Last night I went to pick up Kuniko at the train station and walk her back home. She had a school party, and the whole staff was there to celebrate the new year. The party was at the Oriental Hotel in Kobe – arguably the nicest hotel in town.

It turned out that she came in first place in bingo. The first prize was a lucky plastic tree branch with some lucky charms hanging from it. It came from a shrine in Nishinomiya, and according to everyone it is very famous and they only sell them one day out of the year. The second prize was a voucher for a night in the hotel. I hope that we have a very lucky year. Actually we had a good laugh about it as we walked home. We’ve already spent a night at the Oriental on our wedding night – no need to go again so soon.

Once again I had no classes at school today. I stayed close to my desk where it was warm, and prepared for my first two classes tomorrow. Mr. Kimura came in today with his hair (what little remained of it) completely shaved off. It caused quite a stir, but I actually think it looks cool. He was wearing a leather jacket to stay warm and it was a good look for him. Mark my words, he’ll have a date by the end of the month. Mr. Kimura is a nerd’s nerd – he has five computers at home. Five computers isn’t crazy, but when there are only three people living at home, it seems like a lot. Anyway, he looks much cooler now – way to go, Mr. Kimura!

I’ve started looking at jobs in the area – which is a lot different than looking FOR jobs in the area. Nobody is going to hire me now with a start time in August, but I’m taking a look at the market to see if I can find something good. So far there’s not a whole lot, but we’ll see how things go as time goes on. I’ll put more time into it gradually. I’m looking at the lucky plastic branch and hoping that it works out for me.

I’m back at school, but classes for me don’t begin until Thursday. Today I spent a whole lot of time with a new memory program for my handheld computer.

I’ve been using a program called Stackz for more than a year now. The process for learning new words is pretty complex. I see a word that I want to know, I look it up, and then I add it to an Excel spreadsheet – the word, the kanji, and the definition in English. Then, once in a while I load all the words into Stackz, and memorize them when I get the time. There are more than 5000 words in Stackz, and so even as I learn new ones, there are old ones in the background that are slowly being forgotten.

With Stackz it was a chore just to stay on top of the words that were going stale – not to mention remembering the new words.

I converted to another program called Supermemo. It is a seriously hardcore program for the computer, but thankfully much simpler for the handheld PC that I have. I was in front of the computer for the longest time trying to get my data converted over to the Supermemo format, and finally it’s all in there. Now I have to review every one of those almost 6000 words so that Supermemo can get an idea of how well I know each one.

Until that happens I’ll be busy cranking through words. Just today I went through around 900 words, and I was surprised how many I had forgotten already. Hopefully Supermemo will do a better job of keeping them fresh in my head.

Kuniko has a school New Year party tonight, so I stayed home and cleaned up taco leftovers from the fridge and played around with the memory program. It seems like it will work out – I’m looking forward to using it more.

Kuniko and I are wrapping up a three day weekend, and getting ready to go back to school tomorrow.

The weekend was busy, but not as busy as it could have been. On Saturday we ended up postponing our trip to Nara with Inoguchi sensei because of snow in the area. He didn’t feel comfortable driving, so thought it would be better to wait.

Instead Kuniko and I cleaned house and stayed inside where it was warm. We left early in the afternoon to do some shopping in Kobe. We found a book that I had been looking for in the bookstore, and we looked around some of the sales in the department stores. There were tons of people in the stores – and I couldn’t believe that this was after the mad shopping rush at the end of the year. I could barely walk without bumping into people.

We went over to Asian Days for some dim sum, and then got out of there and rushed over to catch the bus to the airport.

Kuniko was going to see of one of her international students, Tesa. Tesa is from Australia, and has been studying in Japan for almost a year. I decided to come along to keep Kuniko company, because it is a pretty long trip out to the airport and back.

We got to the airport, and we didn’t see anybody we knew – I guess we were a little early. I amused myself with walking around taking photos, and we each got a coffee at Starbucks to kill time. While we were walking around they paged “Mr. Peter, Mr. Little Peter” over the terminal intercom. Some foreigner was having fun killing time.

After about half an hour we found Tesa sitting with her host family, and another teacher from Kuniko’s school, Hakogi sensei. We sat and chatted with everyone while waiting for the plane, and I had a fun conversation with Tesa’s host mother. She asked me how long I have been in Japan, and I mistakenly answered “Two hours” in Japanese. Oops.

Tesa was fun to talk to as well. She seemed like she was ready to head home, though. She was quiet but I think she understood Japanese fairly well. According to her host mother she was a picky eater – no fish!

Hakogi sensei gave us a ride back to Sannomiya and saved us a lot of money, so that was nice. We came back and took a hot bath, and we were ready for bed.

Sunday we had some guests over for tacos. An old friend of Kuniko’s came over with her husband, a Canadian guy named Robert who has been living in Japan for almost eight years. He was a big friendly guy, and we sat around the table eating cheese that they had brought and then started in on tacos, chips and guacamole.

We hung out with them for a few hours and they seemed like an interesting couple. Robert is working on his MBA and looking for a job. It sounded like he’s having a tough time getting something good, though, so I had to think about that as I’ll be looking for a job myself pretty soon. They are really big into movies, and so are we, so we might get together sometime and catch a movie.

The rest of the day was pretty mellow – I worked on a project on the computer, watched a little TV, and we just relaxed. We made a short trip to Kuniko’s parents’ house to pick up some rice, and we just had leftover cheese and crackers for dinner back at home.

Today was “Coming of Age Day” in Japan. People that turn twenty years old this year get all dressed up and go to a ceremony at the city hall to recognize that they are legally adults. The girls usually dress up in beautiful kimonos and look great, the boys dress like an Oakland pimp. I would have taken pictures today, but I always feel like a pervert walking around taking pictures of 20 year old girls.

Kuniko and I hiked up to a waterfall in Kobe that I’ve been to a couple of times. There wasn’t much water flowing this time of year – it hasn’t rained in a while – but it was a big event because it was the first time that Kuniko and I have gone hiking together. She’s not a big fan of it, and I am, so it was nice of her to indulge me a little bit.

We did fun going up and down the hill – we kept it short – and enjoyed a view of Kobe from the top, and met a cat that lived up there. The cat was just basking in the sun, enjoying the attention from the people passing through.

After the hike we went to Yoshinoya for a quick bowl of rice, and then came on back to Futami. We got a couple of new pillows and a warmer bed cover – it turns out that Kuniko is pretty aggressive while she is sleeping. I’ve woken up without covers a couple of times, and she will literally growl in her sleep if I try to steal them back. Hopefully this new arrangement will work out.

I put a few pictures from the weekend in the gallery – just click on the link at the top right of this page to see them!

We had a quiet day at work today – just one meeting, and the most interesting part of the day was when a teacher would come in having just returned from a vacation somewhere. They would tell us details about their trip and hand out omiyage.

The meeting was not so interesting – they laid out the schedule for the term, and it seems like it’s going to be a very short term. I don’t remember the last two winter terms being so short, but back then I couldn’t understand what was going on at the meetings, so I guess it just blew by me. Now I look at the term and see that I’m only going to have a couple of classes with my first years, and then it’ll be exam time.

Despite it being such a quiet day, the teachers seemed to be hanging around well after lunchtime. I was beginning to think that I’d be stuck at school until five, but around three I saw an opening and snuck out of there.

On the trainride home my train made a sudden stop, and everyone started looking towards the back of the train. I’m not sure what was happening, but even the engineer from the front of the train went running back there. We’re on a local train, so I was worried about the express train that was following us – it isn’t too far behind. After a few minutes we got going again, but I have no idea what happened.

I made up some chirashizushi for dinner and it was hot and ready when Kuniko got home. After dinner we did a bit of shopping at Ito Yokado, and now we’re back at home. While we were walking back from Ito Yokado it started to snow, a light flurry of snowflakes started blowing across the parking lot.

Tomorrow we are planning on a roadtrip to Nara with Inoguchi sensei and his wife. If it is snowing, though, we’ll have to cancel. I’m hoping that the weather will improve, but I just checked the weather forecast for Nara tomorrow and it looks like snow all day. We’ll have to wait and see what happens…

It was pretty much an instant-replay of yesterday today. The studies are coming along, I got a chance to plan out the next few weeks, and I got all ready for tomorrow’s big teacher’s meeting.

Kuniko came and got me around 12:30. She took me home and cooked me fried rice for lunch, and so I cooked up some pasta for dinner. I went a little overboard and cooked up italian sausages and garlic bread, too. I loaded the sauce with so many mushrooms it was hard to get a bite of anything without having a mushroom in your mouth. I love mushrooms – what can I say?

We’re staying in tonight… Kuniko has to work tomorrow and then we have a three day weekend. We’ll be doing a trip to Nara with Inoguchi sensei and his wife on Saturday, we’ll have some friends over on Sunday, and then we’ve tentatively scheduled a hike for Monday. Busy, busy! Hopefully there’ll be lots of pictures by the time it’s all over.

I left Kuniko in a warm bed and walked off to work today. It was nearly dark as I walked around Ito Yokado, and when I got to the station there was nobody else there. Once in a while an express train would blow past me carrying a few people, but until my local train showed up I didn’t see anyone else.

Some people have longer holidays than I do, I guess. I walked to school and was the second teacher there. I spent most of the day bowing to people and wishing them a happy new year. I chatted with the vice principal, too – he was in a really great mood after having so much time off. A couple of teachers had taken a group trip to Singapore, so I scored some chocolate omiyage. The librarian had taken her family to Guam, and she told me all about her experiences there. It sounded like the whole thing was set up just for Japanese tourists.

Kuniko came and picked me up and together we went out to lunch at McDonald’s. We wanted to try a burger that they have for a limited time – it’s a double cheeseburger with Japanese mushrooms and a slightly sweet sauce. It was really good – I would it eat it again. They also had a shrimp version of chicken mcnuggets, and those were pretty good, too. A little expensive, though.

Tonight Kuniko went out drinking with some friends, and so I’m holding down the fort here. I made a simple dinner of rice and store-bought yakitori to go with some leftover kimchee. Tomorrow Kuniko has the day off again, and I’ll go in to work for the first half of the day. I need to start thinking about a lesson plan for my students and get ready for classes starting sometime next week.

We’re just wrapping up our long New Year’s holiday around here. Today was our last day, and tomorrow I have to go back to work. Kuniko has tomorrow off, though, so she can relax a little bit longer.

The last few days were spent mainly over at the Kageyama’s place enjoying some traditional New Year’s food (osechiryouri). I think I can speak for both of us when I say that I ate way too much. The food was delicious, and there was even some beef in there to enjoy as well.

New Year’s Eve was fun because we went over to Komori sensei’s house for a soba party. His son was there, along with some of his wife’s co-workers. We had a good time with them, and ate lots of soba and lots of nabe.

After that we made an after-midnight trip to Mikuriya shrine to do the first (and in my case, the only) prayer of the new year. We pulled some lucky fortunes, and so we both should have a great year ahead of us.

Yesterday Kuniko and her sister went shopping, so I stayed at the Kageyama house and hung out with her parents. It went pretty well – considering the language barrier. Kuniko’s dad and I worked on a laptop that he wanted to get cleaned up, and Kuniko’s mom served up a sushi lunch and takoyaki for dinner. Kuniko came back in the evening with a good haul from shopping, and then we came on back home at a reasonable time.

Today we almost went hiking, but the wind is just howling outside, so we decided to postpone. Instead we’re staying in and enjoying the last relaxing day before work starts up again.

We did another late sleep in today. I called my folks in San Diego to get the update on their situation, and it sounds like my grandparents are still having a really rough time. My folks are having a tough time, too. Not only do they have to deal with all the problems down there but they are both sick and they sound very, very tired. I hope that things will calm down soon.

Kuniko and I drove to my school in Takasago to get some things out of my desk. The only trouble was that the school was locked – we couldn’t get in. We did see that somebody’s books and shoes were next to an open locker just inside the door. Kuniko remembered the code from when she worked there, and so I got in the front door. I walked down to the staffroom and startled a teacher there doing some computer work. He literally jumped out of his chair when I walked in.

From there we mailed off a few more New Year’s cards and then came back home. We did some heavy cleaning of the bathroom, and enjoyed a nice mellow afternoon. In the evening we went to Sushiro, a conveyor belt sushi place. Every plate is 100 yen, so I wasn’t expecting much, but it turned out to be really good. I thought it was better than Rikimaru, where I usually go. For the price you really couldn’t beat it. Kuniko and I ate 21 plates of sushi between us. My favorite was the duck pastrami on sushi rice with onions, and Kuniko’s favorite was the Katsuo yuke – it was really spicy and delicious.

On the way home we bought some traditional Japanese desserts, and ate those while watching TV and staying warm in the kotatsu. Tomorrow is another day off – December 31st. I think we’ll probably go over to Komori sensei’s place for a soba party, but after that it’ll be a quiet evening at home and then Hatsumode at Miyakuriya shrine near our house. We may see the master of the yakitori there, too. Should be fun…

We slept in pretty late on Thursday and enjoyed a nice quiet morning. I took a nice long bath, we did some chores, and then I went into Kobe to meet up with Antoine and see “King Kong”. It was a long movie – a little more than three hours – and so it pretty much took up most of my day. I really enjoyed the movie. There were lots of memorable scenes, and since I haven’t seen the original it was that much more interesting. I’d definitely recommend it.

Kuniko wasn’t feeling so great so she stayed home. I caught some okonomiyaki with Antoine and then left him and headed back home. Before the movie I had enough time to go buy Kuniko a Christmas present. When I got home I gave it to her, and it was a success. She retired her old wallet and put the new one into active service.

It was really dead at school today. The vice principal wasn’t there, just a couple of teachers and the principal. I think the principal was keeping an eye on things to make sure we didn’t break into anarchy and steal all the staplers or something. Luckily, we remained under control.

Since there were so few teachers, the principal saw it as a great opportunity to get to know me better. We spoke for almost fifteen minutes in Japanese, and it was a real mental workout for me. Afterwards, I needed a rest – that’s how intense it was. It’s great practice, though, and I wish I could find more situations were I could have a conversation like that without it being my boss.

Arauchi sensei brought in his elementary school daughter today, and so I chatted a little bit with her. We tried to get her to use English, but she wasn’t up for it. She and a student from the school cooked up some soup for us, so it was nice to have some nice hot soup in the morning.

I decided that since the vice principal wasn’t there to check in with, I would just go home at the same time as yesterday. I packed up my stuff, and leaving just two teachers behind I walked out the door and towards the station. About 100 steps from the front door of the school I heard a car horn honk, and the vice principal went zooming by towards the school. I gave him a wave but kept walking. I hoped that he didn’t come to school just to bail me out…

Back at home Kuniko was entertaining an ex-student of hers from Kakogawa, Risa-chan. They were eating pizza and hanging out, so I sat in with them and chatted for a while. She seemed like a nice kid, and it was another good chance to practice my Japanese.

After walking her back to the station we did a little shopping for the evening’s party, and then came home and relaxed and got ready. That evening Chu-chu, Chiemi-chan and Ai-chan dropped by for dinner.

Tonight we ate nabe around the kotatsu and looked at wedding pictures. Chiemi-chan and I each had a shot of tequila, and then split a bottle of Thornton wine that my aunt and uncle left for me. It’s nice to be able to open up a bottle and know it’s going to be good – since I’m often stuck buying wines I know almost nothing about, it can be kind of a crapshoot.

We had fun talking and goofing around. Ai-chan showed us that she could fit her fist in her mouth – that was a nice trick. We ate three bowls of nabe, rolled chocolate cake, cream puffs, hi-chu, cheese sticks, kit-kats, you name it. We partied right up until around 10 o’clock and then everyone rushed to the train station to be able to get back in time.

We really had a good time with them. It turns out that they read this site fairly often, so they knew all about what our daily lives are like. I’ll have to keep that in mind when I’m writing from now on… we’re being watched!

I caught the late train to work today, which is actually the train I used to take every day before my schedule changed. I saw lots of people who I used to see every day, and it was fun to say hello to them. There were a lot of great reactions – one lady saw me and her jaw dropped (it really dropped!) and her eyes got huge. I said good morning and kept walking. It was nice to see everyone again.

At school I worked through the morning and I spent a little more time on my pet project, reading one of my favorite Robert B. Parker books in Japanese. I love the Spenser series because of the wit and humor, and also the unspoken bonds between some of the main characters. I’m trying to read a book now and see how much of that gets through in the translation. The books are actually pretty cheap if you buy them in Japanese, but they take a long time to read.

The other day Kuniko introduced me to a year end tradition in Japan, ousoji. It means, “big cleaning”. We are going to do an end of the year cleaning of my place, and we got started today. I feel bad because since I’m not familiar with the tradition, we are doing three years worth of year end cleaning. Some corners are pretty scary. We’ll keep fighting the battle over the next few days.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before the holidays, and then I’ve got lots of time off. I’m looking forward to having the time to enjoy the New Year holiday. We’ll be pretty busy.

I went to school this morning as usual, came in and got some hot water boiling as usual, and sat down and started studying as usual. Nobody else showed up for another hour or so. Usually there is a fair amount of early morning traffic, but today it was like a tomb.

Today through Wednesday are not official holidays, so I need to go in to work. There are only a few other teachers there these days, everyone else has taken paid leave to stay home or go on vacation. I’m saving my vacation for another time, so I just go in and study for a few hours, and then leave after lunchtime. It’s only a few hours work and I get paid for the whole day.

Today Kuniko beat me home, which is a decidely rare event, and she cooked up a dinner surprise for me – osuzushi. Translated it means “pushed sushi”, and it was a layered sushi rice dish with egg, nori, and tuna laying between rice layers. It was really good, and as a bonus it was very healthy, too.

Tomorrow is another quiet day at work. Wednesday we’re going to have some people over for a nabe party in the evening, so I’m looking forward to that. I’ll try to take some pictures with my new camera and get them posted up here.

Christmas day is no big deal here in Japan – just another Sunday. The real action tends to happen the night before. Usually couples go out or stay in and celebrate together by eating Christmas cake and/or Kentucky Fried Chicken. We decided to stay in. Kuniko provided the Christmas cake, but when I made a run over to KFC I was told they couldn’t get me four pieces of chicken until 8:30. I laughed at the lady and walked across the way to buy fried chicken at Lotteria.

We also had cheese fondue, and we would have had a salad but I forgot to buy one. So the meal was a little unbalanced, but it turned out great. We ate a lot. The cake was especially delicious – it was a chocolate cream cake with a layer of custard cream in there, too. So good!

We opened up presents from the family and got loads of great stuff – they were really nice to send us everything even though they were just here. Kuniko and I had agreed to skip gifts for each other this Christmas, but she ended up buying me a new digital camera that I’ve been lusting after for a while. Now I’m going to have to get on the ball and get something for her.

Now today is Christmas day, and we spent most of the day cleaning, organizing, doing laundry, and shopping for some return gifts for Kuniko’s coworkers. It’s kind of a pain to go out and buy gifts for people when they give you something – it’s a custom that I’m not sure I understand completely. Still, when in Rome…

We talked on the phone with the family gathered in San Diego since we’ll both be at work tomorrow and won’t be able to chat with them on their Christmas morning. It sounds like they are hanging in there in San Diego – my grandparents are going through a tough time right now and so my folks really have to help out a lot while they are there. It’s a tough situation any time of the year, but right at Christmas must make it that much more stressful.

Kuniko has cooked up some curry for dinner tonight, so we’ll stay in a huddle around a hot bowl of curry and rice. Tomorrow it is back to work – but I’m not sure exactly how much work they expect me to do. Should be interesting….

Yesterday was the best kind of Friday – a Friday where I didn’t have to go to work. It was a national holiday to celebrate the emperor’s birthday. As you might expect, Kuniko had to go to work. She actually only had to do two classes and then she could come home, so she wasn’t gone long.

I did two monstrous loads of laundry. I moved a laundry pole that I never use from the front balcony to the back, and then loaded them all up with towels. Most of the day I relaxed, watched TV, and did just a little bit of studying.

When Kuniko got home we did some shopping for dinner, and had a bowl of nabe. We tried a new flavor of sauce that turned out to be not nearly as exciting as the package led us to believe.

Now today is Christmas Eve, and Kuniko woke up feeling a little bit of a cold coming on. She’s in resting and we are going to take it easy today inside. We’ll go to Akashi to pick up our Christmas cake, and I’m going to try to get my hands on some Kentucky Fried Chicken to go with our fondue for dinner tonight. We’ll open presents and just stay inside and stay warm. The snow has mostly melted away, but it is still plenty cold outside.

Thursday was a weird day in a lot of ways. For one, the students had to come in today for a closing ceremony, and then they could go home. Because our gym is undergoing an earthquake retrofit, they decided to hold the ceremony out on the field. Since it has been cold, the powers that be said that the students could wear jackets out there. How nice.

I walked to school in the cold and wind, but there were no clouds in the sky and it seemed like just another cold day. About thirty minutes after I arrived, we looked out the window and could see drifting flakes. Suddenly, it started to dump snow. There was snow everywhere, and it was coming fast.

The students had already mostly arrived, so they huddled up in their classrooms and listened to the closing ceremony over the public address system. Then, they told all the students to get home as carefully as possible.

I walked around and took pictures, and I put some of them in the photo gallery. As usual you could tell that I was a California boy – taking pictures of snow… what a freak.

The snow was everywhere, not just in Takasago, and it was affecting trains and traffic. Cars were skidding all over the road, and my teachers were making arrangements to go buy chains for their cars to get out of there. Around noon I told the vice principal that I had better leave before they shut down the Sanyo train line, and he said no problem.

I walked out to the station, and they were only running local trains. They were coming and going on weird time frames, so luckily I wasn’t going too far. I had originally planned to see King Kong with Antoine in Kobe, and Kuniko was planning on attending a year end party for her school, but both events were cancelled and we ended up staying home, staying warm, and eating tacos.