I got up fairly early today to go out to Akashi and jump on the train with Kuniko. I had messaged her as she approached, figured out what train car she was on, and then jumped on and met up with her.

I thought I saw one of my students who had graduated one year ago, and she was looking at me kind of funny. She looked a lot different, but I mentioned it to Kuniko, and she said she recognized her from Takasago Minami.

That must have been a funny situation for the girl – she’s on the train, and then she sees Kuniko, and recognizes her. Then, a few stops later, she sees me get on the train and recognizes me. Then she sees me come up to Kuniko and put my arms around her – that must have been a pretty good shock. As she got off the train she said hello.

We got off in Umeda, and took the Midosuji line of the subway south – from there it was just a five minute walk to the American embassy. On the way we crossed several rivers, and the city hall of Osaka, which was pretty impressive on its own.

The reason for going to the embassy was to have a affadavit witnessed and sealed by the vice consul, which in turn would be used at the Japanese city office where I live.

We got to the embassy, and there was a line of people outside, mostly Japanese. There was a kind security guard organizing things, and even though he didn’t speak English (and he didn’t have to, because Kuniko was there) he was full of amusing little snippets of English that he had picked up on the job. At the each corner of the building were Japanese security guards, and the American flag was flying above the embassy. It reminded me of spy movies when all they have to do to escape is to get inside the embassy and ask for protection.

We had to walk through a metal detector, surrender our electronics, and exchange photo ID for visitor badges, and then finally we were allowed to go to the fourth floor. We waited there with people hoping for American visas, an American woman (with great Japanese skills) getting married to a Japanese man, and an angry looking young man who had lost his passport the day before he was to come home from his vacation.

The consul came out and had me raise my right hand, and as I stood under the pictures of George W., Dick Cheney, and Condi Rice I swore that the information was correct. It would have made a great picture if they hadn’t confiscated all my electronics.

From there we went back to the station. For lunch we went to a hamburger place that Kuniko had seen on TV. The place was very busy – there weren’t seats, you ordered and then took it away. We ordered and had to come back in one hour to get our food – that’s how popular it was. The burger I got was big – American sized – and it was delicious. There wasn’t as much a focus on meat as in America, but the other ingredients were a good match.

Next we took the train back to Akashi, and Kuniko led me through the shopping center in the middle of the train station. At the end of the building there was a branch office of the city office, with 4-5 ladies wearing aprons while they did office work. It was pretty slow when we walked in, but when we explained what we wanted they sprang into action. I’d say they definitely hadn’t had a marriage request from a foreigner yet, judging from the instruction manual that they broke out.

We produced all the paperwork that we had collected, and it appeared to all be in order. They kept calling the main office, and as we waited I could see shoppers walking by outside the door with shopping bags full of clothes.

Finally they said that we were finished, so we got up and left. We walked back through the shopping center on the way back to the train station.

It’s at this point that we were officially married, even though we carried no proof of the fact. They will have paper proof for us in a week or so, but we’re in the database as being married.

The whole reason to do this now is because we have more time during the summer to do all the paperwork. I knew that it would be weird to get married in a city office, and it was even stranger to get married in a city office that is part of a shopping center. The feeling was akin to walking into the lonely customer service desk on the top floor of a Sears store in some mall and getting married.

After a bit more walking around Akashi, we went back to our respective homes. Kuniko has to work tomorrow, and study for her teacher’s test this weekend. I’ve got to work part of the day tomorrow with some other ALTs getting ready for our students’ trip to Australia.

I went over to the yakitori tonight to chat with the master. It was not so busy tonight, and I got lots of Japanese practice chatting with one of the customers, Masao-san. He’s a younger guy that spent half a year in Australia and remembers about ten words of English. So we had to use Japanese only, and that’s always a great situation for me.

Kuniko is going to move in on Monday, and so we’ll start from there getting used to living with each other. Stay tuned to see how domestic life turns out…

Today as usual the cicadas were making lots of noise as I walked to school. I can’t begin to describe how loud they can get. When you walk by a big tree full of them you can barely hear anything else. The pressure from the noise presses in on your eardrums, and you feel like just a little more noise would be enough to break them. Forget heavy metal concerts – it’s cicadas that Japanese youth will be blaming for hearing loss in the future.

I got a preview today of what the rest of this month and most of next month will be like. I came into work at the regular time, and about half the people that are usually there at that time were present. I settled in to study and was able to work without distraction until around noon.

I ate lunch (leftover yakiudon), and chatted with some graduates from last year who had come to visit the school. They joked around with me mostly in Japanese, and they sounded like they were really enjoying college life.

At around 1 p.m. I went over to Tsuji-san’s place to chat with her for about an hour. She told her father about her marriage last weekend, and so we talked about that. Her mom came in and served us ice coffee, and she sat in on the conversation for a while. Apparently, it didn’t go well.

Tsuji-san’s father is a pretty traditional guy. Tsuji-san told me that upon meeting her previous boyfriend, her father “hated” him. Yikes. Based on that reaction, it was only natural to keep her current guy a secret. Anyway, her father didn’t have a clue that she was even dating anyone, and so when she told him they were planning on getting married he said it was like finding out she had cancer – a sudden realization that nothing will ever be the same. I said that a comparison with cancer was probably not a very good analogy to make, but she said that’s what she expected from him.

Her mother is taking the brunt of it – her father is retired and spends all day thinking about this, tossing and turning at night, and complaining to her mom. Tsuji-san is going to wait a while to bring her fiancee over. It might be a long while judging from her dad’s reaction.

Her father wanted to be consulted on whether or not they should get married, so that’s why he is so unhappy about it. This comes from a time in Japan when most marriages were arranged. Arranged marriages sound pretty old fashioned to me, but they still happen here. There is such a large population of older people in Japan that the traditions they are used to are dying very, very slowly.

Yesterday was Tsuji-san’s birthday, so I gave her an American birthday card and a container of cheese balls that I found over at Ito Yokado. I know she likes junk food, so they should be a big hit.

I went back to the school after chatting with Tsuji-san – her house is literally right across the street. Nobody noticed that I was gone, and since I had left all my books, dictionaries, and flashcards on my desk everyone just figured I was playing ping pong or something. Not two minutes after I walked back in the vice principal came by and told me that I could leave anytime I liked, so at 2 p.m. I was out the door and off to the train station. This is a schedule I can deal with – I got in 4-5 hours of studying, and I got home at a decent hour.

I resisted the urge to take a nap and spent time cleaning out a closet or two. I still have lots of junk, so I’m going to have to work together with Kuniko to make space for her stuff. We’ll have to go shopping and buy some new shelves and storage, but it shouldn’t be too much stuff. We’re only going to be here for a year and then we’re moving to parts unknown – no reason to go nuts buying stuff now.

I’m doing fishsticks for dinner, and then all the shaved ice I can eat. I broke out Kuniko’s shaved ice machine and I’ve been using it a lot. Today on the way home I bought some “adult” shaved ice. Shaved ice here is flavored very sweet and marketed mainly to kids, although adults eat it too. For the first time today I saw they had two “upscale” shaved ice flavors. At twice the price of regular shaved ice I bought one that was honey flavored with bits of fruit rind blended in – it was not as sweet as the regular ones – quite good. The other one was labelled in English as Deep Blue Sea flavor, which sounded a little too salty for me. I’ll save that for later.

Today we had no classes, just a clean up session, and then after that an hour of speeches and stern warnings, and finally the students could go home for the summer vacation.

I was in charge of students cleaning up my classroom and so we cleaned the windows, and I enjoyed chatting with them as we worked. One of the students does a great impression of Oshita sensei, and we also talked about sports injuries.

It was incredibly hot in the gymnasium for the closing ceremony, and a couple of students passed out from the heat as they were standing there. I was lucky enough to be able to go outside when it was too hot, but the poor students were stuck there.

In the afternoon I hung out with some students at my desk, one of whom I shared a train with over the weekend. She asked me all about my trip to the museum, and we chatted for a long time in Japanese. She said she was really impressed that I went over and talked to her on the train – I guess she wasn’t expecting that.

After a while the vice principal gave me some paperwork to fill out. It’s the same paper I filled out last year – you write whether you will be in the office for each day during summer break. Just like last year I said that I would be there all day every day. This usually works with a nod and a wink – you disappear early and nobody seems to mind.

Mr. Hayashi paid me a visit and warned me that this year is very different, and they will be much more strict. He said that I’ll be working hours similar to my regular hours, from 7:30 to 4-5 in the afternoon. I was surprised that the system changed, but it doesn’t affect me much – I was planning on coming in to take advantage of the free air conditioning. I’m going to study anyway, might as well do it somewhere cool without distraction.

I turned in the paperwork to the vice principal and asked him why the policy had changed this year. He said that it hadn’t changed – I guess Mr. Hayashi was wrong. He told me that I can leave when I want, just let him know what I’m doing and it will be no problem. That’s nice to know – I wonder why Mr. Hayashi got the message all scrambled.

I left right on time today, and picked up some ingredients for tonight’s dinner at Ito Yokado. I used a recipe from a book that Kuniko got the other day. It was a yakiudon recipe, and it had some unusual steps… for example, I’ve never stir-fried using mayonnaise before. Following a recipe in Japanese is pretty tough – every once in a while I bump into a kanji that I don’t know so I have to guess, and I just fill in my own ideas here and there. Luckily, it turned out pretty good.

Tomorrow is my Friday – I’m officially taking Friday off so that Kuniko and I will have time to head to Osaka and visit the American embassy. We’re going to try to get the paperwork done for our legal marriage on Friday, because we both have lots of free time. Don’t panic, though – the marriage ceremony that counts is still on November 20th – a long way off. Still, at least in the eyes of the government, we’ll be husband and wife on Friday. That’s assuming that we are able to figure out the rather complicated paperwork involved.

Back to school… it was hot early this morning, and so I had to sweat it out at my desk for an hour or two until they turned on the air conditioning. Since I had no classes today I did lots of vocabulary memorization, and I did some data entry of grammar to be memorized. Grammar is a lot more time consuming to memorize, but it’s immediately useful. I’m hoping this will help me smooth out my spoken Japanese a little.

All of this studying is in preparation for a standardized test that I will take in December. The level that I will take is probably too advanced for me, I seem firmly in the middle – above the level I passed last year, but not quite at the next level. Hopefully a summer of intense study and a little more conversation will get me on the right path.

After school we had a CPR training course, and it is pretty tough to do CPR with Japanese instructions. I did OK by watching the instructors carefully, looking at the pictures in the pamphlet, and recalling what I learned in high school. The CPR dummies have come a long way – they’ve got digital readouts to tell you if you are pressing in the right place, how much air is getting in, they even measure the speed at which you work. We even got to play with defibrillators. They were simple to use, they talked to you and told you what to do. Of course I couldn’t understand the spoken instructions so well, but we got it figured out.

Tonight I cooked a simple rice bowl with mushrooms and green peppers that I grew out on my patio. I used lots of garlic and some MSG that I found. That stuff tastes great!

I’m off to bed soon – I’ve got the bedroom cooling down right now, and soon I’ll get in there, do some reading, and then hit the sack. Tomorrow is an easy day – just a closing ceremony and some speeches. I’m sure they’ll squeeze in a staff meeting or two, so I’ll probably get stuck working the whole day.

Today was a holiday for me, and so I slept in this morning, and then in the afternoon went into Kobe to meet up with Kuniko after her teachers exam interview. She seemed pretty positive about it, which is good. Its a two-part exam – the next part will happen next week… a written exam this time.

We went over to a pasta place that Kuniko turned me onto a while back. I had a pizza, and Kuniko had a big plate of pasta. Kuniko found a small piece of plastic in her pasta – that came as a surprise. I pointed it out to our waitress, and she apologized. I put the plastic into her hand, and I could tell she was a little disgusted with having to handle it, but imagine how we felt – it was in our food.

Despite the plastic everything was delicious, and after we settled up I did a little bit of shopping at Uniqlo for some new T-shirts. Kuniko got a top at a little shop near the station, and then with our bellies full and a shopping bag in hand, we got on the train and headed back.

When I got home I just relaxed during the evening, organizing my flashcards on my PDA, and listening to music. It’s still plenty hot and humid around here, and so my evenings involve a lot of sweat, even when I’m just sitting there. I battled that a little by getting some shaved ice, but I’ve got to start making it myself soon.

Tomorrow I’m going back to school. I don’t have any classes, so I’ll just hang out and see what happens.

This weekend was been pretty nice so far. Saturday Kuniko came over to get some studying done for her teacher’s interview on Monday. She brought along a gift from her parents, a big box of somen noodles. They are short, dry noodles that you boil and then use for anything you like. Delicious.

In the evening we watched “The Incredibles” on DVD at home, eating Hiroshima okonomiyaki and drinking beer. We went to bed fairly early, and since it was so hot out we ended up both waking up around two in the morning. We decided to open up the house and then go take a late night walk around town.

It was pretty quiet around my town as we walked around. We went down to the 24 hour convenience store and bought some cold drinks, and I bumped into one of the yakitori part time workers who was just getting off work. He was hanging out with his girlfriend, so I said hello and we chatted for a little bit.

Sunday I wanted to give Kuniko lots of time to herself to study, so I went into Osaka to see a Van Gogh exhibit. It was at an art museum just west of Osaka, and I had no trouble finding it following a printed map in Japanese. There was a big line waiting to get in – I had to wait 75 minutes just to get into the museum. It was the last weekend of the exhibit, and it was a holiday weekend, so that explained why there were so many people.

I waited patiently in line, reading my copy of Harry Potter as I stood there. Once I got inside they had metered people in carefully, so you had as long as you wanted to see the exhibits. They had all the famous Van Gogh paintings there, and it was great to get right up close and see them. The oil paintings were particularly impressive – the textures of the oils aren’t immediately apparent in photographs and prints.

After the museum I caught a quick lunch of shrimp tempura donburi, and then caught the train home. It was a fairly packed trip, but I was lucky to get a seat early, so I could finish off the Harry Potter book in comfort.

Back home Kuniko and I killed a little time over at Ito Yokado, and then drove over to a yakiniku restaurant that I haven’t had a chance to try yet. It was really good – we had a great dinner, and I avoided the grilled liver (Kuniko loves it). There was plenty of other kinds of meat to eat, a big bowl of bibinba, and a green salad. We polished it all off and it was only about 4000 yen for two people. Much cheaper than the sushi dinner that Antoine and I were shocked about the other day.

As we were leaving one of the employees recognized me – it was one of the ladies I say good morning to every day at the train station. She caught me off guard because I couldn’t immediately place her – she was wearing a uniform and was completely out of context. She explained how she knew me to Kuniko which was a good thing – I don’t think I could have right then.

Kuniko went home to get plenty of sleep for her test tomorrow, and I went to bed fairly late, staying up to watch a downloaded episode of Battlestar Galactica. Tomorrow I’m going into Kobe to meet up with Kuniko after her exam.

Today I had the only class of the whole week, and it was just practice interviews for the STEP test. Wait a second, didn’t we just have the STEP test? Yes, but Mr. Hayashi had me interviewing again. It was a good opportunity to talk to the students who took the test and ask them how they thought it went.

After that I had two hours to study before an “international lecture”. Mr. Kimura translated the title of the speech as “A Discussion of International Intercourse” which had me giggling. Despite the name, it was a fairly serious talk. The speaker was a college professor here in Japan – she is originally from Poland, and she was talking about her impressions of Japan as a Polish person.

I saw her in the hallway before her speech, and as she walked by I gave her a cheerful “Good Morning!” in Japanese, but she just ignored me and kept walking. That didn’t impress me too much, but her speech was pretty good. She has lived in Japan for 19 years, so her Japanese was really good. Strangely I was able to understand around 80% of what she said, compared to native speakers where I’m about 50-60%.

She talked about fitting in in Japan, and how everyone sees her and expects that she speaks English (she doesn’t). Even though she speaks Japanese people are hoping that they can practice English with her. She sounded a little frustrated, but she’s been here for 19 years so she must be getting something out of it.

It was freaking hot in the gymnasium, and the students weren’t allowed to bring fans in. I didn’t get that memo, so I walked around fanning myself until a teacher told me that it was a fan-free speech. I put it away and sweated big time for the next hour. But we all sweated together, and that’s the most important thing.

The biggest problem I had with the speech was that there was nothing for the students to relate to. Why do they care what a Polish person thinks of Japan? If she’s trying to allude to cultural differences maybe it would be good to give some examples from their perspective. I’ve never seen so many sleeping students. The teachers tried to walk around and wake up students, but they could only get the students around the edges. Like penguins in a storm the ones in the middle slept comfortably.

After school I came home, cooked up a quick omelete to kill off some bacon and onions that I had laying around, and then did some laundry. Not exactly an exciting Friday evening, but it was a lot cheaper than last night. Antoine and I are still reeling over that sushi bill.

Later in the evening my stomach was craving just a bit more, and the master had called earlier to invite Kuniko and I to a house party next Tuesday. I decided I would deliver my RSVP in person and get a stick or two of meat and a beer.

The yakitori was packed – every seat was full but one, and so I snuck in there and grabbed the seat. The master had three part time helpers working with him behind the counter, which is pretty amazing to see – the place is tiny and I can’t believe they were able to move around back there.

Even though it was a packed house one of the part timers that I know came over and took my order right away, and my food arrived within a few minutes, leapfrogging the big backlog of orders that the master was working on. Sometimes it pays to be a regular.

One of the girls at the end of the bar started giving me meaningful looks, with her boyfriend sitting right next to her. He looked at me a couple of times too, but I couldn’t read his expression. There was something weird going on, and I don’t think he was happy about it. I decided to wrap it up after one beer and get out of there. I settled up the bill and told the master that I’d be there next Tuesday with Kuniko, and he looked really happy about it. I think he was also happy to have so many customers, even though he was working really hard.

This week is a three day weekend for me – Monday is Marine Day. I don’t think it has anything to do with the branch of the American military, but the U.S. wrote the Japanese constitution so maybe it is. I’m going to try to sneak off to see some art exhibits in Osaka this weekend, but other than that it’s a quiet weekend. The new Harry Potter book comes out tomorrow morning, so I might run over to the bookstore at Ito Yokado and pick it up.

Today we had the second half of sports day – so this time I was determined to dress a little more relaxed. Yesterday all the other teachers were wearing shorts, sweats, and they looked pretty casual. Today, I wore shorts and a T-shirt, and everyone was commenting on it. “Wow, you look pretty casual!”, or “Is that ‘summer style’ you are wearing?” they asked.

I claimed that it was “Cool Biz”, taken a step further, and they seemed to think I was a little crazy. That’s OK, though.

I played volleyball in between official matches to help warm up the teams, and by the end of the day I was seriously sweaty. I spent the rest of the day in the staffroom enjoying the air conditioning. In the afternoon I went over to Tsuji-san’s place and chatted with her for more than an hour, and then left school around 4:30.

Luckily, Antoine gave me a call – he was finishing up a conference in Sannomiya and wanted to meet up in Akashi and hang out for a bit. It worked out great, actually. I went into Akashi and met up with him. We started by going out for okonomiyaki, then we went to Donkey to play some darts and drink some beer, and then finally we went to the underground sushi restaurant.

It was a lot of fun. The only disappointment was the sushi restaurant. The sushi master showed us a piece of paper at the end of the night with the price of 9600 yen – almost $100! We were really surprised – we hadn’t eaten that much, and we barely had enough money to cover it. We’re thinking he made a mistake, but I’ve had so many cheap/free meals there, that I’m not going to complain.

While I was waiting for the train home one of my former students walked by. She is actually one of the students that was waiting to ask me out once she graduated. The good thing was that she saw me with Kuniko a while back, and so that relieved a lot of pressure.

We sat together on the train and talked all about her college life. It sounded like she was really enjoying it. She is still studying English, but is having a hard time finding somebody to study with. She said that Mr. Hayashi told her not to come back and study with him, so she was a little worried. I gave her my card and said that if she needed help she should give me a call. She seemed really happy, and maybe it’ll be a way for me to make some money on the side.

Now I’m back home and getting ready for bed. Tomorrow is Friday, and I’m looking at a three day weekend. Monday is a holiday, and after that the summer vacation starts. It’ll be study hard every day and stay out of the heat.

Today the sky cleared up enough to have a small sports day event for the students. The boys competed in kick-baseball, and the girls played volleyball. It was a good chance for me to walk around and chat with students. The boys asked me all kinds of questions: what’s my favorite band, what movies do I like, what sports do I play. The girls, on the other hand, ask me if I have a girlfriend. They want to know details, too, but I just give them the lite version.

I had lunch in the cafeteria today with two of the part time teachers, and we had a perfectly normal conversation completely in Japanese. I was able to follow most of it, even if I didn’t understand everything they were saying. I asked them about the girl students’ fascination with my personal life, and they said that students had asked them in their classes whether or not I have a girlfriend or not. They said I’m very popular at the school, regardless of the fact that I’m a foreigner.

I only did a little bit of studying today. Instead, I did some pleasure reading in the staffroom, and chatted with some of the teachers. I had about five hours to kill, but I did it nicely, and tomorrow I’ll be in the same situation. I’m hoping to do a bit more studying tomorrow. I want to take advantage of all this free time – things are going to get busy again after the summer break.

Tonight for dinner I made zaruudon, cold udon noodles dipped into a broth with onions and wasabi. It turned out great, and combined with my leftover takoyaki it made for a filling and pretty healthy dinner. Not much else to report this evening – I’m off to bed.

I had a strange day today – nothing particular happened – in fact, I had no classes today. We were supposed to do a sports day, but because it was raining it got cancelled, so we had classes as usual. Tomorrow if it doesn’t rain we will try to do a sports day, but if it does rain I’ll finally have one or two classes to teach.

Today was strange because due to a problem with my PDA I couldn’t study vocabulary, so I just spent the day reading passages in Japanese and translating from a Japanese textbook. It was hard work, and I took frequent breaks to walk around the school and see what was going on elsewhere. It was like my brain was burned out on studying, and trying to get me to do other things. I think I’m going to take the hint, and tomorrow I’ll probably just study a little bit.

I talked with the principal today, and we sorted out what they want me to do. I told him that I have an evening appointment right in the middle of the days they want me to work, and hopefully that will keep me out of any overnight trips. I don’t mind helping out, but I do mind camping out.

Lastly I had a meeting with the other English teachers, and we talked about the students that were failing, and we talked about what we should do. Mr. Yamamoto was running the meeting, and as usual he asked me to give my opinion of each class as we went through. It’s nice to be able to participate in these meetings, even though it’s not happening in English. Of course I give my comments in English, and I think that makes everyone happy.

Tonight for dinner I made a hot ham and cheese sandwich, and I had a side of chirashizushi. For dessert I bought a peach from Ito Yokado – there are a lot of peaches in the store right now, but they are all expensive. I thought it’d be a shame to let the season go by without even trying one, but I was so full from dinner that I’m going to save it for breakfast tomorrow.

It’s really feeling like summer now that the cicadas have started making their distinctive noise. In Japanese commercials on TV when they want to give the impression that it’s a hot summer day they play the sound effects from the cicadas, and it’s amazing how fast you think of summer – it’s an audio lightswitch. I still remember stepping off the bus into Yashiro to meet Mr. Hayashi and Andy for the first time, and the cicadas were making that noise. I turned to Antoine and said “What the hell is that?” and we both knew we weren’t in California anymore.

No classes today! We’re in the weird period where there are some classes, just four a day, but they don’t really count. I spent most of the day studying, memorizing words like “民間伝承” (folklore), and “人質” (hostage). My tests are all graded and everything is done for me for last term.

Mr. Komori dropped by today, like us he had only morning classes, so he was free in the afternoon. I chatted with him a little while, and he looked like he was enjoying life. Kuniko sent me a message in the early afternoon and she got to leave home early, too. I figured I’d study until around 3:30, and then sneak out myself.

I did a little shopping for this week at Ito Yokado – I bought some bacon, some cheese, some octopus, and some shaved ice for dessert. For dinner tonight I made some traditional octopus balls (takoyaki), and then some non-traditional ones with cheese and bacon instead of octopus. They both turned out OK, although I’m a little out of practice flipping them on the special stove that Kuniko gave me. I ended up putting lots of hot sauce all over the cheese and bacon ones – yum.

While I was cooking dinner my cell phone rang, and it was the principal of my school. It was a strange conversation because my principal can’t speak any English at all, and so he pushes forward in Japanese, and he talks fast. At first I thought he was asking where I disappeared to this afternoon, but it turns out that the board of education was looking for me to find out if I can work sometime in August. This is the phone call that I’ve secretly been dreading – the request to work at Yashiro.

When I first arrived here two years ago we had to attend a mandatory three day session at Yashiro, and it was a boring orientation punctuated with drunken partying, and sleeping in dorm rooms with six other people, no private baths, and bad cafeteria food. At the time I remembered thinking, at least I don’t have to work this thing and clean up the puke afterwards. Guess what…

I told the principal that I’d call them tomorrow and let them know if I’m free. The principal seemed happy enough with that, but I wonder if he spent the hour from four to five p.m. today walking around the halls looking for me. No problem – I’m not worried. Really… I’m not. Well, maybe a little.

Saturday morning I was up at 7:30 in order to report for my community clean up duties around the apartment buildings where I live. A couple of weeks ago I got a little note in English that explained the system to me. I’m guessing that Jane upstairs also got the same note, since she has missed the clean up lots of times.

I really don’t mind doing the cleanup, it’s just that the schedule is erratic, and I’m never quite sure when it is. The last time it was on Sunday, but every time before that it was on Saturday. Maybe it is influenced by the weather.

Anyway, I was outside raking away at the leaves with Jane, and we got a good chance to catch up. She’s really enjoying her life in Japan, and she seems a little more relaxed lately. At first when she arrived she was a bundle of nerves, and I think it took a while for her to settle into a routine that she is comfortable with.

She mentioned that she knew a local elementary school that might be in the market for a foreign English teacher, so I might get in touch with them. It’s a year before I need a job, but maybe it would be worth talking a little with them. Teaching English to elementary students is a much different ballgame than teaching to junior high or high school students. Is it something I’d be interested in? The focus at that age is more on singing, games, and physical activities. People I know that do it full time come home exhausted. Still, I love kids and it might be fun to try a few times and see how it goes.

In the evening Kuniko came over and together we went over to a karoke place across from Carrefour for a post-wedding party for a friend of mine who is a regular over at the yakitori. He’s one of the first guys I met at the yakitori, and he invited Kuniko and me to join in the fun.

Kuniko and I each contributed 15,000 yen (about $150) and wrapped them in a symbolic envelope with our names on them. Then we went into the party and met with the organizers (more regulars from the yakitori). We paid 5000 yen each ($50) for all you can drink and all you can eat (and all you can sing, for that matter). Kuniko drove so she just had a couple of glasses of orange juice. I had four or five cups of beer, and they kept the beer flowing pretty good. The food was a little scarce, actually, and I was pretty hungry. For my 5000 yen I don’t think I got my money’s worth, but at least the party was good.

There were lots of people I didn’t know, but some people sang karaoke. There were a few speeches by the bride and groom, a few kisses, and some games. They played this weird game where six people came up on stage and each one ate a creampuff. Six other people watched them eat the creampuffs. The gimmick was that one of the creampuffs had something evil inside, I don’t know what. Maybe wasabi, maybe something salty, I don’t know. Anyway, the people observing have to guess which person ate the bad creampuff. If the observers guess correctly, the creampuff eaters have to drink a shot of oolong tea mixed with Tabasco sauce. If the observers guess wrong, they have to drink the shot.

The first round, Kuniko got called up there, and she ate a normal creampuff no problem. I was up there the second round, and I had a normal creampuff myself. Delicious, but I wanted to see what was in the weird creampuff.

The final game was one where we had a relay, and you had to eat two saltine crackers, swallow them, and then the next person goes. Kuniko and I both competed in this one, and we both cheated. I saved up lots of saliva and also secretly dipped my cracker in mayonnaise. We still lost, though, and so I got to drink the Tabasco tea cocktail. It wasn’t so bad, really, but maybe that’s because I like Tabasco so much.

We had a good time at the party – the only downside was that everyone was smoking there. It seemed like everyone, anyway. The kids that were there weren’t smoking, but them and us and that was it. When we left we reeked of tobacco smoke. Yuck. On the way home from the party we stopped in at a ramen shop to get some food – I was still hungry. The noodles hit the spot.

Sunday we got up and headed to the town of Shingu, west of Himeji, to see Yuri perform in a taiko drum concert. I’ve always been a big fan of taiko drums – they are so loud and the effect of their noise shakes you from the inside. Yuri got us free tickets, so we went and sat right in the front to root her own.

She did a great job – it looked really difficult, but she seemed to do it effortlessly. The other drummers were also very talented, and I was so impressed. They played for about two hours, interspersed with a dance troupe that did a variety of international dances.

At the end of the show we got to congratulate her and she looked really happy. There was quite a big crowd there, and she must have been nervous performing for so many people.

Sunday night Kuniko and I just hung out and had a simple dinner of tantan noodles (cold spicy noodles with a meat and miso sauce). The rain is coming almost every day lately, so it’s good to stay in and stay dry. This week I’ll have to go out and face it, though. It has been a pretty wet season so far.

We finally wrapped up the exams today – just two left, and the students were free to go out and participate in their clubs, go home and relax, and get ready for the meaningless classes next week before the big summer break.

I went to school and studied hard through the morning until about lunchtime, and then packed up my gear to go. It was interesting to see that lots of teachers that were leaving early the rest of the week were sticking around today, but I followed through and walked right out of there. A couple of teachers made comments that it must be nice to be able to leave early, and I just smiled and told them just how nice it is.

Even though I have permission to go home, even though I have a special arrangement, even though I put in plenty of hours and a few half days every year doesn’t really make up for it, I still feel a pang of guilt as I leave all the other teachers behind. I know I shouldn’t, but it still creeps up on me. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in Japan for so long – maybe the overwork culture is creeping up on me. I decided today that if I’m going to show people what its like to work a reasonable schedule and still do a great job, I’m going to have to get over the guilt pangs.

This weekend is the STEP test, and for the first time ever Mr. Hayashi wasn’t asking me about whether I had gotten a phone call from STEP headquarters. Usually he’s really eager to find out if I’m going to be doing the interviews – this time he was silent about it. I never did get the call, and I think I might have been bumped off the A-list. I don’t mind – Kuniko and I are planning on seeing Yuri perform at a taiko drum concert that day, but it was kind of strange. I hope my students do well – I’ll be thinking about them on Sunday.

Back home I spent the afternoon scrubbing the bathroom. Later this month the Kageyama family is going to remodel their bathroom, so I offered the use of my bathroom for bathing purposes in the evenings, for about a week. So, I wanted to scrub that sucker clean. I won’t go into detail, but there were some things that had been in there long before I showed up – I don’t think my predecessor Andy did much in the way of cleaning.

I got a message from Carrie this afternoon – she invited me and Kuniko to go drinking at the rooftop beer garden in Akashi if we were free, but I’m a little light on cash lately, especially with the post-wedding party we’re attending tomorrow night. Instead I spent tonight working on my Japanese, listening to loud music (Unida). I had zarusoba for dinner – delicious.

I’m back from an evening in Kobe trying on clothes for the wedding. We went over to the wedding place and had lots of talks and discussions about the various decisions we’ll be making in the near future, and we also got to let loose in the dressing room and try on different clothes.

Kuniko of course looked just beautiful in the dresses she wore, and picked out a couple to wear. I tried on a couple of suits, and I think I found one that I like. Choosing between gold and pink is tough, and the blue ones were really nice. I’m not entirely sure, so next time they are going to help me decide.

We spent about two hours playing around in there, and then we went into Sannomiya to have some ramen at a restaurant that Kuniko wanted to introduce me to. It was really good – the ramen I had was in a shrimp/salt broth, and it had a couple of shrimp wontons floating in there. Yum!

After dinner we shopped around a little to burn some calories, and then we had a couple of parfaits for dessert. It was the first time for me to have a parfait in Japan. The stores that sell them have these giant plastic replicas in the window, and you can choose the one you want – the have lots of flavors. I settled on a chocolate one, and Kuniko had a tiramisu flavored one. They were really good – like a milkshake on steroids.

Tomorrow is the last day of an easy week for me, and I don’t have much planned actually. I’m looking forward to relaxing a little bit and studying hard.

Today I woke up with a slight hangover and I remembered that I have a special lesson this morning at a junior high school to try to get students to come to our school next year.

I got over the hangover quick enough, went into school, and before long I was speeding down the road with Mori sensei. She was running a little late, so we got there with just enough time to have a short chat with the receptionist, and before we knew it, we were standing in front of a class of students.

The students gave us a premeditated round of applause, and they even had made their own name cards, so it was very easy to call on the students.

I had never taught with Mori sensei before – she had always struck me as the type to over-prepare and then get caught up in the details. I think today that happened, and so the lesson (at least to me) didn’t go that smoothly. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a success, but it didn’t live up to what it could have been.

Mori sensei had lots of teaching materials – probably too many, and so she spent lots of time leafing through them looking for the right one. She spent a lot of time trying to convince the students to come to our school by showing off the things that they don’t have at their junior high school (like a cafeteria, a table tennis room, etc). The students didn’t react to these things at all, really. They just waited for the next English question to come. That wasn’t the only problem, though.

This is going to sound egotistical, but the class didn’t focus on me. What I mean is, any Japanese teacher can go in there and teach the students, but it’s a rare opportunity for them to interact with a native speaker of English. Although the lesson plan called for me speaking with the students in several parts of the lesson, we tended to skip over those. Instead, Mori sensei used her English to instruct the students on what to do. Unfortunately, sometimes even I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say to them.

Another example was pronunciation – she would introduce a new word, and then I would say it, and the students would repeat after me. After a couple of times, Mori sensei decided to cut the middle man (me) out, and so she had the students repeating after her. That’s probably a bad idea, because her accent isn’t very natural sounding.

You might think that I thought the class went horribly from what I’ve said so far, but there were some good points. The students reacted well to the questions that I posed to them, and I was impressed with their confidence. They were generally pretty quiet, but occasionally they would laugh at something or talk about an answer among themselves. They weren’t as relaxed as my classes are, but my classes have students that know me and each other quite well by now.

After class as we walked back to the principal’s office for the traditional chat over coffee I got a chance to say hello to a lot of students in the hallways, and that was fun. They reacted really well, and their greetings in English sounded very natural.

The principal had us in his clutches for almost an hour talking about all kinds of things, from ESL teaching in America, to the jungles of Africa – he seemed like a lonely guy. He said that he’d like us to come again soon, and seemed very positive about the class.

On the drive back I gave Mori sensei my honest opinions about the lesson, and she took them to heart. She was excited about the chance to go back and teach another lesson, and I mentioned that of course he would be willing to have us back – we are teaching his students for free. His teachers are getting some time off, and our school is paying the bill. She thought that it was funny – I guess she hadn’t thought about it in that way before.

I did a little paperwork when I got back to school, and then took off around noon. I took the local train home from Takasago, and when I got off a pretty blond foreigner that I ran into a while back came walking down the steps of the station with me. I said hello in English, and she answered in Japanese, and so we talked in Japanese. She is from Russia, and is working for about 8 months in Japan in Kobe. I guess she lives around here somewhere.

We talked about life in Japan and she was really interested to hear about America and California. When we got to the bike rack where her bike was she rustled through her bag and came up with a menu of a restaurant where she works. It’s a “European” food restaurant, kind of a mix of many different styles. She invited me to come there sometime, and said she wants to chat with me more. She seemed nice enough, but it’s weird to speak Japanese with another foreigner – and it’s weird to see a foreigner in Japan who is not teaching English in some way.

Now I’m back at home and getting ready to go into Kobe and meet up with Kuniko to try on some wedding garb. I’ll write more later!