Saturday night I decided to go check out a yakitori that I have been wanting to visit for a while. It’s not the usual place, Denya, but one a little farther away to the north of my place.

I was talking with Kuniko the other day about my plan to go visit it, and she was surprised that I would go alone. Other people have expressed surprise that I went to Denya alone the first time I went there almost three years ago. What’s the big deal?

I walked out to the place, and stepped in the door. My first impression was that they spent a lot of money on the atmosphere. It was fairly dark, and well-decorated. The yakitori grill was behind clear glass surrounded by curtains and sho-chu bottles. I could tell that it would be a little more expensive than a visit to Denya.

A lady came up and asked me how many people, and when I said “one” she asked, “One? Just one?” I took a seat at the counter, and I was the only single in the place.

The menu was fairly simple, and I tried a couple of different items. Overall it was a little healthier than Denya, and the prices were quite a bit higher. The flavor was good, and I was able to eat and drink quite a lot. After four beers I was able to speak Japanese like a native with one of the servers, who was curious where I came from and what I was doing.

Kuniko got back fairly early, around 10:45 p.m., and it sounded like she had a good time with some of her ex-coworkers. I guess some of the people that were hoping to be there couldn’t make it – everyone is busy.

Sunday morning I had to get myself out of bed and leave a warm beautiful woman sleeping in the bed behind me, to go to work. I had no classes today, so it was just a matter of walking to the train station in the rain, walking to the school from the train station in the rain, and then setting up shop at my desk and working on vocabulary and reading.

The more I listen to my surroundings in the staff room, the more I understand. It’s very easy to let the Japanese flow all around you – for me to understand it I need to actively listen. It’s harder than it sounds. The good news is that with more and more practice I am able to catch what’s going on around me.

The teachers in the first year group where I sit have a real camaraderie, they joke and laugh and are much noisier than any of the other teacher groups. They tend to really tease one of the young teachers, a math teacher named Ageshi sensei. He good naturedly takes all the teasing, and I think he does a lot to deserve it. It’s a lot of fun to listen in and see what grief they are giving him. On Friday afternoon he had left early from school, and today everybody was saying “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you last,” etc. etc.

There’s a bit of real bite in what they are saying, though. Taking time off in the Japanese workplace is seen as a burden to your coworkers. The power of peer pressure drives people to stay at work, even if they are finished or don’t need to be there (or need to be somewhere else with their family).

Kuniko picked me up after school and we went over to her parents to hang out and celebrate Kuniko’s birthday. We had a good time over there, and as usual ate way too much and brought home lots of vegetables and sweets from her family. I got a big bottle of sho-chu from her Dad, and some beers, too.

Now we’re back and heading to bed. At least I don’t have to worry about a tough Monday. I did Monday on Sunday.

Almost a week of head-scratching and I think I’ve finally got the website back up and running. It was down longer than I expected, and my e-mail was toasted for a while, but I think it’s back to normal. It wasn’t without some losses, though. I lost all the captions for the pictures in the gallery. At least I still have the pictures.

Not much to report for this week. At work we have mostly wrapped up the regular schedule of classes. We had Miyake sensei over for dinner on Wednesday night. We ate lots of tacos and talked for a long time. She was very happy to visit with us and break from her regular routine – we enjoyed talking to her.

Today was a weird day at school. The had no students, and for the teachers you could either take today off or March 17th off for free, to compensate for this Sunday, when we have to go in to work. I’m not sure why the weird schedule, but I decided to go ahead and go in today. The vice principal left at 10 o’clock in the morning, and told me that I could leave in the afternoon. I took him very literally and left at five minutes past noon.

This afternoon I did laundry and finally got things set up on the website the way I like them. Tonight Kuniko will be getting home late because she has an English teacher’s meeting to find out who will be teaching what classes. Yesterday she found out that she will be teaching high school first year students next year, as opposed to teaching third year junior high students like she is now. There was a chance that she would be teaching first year junior high students, but it didn’t happen. Kuniko was happy about the level of the students she will teach, but that teacher group is entirely men, and about half of them are single. She won’t have a female to hang out with in her group, so she’s thinking it might not be so much fun.

More updates this weekend!

So a while back Kuniko’s boss sent a letter home with Kuniko for me telling me about her secret plan to have me at the party tonight. We put the plan into action, and so I was headed to Kobe about 30 minutes after Kuniko left this afternoon.

I went to the Kitano Club, a really upscale restaurant near the House of Pacific in the Kitano section of Kobe. The staff received me, led me up to the bar where I could hide out. The party sponsors – the Rotary Club of Kobe – picked up my bar tab.

The Rotary Club is sponsoring Haley, an exchange student at Kuniko’s school. Since it was her birthday and Kuniko’s, they had a nice little party. Once they got the party started, the staff brought me downstairs and I appeared with a bouquet of flowers when they were singing to Kuniko. It was a great surprise!

Kuniko was totally shocked, and afterwards we had our picture taken with everyone. We wished Haley a happy birthday, and ate a ton of delicious food. The menu had prosciutto, roast beef, shrimp, all kinds of tasty things that I liked. People were treating us like royalty there, and the head of the Rotary turned out to be the owner of the restaurant. He seemed really happy to have me there to add to the international flavor of the evening.

Finally we hit the road, saying goodbye to everyone. One of the teachers was really curious about my brother’s upcoming visit. I think she wanted to set him up with a girl that she knows.

Now we’re back at home and getting ready to bed. The house is filled with flowers – I think we have four or five vases of flowers right now. Tomorrow it’s back to work, and back to reality!

Saturday slept in a little bit and then did odd jobs around the house. The weather was nice outside – things are warming up gradually, and today we had some sun to dry out our laundry.

Pretty early in the day Kuniko had to leave for a drinking party with her college friends in Osaka, and soon after that I left for a drinking party of my own with Struan and Antoine.

The original idea was just to meet up with Struan, but Antoine got a rare Saturday night free because of a fight with his girlfriend. We met up at the Belgian beer place, and the bartender defended Antoine and Struan’s empty seats until they arrived.

From there we went to Asian Days for all you can eat dim sum, and I will admit that I ate way too much. I don’t know why – we just kept talking and eating. We got a lot of attention from the other patrons, mostly female. I was egging Antoine about the possiblity that he is a single guy now. He was joking around about it, but I could tell he was pretty bummed out.

From there we walked over to Higashimon street, and found an underground bar that we’ve visited a long time ago. It was a pretty upscale place with a really good atmosphere. There we talked and talked, and finally we decided to go to one more place.

As we walked north into Kitano we found ourselves outside a themed bar – The Lockup. It’s a relatively new place, and the idea is that they put you in a room with bars and serve you weird drinks and food, and then every so often all the lights go out and crazy guys in scary costumes run around and try to scare you. We sat and drank glow-in-the-dark sweet barely alcoholic drinks and ate peanuts while all the fun was happening around us. Antoine was on his sixth or seventh sho-chu by that time, so he was starting to feel the effects. We tried to arrange for a photo with the “warden” of the place, a girl dressed in a plastic policewoman suit complete with miniskirt, but apparently she had just left when we asked. We had a couple more drinks, and then headed back to the station.

I think Antoine and Struan were going to stick around, and I think Antoine had missed his last train, so I took off and met Kuniko at home – she went all the way to Osaka and still beat me home. After midnight it was officially Kuniko’s birthday, so we opened presents, and she seemed to like her present, a BabyG watch that I picked out for her.

We went to bed late, so we slept in today early. Kuniko is going to be leaving soon for a party for one of her exchange students. As it happens, her student (Hayley, from Canada) has a birthday on the same day as Kuniko. The school arranged to have a birthday party for her at Kitano club, a really nice place in Kobe. There’s another birthday surprise coming up, though. Stay tuned!

On top of today’s regular post (below), I graded a particularly interesting journal today. So interesting that I had to copy it down and post it here. The topic was, what will your life be like in twenty years. Here’s the journal, posted exactly as it was written:

Hello Bryan! My name is Nishio Takao. I will be crazy after 20 years. I am the crazyest in the world. My age is sixteen. Sixteen + twelve = 36. I do not know it. My expectation, Kim Jon Il is superhero. Kim Jon Il is crazy. Kim Jon Il is great leader. North Korea is crazy. I do not Kim Jon Il language. Kim Jon Il will awake war. Bush is going to die. Crazy Kim Jon Il culture is expand. World people is going to become crazy. World people is going to be decread by war. I may be killed by great leader Kim Jon Il. I am genius! Kim Jon Il is crazy. Good bye Bryan!

I gave him a good score – that’s quality writing!

Today was a weird schedule because we announced the results of the screening test for next year’s first year students. Because of this, the students came in an hour later, and we had lots of free time before class started to have a fun meeting.

As people were getting ready for the meeting, one of our teachers flipped out. He started yelling at another teacher, and suddenly everyone became engrossed in their coffee, tea or newspaper. I’m not sure what he was freaking out about, but I bet it might have something to do with only taking two holiday days a year. That kind of stress has got to add up.

The meeting was good, and bad. The good thing was that instead of handouts, they used a computer and a projector to make a presentation, and everyone watched from their seats instead of wasting a bunch of paper that everyone is going to throw away anyway. This was a first for my school – they are a bit old fashioned. Watching the vice principal try to figure out the laser pointer was priceless.

The bad news was that they were showing an excel spreadsheet, and I think most people couldn’t read the screen. The vice principal did the presentation facing away from us, and without a microphone, so most people couldn’t hear anything either. In a classic Japanese meeting move, at the end of the hour meeting a guy stood up and said that he couldn’t see anything or hear anything, so maybe they could fix that next time. Dude, why didn’t you pipe up before?

My classes went smoothly, with some of my favorite students. I had them write me a farewell speech, and two girls were almost crying as they read it. The reviews of my class keep coming in, and so far it has been 99% positive. Although it’s nice to get positive feedback, negative feedback is much more useful. Still, when the biggest complaint is that the students want more of your classes in their schedule, I guess you are doing something right. I think the big influence is the format of the class. It is loose, relaxed, and freewheeling. You would think that in this format the students would be sleeping more, but on the contrary, I have only had one or two students sleeping in my class in the last three years.

Although I’d say the students speak only marginally better English after my class, I would say that they leave the class with a view that English isn’t such a serious matter, that they can approach it as a communication tool rather than a study subject. Most important, students start to like English more when they take my class. Also I enjoy the format because maybe it will make them think about the formats of the other classes they take – are they as effective?

In the afternoon the same teacher flipped out again, this time with another partner, making him the likely guilty party in both situations. Luckily he ran off to the smoking room to calm his nerves with a cigarette.

Also in the afternoon a small crowd gathered in front of our school. The crowd was made up of junior high school students who had taken the entrance exam for our school, and their parents. They were hoping that their scores were good enough to get in as new high school students next year. At 2 o’clock they put the results on a big board and hung it out the window for everyone to see. The students’ reactions were mixed – most of the ones who passed just smiled and got their paperwork. A couple of boys acted liked they just won the lottery. Seriously, shrieking, jumping up and down, and hugging their friends and family. Our school is no Harvard – it’s a middle to low ability high school, so it’s nothing to freak out about. Surprisingly I saw some tears of some students that didn’t make the cut at our school, which seems to be pretty hard to do. A couple of moms walked away drying the tears of their sons and daughters.

We had one more staff meeting before the end of the day and then I could finally go home. I bought some groceries for dinner and I’m just kicking back tonight watching some TV and drinking some seasonal Japanese beers. Actually, they are seasonal only in the sense that the label has changed. I can detect no flavor difference whatsoever.

Kuniko is partying tonight with some co-workers – it’s the first of in a series of three parties. She’ll be tired out by the end of it, I’m sure.

There was a scheduling change today, and I had both of my classes early in the day. That left me free to fool around in the afternoon, study, run errands, and whatever else I wanted.

The classes were great – the students seemed to get into the lesson, and they left some good comments on their evaluation sheets as they left. The comments are almost uniformly positive, and it sounds like they really have begun to take a greater interest in English. The unique format of my class seems to be effective, too.

Kuniko and I arrived home at the same time tonight, because I had a lesson with Tsuji-san after school. She sent me home with a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates – one a congratulations gift for the test result, and the other a Valentine’s gift.

Kuniko cooked up another delicious donburi, this time with beef, mushrooms, tofu and curry powder. It was good, but not as good as the other recipes we tried lately. Still, it’s fun to experiment.

This weekend I may switch this site to another server, so there may be some downtime for a while. Don’t worry – come back in a few days and it should be back up!

It was a bittersweet day today. It was my last lesson for Maeda sensei’s second year students, and Oshita sensei’s second year class. Maeda sensei’s class is by far my favorite. The lesson went well – we practiced giving a farewell speech, and I had them fill out an evaluation in Japanese about how my class was.

The evaluation is a new thing that I came up with – I want to be able to get some new ideas and hear about what things didn’t work this year. Maeda sensei’s class wrote some excellent comments – they were still writing when the bell rang and they didn’t want to stop. I said goodbye at the end and the students all waved goodbye with a big smile – I felt like Robin Williams at the end of “Dead Poet’s Society”. Not really, but it was cool. On our way back to the staffroom some students chased us down and gave us Valentine’s chocolates.

The students had the day off on Valentine’s Day, but that didn’t deter anyone – they were passing out homemade chocolates to their friends and favorite teachers. We were lucky to get some, and by the end of the day I had a pretty good collection. Some students were patrolling the hallways looking for me – it was a nice thing for them to do. You can tell who the popular teachers are by the pile of chocolates on their desk at the end of the day. Since my classes are so easy I got a lot of chocolates.

We had an ESS meeting today – we’ve changed the day to accomodate some students that have a conflict on Thursdays. We watched the second half of “The Incredibles”, and exchanged chocolate there too.

It should be a quiet evening tonight and tomorrow, and then Kuniko has three parties in a row – Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Lucky, lucky!

Today everyone else but me went in to work early. I slept in and arrived after everyone else, but I still was on time. Confused? So was I. No worries, though – everything worked out fine.

I had a good day at school studying and I even got a free bento lunch. Everybody else was fairly busy – I was one of the only teachers without any responsibilities for the day. While all the junior school students were sweating the exam and the interviews, I was downstairs alone in the staffroom memorizing vocabulary.

Today is Valentine’s Day in Japan, which means that the women are on the hot seat to give chocolates to the men. I got some obligation chocolates from the first year female teachers, and a little homemade chocolate from one of my students yesterday. Kuniko came home tonight with some chocolates for me (including a fig pig – a fig baked into a sweet bread pig), and a gift – the book “Deep River” in Japanese. I’ve read the English translation, now it’s time to buckle down and read it in Japanese. It’ll take a long time, I’m sure.

For dinner we had cheese, crackers, roast beef, salad, prosciutto, and a bottle of champagne. We got a little drunk on the wine and all the cheese was delicious. We also got a box from my folks full of shirts, candies, and Valentine stuff – it was fun to look through that.

Now we’re headed to bed – it wasn’t a productive night but it was a lot of fun. It might be a little tough to get up tomorrow morning…

Last night Kuniko made a new recipe, and it was a lot of fun to eat and to make. She made nikuman, which is sometimes called pork buns in American Chinese restaurants. I love to eat them – we eat them quite often and they are available everywhere. I’ve never made them from scratch, and it turns out it wasn’t so hard to do. Kuniko called me into the kitchen to help with the rolling of the dough and filling, and then they cooked up really easily in a hot frypan. They weren’t pretty (at least the ones I made weren’t), but they tasted great. We ate them while watching a movie that we rented, “The Island”. The movie was “mah-mah” as they say here in Japan.

Today I was at work early, with only one class. I spent the morning doing vocabulary and writing the listening test for the first year students. They have a weird sign in the corridor outside the teacher’s room that says that nobody but staff can walk down one side of the corridor. I couldn’t figure out why, so I asked the history teacher. He told me that they are doing an exam tomorrow, and behind one of the doors of the corridor is an automatic grading computer that they fear will be tampered with by students. It’s weird because none of our students are taking the exam, just junior high school students who might want to go to this school. They are fearing some real “Mission Impossible” stuff I guess. Sounds like paranoia to me.

There are no classes tomorrow since we are administering the exam for junior high school students. My responsibilities in this area are exactly zero. I’m not sure why they want me here, but since they are paying me I might as well show up. The history teacher came by and told me that I need to stay late tomorrow, which was hard to figure out since they don’t need me for anything anyway. Later he came back with a sheepish look on his face and said that he had consulted with the vice principal, and he found out that I could leave at my regular time. I think the history teacher enjoys being my mouthpiece – so much that he does it even when I don’t need to say anything.

Back home I found the results from my big exam that I took in December of last year waiting for me in the mailbox. I hate opening envelopes with important results – I tend to build it up too much. I took the envelope from the JET program on a hike deep into the mountains and only after arriving at a waterfall far away from anyone did I open it up. Today I waited just a little while – I did the dishes, washed the bathtun, the usual routine.

So did all those hours of hard work finally pay off? Did I gain an important edge in my upcoming job search? Did I pass the exam that has consumed pretty much my whole life in 2005?

I’m building the drama, even here. Yes, I passed – barely. I’m happy – but the result doesn’t change where my Japanese level is right now. I still can’t have a decent conversation with most native speakers, I can’t understand what is going on watching TV, I can’t read the newspaper without a dictionary handy.

Even though I passed, I’ve got a long way to go.

That being said, tonight I think we’ll go out and celebrate just a teensy bit. Kuniko will be here soon and we’ll head and do something fun.

Tomorrow is an easy day at school – no classes, but I’ll have some planning to do for a lesson on Wednesday.

We had a good time on Friday – a really good time. After school I met up with Antoine to play pool and hang out for a while. Antoine showed up sporting an alternate hairstyle – it was really interesting. Kind of like a mohawk, but a little more subdued.

We went to the same billiard place that we went to last time. It is in a weird location, on top of a game amusement place that looks pretty seedy despite being right across from a police station.

We stepped over a knocked over garbage can to get in the elevator, and arrived at the top floor where all the pool tables are. The beers are pretty cheap here, and the tables are not so expensive either. There were a couple of foreigners shooting pool at the end of the room and then a couple of salaryman types working off their frustrations at the tables.

Antoine and I played for an hour and ordered up beers whenever we were thirsty – the nice young lady would call the kitchen and then bring the beers right to the table. Nice!

We played three games and I lost two to Antoine. We were playing anything goes pool, and it was fun. It’s much more fun when you don’t sweat the rules so much, but as I write this I think that’s probably true with just about everything.

From there we went to Starchild Burgers, which is a place that I’ve been trying to visit for almost six months without luck. This was the fourth attempt, and it worked out that they were open for business. Their menu was filled with a burgers and appetizers, and we both got a bacon cheeseburger, and some nachos for a starter. The nachos were good, the burgers were great, and I had a couple of Heineken darks with dinner. I haven’t had Heineken dark since drinking it on tap at the Silver Dollar Hofbrau in Fresno, California during college.

The next stop was King of Kings, another place that I thought about visiting but never have. The place was quiet, and the jovial bartender led us to a really nice bar. We pulled up a stool and enjoyed some professionally done drinks. I knew it was going to be expensive just from the layout of the place. You can either sit there and worry about how much it’s going to be and hurry through the experience, or you can just relax and enjoy it. The language we used was Japanese – with the exception of a bar waitress that spoke a little English. She explained that she wants to learn English because someday she will travel to Spain. I tried to explain that they speak Spanish in Spain, but I guess English is a little more useful. People tend to be more practical about the language they learn, and English goes pretty far in this world.

We paid the bill (3 drinks, 5700 yen, around $50) and headed back to the station – it was getting late by now, and there was some doubt as to weather Antoine could get home before the last train.

Kuniko was drinking in town tonight, too. She had gone out with a bunch of her teachers, and so we were in touch via cellphone messages throughout the evening trying to coordinate it so we could go home together. As it worked out I sent off Antoine and walked back up the street a little and after a little guidance from Kuniko found the restaurant where they were. I went inside and said a quick hello and goodbye to everyone, and then we hit the road.

Kuniko was having trouble walking – I had to support almost all her weight as we walked, and we quickly determined that a long walk to the train station and a long ride home probably wasn’t going to happen. I walked us up the hill a little bit and as we were getting our bearings on where we were the bartender assistant from King of Kings went walking by and gave us a big smile and hello. What a sight we must have been – that guy was just in my bar and already he’s dragging a beautiful girl around looking for a hotel.

I flagged down a taxi, and he took us to a couple of love hotels, looking for one with an open room. Love hotels are usually just for short term stays – an hour or so, but as it gets later, they rent out the rooms for the night, and the prices are quite reasonable. Usually about the same price as three drinks at King of Kings.

We found one, and watched as an embarrassed young man dug through his pockets and was unable to afford a room for him and his date. They ended up having to leave, and so we stepped up and got a room. The owner’s wife came out to check on Kuniko’s condition, especially since she couldn’t really stand up on her own. I guess we were OK enough to get the room – we went down the hall and crashed right out in a no-frills love hotel.

The nice thing about love hotels is that they don’t do much business in the morning – that means that we could sleep in late. We took advantage of that, and got out of there around 10:30. Kuniko was feeling a little queasy, but we made it home safely and then went back to sleep. By afternoon she was feeling fine, and we both had a big appetite.

Kuniko cooked up a tasty chicken, tomato and cheese dish for dinner, and we had some special shu-mai that we had gotten at IY along with it. The dish turned out great – and it was pretty healthy, too.

Now it’s Sunday, and we’re doing housework, studying, and relaxing. It was snowing outside this morning, but now it has stopped and we’re getting ready to head over to IY for some shopping.

So I went to school and eagerly awaited the result of the purported strike, and it turned out that the school caved in and gave everyone a raise, so there is no strike. Unfortunately the raise doesn’t extend to me, but I’m on my way out anyway, so no problem.

I had a new lesson today – this is my last round of lessons for the first year students – they’ll graduate soon, and so it’s kind of my farewell class. I’ll really miss these guys! During the class I collected surveys from the students to find out how the class was. Of course they wrote in Japanese, but it was fun to read them. I didn’t get much criticism – it was mostly the same friendly, happy stuff. I’m hoping to get some ways to improve for next time.

My last activity is a pretty tough crossword, with the first student to complete it taking home a Choco-Pie. I bought just enough Choco-Pies for each class, but right off the bat we had a problem when the time ran out and I had to award two Choco-Pies to students that had tied. Looks like I’ll need to buy more Choco-Pies.

We had a meeting after school, and it lasted more than two hours. It lasted right through my appointment with Tsuji-san, and way past when I’m supposed to leave the school.

The meeting was the first one I’ve seen that had a genuine argument in it. There is a movement to ban smoking on campus for the teachers, and there are some people really against it. One guy was really freaking out about it, and he was shouting down the principal and vice-principal, which is not a great way to build job security. It was fascinating to watch – I couldn’t understand everything, maybe not even half, but you could tell it was a very unusual situation. Everybody else looked embarrassed, but I was licking my chops. FIGHT, FIGHT!

I got home much later than normal, and Kuniko had gotten home much earlier than normal. She cooked up a great dinner – garlic pasta with ham and fresh greens. I had a Vietnamese beer with dinner that tasted really good, and we ate lots of pasta and then just lounged around in the evening – now I’m off to bed early.

Tomorrow Kuniko has a party with her co-workers, and I’m going to try to meet up with Antoine to shoot some pool. The weekend is almost here!

Today we had lots of hushed whispers around the office, culminating in a mandatory meeting in between classes – something usually reserved for natural disasters and typhoons.

The gist, which I only understood through other teachers later was that there was a chance that some of our teachers were planning a strike tomorrow, and that we were all required to be at school from 8 a.m. until 9:30 a.m., without exception. No ducking out to the convienence store, no runs to the bank. The striking teachers are supposed to skip the first period only to show their power. Apparently the union is somehow strongly influenced by the Communist party in Japan, which is more powerful and less evil than you might expect.

Anyway, I know a couple of teachers that are in a union, although apparently there is more than one. I’m not sure exactly what will happen tomorrow, but everyone was jumpy today about it.

I had a great class with Maeda sensei today. Last week I had tasked the students with developing a TV commercial to perform in front of the class and video cameras today. I was a little worried about it, I had said that they could use both Japanese and English, and I was afraid that all the commercials would end up being in Japanese mainly. As it turned out, there was very little Japanese.

The first group came up with the cameras rolling, and they put on a great 1 minute commercial. Everybody else in the class was a little shocked – I don’t think that they had expected anything quite so good. From there on it just kept getting better. The students that didn’t really practice or study turned out to be a minority – just two groups. They crashed and burned, and since I had all the students evaluating each other it was nice to see the students noticed who studied and who didn’t.

I couldn’t be happier with how the commericals went, and if I can figure out how to get the commericals from the video camera onto a computer, I’ll try to post some of the good ones here. For a two class project it turned out really well, and it makes me want to try more elaborate stuff in the future.

After school today I had the third year students come over to our house for a conversation lesson. We sat and talked about the upcoming Valentine’s Day, about Hokkaido, and about what they did last month. It was fun to chat with them. During the lesson the doorbell rang, and an ex-co-worker of Kuniko’s dropped off a wedding present for us – some artwork by a local artist. He didn’t stick around, though, and it was probably good since I had at least one of his students sitting in the living room.

Kuniko showed up soon after just as we finished the lesson, and once we ushered the girls out the door she cooked up a big stir-fry dinner. We did some shopping at Ito Yokado afterwards, and now I’m headed to bed. Tomorrow will be either a very interesting morning, or completely normal.

I’m tired out from an evening on the town with Kuniko. We met up after school in Kobe – she was busy taking one of her students to get her hair dyed (back to black). I got out of work a little earlier and we met up at the bookstore. After picking out a few selections we headed to a little ramen place we both like near the motomachi station, and settled down in front of a huge bowl of noodles.

I had ordered the cha-shuu ramen, and the rim of the ramen bowl was draped with roasted pork – you just grab a piece and dip it in the noodles and broth whenever you like. As if that wasn’t enough we split an order of fried rice and a plate of gyoza. Wow.

After that we walked around a little bit and ended up having a couple of cookies and some coffee at Starbucks, and then finally we caught the shinkaisoku train (running 8 minutes late) back home. I’m whipped.

Work is going well – everyone there is sick but me, it seems. I’m almost at 100% now, as might be indicated by my diet. I was spared visits from the history teacher today – he was on a business trip.

I spent some time in the afternoon fielding questions from a group of girl first year students who wanted to know what “fuck you” meant. Dangerous territory there, but I think I explained it quite well. I don’t think they’ll be using those words in public in the future.

I’m off to bed – tomorrow is a busy day with students performing commercials, and some students coming over in the evening. They are really into the conversations and want to come twice a month, so we’ll be seeing a lot more them around the house.

I saw a funny thing on the way to work today, a little insight into how some things are so different here in Japan from what I’m used to.

I was walking along the road in Takasago, just about five minutes away from my school. Ahead of me the sidewalk was wide open, there was only two people approaching each other. I watched the two people walking towards each other, both of them with their heads bent down looking steadily at the ground. It became apparent to me that one or the other was going to have to look up soon and see that they were on a collision course.

But, nobody did, and they jumped out of each others way when each other’s feet were in their range of vision – maybe less than a foot apart. It was strange to see given that the whole rest of the sidewalk was open and empty for as far as I could see.

I’ve noticed that people that walk around tend to not be so aware of their surroundings – at least not as aware as I am. Before today I have written it off as me being a little frustrated with the slower walking speed around here, or maybe some frustration at being stared at all the time. But now, I think it is just that people here don’t need to be so aware of their surroundings. If they bump into somebody, nobody is going to make a big deal, nobody is going to yell at them or push them, and nobody is going to pull a knife or a gun. It is interesting what living in a relatively low crime society can do to people’s awareness.

Through a scheduling fluke I had no classes today, and had six separate visits from the history teacher. Despite this I was able to study most of the day and plan a lesson for Wednesday. Outside it was snowing pretty hard in the afternoon – big fluffy flakes that melted soon after they hit the ground. The flakes were the size of quarters or half-dollars – and even though they were falling fast and thick it just wasn’t cold enough for them to collect on the ground.

The English educational system in Japan was struck a critical blow today. The history teacher received a teacher’s license to teach English. He’s been working hard on papers and exams, and somehow, he passed. As I sit and listen to him tell me, “I have great interested in telling you what you do this weekend,” and “Today I hit the punch!”, I wonder who gave him a license. He’s missing some huge fundamentals, but apparently it’s enough to teach English in the public school system. I feel sorry for his students. He wants to keep the certification a secret for now – he’s afraid of the reaction of the English teachers. I don’t know what I would think if I were them.

This afternoon the vice principal stopped by and invited me to join a class being taught by an American college professor from Osaka. The VP said that he was going, so he invited me along. I told him that I’d meet him there, and headed upstairs a little while later. The professor was teaching away, and the students all turned back to look at me with an expression of “what the hell is this guy talking about?”

It turned out he was lecturing about the upcoming iPod/Levi’s jeans cross-promotion, and he had the students looking up words like “frenetic” and “drooling”. I walked around and tried to help the students out. The professor had a great lecture, but it seemed like it would be better suited for a college or higher level high school class. The professor asked me if we had some speakers to plug his iPod into to play some music, but unfortunately we didn’t.

Overall I thought it was a wasted opportunity, but something that the school will publish as one of the advantages of going there – courses by college professors. The guy was nice enough, though, and he was really happy to have me around.

I was looking at some of the major events coming up in the next six months for me and Kuniko. We’ll be taking a trip to Hokkaido at the beginning of next month, Mark will be in town at the end of March, I’ll need to renew my passport at the embassy in Osaka, and then change my visa to reflect my new status as married. The visa is important because it will allow me to stay in Japan regardless of my job status. I would hate to be against a deadline for a visa and take a crappy job – this will give me a little more flexibility. Finally, I’ll need to get a new re-entry permit once I get all the other things taken care of, so I can come back into Japan if I leave it.

Lots of fun paperworky-type stuff to look forward to, with a culmination in hopefully a honeymoon trip in the summer and a new job soon thereafter.