Kuniko and I slept in a little bit today, enjoying the public holiday as much as we could. I had a light hangover, but I got over it pretty quickly. We spent the day relaxing around the house, doing some things to prepare for the wedding, napping, and doing some shopping both at Ito Yokado and also at Carrefour.

In the evening we went over to the Kageyama household in Kakogawa for dinner. We wanted to deliver some pictures to Kuniko’s sister who is in town for another wedding. We had a dinner of katsudon, fish, and some shrimp shu-mai that we had brought as omiyage.

Everyone chatted about the upcoming visit from the family, and things are really starting to firm up for the first week of their visit.

Kuniko and I both took a bath (separately), and then watched a little TV while talking with Kuniko’s sister. She is going to make the bouquet for our wedding.

Finally we wrapped things up and headed out the door, but not without being laden with fresh vegetables, omiyage, and rice. It seems like every time we go over there we bring back more and more food. It’s starting to get out of control. We’ll have to eat hard to keep up with all the food we’ve got now.

It was a weird day at school, right in the middle of a week broken with holidays. I had just two classes, so it wasn’t too tough. In Matsubara sensei’s class one her student’s mothers had passed away yesterday, so she had gone to the memorial, and she had lots of things to organize at school for the student, who was going to miss the next week.

In Matsubara sensei’s class we held a spelling bee. It wasn’t really that official, the rules were not quite understood, but in the end everyone at least spelled a word correctly.

In the afternoon I was free to study, so I focused on grammar. I’ve done a little better on grammar lately, but will it be too little, too late? Soon enough I’ll find out.

After school the ESS club joined up to watch a scary movie. There were two other girls who weren’t in ESS, but the group that was there is really the core group. Some of the second year students have been busier chasing boys, so my group is the girls that prefer studying and goofing off to fraternizing with the men.

I hit the road around five o’clock, and caught the train back to Futami. Soon after I was over at Denya meeting up with Atsuji-san. Kuniko was out drinking with Chiemi-chan this evening, so it worked out great that we both had someone to party with.

Atsuji-san spent a lot of time in the states, mainly in Colorado but also in California. His English is great, and we enjoy drinking together and switching between languages. As each of us drink more, we switch between languages more often. So, it can get kind of confusing.

The master and I talked about the upcoming wedding, and we were thinking about the second party, what everyone will do, and a Denya party with my family. Everybody is getting really excited about it. Atsuji-san is going to try to take the day off to come to the second party, so that was good news.

I had brought along the hot peppers that I had grown on my back porch. They grew from the seeds that Sara had sent me a long time ago. I let them ripen on the vine for a long time, and they turned a brilliant red color. Finally last weekend I harvested them, and I had five or six. I ate a few at home, and I brought the rest into the yakitori for the master.

The master asked me how to serve them, so I advised grilling it. He grilled it up on right in front of us, and then he cut it into three pieces and poured ponzu sauce over it. It was sweet and delicious, not spicy at all.

I told him that eating it raw would give you plenty of heat, and so he cut one up into rings, wrapped them around some grilled sausages, and served those. They were very spicy – Atsuji-san and I were sweating. The master cut one up and gave raw pieces to the two part time workers, and also one to another customer. They were gulping water like mad, and the customer looked like he was in genuine pain. I’ll never forget the look on his face – total shock. How could something be that hot?

I split around eleven o’clock and walked in the door just a minute or two ahead of Kuniko. She also had a good time tonight. She told a great story of trying to find a restaurant that wasn’t packed in Sannomiya. Tomorrow is a holiday, so everyone was out drinking.

I’m going on day two without hunger. I don’t know if it’s physiological, mental, or metaphysical. Whatever the case may be, I’m not hungry. Will I ever be hungry again?

Today Kuniko had to go off to work, so I made up a lunch for her while she was in the shower, and made a breakfast for her before she left. Then I went back to bed and slept until almost noon. There goes my theory on home productivity. I definitely do more studying at school.

I had lunch, half a sandwich with a small cup of noodles that we had in the cupboard from a long time ago. They tasted good, but I had the feeling like I didn’t need to eat them, really.

In the afternoon I caught up with studying, spending two hours to memorize 100 words. Just about 500 more words to go. Oy.

Kuniko is cooking dinner tonight, so we’ll see what she comes up with. My dinner last night was pretty uninspiring I think (corn soup and garlic cheese toast), so she’s going to liven it up a little bit.

Tomorrow I have to go back to work, but Thursday Kuniko and I both have the day off. No plans yet, but we’ll have to do something fun.

I woke up this morning completely not hungry, and as I type this at around 6:30 p.m. I’m still not hungry. I have completely lost my appetite. I made some rice balls for Kuniko and I to take to work, and I ate those at work not because I was hungry, but because they were sitting there and it was lunchtime. Maybe I need to give my body some time to finish up whatever it is working on.

This is a weird week for me. I have a holiday on Tuesday (to celebrate the foundation of the school) and a national holiday on Thursday. I was telling Kuniko that every workday will be like a Friday. If I’m working this week, at least the next day will be a day off. I guess you could look at it like if you are not working, tomorrow you will have to work, but I’m an optimist.

Today was Halloween, and I didn’t do anything special at school other than show off the jack o’lantern that we made in ESS to the students in my first year class. They were very impressed. The jack o’lantern is already starting to decay – I don’t think it’ll make it past Wednesday.

The class was a lot of fun – it had one of my favorite students in it. Her name is Miki Tanaka, and I think she was born without the “shy” gene. She will try anything in class, she isn’t afraid to act out in a dramatic fashion, and she has the whole class in stitches whenever she says things. She doesn’t seem to play to the laughs, though – she acts like everything is happening naturally.

Today she volunteered to be a customer in our “restaurant”, and her friend was the waiter. We needed one more customer, so I picked one of the boys to join her at the dinner table. They sat down together, and we had lots of giggles just because there was a boy and a girl in a pretend dinner situation.

The boy hadn’t studied at all, so she guided him through it, flagged down the “waiter” when there was problems, and really did a bang-up job. Everyone was laughing and enjoying the show, and Miki just kept on plowing through.

She has a personality that is really rare among my students – she is beyond cool and into weird and eccentric. My classes with her are very interesting.

A student came running up to me before the class and kept saying that there was a bug in the back of the room, and she was acting afraid of it. I was in my “English only” mode, so I pretended I couldn’t understand. Her friend came running up behind to translate for her, and in a case of supremely bad timing, the girl turned to point at the bug and cracked her approaching friend across the nose, knocking her to the floor. I couldn’t believe it – I have read mystery novels where people are killed by somebody smashing their nose so that the bone fragments go into their brain and they die. That was the first thought that went through my mind as the girl lay stunned on the floor, but apparently it didn’t happen. She got up laughing, and after I confirmed that everything was OK, she chased her friend around like she was going to hit her back. A near-fatality in my classroom!

After school Mr. Yamamoto asked me to join him for a practice session for our open high school lesson. Mr. Yamamoto is into alternative forms of teaching. He is the guy that wants to take the students outside in the sun and play guitar to them and sing in English and let butterflies land on their heads and inspire them to study English as a life-long pursuit. So naturally, that is what he has planned for the open high school lesson.

Maeda sensei and me are the suckers who will be singing “It’s A Wonderful World” during the lesson, while Yamamoto sensei strums away on guitar. We had a practice session after school, and I yowled through it as best I could. I had warned him that I couldn’t sing, and he didn’t seem to care. After we finished, he said I sound just like Bon Jovi, and then he burst out laughing. I didn’t know whether to thank him or agree with him.

Finally I was heading out the door, literally walking down the hallway towards the exit, and the vice-principal came out an office and said goodbye. “By the way,” he said, “Tomorrow is a regular work day.”

He laughed at my expression as I think my jaw dropped open. Everybody has been saying no school tomorrow, and as it turns out, that is just for the students. The teachers have been saying they aren’t coming in, and as it turns out, that is because they are taking a paid holiday. The vice principal said that it was perfectly OK to take the time off since I have plenty of leave available, and he is right. I received five days of special leave for my marriage, so I might end up my contract with extra holidays, which I would just hate to do. I went back inside and took the day off officially.

I’m planning on staying home all day and studying inside. I want to compare that with my productivity at work. I’m hoping that it is close to the same. I’ve got lots of work to do to get ready for the big test in December.

Tonight Kuniko gets home late, so I’m going to have to figure out something for us to eat for dinner. I’ve got some ideas, but when you aren’t hungry it’s harder to dream stuff up. Maybe a small easy dinner tonight.

Kuniko came in late last night, with stories of the wedding and lots of pictures. I had tasked her with doing some research for our wedding, and she did a great job. A regular Valerie Plame.

On her way back she bumped into a large group of foreigners in Halloween costumes. She said they were acting out – screaming, yelling, running around, jumping the ticket gates and ignoring the law. I caught myself saying, “foreigners, yikes” out loud. I guess I mean foreigners other than me and my friends.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but there is a large contigent of foreigners here who come to party, sleep with as many people as they can, and ignore what people might think of them. They often are fresh out of college, and see this as a good opportunity to continue the party. Unfortunately, a lot of these folks are on the JET program.

Sunday Kuniko was back out the door, and I enjoyed a day studying at home. I did a lot of laundry, and had a chance to read for pleasure in the sunlight falling on the black leather couch.

If you look at the pile of garbage that we’ve accumulated between the last garbage day (Thursday) and tomorrow, it’s huge. Tonight after eating a delicious nabe dinner that Kuniko prepared, I had a stomachache, and I think I know why. All that garbage had to come from somewhere. Kuniko seems to think that we’ve not been overeating, but my stomach is telling me a different story. I’m going to eat less tomorrow and see how that goes.

Kuniko and I slept in late this morning and had a great chance to catch up on some much needed sleep. There was a light rain falling outside, and we could barely hear it as we faded in and out of sleep in the morning.

We got up around 9 o’clock and had some pumpkin pie for breakfast, and Kuniko started to get ready for the wedding that she is attending in Osaka. Once she was all set I made us a quick lunch of sandwiches, and then I sent her off at the station looking like a million bucks.

I had the day to myself, so I’ve just been doing a little bit of laundry, studying Japanese passively (reading Japanese books that teach English), and watching some TV. For dinner tonight I made up some nabe, and it turned out pretty nicely, even though I was the only one around to eat it.

Kuniko will be back either late tonight or sometime tomorrow, so I’m going to hang out tonight and see if she shows up. I’m watching Japanese language videos on the computer and just relaxing. Tomorrow Kuniko has to go in to work for part of the day, so I’ll be free to do some fun stuff here at home. I just need to figure out what that will be.

Friday was a pretty calm day at work. I had three classes, I spent some time talking with Yamamoto sensei and Maeda sensei about the upcoming open high school lesson, and mark lots of journals to return to the students.

I had a few good conversations with my students, who seem to be just getting more and more comfortable speaking to me in English. Some students in the hallways still avoid speaking English – they are more comfortable with Japanese. I lure them into a trap by starting the conversation with Japanese, and then suddenly asking them something in English, which catches them surprise. Mostly they answer in English without even realizing it.

After school, I went into Kobe to meet up with Kuniko and take a look at some of the restaurants that host wedding “Second Parties”. The first place we looked at seemed great on the website and in a magazine, but when we got there it was completely decorated like something out of Aladdin.

We nixed that restaurant right away – just a little too cheesy for us. The next place was more promising, but just a little dark inside. I like dark restaurants and bars, though, so maybe it will be a contender. The chief chef talked with us and he seemed like a really nice guy. He also seemed really flexible about what they could cook and what they might do.

The last place we checked out was called “Colonial Living”. It was the lower section of a big office building and had some unique architecure. I liked the feel of the place, but for some reason it was fairly dark, too. The guy that guided us around seemed a little on the snobbish side – not nearly as friendly as the other guy we talked to. We peeked around the place, and then took some brochures and left. They seemed pretty serious about the party, and seemed to think we would be serious about it, too.

The second party will hopefully be a much more casual affair than our wedding reception – just drinking and eating with our friends and family, and having a good time. Less speeches, less formality, more fun.

While we were out we managed to get a hold of two slices of pumpkin pie to take home, and we had dinner at the gigantic sushi restaurant. It is gigantic sushi, not a gigantic restaurant. The same guy served us this time, and he seemed to remember us.

Finally we went to catch the train and found that there was an accident somewhere along the JR line. We took the Hankyu line instead, but since everyone else was doing that, we had a seriously crowded train. People just kept packing in and shoving, and when you are on board you can’t believe that they let the trains run with that many people. You are literally pressed against everyone around you, and I had to do a constant pushup against the wall to keep from squishing Kuniko. It was jammed for almost five stops before it got better, but it was definitely the most packed train I’ve ever been on.

During previous years the ESS has had some kind of Halloween event. Usually it involves makes something edible, but this year the students wanted to make a jack o’lantern. A couple days ago I found some real American-sized (and colored) pumpkins on sale. I bought one for 2000 yen, and today we hacked into it.

The students were super excited about it – they were dying to get their hands on it and begin the surgery. I had the pumpkin on my desk throughout the day, and teachers kept asking me about it. It was a good introduction to Halloween, which is only just catching on here. They aren’t trick or treating yet, but they like to buy Halloween candy and gifts.

We laid out some newspaper, and thanks to some tools that I brought along we were able to open the medium sized pumpkin up. Everybody got a chance to stick their hands in and pull some goop out, and everybody was saying “ewww” and the Japanese equivalent of “gross!”

I forgot my camera today, but I took some pictures with the school camera. Tomorrow I’ll download the images and try to get them posted here tomorrow night. There were some good pictures of girls mutilating pumpkins.

They also wanted to watch a movie, but we had one person that said “no scary movies!” I ended up renting “Haunted Mansion” as a compromise – I figured that it was made by Disney as a family movie so how scary could it be. We watched the first half, and one student screamed out loud a couple of times – she was easily frightened, I guess. Everyone else gave her a hard time.

At 5 o’clock we sent everyone home, and I left the jack o’lantern in my classroom – I’m sure it will reek of pumpkin tomorrow. The other teachers are eager to see it, so it might take a tour of the school tomorrow afternoon.

Tonight Kuniko is bringing home some shuu-mai from Ito Yokado, so we’ll be eating well. I started running again in the mornings, now that the weather is cooling off. I noticed that it has given me a big appetite.

Wednesday is always a busy day for me – I had lots of new lessons, and they are all in a row so it is pretty exhausting. By the end of it I was drained out. I took the last period of the day to rest up, and then the visiting students from Taiwan showed up.

A while back our school had invited a group of high school students from Taiwan to visit our school. Today they showed up, and our school had really rolled out the red carpet for them. It was very interesting because their students didn’t speak Japanese, and our students didn’t speak Chinese.

When I arrived they had seated the Taiwan students in the big meeting room, and they all sat quietly and patiently in their school uniforms waiting for the visit to start. Our students were in class still, so the history teacher was in there doing some sort of entertainment patter in Japanese, broken English, and shattered Chinese. The students sat there trying to figure out what the heck he was saying. He asked me to go in and say hello, and as soon as I walked in everyone burst into applause like someone had just done a magic trick.

They were all smiling, and I said hello and introduced myself in English. Everyone answered back in English, and it seemed like they really knew their stuff. I promised that I would be back, and went over to search out our students. They started arriving, and everyone sat across from a Taiwanese student. The speeches started soon after.

The group had brought a translator who spoke in flawless Chinese. I eagerly waited to hear his Japanese and when it came, it was pretty bad. Not as bad as mine, but not very good. You could see on my students’ faces that they knew what his native language was.

Of course everyone was taking pictures, and they staged an international handshake, exchanged gifts, and it all seemed pretty forced to me. The students were patient with it, and finally after it was all over, we divided them into groups and toured them around school.

This was a great time for the students to try to communicate, and it was fascinating to watch. They had to use English to communicate, it was the only language that they had both studied. My students did pretty well – I was proud of them. Nobody got frustrated and quit, and people were making friends and smiling a lot. I talked with a few students in English and they were quite good – better than my students, I’d say.

My group was with Ms. Tsutsumi, and it was all girls. The Taiwanese girls wanted to see everything, take pictures of everything (especially the cute boys on the sports field), and it took quite a while to get everyone back in the meeting room to wrap things up.

As we walked around Takasago Minami students that were not involved often came up to say hello in English, and occasionally Chinese. They wanted to participate, and they weren’t so shy about it. My students also got to speak with me more in English. They would consult with me about an English expression, get it right, and then ask the Taiwanese student.

One other interesting observation was that my students were complaining that the male Taiwanese students were not so interested in talking with the male Japanese students – they were far more interested in the girls. Also, the Taiwanese girls weren’t shy about calling a Japanese boy over for a picture if they thought he was cute. I think their aggressiveness really took my students by surprise.

It got to 5 o’clock and there were still students roaming around the school under the guidance of the history teacher. I snuck out of there, right on time for my usual day, but early for the event. I think I missed the closing ceremonies and handshakes; maybe I missed a group photo if I’m really lucky.

Overall, I think it was a success. Once you got the speeches and the bravado over with, the students could get to know each other, and that’s what really mattered. The Taiwanese students gave out little cards with their cellphone number, e-mail, and their address in Taiwan to our students, and so maybe they will try to stay in touch over time. Inter-Asian diplomacy has been pretty crappy lately, so things like this can only be good.

I went to bed last night and just plain forgot to post about yesterday. Maybe because yesterday wasn’t such an exciting day. I only had one class to teach, and the rest of the day was doing legwork for all my classes today.

We had an after school staff meeting, and included in that was an announcement that we’ll be getting 30 computers in the staffroom, and they will be distributing them to teachers that don’t have computers. They spent 20 minutes telling people not to panic, don’t let your students use them alone, and don’t be afraid of new technology. It was almost comical.

Kuniko got home early, so we used the opportunity to sneak over to Befu and go to the DIK store, which had been renamed to a tamer “DAIKU”. Insert DIK joke here.

We got some planters, a hot water pot, and some planks for a construction project, and then came back home and had cream stew for dinner. Kuniko had made it up, and it turned out great. There are lots of leftovers, so we can enjoy it over the next night or so.

Now, it’s Wednesday morning, and I’m getting ready to head to work. Tonight we’ll be doing some more wedding planning here at home. Things are getting down to the wire!

I was up on and off throughout the evening with pain in my shoulder and some good bruises tattooed there. Fortunately, the pain isn’t as bad as last year, so I should be OK by the end of this week.

Today I would normally do lots of studying, since I have only one class on Mondays. Instead I spent the whole day on preparation for the rest of the week. I prepared for today’s class, and also I did prepwork for two other classes on Wednesday. As a result I am feeling pretty guilty about not studying even one word of Japanese today. Maybe later tonight I’ll succumb and memorize some words.

My class today was a new lesson on ordering in a restaurant. I wanted to make it a fun lesson, so I pushed two desks together, put a tablecloth over them, lit a candle and set two places with a couple of teacups instead on wineglasses. It was the first thing students saw when they came in and they were all impressed. I was hoping that feeling would last through the lesson, and remarkably, it did. They tried their best and later when I had them dressed up as waiters delivering imaginary food they hung in there and did a pretty good job.

I spent some time talking with one of the office ladies while we were copying things in the copy room – she told a great story about her niece who is getting married to an English guy. She had them over for a get together along with a bunch of other family, and it amounted to almost 20 people. For a Japanese household, that’s pretty big. She commented that this gentleman’s disposition was much different from mine – she said that I am always bright, cheerful and outgoing when she sees me, and this guy seemed kind of quiet and introspective. He’s planning on bringing his Japanese wife back with him to England next year. It was a nice, kind of unintentional compliment from somebody I don’t normally speak with very often.

Today I had a really good time with my students, especially the third years who were hanging around the staffroom after class. We joked about this and that, mostly in English, and seeing how relaxed they are with me reminds me how soon it will be that I’ll have to start over making some new students comfortable. I was thinking more and more that I can’t imagine doing something else besides teaching. Maybe I am just in a great situation now – if I had unenthusiastic students would I still like teaching? That’s going to be a big question for me as I get ready to change jobs soon.

I’m sure I’ll have more deep thoughts about this later on, but for right now everything is going just fine.

I cranked myself out of bed Sunday morning fairly early with a pretty good headache. It was probably from all the different drinks that I had at the house party last night. While we ate lots of nabe and sat and talked I drank two glasses of Aomori, two glasses of sake, two glasses of red wine and one glass of white, and a beer. It’s not the amount that got me, just the diversity of weird things in my stomach.

First thing I did was to go to Ito Yokado to buy socks for my new matsuri outfit. Last night they delivered some brand new official matsuri clothes for me to wear. One of the wives demonstrated how to wear it, and so I was pretty sure I could figure it out. I got the socks and came back, and Kuniko told me that the master had called and wanted me to go to Denya right away. I took off and met the gang in front of the yakitori, and then we went inside and they helped me get dressed into the outfit.

There was a white undershirt, some white pants that tied around the waist, some white tabi shoes with soles built into the bottom, and then a wool wrap that I wore around my midsection to keep me warm. The wool wrap doubled as a pocket to carry my valuables, so it was quite useful. Over the whole thing I wore a colorful happi, sporting the bright orange and blue colors of the area we were representing. The collar said that I was a member of the fireman’s group – but I was just borrowing it, so it was no big deal.

The master bought me a rice ball from the convenience store next door, and then we walked to the matsuri. The crowds were building, and we walked by some of the other groups on our way down to find our other members. I got a lot of stares, especially since I was wearing the traditional outfit. The last two years I just threw on the happi, but this time I looked like I was serious about it.

We went all the way to the harbor and stood around by the sea, dipping our toes in, drinking sake out of paper cups, and then we all headed up to meet up with the mikoshi (portable shrine). Once we got there somebody had a case of beer that they distributed around to people, and so some folks had sake in one hand and beer in the other. Police vans full of cops drove slowly by on the way to the matsuri to provide security, but they didn’t seem to mind that everyone was sitting around drinking in public at ten in the morning.

At first the shrine is on a rolling platform, which works great for moving it around on flat surfaces, but once we got inside the shrine grounds, we removed it from the platform, and then carried it around the shrine. The first time around went so smoothly, I couldn’t remember why it had seemed like such a difficult chore the last two years. During our trip around, lots of people were pointing and staring at me, and I heard lots of talking about me. I had plenty of old guys around to give me advice, and at one point somebody stuck a TV camera in my face. I posed for a few pictures for some photographers, and I was somewhat of a minor celebrity, if not a major curiosity.

We had some time to kill in between laps around the main building of the shrine, so we walked around, talked to some people, and had some lunch at a restaurant across the street. Everything was going great, and it seemed like it was going to be a really easy day.

We went in for the second lap, and everybody grabbed the mikoshi and we set off. This time, it went really poorly. First off, everybody seemed to be a lot weaker – in the back corner they kept dropping it. Our leaders, instead of mixing the people around and moving stronger people there, just kept toughing it out. Then at one point we dropped the mikoshi hard and it came down on some poor guy’s ankle. Everybody started calling for an ambulance, and then instead of giving the guy space to breathe, people crowded around him. The police helped a little bit, but they seemed a little confused. Then, while the guy is still on the ground waiting for the ambulance, a couple of fights broke out between our drunken guys and some people in the crowd. Then a couple of our own guys were pushing and shoving. They finally got the injured guy out of there, and so we continued on, but there were more and more fights. The policemen would come and prevent them from fighting, but they wouldn’t do anything else. In the end they had to take some of our guys away, and that left even fewer people to carry the mikoshi.

It was another hour or so before we could get the mikoshi back to where we started, and by that time, I had had about enough of carrying around portable shrines. On the way back we had bumped into the branches of a cherry tree and rather than move the mikoshi around it, one of the Denya gang had torn the branches down in a brutally impromptu pruning session.

By that time, Kuniko, Antoine and Miwako had arrived, so we got to chat a little bit. This was Antoine’s first real matsuri, so it was interesting to get his thoughts on it all. Kuniko had taken a few pictures of the events while I was lugging the mikoshi around, and she got to hear people all around her pointing and talking about me while she watched anonymously.

While the four of us walked around the matsuri, Kuniko bumped into some of her students. I stayed away – Kuniko is trying to keep me a secret from her students. Unfortunately they sniffed out the truth, and so I introduced myself to them and they were sufficiently shocked that I am sure the whole school will know about it tomorrow.

Rather than stick around for the evening lap we all went back to our place and I took a shower while they sat around and talked. From there we headed to the closest okonomiyaki restaurant and had a feast. We sat and talked and ate, and then moved to 31 flavors in Ito Yokado for a dessert session. At around 8 o’clock Antoine and Miwako headed home in Miwako’s car – and we headed back to our place. Before we could get there the master called and wanted me to bring along my happi to return it. He said that it would be my last chance to carry the mikoshi, and although I was mentally finished carrying the mikoshi, it seemed like we should head over there.

We got there and had to wait for a little while for the master and the mikoshi to show up. It was back on it’s wheels, and full of kids when it arrived. I was relieved to see that the barn where the mikoshi is stored had wheel grooves that matched the wheels on the mikoshi platform – we could just push it right in there. The master said I should put on the happi and help put it inside, so I dutifully donned the happi and stepped up to the mikoshi with the other members, still wearing the clean nice clothes that I had changed into after my shower.

You can imagine my shock when everyone pulled the heavy mikoshi off the wheels and started bouncing it around on our bruised shoulders again. Kuniko was sitting there waiting for me, and I decided that I had enough – it looked like they were going to take a while before they put it in. I returned my happi to it’s owner, and we drove home from there.

Kuniko was nice enough to massage my bruised shoulder, and then we crashed out. What an exhausting day – and I have to go to work tomorrow…

This morning we got up at the crack of dawn to throw in the first load of laundry. With a bit of foresight last night we loaded up the machine and hung out some, so we had a good start. Living together makes for some huge piles of laundry – today’s was a biggie.

Kuniko and I split the workload of cleaning the place up, and Kuniko made up some delicious nabe for lunch. Just as we sat down to eat the nabe, the doorbell rang, and it was three Japanese Jehovah’s Witnesses. They spoke perfect English, and offered me a pamphlet – they wanted to talk more, but courteously left when I said I had some nabe on the stove.

We talked with my folks a little bit on the phone, and soon afterwards Kuniko was out the door and headed to Osaka to go drinking with some of her old coworkers. Tonight I’m going to head over to a dinner party with one of the Denya regulars. I’ll be heading out the door pretty soon.

Tomorrow is the matsuri, so I don’t want to be too hung over for that…

We brought the students back to school on Friday and tried to teach them with normal classes for one day after four solid days of exams. The result was as you might expect, a load of exhausted students who had a hard time paying attention.

Despite this, we pushed through three classes today. My students were really looking forward to going home and getting some rest. They were also looking forward to their sports clubs – they cancel sports club practice just before and during exams, and so now they’ll be staying at school late at night and on the weekends to practice hard.

I got home a little earlier than usual, and Kuniko made it back soon after me. She had a good field trip – they had made pottery, had a picnic, and at the end they had eaten chocolate ice cream. By the time she got back, she wasn’t so hungry. We postponed our nabe feast until tomorrow, and instead we went shopping over at Ito Yokado and I bought some sushi and some Chinese sesame pork.

It was a pretty mellow evening, especially for a Friday, and we were in bed relatively early. I think we’ll need the energy for this weekend.

Thursday was the last day of exams for the students, and the last day of preparation the teachers had before they have to get back to classes. I spent the day continuing to cram vocabulary into my brain with the idea that maybe they will come in handy someday. Now I am exclusively studying for the exam, rather than studying for my own benefit. I’ll keep this up through November and take the exam in early December.

On the way home from school Kuniko sent me a message saying that she was off early today. We ended up meeting in Ito Yokado, and going on a grocery shopping spree. We bought ingredients to make our own ramen, and plenty of supplies for the weekend.

Back home we ate big bowls of steaming hot ramen, with cuts of pork, Chinese bamboo, green onions and bean sprouts floating around in among the noodles. After dinner Kuniko watched some Japanese TV and then did some marking – I watched the latest episode of ‘Lost’ on my computer, and then went to hit the sack.

This weekend should be a lot of fun. We’ll be cleaning house on Saturday, but Saturday night Kuniko is going into Osaka to have dinner with some of her old co-workers. I’m heading over to one of the Denya regulars’ house for a house party. Then Sunday I’m going to go to the Futami matsuri once again and try to injure myself. Antoine and his girlfriend will probably come by, and Yuri, Tamura sensei, and her boyfriend will probably all meet us for dinner afterwards.