Today was a holiday, ostensibly to give respect to the aged in Japan. Kuniko and I used it to sleep in. Kuniko spent the morning making giant shorts for her class activity during the upcoming sports day. From what I understand, two students will be wearing these giant shorts and race around the track. It’s a little hard for me to understand, but Kuniko made some practice shorts for them to use.

We made a morning trip to Carrefour to do some shopping for the party tonight, and we found some good deals. They had some Hawaiian beers that I picked up, and we also got some Mexican ingredients for tacos tonight.

In the afternoon I did some studying while Kuniko did laundry. At around 7 o’clock, Chu-Chu and Chiemi showed up. I hadn’t seen Chu-chu in a long time – we had a chance to meet a long time ago in Osaka. This was my first time meeting Chiemi. We had a great time with them. Both of them had spent time overseas, and were familiar with the concept of tacos, and so it was fun to eat, drink and chat.

For Kuniko it was a great chance for her to catch up with her old friends, and everyone seemed excited about the upcoming wedding. We ate and drank and drank and ate, and by the end we had eaten tacos, chips, quesadillas, a salad, some cake, and some Haagen Dazs ice cream.

It was a great chance for me to practice listening to Japanese. I popped in a comment in Japanese now and then, but I’m still not really confident. I get all excited and start to say something, and then I forget a verb – or worse – how to conjugate it properly, and then I lose the moment and I sound like a retard. Still, everyone was patient with me and I learned a lot about everyone and got a glimpse into Kuniko’s college life. I guess she ate a lot – that sounds familiar.

Tomorrow is Sports Day practice for me, which means no classes. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, probably alternate studying with watching some of the events. Should be fun!

Both Friday and Saturday were Culture Festival days at Kuniko’s school in Kobe. The events kept her really busy, and she didn’t get home from the Saturday festival until past 11 o’clock at night! Kuniko took the camera into school and I’ve posted some of the pictures. She also took some video of a performance from her mandolin guitar club, and some other dance performances.

The dance club performance was pretty good, and I couldn’t believe that these girls dancing were junior high students. We were watching the video on the camera at a train station and I felt myself being self-conscious of what we must look like as these girls paraded around the video screen.

Sunday morning we got up fairly early and caught a train to Osaka to attend the Culture Festival at Kuniko’s old school. It was a chance for me to see the school where she worked so hard, had to live for several days, where she and the other female teachers had to cook for the male teachers, and where she constantly did battle with her draconian boss.

It took us almost two hours to get there, and when we arrived we registered at the gate. Everyone remembered Kuniko, and she introduced me as her husband, and we had lots of nice conversations. Soon after we met Higuchi sensei, one of Kuniko’s coworkers from that time. It is interesting to note that all of her coworkers left at the same time – everyone had a hard time with the boss.

Higuchi sensei was a really nice guy – he came across as a really smart guy, too. We walked around and met former students, current students, and teachers. I was impressed with the size of the school. Not only is it a high school, but it’s also a college. There are 1500 students there, much bigger than my school. In addition it is a private school, so the rooms are air conditioned, there is a TV monitor in each classroom, and everything just looked a bit nicer than what I’m used to seeing.

The big part of the Culture Festival is selling food – and each class had a different them. I was drawn to “American Hot League” which was selling American style hot dogs. They were really pretty small, but they had “ketchup sauce” or “chili sauce” to put on. They were pretty good though. We paid 160 yen for each one with a drink, and the little ticket they gave us said that we had paid 160 dollars!

Afterwards I told the teacher in charge that I’m American, and those were truly American style dogs. He relayed the message to the students, and everyone was very happy.

We met some of the ALT’s from that school, private ALT’s who unlike me work for themselves and not the prefectural government. They were all really pleasant to talk to, and they seemed to have a great relationship with the students. The student’s English level is much higher than my school, so it was amazing to see some students having full conversations with native speakers of English.

We ate plenty of food, maybe too much, but we wanted to try lots of things, and the students appreciated it. We got a lot of attention walking around hand in hand, but I’m getting used to that.

A bonus moment was when we got to meet the Dragon Lady boss herself. She looked like a tough woman. She smiled and seemed nice enough, but I could tell that she probably wouldn’t take a lot of crap from anyone. I wish I could have snuck a picture…

Finally we called it a day and took the long train trip back to Nishi Futami. We snuck in a nap during the afternoon, and then had some leftovers for dinner. The final stage for the day was a drive to Okubo to do some shopping and see a movie. We saw “Cinderella Man”, and it was a really good movie. Pretty violent boxing scenes – Kuniko would turn away to avoid seeing people getting the pulp beaten out of them.

Finally we came on back and hit the sack around midnight. Tomorrow we’re having some of Kuniko’s friends over for tacos and booze, so we’re going to clean the house and do some preparations. I’m going to make guacamole again – yum!

On Friday morning Kuniko and I were heading out the door and at the last minute I figured that I should send off my package of wedding announcements to my folks today, since it will be a few days before the post office opens again. Kuniko watched me getting ready, and thought maybe we should wait and put a few choice items in. It was a good idea that we waited – more on that later.

Kuniko and I walked to the train station together, which is unusual becuase she leaves about a half hour earlier than I leave. We stood on the opposite sides of the platform and I made goofy faces at her and told her how sleepy I was. Other passengers sat and watched us with mild curiosity.

Today at school was went without a hitch. The history teacher made a lot of visits. Lately he’s using a new strategy to drive me crazy. He is watching CNN news, and although they are speaking English very fast he catches bits and pieces, formulates a hypothesis based on what he heard, and then comes in to ask me about it.

This leads to strange situations. Like today, he told me he was shocked that the newscaster was using two words, “refugee” and “evacuee” to describe the victims of Hurricane Katrina. He demanded to know which word I use, so that he could settle it in his mind. There’s no easy answer, and I think he knows it. He wants to get me talking to him as much as possible. He’ll decide that all Americans can’t deal with humidity, everyone in America is cool or rich or rude or cheap. Like so many other people, CNN news is one of the few windows he has into American culture. Scary.

Kuniko offered to cook dinner tonight, so when she messaged me on the way home and asked me what I was up for, I told her -> MEAT. She came through with several packages of beef on sale of Ito Yokado, and she created a vegetable and beef stir fry that rocked. It hit the spot. We each ate big, and there’s more left for the weekend.

Kuniko was bushed after dinner, but we managed to stay up to watch part of a Japanese drama show that I enjoy. I don’t understand, but it’s likely that if I did, I wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much.

I don’t remember if I’ve explained the plot here before, so I might as well tell you. The plot revolves around six students that are supposed to be college students, or maybe they are high school students. They are dressed how a fashion designer would envision cool students. Their teacher always wears the same clothes, always has the same stern, no nonsense attitude, and spends more time berating the students than actually teaching. This is of course because they are not going to show him actually teaching material – that would make for boring TV.

Strangely, he is assisted by four other teachers that come into his class and do teach short lessons with actual learning material. They run in a montage style, with each of the students thoughtful faces getting a closeup. These part time teachers are dressed like historical figures from both Japan and other parts of the world. There’s a traditional Japanese father figure who wears robes and is always fanning himself. There’s a guy that looks like a Japanese Albert Einstein. Et cetera.

Tonight the students were trying to pass a test to get into a school, and the amount of drama that went into just going and checking the results was amazing. I wasn’t affected by the drama build-up – I don’t have much connection with the characters – but it was an interesting insight into how much pressure goes into passing tests in Japan. It’s a part of life here, even part of mine.

Last night it was pretty close to cool outside, and today the wind was blowing around nice cool air. I’m enjoying the change in temperature, to say the least. I don’t know how long it will last, so I’ve got all the windows wide open now cooling down the house.

I just had two classes today, and so I spent the morning studying and chatting with other teachers. I had a good conversation with Miyake sensei. She was talking to me about who I invited to the wedding, and she was concerned that I had invited the vice-principal without inviting the principal. Apparently that’s a slight breach of protocol. I told her that I talked it over the vice-principal, and we’re OK. I’m not doing it to secure my position in a company, I’m doing it because he’s a really nice guy and he’s helped me a lot in my time at Takanan.

My classes were a breeze, and the students were also very appreciative of the cooler weather. They seemed to have a little more energy, and I think they are really learning how to give directions. It feels good to see them step away from their worksheets and still be able to tell someone how to get somewhere in English.

There was a funny moment today when I was talking to Tsutsumi sensei about the next lesson for the first years. I had passed out the lesson (3 pages) to all the teachers yesterday, and when she came and sat down I realized that I had given them the wrong lesson – I had given them one for the second years. The funny part was that they were ready to go with the lesson. She said that she wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but she had confidence that I could pull it together. I printed out the correct handouts and re-handed them out. Embarrassing!

After school we had ESS, which was simply ten girls in a room giggling, gossiping in Japanese, and occasionally, reluctantly, speaking to me in English. Two girls in the club are determined to speak English with me, though, so I had a good chance to talk with them. Matsubara sensei was also trying to get them to speak English, but it wasn’t working. Finally we quit around five o’clock, and I went across the street to Tsuji-san’s place for some Japanese/English conversation.

I’m back home now and Kuniko is working late in preparation for their school festival on Saturday. It looks like it will be a late dinner. She’s going to be working late tomorrow as well, and then be at the school festival all day on Saturday. We might get some downtime on Sunday, but I think that we have a public holiday on Monday and so we should get a chance to catch up then for sure.

My schedule today was mixed up and so I had a really tough lineup at school. I had four classes in a row with just 10 minutes in between, from the first period to the fourth. Luckily I had done a lot of planning yesterday, so it went pretty smoothly.

Matsubara sensei was gone today, so I taught her class solo. It went pretty well, and I only had to break into Japanese once or twice. All of the students were impressed, and I think they paid just a bit more attention.

After my run of four classes finished up, I was able to relax, have a leisurely lunch, mail some letters, go to the convenience store for some cold beverages, and generally just kick back. I studied kanji in the afternoon, and then went to a very boring staff meeting in the afternoon.

The purpose of the staff meeting was to introduce a goal-oriented system to the educational system at our school. It was mind-numbingly boring, and it was met by some resistance from the teachers. From what I can tell they are going to give it a try for a year and see how it goes.

Finally, I chatted with the vice principal about taking time off for the wedding. He signed off right away for the five days leading up to the wedding, but he seemed surprised that I wanted to take three days off the next week. He said that we’ll talk about that in the beginning of November. I’m thinking that he’ll let me take it, and even if he doesn’t the teachers have a plan in place to do my classes without me, so I might call in sick three days in a row. Like I said before – there’s no reason to save my capital… I’m gone in August.

Tonight I got home and went out with Yasu for dinner at Denya. It’s a good chance for Yasu to use his English, and we had a good time talking about all kinds of things. I gave him an invitation to the wedding, and we talked about his future. He went with his brother to a fortuneteller and I guess he found out some opportunities will be coming his way in November. He told me that he doesn’t believe in it, but now he’s paying a little more attention.

Now I’m back home and Kuniko will be getting here soon. I brought back some yakitori for her just in case she missed dinner. Tomorrow I have a comparitively easier day, and Friday should be pretty easy as well. Once I get past Monday I can just cruise into the weekend.

There was some good news today for me – the English teachers met up and consulted each other and came out with the verdict that they could live without me for two weeks. I was thinking a little bit about this process and thinking that I was spending quite a bit of “political capital” with this, but then how often do you get married, anyhow? It’s not like I can stay at the school past next year anyway. I might as well use up all my capital before I go.

The next stage is taking it to the vice principal. It might be a tough sell, but at least I have the entire English staff confirming that it’s OK with them. The timing turns out to be just right. I’ll be gone during the “last review” lesson, and then I’ll be back just in time for interview tests. Perfect!

One of the teachers in my section always makes coffee in the mornings, and offers it to anybody that wants some. I also say thanks, but no thanks – I’m not a big fan of coffee unless it is combined with so much cream and sugar that it’s no longer classified as coffee. Anyway, I found out the other day that he’s been making coffee and putting it in the refrigerator, and it’s free for anybody to take. Today I made a tall iced coffee with lots of cream and sugar and ice. All I had to do was put my feet up on my desk to complete the picture of total relaxation. The air conditioner was pumping, and when my sweaty students came in for a conference or something they saw me enjoying a tall cold glass and probably wanted to kill me and drink it themselves.

I did two classes today, and both of them were full of energetic kids, despite the heat. They listened carefully, and guessed at things they didn’t quite know. They also seemed to take more chances and so I upped the difficulty level just a bit.

Mr. Hayashi left early from school, so I was the sole clean-up commander at the end of the day. The students came down and gave me their clipboard, and I supervised the cleaning of the bathrooms and one classroom. They did a fairly good job, and were endlessly amused by finding dead bugs, overflowing toilets, or saying “urine” over and over in Japanese. It’s not high comedy, but I have learned to make do.

They stood and stared at one urinal that was stopped up and wondered what to do. I came by and told them they didn’t have to clean it – just do the rest of the room. Their celebration was truly epic.

Through the afternoon I studied at my desk and chatted with the other teachers. Tanaka sensei urged me to go home – he said I looked tired. I decided to stick through to the end – I need all the teachers to see me working hard in anticipation of my vacation in a few months.

Finally, on the way home I shared a train with one of the third year students. She is pretty good at English and she is studying it very hard. She went to Australia last year and had a great time. She’s a little shy, but I was very surprised when she came up and sat right down next to me on the train. We talked at first just in English, but I switched to Japanese to keep things flowing. She was really impressed that I spoke Japanese – she asked me lots of questions about how long I have been studying. I hope it inspired her to keep studying English.

Back home I cooked up shougayaki (ginger pork) for dinner with some cabbage salad and tofu on the side. It was a seriously healthy meal, but there was fat hanging on the edges of the pork, so it wasn’t health-freak-healthy. Kuniko came home around 7:30 exhausted from her day. We ate, did the dishes together, and right now she’s asleep in the next room.

Before Kuniko arrived we got a last minute invitation from the Denya master to join them all for some kimchee nabe at a local restaurant. Unfortunately our timing wasn’t right and I had to pass. Still, it was nice to be invited!

Tomorrow I’m going to meet up with Yasu and head over to Denya. It’ll be good to talk to Yasu – it’s been a long time! I’ve got a hectic day at school – four classes in a row from morning to 12:30 in the afternoon.

Matsubara sensei, that is. I was talking to her earlier today and trying to lay the foundation for my time off during November. She casually mentioned that she is pregnant, and is looking forward to the birth of her second child in February. I was happy to hear it, and also I felt like I have some kind of supernatural ability to detect pregnancy.

Elsewhere in the gossip department, yesterday I bumped into Yamamoto sensei and the school nurse standing together in Ito Yokado and looking very nervous that I had caught them. Yamamoto sensei recently got a cellphone after years of not owning one, and that’s a symptom that he’s seeing someone for sure.

Today I bumped into them both separately, and he didn’t seem to mind, but the school nurse looked really embarrassed and found something else to do quickly. Their secret is safe with me – they’ve covered for me in the past, so it’s the least I can do. I just hope none of my teachers read this site!

Like I said before, I’m starting the very complicated process of getting time off for my wedding. I’m planning on taking the week before the wedding and the week after to show around my family while they are here. It’s interesting to see how people view vacations in Japan.

I have plenty of vacation time, so that’s not an issue. In fact, I have five free days off just because I’m getting married. Since the time I want to take off is during classes, it becomes a big deal. Unlike other teachers I cannot be substituted, so I need to make sure that my classes are covered with other activities, and I have to talk with everyone involved. I’m doing this process in the Japanese style, getting tacit permission from everyone before I actually request the time off.

In Japan long vacations are pretty rare. Most vacations last a week at the most. People hurry back to work because they don’t want to leave their co-workers hanging. Oshima sensei just got married at my school and he was gone for about three days. He came back today with a homemade lunch from his wife and acted like nothing had changed. Even some teachers that had gone to Europe or the United States only stayed for three or four days – they spent more time traveling on the plane than at their destination!

My philosophy on vacations is much different from what is normal here, and we’ll just leave it at that.

For dinner tonight we had some Okinawan soup that we found at Ito Yokado. It was my first taste of Okinawan food and it was pretty good. Kuniko says that the food there is great, so we’ll definitely have to make it a vacation destination someday. Two or three days there wouldn’t be so bad.

A while back Struan had told me about a wine tasting event that goes on periodically in Kobe. It’s at the Sheraton on Port Island, and it’s a bit pricey (5000 yen a person!) He was planning to attend the next one because one of his teachers had invited him, and so he in turn invited Kuniko and me.

I met Struan on the Akashi platform, and we caught the shinkaisoku train towards Kobe. The plan was to meet up with Kuniko in Sannomiya, since she was already there because of work. Tanaka sensei was to meet us in the same area, as well.

We sat on the bench seats of the train, and there was a really beautiful girl standing across from us. Struan mentioned casually that she was the woman of his dreams. I settled back to watch Struan try to figure out a way to say hello without seeming like a sexual offender. I came up with a few novel ways to say hello, but in the end he didn’t have the courage. She looked at us a couple of times, and looked away quickly. When we got to the station she happened to be going the opposite way, so we watched her go, and Struan hung on to the faint hope that she used the same station we did, so maybe he’d see her again.

We met Kuniko near the bus stop, and soon after that Tanaka sensei showed up. She is a middle aged home economics teacher at Struan’s school, and we were all surprised how well she spoke English. She was always smiling and she looked serious about tasting wine today. They were hoping to get some “tips from a pro”, so I told them I’d do my best. We caught the bus to the hotel, and walked into the lobby.

It was a pretty nice hotel, and there were Americans here and there among the mostly Japanese staff. The place looked expensive, and it’s in a pretty remote location. The idea I guess was to get traffic coming this direction from the Osaka airport. It’s about a 40 minute bus ride from the hotel to the airport, so it’s not exactly convenient.

We went inside the sports bar, where the event was being held. We duly paid our 5000 yen each, and went inside. The bar was quite nice, and the array of bottles was pretty impressive. There were four distributors, and you could taste from their selection as much as you liked. They had some upscale wines that they were charging for a taste – and it seemed like they were getting some action.

We were some of the first people there, and we got started right away. There was a huge lineup of empty glasses, and so we each grabbed one, I picked a wine to try, we all got a healthy pour and then we sat down to taste it. There weren’t dump buckets, and they poured about a third of a glass of wine. Also, there wasn’t much room to stand in front of the bottles because of the foot traffic, so it was better to go back to our seats. We sat at a dinner table set with silverware, and there was a full meal that came along with it.

We tried lots of wines, starting with whites, then moving to Pinot Noirs and finally into the heavier reds. There were some winners and some losers, but it was a great variety. I tried to explain what I thought of each wine, why I felt that way, what I tasted in each glass, and I think that might have been interesting to Struan and Tanaka sensei. They had both seen the movie “Sideways” and that had fueled some of their interest.

Since we wanted to compare wines we left the first glass, grabbed some more empties, and filled up again. Soon our table was full of glasses. The staff were a little alarmed with that kind of behavior but made no move to stop it. I created little dump buckets out of the first few glasses, and left those on the table. Struan had no dump buckets – he just drank. Tanaka sensei was also hitting it pretty hard – she was funny to watch because she was trying to stay organized and remember all the wines, to rate them on the sheet, and still drink to her heart’s content. I was surprised they poured as much as they did.

The staff was patient with us – other tables were quietly sipping their wines and we were racing through wines and creating a huge collection of glassware. They brought us some delicious food – an appetizer plate for each of us with some salmon sashimi, prociutto, sweet figs, and some kind of shellfish all buttered and garlic ked. They also had all the bread and garlic bread you wanted. There was a main course of a wine marinated chicken with cheesy risotto, and there was a cheese platter with two kinds of cheese (goat and a brie-like cheese) to enjoy afterwards.

I’m not sure when we all arrived at the drunken stage – but it seemed to come at different times. Kuniko was getting sleepy at the table, Struan was rambling on about this and that, Tanaka sensei was giggling uncontrollably and kept saying how embarrassed she was (but in perfect English!) and I was using dump bucket glasses but still feeling a really nice buzz.

We had a time limit of two and a half hours, and we used up every minute. They were selling the wines there, so if you liked one you could buy it at a discount. Struan and I both bought a bottle of Trebbiano from Italy that was really good. Struan also bought a pinot noir that he liked.

From there we headed back to Sannomiya, and then went our separate ways. Kuniko and I went shopping for wedding rings and found a set that we liked at the Sogo department store downtown.

You might wonder if it is a good idea to buy something you will be wearing every day for the rest of your life after consuming so much wine. All I can say is that we really liked the rings last night, and as I type this I hope that when they are finished engraving them and they arrive that we will like them just as much.

We ate a few snacks in Chinatown, got some drinks at Starbucks for a dessert, and then finally caught the train back home. We were both bushed, and crashed out soon after we arrived. I can’t believe we have to work tomorrow!

Saturday morning Kuniko and I could sleep in a little longer than usual. I still had to get up and go do community chores with everybody at eight o’clock. Kuniko offered to join me, but we thought it would be more useful for her to stay in, relax, maybe do some chores.

I put on some scrubby clothes and went downstairs to get to work. I met up with Jane, and we paired off and found a neglected, weedy corner of the facility to work on. We used the hour to catch up with each other. I found out that Jane has a boyfriend – and although she says he’s always over visiting, I’ve yet to see him. We chatted about her plans for the future – it sounds like she’s leaning towards heading home after this year is up. The more I heard from her stories, the more it sounded miserable for her – at least the teaching part.

We wrapped things up and I went back upstairs. Kuniko had to go into work for a little while, so I spent the morning and part of the afternoon doing chores around the house, and doing just a touch of studying. I got to talk to my folks on the phone, and we chatted about their upcoming trip for our wedding. It’s starting to get real, and it’s fun to talk about it and start planning things.

Kuniko got back at a reasonable hour, and we worked on different things. Kuniko was writing the names and addresses of the people she is inviting on her invitation envelopes. She wrote them in beautiful kanji, but kept saying they looked terrible. Maybe they look bad to Japanese eyes – to me they were better than I could ever dream of writing.

For dinner tonight we cooked up tempura for the first time. Lately we’ve had lots of vegetables stacked up around here, and that’s a good way to use them up. We fried up some yams, pumpkin, basil leaves, shrimp, lotus root, some green peppers from my pepper tree, and even some tiny tomatoes that I popped in as an experiment. The first few pieces were a little firm as I wasn’t sure how long to cook them, but then we seemed to find our rhythm and got some great results. We ate the lot of them with some tempura sauce that Kuniko cooked up. Wow! Fried food is just so good.

Strangely today I had the most classes all week – three. They went without a hitch, and so by lunchtime I was enjoying my bento box and looking forward to the weekend.

I chatted with some students after lunch, studied, bought something cold to drink at the local convenience store, and really just wasted away the afternoon. I made good progress on “Holes” – I’m within a few chapters of the end. It’s taken a long time, though. The next book? I don’t know yet.

On the way home I started feeling a little funky, so when I got home I pretty much did some chores and then crashed out on the bed. I got up and made a quick udon dinner for Kuniko when she got home, and then went to bed again soon after that. I’m tired out – but I don’t work so hard… why is that? Is it the mental observance of Friday? I’m going to enjoy this weekend for sure.

I spent lots of time today taking practice tests for the big exam in December. I’ve been planning on failing it and focusing my efforts on passing it next year. It’s only offered once a year. Realistically, I will probably be ready to pass it next summer, but I’ll have to wait until the end of next year.

The practice tests went pretty much as I expected. I was getting around 40-50%. I need 60% to pass, and it’s close enough that it gives me a chance of passing this year. I’m going to have to really focus my efforts over the next few months, and if I do pass it will be by the skin of my teeth. It’s a lot of pressure, though, and I’d prefer just assuming that I will focus and continue working at my own pace. I might as well give it a go, but I know it’ll be heartbreak if I miss it by just a few points.

My classes went really well today, and I had one of my favorite classes in the afternoon. They are really active students and they don’t mind speaking English in class. It’s always a pleasure to teach them. They were full of energy today and they did great.

After school I went across the street to Tsuji-san’s place and chatted with her for about an hour. She finally got her fiancee and her father together in the same room and it sounded like a really fun time. The father sat and talked for four hours, and the fiancee just nodded and said “Hai”, “Hai”, “Hai”. I don’t know if anybody learned anything from the experience, but at least the father feels better.

At 6 o’clock the ALT that replaced Daniel came in for her lesson. She is fresh from Pittsburgh, PA, and she doesn’t speak any Japanese. Tsuji-san is going to help her out. She seemed like a nice enough person, and she’s been adopted by a group of ALTs in the Himeji area, so she should be just fine.

Kuniko beat me home and she cooked up an awesome dinner. It was a dish called “Mabonasu”. It was meat, eggplant, and peppers combined with a spicy sauce and served up with some miso soup on the side. I was raving as I scarfed it up – I even licked the plate clean it was so good. There are some leftovers so I get to take to work with me in my bento lunch box. Oh yeah.

Tomorrow is Friday and there’s nothing special planned in the Fredricks household. Kuniko is stuck working this weekend in preparation for the school festival, and so I’ll have a weekend pretty much to myself. I have to do community cleanup on Saturday morning, but other than that I have no obligations. Maybe I should hit the books and go for that passing grade…

Today was a pretty slow day for classes – I only had two. They went well enough – I told Matsubara’s class that they will be working on a project for the next few weeks. They’ll be doing an English skit in front of the class. This will be the first time that I’ve done a long term project with the class and I hope it goes OK.

I took a practice test for the December Japanese Proficiency Test. It didn’t go great – it was really difficult. I squeezed out a 60% score on one part of the listening test. I’ll need to do better than that, though.

For dinner I cooked up spaghetti with a garlic, olive oil and black pepper sauce and it turned out merely OK. Something was missing, but Kuniko and I couldn’t figure it out. That’s the fun of cooking, if you fail at least you can try again the next night.

We went to Ito Yokado after dinner to get some lunch supplies and we found some roast beef for 50% off – I got two packages full. It’s roast beef sandwiches for lunch tomorrow!

Finally we put the finishing touches on some wedding invitations that need to go out soon. The wedding is getting closer and closer!

For a typhoon that still hasn’t shown up, typhoon 14 has been all anybody has been talking about today. It is supposed to be the same strength as the hurricane that went through New Orleans recently, but I think that Japan is a little more used to weathering big storms. Everybody at school was expecting to get a typhoon warning – once that happens everyone can head home.

All the students wanted to go home. All the teachers wanted to go home. Yet, we stayed. The warning never came, although the typhoon was still bearing down on us. It was moving slowly, and just before I left school they said that it was turning north towards the Asian continent and away from central and northern Japan. That means that we’ll just catch the edge of it sometime in the middle of the night, and we should be OK to go to school tomorrow. Staff and students were highly disappointed in the news.

I had two classes today – one with Miyake sensei and one with Tsutsumi sensei. This was the first day back for Miyake sensei and it was good to catch up with her. I heard stories about her vacation and it sounded like she took an English study break, which she deserves. Our class went really well together, and I could tell she was happy to be back in front of the students like I was.

After school we all left early just in case the typhoon was speeding up, and so I got home around 5 p.m. Kuniko sent me a message saying that she would handle dinner, so I did a few chores and secured some things on the back porch just in case.

Kuniko cooked up buri teriyaki and tofu for dinner. The buri (yellowtail tuna) was in filets and she sauteed them in a pan with some teriyaki sauce, and then combined with the tofu we had a very healthy dinner. I was impressed with the buri – it had really good flavor and was very tender. It was also really inexpensive – that’s the nice thing about buying fish in Japan. It’s always reasonably priced and always fresh.

For dessert we had some Haagen Dazs ice cream (classic chocolate and mango/vanilla). Outside the wind is starting to blow a little harder, but it’s still dry out there. We’ll see how things go tomorrow!

Today I gingerly got out of bed to make a lunch for Kuniko and myself. Kuniko left before me and I bustled out the door with my arms full of garbage for garbage day, my lunch, my new textbooks, an umbrella, and my manpurse. Luckily I was able to manage everything to the train station.

Smoking is a really big problem here in Japan, and thankfully almost every train is non-smoking. In addition, most stations have a smoking corner, but everywhere else it is posted as non-smoking. Unfortunately, the station postings are more of a suggestion, and it’s not so rare to see people smoking right under a no-smoking sign. For a long time that has been bothering me, so I decided to ask the next person I see doing that to go to the smoking corner (in polite Japanese, of course).

Today a guy sat next to me on the bench and started puffing away. But today was not the day to have a little international conversation. This guy looked normal enough except for the juge bruise spreading from his eye across the whole left side of his face. He looked like he got it last night, and there was still some swelling on other parts of his face. The last thing I want to do is be the straw that breaks this camel’s back – my stupid comment might be enough to push him over the edge.

I settled for looking conspicuously at the no smoking sign, and then turning my body on the bench and just staring at him. I could tell it bothered him, but he was determined to have his cigarette. I just watched him for about a minute before my train came, and then left. Maybe next time.

I distributed my omiyage from the trip to Kyoto, and spent most of the day lesson planning and studying. I’m down to about 2-3 hours of study a day, and so I feel like I’m lazy or something. I know that it’s a limitation of my job, and I’m lucky to be able to study for 2-3 hours. Still, with the big test looming in December I’d really like to study more. However, maybe it’s time to just admit that I won’t make the cut this time and try to study a little more long term and a little less short-term-cram.

Kuniko asked me to run into Akashi and pick up some paperwork at a hospital there right after work since she couldn’t get there before it closed. I headed there, found the place easily enough, and got the paperwork without a problem. From there I came straight back home and made up a pot of tortilla soup and let it cook while I did chores and stuff. Kuniko came in around 8 o’clock, and we had some hot soup. Lately it’s been cooling off due to rain and an incoming typhoon, so the soup hit the spot.

We’re settling into the grind of the week, but before you know it it’ll be the weekend again. Time seems to be flying for me – it’s probably because it’s the last year of my cushy job and I’ll have to face the real world soon enough.

Saturday Kuniko took the day off from her club activity leader role, and we caught a train to Kyoto. I’m always amazed how quick and easy it is to get to Kyoto. We sat and chatted, looked out the window, checked out other passengers, and before you could say “space out” we were there.

The reason for the visit was for Kuniko to exchange a charm that she had purchased at one of her favorite temples. She made a wish on the old charm, and once that came true, she needs to bring it back and exchange it for a new one. I bought one, too, and together we performed the necessary rituals to get it charged up with a new wish. We’ll see if it works.

When we first arrived there was a really long line of people waiting to get a tour/sermon/lecture by a priest, and since we were definitely not interested in that, we walked by all the people and completed our business there.

On our way back to the station we stopped in and visited another temple, this one preparing for a matsuri event that evening. I took a few pictures there, and we watched a group of people surrounding a portable shrine resting in the shade to avoid the heat.

From there, we went to Arashiyama. The day was really hot, so we caught the train instead of walking three kilometers in the sun. It was totally worth it. We got to the side of the river and then crossed into town to have lunch and look at some of the touristy things. We had a simple traditional hot-weather soba lunch, and for dessert we had green tea ice cream.

On the way back we stopped by a pond with some pretty remarkable lily pads. They were growing a big stem that looked like a fake plastic attachment.

Next we caught the train into downtown Kyoto, and I was able to do some shopping at a huge bookstore there. I got two Japanese grammar reference books that I’ve been dreaming of for a while. As it happens, one of Kuniko’s friends, Tomo-chan, was in the area, so we met up outside the station and said hello. She’s getting married this month, and she looked very excited.

We paid a visit to one of Kuniko’s favorite dessert shops. She knows Kyoto inside and out – she went to college there and she went out a lot, so she knows all the good spots. The tiny restaurant was dedicated to French cakes, pies, and pastries. I took a few pictures inside – everything looked good, and there was a huge line for tables. We picked up some dessert to go, and the wait wasn’t too bad.

The last stop for us was to buy omiyage from the trip so we have something to give everyone on Monday. From there we took the train all the way back home, and had a fairly unhealthy mix of leftovers and gyoza for dinner. The cakes for dessert were spectacular.

The next day I was up early to go to a volleyball tournament. The master of the yakitori had cleverly talked me into helping out the Denya team. I met up with one of the regulars outside my apartment, and he drove me to the Akashi city gymnasium.

It was quite a place. Everything was in beautiful condition, it was clean and well-staffed, and it sat on a hill overlooking the city. We sat outside and waited for the rest of the team to wake up and come over.

Finally they started trickling in. I got a lot of attention from the other players, as I was the only team member that was foreign. Lots of people looking away quickly when I moved my head around.

We had the opening ceremony, and I noticed that our team was one of only two that didn’t have their own uniforms. The master had assured me that we were playing in the easiest league – the C league, but the other C league teams were hardcore. They set up spiking drills, they all had kneepads and it looked they had been practicing every day to get ready for the big event.

Some of the regular Denya guys have wives and girlfriends on a girls team called “BEST”. They were there playing and they did a really good job. They won last year, and the last I saw them they were facing off against a girl team called “CLOVER” who wore pink shorts and neopolitan tops.

We played two games and were elimated from both easily. The judges were strict and not many people were smiling. The Denya team really stood out from everyone else because I think our members were the first ones out of the door to take a smoke break after the games, some of our members were trash-talking the other team, and everybody on our team just laughed and had a good time. The other teams looked at us like we a bug that they found necessary to step on.

The good news about early elimination was that we could leave early, so we all bugged out and left the girls team to fend for themselves. We found the nearest watering hole and had the Japanese equivalent of a Denny’s lunch – soba, tempura, sashimi, rice, and little bits of pickles. We each had a couple of beers and lamented our losses. I guess last year they had won a game, and then lost the rest, so this was a step backwards. I even heard some people saying they might practice next year.

I came home and crashed. I’m coming down with a sore throat – so Kuniko let me sleep the rest of the afternoon away before we headed out to visit her folks.

The last stage of the weekend was a feast and a bath. Kuniko’s mom cooked up lots of food for us to eat for dinner, and then while Kuniko fiddled with the family computer to try to get it to print on envelopes I tried out their new bath.

It’s a little strange to be invited over to someone’s house for a bath. Of course it was Japanese style, so I used the water, and then the next person used the same water, and the next, etc. You don’t actually use soap in the bath – you do all that with a shower setup just outside the bath. Then you get in clean and you get out relaxed. They have this cool setup that keeps the temperature constant while you are in there, and it lets you know in another room when the temperature is where you want it. I was raving about that bath the rest of the night.

Finally we wrapped things up, and so we headed back with armloads of fresh vegetables from the farm, and a sizable bag of Kageyama rice. I’m bushed, and tomorrow is Monday – ugh.