really impressed that I could. The more we talked about what exactly I could and couldn’t do the more I realized that I was just giving this guy ammunition the next time they meet up, so I tried to change the subject.

Arauchi sensei came by to ask me for some restaurant recommendations for my area. I gave him a few restaurants that I like, but really I don’t go out to many places besides the yakitori, and he has already been there. It was fun to give some recommendations, though – in Japanese, too. That goes to show how well I’ve settled into life here.

After school no ESS members showed up, so I made an exit right on time, and got a haircut in Befu on the way home. Kuniko has plans to meet up with a friend after work so I went ahead and ate leftovers for dinner tonight. Right now I’ve set aside some dinner for Kuniko and I’m just hanging out – she should get home any time now.

Tomorrow I can finally teach some classes – I’m really looking forward to that.

No classes today, just a few more ceremonies and a whole bunch of speeches. The teachers that had been transferred came to our school today in the afternoon to say one last farewell. First we had a meeting in which they each gave a speech saying goodbye. Some people just kept talking and talking – seizing the opportunity to have a captive audience with nowhere to run.

One of these teachers was Onishi sensei, who is a retiring teacher this year. He gave a speech last term in the staff room, he gave another one at the last major staff meeting, he gave one today at our meeting, and then he gave another one to the students. In two weeks we’ll have all these teachers over at a going away/welcome party, and that will be the final time I hear him speak.

His speeches aren’t bad, they are just a bit long and his voice is really hard for me to understand. The other teachers had a few short remarks and sat down, which was awfully considerate.

After our meeting they assembled all the students in the gym and brought in the teachers. They sat on stage and one by one came up and gave a speech. These speeches were pretty diverse, and for the most part interesting.

Finally, after almost 90 minutes of listening to speeches the students were set free and the teachers were free to mingle with the outgoing teachers in the staffroom. I had a nice talk with the vice-principal (who is now a principal), and also with Kimura sensei, Kawamura sensei, and Watanabe sensei. I’ll get a chance to see them all again at the big party in a couple of weeks.

I killed the rest of the day studying and chatting with Miyake sensei, who came in to check out her schedule and find out about my lesson plan for the first years. Since yesterday’s meeting about the first year plan left me waiting around for Mori sensei, I didn’t have much to tell her about. We were both kind of confused about why it has to be so confusing, but like me she will adapt and do just fine.

Now I’m back home, relaxing and thinking about the rest of the week. There are a couple of major things I have to get done in the next few months, so I’m working on getting started on those. Little details like finding a place to live, a new job, and planning a honeymoon in Europe. I better get my act together…

Sifting through years of daily archives looking for something in particular can be a pain, so here are a few highlights from my time in Japan. There are so many great experiences – it’s hard to narrow them down. I’ve picked out a few of my favorites and put them in here. If you have some please let me know and I’ll post them here as well. In no particular order:

Arriving in Futami, just off the plane. Bonus: meeting Kuniko for the first time.

Meeting Kuniko’s parents for the first time.

Our wedding day.

Honeymoon in Europe:
Day 1 in Paris, Day 2 in Paris, Day 3 in Dijon, Day 4 in Venice, Day 5 in Venice and Florence, Day 6 in Florence and Pisa, Day 7 in Florence and Rome, Day 8 in Rome, Day 9 and 10 in Rome and home.

It’s back to school time, but not really. I don’t have any classes until Thursday. The first few days of this week will be full of the ceremonies. Today we had the opening ceremony for the 2nd and 3rd year students, which was nothing too exciting. They told the students to work hard this year, to not pick on the new 1st year students, and to generally be nice.

One of the big problems today was that some girls had taken the two weeks off and very slightly dyed their hair brown. Some students can get away with it if they do it really, really subtly. Today there was a line of girls that had gone a little too far, and they were getting yelled at. When every student in your school has black hair, these kids really tend to stand out. Maybe there is a lesson in there somewhere about wanting to distinguish yourself. Maybe my school’s mission is to quash that desire.

After all the students went home the new first year students came to school with their parents for the entrance ceremony, which is essentially the same ceremony as the graduation except no applause at the end. There is so much standing and bowing and sitting – I couldn’t help but wonder who thought this all up. But a part of me knows that you can’t have an ending without a beginning in Japan, and everything that they do completes a circle – sometimes the circle is just hard to see at first.

In the afternoon I was free to study as I pleased. I prepared two lessons for later this week, and ate my free bento lunch that they gave us today. Outside it was raining continuously, so it was nice to stay in and stay dry.

There are lots of new faces around the staffroom nowadays, and none of them are really comfortable talking with the foreign guy. I know it is just a matter of time before I have them smiling and asking how my weekend was – right now they barely acknowledge my existence. They are the slab of marble that I will soon carve into an international-minded Japanese citizen. I’m really writing esoterically today.

Yamamoto sensei is now taking over all the duties that Hayashi sensei had before regarding managing me at work. He’s taking a very hands off approach and letting me do whatever I want, but it is nice to have a backup around since the vice principal has moved on to another school. We were joking around today about a huge subwoofer that he bought to watch movies. He was unaware how powerful it was until he hooked it up. Now he has to turn it to the lowest setting in order to avoid pissing off the neighbors.

I had a meeting to talk about my first year lesson coming up on Friday. All the teachers save one who are involved came to the meeting, and I had put together my lesson plan in advance so everyone could check it out. This was standard operating procedure the last two years, so I didn’t think anything of it. The plan was detailed, down to the last minute.

Everyone liked the plan and was ready to run with it, but one teacher, Mori sensei, wanted to do her own thing. This caused a big logjam and everyone was tiptoeing around each other’s pride for almost an hour. We ended up trying to merge the two plans. I’m not sure what concessions I made and what parts of my plan remain, but I made a power play at the end of the meeting and nominated Mori sensei to rewrite the plan as we had agreed.

Afterwards I was a little frustrated that the plan that I know will work got scrapped, but I can see where she wants to contribute something to the planning stages, whereas the previous teachers were happy to leave it all to me. In a way, it’s good practice for my next job, where I may face the same situation. I’m going to have to let Mori sensei see for herself what works and what doesn’t, but I’m a little bummed that it will be at the expense of my students’ learning time.

I’m really looking forward to teaching with Nozaki sensei – she seems so excited to be teaching with me and her English is top notch – I think probably the best at the school. She speaks smoother than Mr. Hayashi, who was the front runner since I arrived. The other teacher, Okamoto sensei, seems really shy and nervous to speak English. His strategy now is to be quiet and see what the lay of the land is.

He had only one contribution to the hour meeting. Mori sensei asked me to shake hands with the students when I meet them the first time. I said sure, and Okamoto sensei jokingly asked if it was OK to hug them. I’m all for humor and levity, but anytime anyone jokes about that kind of stuff I get uncomfortable. He’s a new guy, though, so we’ll see how he does in the classroom.

Now I’m home and getting dinner ready for Kuniko. It should be a pretty simple dinner tonight – lots of vegetables and a little bit of shrimp. Tomorrow I’ve got more ceremonies and meetings, so I hope I’ll have something interesting to write about tomorrow night…