Kuniko and I slept big time Saturday morning. Late last night we had decided to just stay in and rest up this Saturday instead of going out hiking, sightseeing, movie-watching, or any of the other fairly active things that we usually do on the weekends.

We slept until nearly noon, and then wandered over to Ito Yokado to pick up a few things for dinner, and a movie to watch on Kuniko’s DVD player. DVDs in Japan are really expensive – some are as much as 5000 yen ($50), but recently they’ve been selling some pretty good titles for as low as 1000 yen. I picked up “There’s Something About Mary”, and so we watched that with dinner.

Speaking of dinner, Kuniko made up a great meal of Nikujaga (meat and potatoes), miso soup and rice, and we had a serious feast while watching the flick. Comedy is always a little tricky to translate, but I think for the most part Kuniko got the jokes. Some were good, some were bad, and some were really bad.

Late that evening I walked her to the taxi stand and she got a ride home. She had to leave early the next day to escort some of her students to a concert in Osaka. Kuniko is in charge of the mandolin club at her school, so four of the club members were going to perform at the concert. Later Kuniko told me that they had won an award, so they must have done well.

I spent Sunday talking with my grandparents on the phone, doing laundry and cleaning, a little bit of gardening, some shopping for lunches this week, and studying Japanese baseball terms.

It looks like next weekend I’m going to get a chance to see another baseball game, this time with Yasu. He got a pair of tickets for the Tigers, so we’re going to go catch a day game. I’m brushing up on my baseball vocabulary in anticipation.

I was watching some baseball on TV while I was studying today and the doorbell rang. I answered it, and it was the dreaded NHK man.

NHK is the Japanese broadcasting corporation. They send these guys around to houses all over Japan, and try to charge you for watching TV. Really! Before I didn’t have a TV, so I could just tell them “sorry!”, but today when I opened the door the sound of the baseball game in the background was pretty clear, and I knew that today I would have to pay.

I understand that most people get out of paying by making up some kind of excuse, or just outright lying. As Kuniko pointed out, I could have just pretended not to understand what he was saying, but I just paid up. The guy was almost surprised that I paid him, but I got a very official-looking receipt, so it must be legit, right? It cost about 2700 yen for two months (ouch!). What a weird system, though.

I wrapped up this weekend with a phone call from Kuniko – she was back from her concert and tired out from the trip. She’s got another busy week ahead of her – I’m just going to be doing a regular week, though.

Friday night after school I went over to Akashi to meet up with Komori sensei and drink some Guinness with him. We met up at Donkey, and caught up on what’s been going on at each other’s schools.

Mr. Komori is a tennis nut – he loves to play tennis. Unfortunately the other day he had his first tennis injury, tennis elbow. He got it just from reaching down and grabbing a ball, but we thinks that maybe he’s been playing too much lately.

On the good side, he bought another house that he has remodeled into an art studio for his wife. He invited Kuniko and I to come over sometime and make soba noodles with him at the new place. He’s also looking forward to showing my family how to make noodles when they come over in November – he seems just as excited as I am about the upcoming marriage.

After Donkey, we went over to the okonomiyaki restaurant – it was the same one that we visited with Nel and Kiyomi last weekend, and this time I knew exactly what to order. We each had a tonpeiyaki, and then we had a negisugiyaki – a big onion and meat okonomiyaki that was delicious.

Despite my protests, Mr. Komori paid for both meals, claiming that he makes lots of money and I should save my money for my new life. What a nice guy! He got on his bike and left, and I after sending a message to Kuniko I found out that she was just wrapping up her school party. A few minutes later she walked through the gate and we took the Sanyo line back to my place. It was great to see her – even though it’s only been a week my heart still kind of jumps inside my chest when I see her walking towards me. Yowza….

Only two classes today, but the bad news was that I had to teach them without assistance. In one way it’s a good experience – I can try to handle the flow of a class without outside help. For the most part I do that for my first year classes anyway, but this was like working without a safety net.

My first class was really surprised when I told them I was the only teacher today. I’ve got a couple of really noisy students in that class, but I worked early on to make friends with them. That really pays off in situations like this – I can use them to help me keep the class under control. Surprisingly, this class ran better than some of my classes with another teacher in them – I explained everything carefully in English, I translated some details occasionally, but I’d say that it stayed about 80% English.

At the end of the class everyone was happy and smiling, and it was the most satisfying class that I’ve ever taught at my school. Some of the girls from the class stayed around afterwards to ask me some details about my girlfriend. They are really intrigued by the idea of me having a Japanese girlfriend, and they want to know her name, where we met, what we do on the weekends, everything. I chatted with them a little bit until they were satisfied, and then I went back to the staffroom for lunch.

Today was Matsumoto sensei’s birthday. He’s a new computer teacher that sits two desks away from me. He’s a really nice guy – very friendly, and as a younger teacher we always get along really well. He turned 31 years old today, and I only found out about it because the other teachers had bought a big box of cream puffs to pass out to everyone to celebrate. He explained to me that it was for his birthday.

I asked if maybe we should do the birthday song, and two other teachers overheard me and before you know it all three of us broke into ‘Happy Birthday’. I realized halfway through the song that I was the only one singing it in English. Half the staffroom turned to see what the hell was going on, Matsumoto sensei turned bright red, and I cranked up the volume to cover for the fact that there were only three people singing. It turned out nicely, though. Everyone was suitably excited and embarrassed, and I earned my cream puff.

After lunch I had my second solo class. This one was a little louder than the last, but the students stayed under control for the most part. Two boys started playfully hitting each other over the head with their cardboard namecards, and I had to take them away for the rest of the class. After class they came to get them and they both apologized without me prompting them – that was a surprise.

After school we did our ESS meeting, and I helped fix some of the wacky English that my students were writing. I didn’t fix it all, just enough to make sense. Translation isn’t easy, but my students did pretty well. Three or four of my second year students were asking me all about a CD that I had played on Wednesday for Maeda sensei’s class.

We did a music lesson on Wednesday, and so I played a new song by Coldplay that I had downloaded off the internet. Not only did I not pay for the song, they haven’t released the album yet. Today I tried to explain to the students that I couldn’t give them the CD quite yet, but soon the official CD will come out in Japan. The reaction to the song was really good in the classroom, but these kids were going nuts afterwards. They wanted to listen to the song again and again, and it was really cool to see them get excited about something like that.

I spent about an hour with Tsuji-san after school speaking in English and Japanese. She looked tired, really tired. I think her new job is wearing her out. We are trying to set up a time for her and her boyfriend to meet Kuniko and me for dinner. Not sure when it’ll happen, but she sounded excited about the chance to meet up.

Tomorrow is Friday, and I’m going to meet up with Komori sensei over at Donkey for a couple of Guinness. I’m also hoping to meet up with Kuniko sometime tomorrow evening. She’s got a busy weekend coming up, so it might be the only chance to see her for a while.

I had a strange feeling of doom as I went to school today. I was not absolutely satisfied with my lessons – I’d been planning them the last couple of days, but for some reason I felt like I needed something extra, there was something missing, or that the whole thing was going to be a complete failure.

I’m happy to report that it was nothing of the sort.

My morning class with Matsubara sensei was good. The students responded well to the lesson despite looking tired and being really quiet. I’ve been doing this thing where I pick out somebody from the crowd that looks bored and keep eye contact with them as I teach for a few seconds. It tends to snap them out of whatever dreamworld they are in and gets them to pay attention (for a while). In this class I did a version of the game “password”, and it went pretty well. The students did better than I thought – it was a tough job to find words that were easy enough for everyone to know but tough to describe (without using Japanese).

Mr. Hayashi’s class was easy – just doing mock interviews with the students. They didn’t do very well, and I think Mr. Hayashi is having me do interviews at the 2nd grade level, but 95% of our students aren’t at that level. I’m not sure why he’s doing this, but I fear it might be a waste of their time. They tend to get frustrated with the process, and that won’t help build confidence for the future. After the class ended, Mr. Hayashi said that he had a judo tournament to attend the next day, so I’m going to have to teach two classes solo. It normally doesn’t bother me that much when this happens, but the lesson is designed for two teachers, and the first year students will need some explanations in Japanese. I hate to show them that I know Japanese – they will try to use it as a crutch the rest of the year. Anyway, the class should be fun.

I walked into the next class with Maeda sensei, and when the students saw me, they broke into what can only be described as thunderous applause. Some stood and cheered, others chanted my name, and it took almost five minutes to get them settled down and ready to learn. I’d like to say that it was because I’m such a great teacher, but it probably has more to do with the fact that Maeda sensei wasn’t going to be lecturing that class. I appreciate the popularity, but you can’t let it go to your head. I’ve got the reputation of having “fun” classes, which are perceived as “easy”. I’m hoping that the learning part is sneaking up on them from behind, but who knows?

My last class was with Oshita sensei, and about five or six students were falling asleep during our lesson. I don’t mind when that happens – it doesn’t usually happen to me because my classes are more active, but these guys were really tired. Later Oshita sensei showed me their schedule, and they have a long day on Wednesday. They come in an hour early, and they stay an hour later. They have P.E. in the morning, so by the time I get them they are worn out and ready for bed.

After school I came back on the train with Ibayashi sensei. He’s an interesting guy. He’s widely considered (at least, from what I hear) to be a rude teacher to older teachers at our school. He’s young and he doesn’t pay the proper respect. That’s a point for him in my book, but I guess it doesn’t help him with his co-workers. He slams the door, he smokes, he plays pachinko, and he does a lot of distasteful stuff that normally would make me stay away from him. He lives in my apartment complex with his family, and he saw Kuniko and I walking around together a long time ago, but he kept our secret to himself. He has always treated me with respect, and to the limits of my Japanese we have good conversations.

Today we rode the train back to Nishi Futami, and he was talking, talking, talking, and I did my best to understand exactly what was going on. I caught around 60% of what was said, which is pretty good for me. I was telling him how nice everyone at the apartment complex is to me, and he told me a funny story.

When I get home, there is usually a crowd of tenants from our apartment complex out front. It’s all the stay at home moms, probably 10-15 of them, letting the kids play and chatting. Apparently soon after I moved in way back in 2003, I had been talking to one of the mothers, exchanging hello’s, and then I said “See you later!” in English and left.

This caused a bit of a stir. I guess the woman wondered what that meant, so she looked it up word by word in a dictionary, and thought that it meant that I was planning on visiting her later that day. I’m not sure on the details, because I’m hearing this story second hand in another language, but her husband was wondering why I was planning to visit his wife, and they consulted Ibayashi sensei who at least worked with me and might possibly have some insight into this foreigner who was chasing around somebody’s wife.

They all looked through the dictionary, and apparently figured out that it was just a standard saying, and so there was much relief all around, and I probably narrowly avoided getting my ass kicked by some angry husband.

Of course I was totally oblivious to the whole thing and stories like this make you wonder what other misunderstandings are happening all around you day to day.

This evening is a quiet one listening to music and relaxing. Wednesday is my big day, so from now on it’s a slow mellow ride into the weekend. Looking forward to it!

Today my medical exam went off without a hitch. Since I’m under 40 years old I get to skip the blood check, and the tasty barium milkshake. Other teachers came in looking like they just had to swallow something awful. Like barium.

I think the results were normal – nobody freaked out when they saw my numbers. The blood pressure came in just fine 112/68, which I guess is OK. The other teachers were sweating bullets about their blood pressure, especially the ones that smoke. Sorry guys!

For lunch I had a great Chinese food meal prepared by some third year students. They dropped it off at my desk complete with a silver platter and the other teachers got jealous right away. The food was great – they did a good job and I’m not just saying that. I brought the dishes back to the kitchen and wrote up a little review for them to check out (in English). It was nice of them to think of me.

During my afternoon class they came in and took some pictures of me in action. I saw some of the results later on, and there were a couple where I looked like I was shaking my fist violently at my students. I’ll have to pay attention next time and see if that’s a compulsive thing or not. My blood pressure is low, so it must not be that I’m stressed, right? Right?

A couple of times today I had the chance to speak some Japanese with teachers and students, and people again mentioned that my Japanese is coming along. That gave me a lot of encouragement, and got me thinking about language learning in Japan.

People are really patient with my Japanese. It’s universal – I’ve never had someone get frustrated with the fact that I couldn’t communicate clearly with them. They are always polite, they look for other ways to say something, they find ways around the language gap. More and more I’m able to contrast this with the way that foreign languages are handled in America.

Say somebody comes into your workplace and fumbles with words, stuttering in broken English, and having to explain himself with gestures or by consulting a dictionary. I think people in America would do their best to understand, but also get frustrated. I know when I was living in America I would always say “This guy lives in America, why can’t he speak English?” Now I’m in the opposite situation.

Language-wise Japan is an isolated nation. There is no other nation on earth where you can go and speak Japanese to anyone you like and be able to communicate. The onus is on the Japanese to learn another language to communicate with the people of the world. Now compare this with English. If you speak English you can travel to countries all over the world, and travel easily. English is widely recognized all over the world, in brochures, books, and the internet. There is little to no burden whatsoever on native English speakers.

Maybe that helps create a “learn English or get out of here” attitude – one that I had before I came to Japan. It’s nice to see people around here being patient with me, because they recognize how tough it is to learn a foreign language.

Anyhow, I’ve got to say that working on learning Japanese has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life, and I can tell it will be something that holds my interest for a long time to come. There’s this feeling you get when you are speaking or reading Japanese, and I’ve never lost it since I’ve been studying – it’s like a voice inside your head is saying “Holy shit! I’m speaking Japanese!”

Monday morning brought three fresh faces to the morning meeting at our school. We’ve got three student teachers this year, and they all look particulary young and impressionable. Their bows are low, the look around them wildly for fear of getting in someone’s way, and they’ve got a long way to go before they become like the grizzled veterans of the Takasago Minami High School.

Mr. Hayashi told me not to come to his Monday classes, and told me that maybe we’ll wait until after the exam. We just wrapped up our mid-terms, so I’m not sure what exam he might be talking about. I didn’t sweat it much, though – no problem. I’ll just study instead.

Mori sensei came by and asked to talk to me in private about something “very personal”. With great anticipation I walked with her to the quiet side of the teacher’s office. She told me that she had applied and was accepted to a research group that will be going to New York and Washington DC this summer to study some part of the American educational system. There are teachers from all subjects going, and four of the teachers will be responsible for translating everything, and smoothing everything over for the research group. She will be one of the teachers, and there is a big grant of cash in it for her, as well as a free trip to America. She said that the position was highly sought-after, so she was really happy to get it.

I was also pretty surprised. If I was doing educational research and needed somebody to translate for me, I don’t think Mori sensei would be the first name that jumped into my head. She hasn’t really spoken to me much at all in the year that she’s been here, and she is too shy to speak English in front of the other teachers. She has waged a war against Mr. Hayashi over curriculum issues, teaching strategies, and general work ethics.

Anyway, she wanted to know if I could spare some time to chat with her once a week to try to get her English conversation up to speed. I told her that it would be my pleasure, and so we’ll be working on Friday afternoons trying to get her ready for translation duties this summer. It’ll be tough, but we’ll try it out.

Let’s see… what else? Tomorrow I get a free lunch, prepared by some of the students in the cooking class. They are cooking up a big meal and then they get to choose a victim/recipient to taste the food and evaluate it. I guess some of the wiseguys in the third year figured I would be a good guinea pig. They came by and invited me to eat tomorrow. I don’t know yet what it’ll be, but I’m looking forward to it.

Tomorrow is also the medical check, and they want to take some pictures of me teaching my afternoon class. They are using the pictures for a brochure or something. Luckily I have some warning and I can wear some decent clothes.

I cooked up some chige (Korean soup) for dinner tonight, using some of the leftover gyoza from the night before and it came out pretty well. Not so spicy, I’ll have to heat up more next time.

I had a really nice couple of days. Kuniko came over on Saturday, bringing lots of omiyage from her trip to Okinawa. There was delicious candies, Okinawa beer, even Aomori (the Okinawa version of tequila). Together we went into Kobe to drop by her school and pick up some exams that she needed to mark during the weekend.

It was my first time going to her school – it’s on the top of a mountain on the north side of Kobe, and it was an uphill walk to get there. Once we arrived we snuck up a side road to get there to keep out of the eyesight of any of her students that might be walking around. We made it there successfully, and then I waited out on a bench while she went into the staffroom to get her paperwork.

While I was waiting a couple of students walked by, and the groundskeeper came by to ask me some questions and figure out if I was just hanging around the check out the girls or if I had a real reason to be there. He seemed satisfied with my response, and a few minutes later Kuniko came out and we hit the road.

After running a few errands in Sannomiya we went back to Akashi, and met up with Nel and Kiyomi there. Nel is a really laid back guy who is fun to hang out with. I felt guilty not talking with him for so long, but we got right back in the swing of things. We went out for okonomiyaki at the restaurant right across from the Akashi Castle hotel – the hotel where my friends and family will likely be staying for the wedding.

Nel and Kiyomi handn’t heard about our engagement, so they were really happy and we chatted for a long time. They are in much the same situation that we’ll be in – Japanese wife, foreign guy, and since they had already gotten married Nel had some good advice for me. He’s also got some interesting ideas about working after JET, so I’m definitely going to pick his brain about that.

After okonomiyaki we went on to Donkey and had some beers and drunkenly threw some darts around. That was a great chance for Kuniko and Kiyomi to talk girl to girl while Nel and I threw darts and drank beer.

After a fun time there we headed out to the train station, and we went our separate ways. Kuniko and I came back to my place and hit the hay – all this hiking around has a way of tiring you out.

Sunday we went out for a McDonald’s breakfast. I hadn’t had one in so long that it sounded really good when Kuniko mentioned it. It turned out pretty good – the hot cakes tasted great, the Egg McMuffin was excellent. From there we went to the movie theater to catch an early show of “Million Dollar Baby”, which just arrived here in Japan. It was really good – Kuniko and I were both pretty quiet after the movie absorbing it all.

We spent the afternoon grading papers, studying, and relaxing. Kuniko worked hard and graded all her papers, so afterwards we went to Ito Yokado and bought some groceries for dinner. I made steamed gyoza (pot stickers), we had a pre-made salad on the side, and some rice. There were four different sauces to choose from, a chili garlic, a Thai hot sauce, regular old gyoza sauce, and jalapeno mustard. We ate dinner with a couple of Okinawa beers, marked ratherly strangely as “Hard” and “Soft” beers. Yum!

Another great weekend in the books. This week should be pretty straight-forward. I have a health examination at school, so I’ll be at home Monday practicing peeing in a cup in anticipation of the big event.

As I am writing this post I’ve got a small cup of chocolate chip cookie ice cream in front of me, I’m listening to the White Stripes’ new album, and I’m buzzing just a little bit from all the beers I just drank.

My day at school went just fine. I had three classes – one class was full of mock interviews to prep for the STEP proficiency test. Some of the students did well, others, not so well. It was a good reality check for them, though, and I think they will study hard to get ready for it. If they had trouble I would explain what I was looking for in Japanese, something I don’t usually do. After the interviews one of the students complimented me on my Japanese, saying that it had improved a lot. That was nice for me to hear.

I had lots of fun with my first year classes today. The students are really into the classes, and so I had lots of great conversations. They turned in their first homework today, and it was fun to read those. They are supposed to introduce themselves to me, and use at least 100 words of English. My favorite quote – one of my students wrote: “I am a fervid hater of tomatoes.” Oh yeah.

After school I came back home, did a quick cleanup, and then went out to eat some sushi at the local restaurant. Every time I go to this sushi place people have ended up picking up my bill, so I really want to go there and see how expensive this place is. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the cards tonight – it was closed for the evening.

Instead I kept going along the road and went to a yakitori that is next to the greasy ramen place. I’ve never been there, even though it’s very close to my place. My allegiance is to my regular yakitori (Denya), but I figured that I should at least try the other place. I ducked in there, hoping that none of the regulars from Denya were driving by just then.

Inside I sat at the bar – it was a fairly spacious place, and there were lots of other people in there. I ordered up a variety of food and a beer, and sat watching the TV and taking in the scenery. There was a couple of people to my right who were curious about me, but they were too shy to talk. The waiter took my order, and I could tell that he was impressed that I could read the menu. That made me feel good, even though my ordering in Japanese wasn’t so smooth.

At one point there was a big group of people coming in, so we had to sit close to each other at the bar, and that was the opening that the couple was looking for. They sat right next to me, and offered me some scotch. I was drinking beer so I declined, but they ordered some more beer for me, and then we started chatting.

It was a weird thing – they were really excited to be talking with a foreigner, but since they didn’t know English we talked entirely in Japanese. It was fun to chat with them – they were really nice folks. I exchanged business cards with the husband, and as I look at the card now I can’t tell exactly what he does. He works in Takasago, where I work, so that was a good conversation starter.

They ordered some food for me to try out, and we sat and talked about all kinds of things while the food was being prepared. I ate big once it came, with lots of thank-you’s, and after another hour or so, they said they had to leave. They were really happy to talk with me, and they invited me and Kuniko to come visit them sometime. The wife said to me that her husband loves me, so I’m not sure if we’re still on a platonic relationship or not. The husband told the master of the yakitori that from that point on, everything I bought was on them. He said that I should take my time and enjoy ordering from the menu. Then, they left.

I don’t know how comfortable I would be telling a stranger to order on me for the rest of the night, but I wasn’t about to take advantage of the guy. I cashed out soon after they left. My bill was only about ten bucks, a hell of a deal.

I’ve heard stories of people that come to Japan and take advantage of the curiousity and hospitality of others. It’s amazing how nice people are here – especially to foreigners. It’s financial evidence of how nice people are here – it’s a way for them to express their hospitality in a society keeps home life in the family… the houseparty hasn’t really caught on here.

As I left the restaurant there was a girl on her cellphone outside. As I walked out I nodded a goodbye to her, and she gave me a look that made me feel like the only piece of meat at a carnivore convention.

On my way home I decided to swing into 31 Flavors for a scoop of ice cream, and I could tell that I made the employee’s day a lot more interesting as I debated between flavors for a few minutes. Once I got my scoop of ice cream I walked towards the exit, and two girls dressed to kill came walking by – they said ‘hello’ in English as I walked by.

Life is very interesting in Japan, I can’t deny that. It was a fun night, but now I’m back home and looking forward to meeting up with Kuniko tomorrow. She’s back from Okinawa, and it should be fun to hear all the stories about her trip.

Because of various holidays, exams, and other delays, we’re still doing my lesson on complimenting. I’ll finish it up at the end of this week, but for now we’re still forcing our students to give us compliments. Today Tsutsumi sensei and I had one class full of compliments – she loves it when they compliment her. The students are good, too. “You look so young,” they say. “You have a wonderful smile,” they exclaim.

During the second class with Mr. Yamamoto, one girl complimented him on his eyebrows. We looked at each other and tried to figure out what the heck she meant by it, but maybe it was one of those backhanded compliments.

Both classes were full of energy, and right after that we had ESS, which is another group of students full of energy. Today we spent a lot of time on their articles for the culture festival project. I helped with some translation and editing, and the students joked around a lot. They put on a CD to listen to while they worked, and we spent the time well. They are getting close to the deadline, though, so we’ll see if they can finish the articles off on time.

I had a class with Tsuji-san after school, and we talked about her job, how her voice is disappearing from speaking so much, singing so much, and practicing English so much. We spent about an hour flipping between English and Japanese, and then I went on home.

The other day I bought a little rice ball mold – you pack it full of rice, squeeze it together, and when you are finished you have a perfectly shaped rice ball. Of course, they are triangular rice balls, called “onigiri” in Japanese. So I guess the term rice ball is a little misleading. Anyway, I packed half of it with rice, put in some filling (in this case some smoked and salted salmon, and then two drops of mayo. Then I put on a top layer of rice, and squeezed them together, and it came out perfectly. It’s a great way to get rid of leftover rice after dinner – make some onigiri and eat them for breakfast or take them for lunch the next day.

Tomorrow is Friday, and then the weekend is rolling around again. I’m hoping that Kuniko and I will be able to meet up with Nel and his with Kiyomi on Saturday night in Akashi. It’s long time no see – it’d be great if we can catch up with them.

It was a weird day back in front of the students – lots of unusual things happened, but I just rolled with it and it turned out fine.

I had four classes today, but only three of them panned out. The first was a solo class in front of some of our best second year students. They looked at me with their mouths hanging open, trying to make some kind of sense of what I was saying. I stuck to English though, and lots of gestures and sign language.

The class went really well, and I’m a big fan of these students. Most of them are getting over the shy thing, so they react well to projects and group work. Today I had them drawing which always is fun for everyone. I walked around and asked them in what things were, and they worked to try to explain their pictures in English to me. Sometimes it’s hard from them to speak in front of all their classmates, so explaining to me in front of three other people that are willing to help out is much easier.

Mr. Hayashi’s class went just fine, we started doing mock interviews for the upcoming STEP test. One girl in that class does great in English until she sits down in an interview setting – then she freezes up, stumbles, and gives up. It’s strange to see her demeanor change so quickly, but today she did it again. I’m going to try to relax her next time, and hopefully I can coach her for the official interview. I know she can do it – she has the ability – it’s just getting over the nervousness.

Oshita sensei’s class didn’t happen – due to a scheduling error I was supposed to be in two classes at the same time, so he was left with about five minutes to come up with something to do for his class last minute. I felt bad, but it was the scheduler’s fault, and I’ll do my class with him next week.

Maeda sensei’s class was all about numbers, and for my students, number in English are really tough. Million, thousand, one hundred, and all the commas and where they go – it’s tough stuff. I really drilled them on it, and we played a game at the end where students competed head to head trying to write down the number that I said out loud. It was fun, and the teams that I set up (the left side of the class versus the right) really got into it. I was surprised.

I had the afternoon free, and around 4:30 the history teacher came by and gave me a hot tip that both the principal and vice-principal were on a business trip, so he authorized my early departure. I took advantage and hit the road.

I got on the train home, sat down on the bench seats, and the girl to my right suddenly smiled at me, and it was one of my third year students. I didn’t recognize her because she had already changed out of her school uniform.

There’s a respectable distance that people keep when on the train. When the train is crowded it might be just an inch or two – when it’s really crowded you just make a show of moving away from someone, even though there’s nowhere to go. When the train is empty, like today, the farther away the better. We were sitting apart with space for about five people between us, so it made for a difficult conversation. She decided to move over closer so we could talk, and before I knew it she was right next to me. RIGHT next to me.

I looked uncomfortably around the train car for other students or teachers, but there were just people sleeping and ignoring us, and so we talked about this year compared to last, what she will do next year when she goes to college, what she’s doing on the train today, etc. She did a good job with English, but we frequently lapsed into Japanese to get a point across.

Finally at my stop we both got off, and she walked with me to Ito Yokado – she ended up doing some shopping there. I passed on through on to my place, and made up a dinner of hot dogs inspired by the Dutch hot dog place in Takasago.

Tomorrow is just two classes, but I’ll be doing ESS in the afternoon and I’ve got a Japanese lesson after school, so I’ll be fairly busy at the end of the day.

Exams are over, and for the students it’s a big sigh of relief. For the teachers, it’s back to work. Not really – most of the teachers at my school have been working hard preparing and then marking the exams, and they don’t have a light schedule like I do. Everyone is looking forward to getting back into a routine.

The history teacher was walking around today with a plastic plug in his nose, ostensibly to keep blood in, but it sure draws a lot of attention. Today he was asking me about the historical significance of Gurkhas in American education. He is a history teacher, and he is shocked that I’m not thinking about Gurkhas more often. You never know quite what to expect with the history teacher.

I sailed out the door at noon and made some ramen at home for lunch. The day was threatening rain but it never really showed up. I studied flashcards, flashcards, flashcards, and listened to some Japanese CDs full of simple sentences that I struggled to comprehend.

A highlight of my day was a text chat with Kuniko in Okinawa. She’s doing well and enjoying the trip. It’s the rainy season there, so we’re hoping she gets a little sunshine while they are there. She sent me a photo from her hotel and it has a beautiful view of the ocean – they must be right on the beach. Lucky!

In keeping with the listening comprehension theme I watched the entire Hanshin Tigers baseball game, struggling to understand the announcers. It might be useful to pick up some baseball lingo – I only know “strike out”.

Tomorrow I’ve got lots of classes, included one solo class, so I’m looking forward to that. Today the schedulers noticed that I would be going it alone, and they asked me if I was cool with that. I’m cool with it now – ask me again after the class.

Mondays are a lot nicer when you only have to go in to work for a few hours. I was up pretty early this morning, probably because of the surplus of sleep that I picked up on Sunday. I strolled to work and said to hello to all the usual people.

At work Yamada sensei was back – her husband died about a week ago, and she’s been off work the past week. She looked OK. I went over before the morning meeting and offered my condolences and talked with her a bit. I crammed the correct Japanese terms into my head and they all seemed to come out OK, so that was a relief. She is a really nice lady – in English she said “My husband dead”, and she held my hand and looked me in the eye and we both almost lost it. My Japanese wasn’t adequate to say what I wanted, all I know how to say is “do your best” which didn’t seem appropriate. She seemed to do OK the rest of the day, though, and maybe being at work will help her think of other things for a while.

The history teacher came by and told me all about how he woke up Saturday night in a pool of blood from his nose. He said that it looked like a murder scene, and he had made an appointment to see the doctor that afternoon. Unfortunately he got another bloody nose right in the middle of the morning meeting, so he got a ride to the doctor and they laser fused the blood vessels together right then and there, and now he’s going to be fine. Wow!

At around 11:30 I left school for home. All the students were leaving around the same time, going home early to study for the last day of midterms. I chatted with a few on my way back – they love speaking English. Some of them are shy, but once I break the ice, they seem to try hard to communicate.

On the way home I did some shopping at Ito Yokado for the week, and then came home and opened up the house to let the breeze through. I put on some shorts and then went out to the post office to mail some things.

I did surprisingly well communicating how I wanted to handle shipping, mainly by listening for keywords and focusing on the sentence around those. Sometimes the person I’m talking to will do a whole sentence that I completely miss, you just have to keep listening until you get something, and then go from there. I hope the packages make it OK.

I don’t get over to Higashi Futami so often nowaday, so when I was walking from the post office I was very surprised to pass a blonde Caucasian girl going the other way. She was just as shocked, and we said hello to each other. I think we were both wondering who the hell the other person was. Could it be there is a third foreigner living in my town? Wow.

The last stop in Higashi Futami was the liquor store. I cashed in a few beer coupons courtesy of Kuniko’s father, and I also got a chance to chat with the people that own the place. They are really nice people, and the son is the guy that I exchanged a bottle of sake for a bottle of wine. He’s looking forward to opening it up on his birthday – it’s coming up at the end of this month. I’m interested to hear what his opinion is.

I’d like to say that I got back home, had a wild party, and freaked out all my neighbors by throwing beer kegs out my windows onto the street below, but it was actually a quiet night of studying, listening to music, a dinner of mushrooms, beef and rice, and some Japanese TV. Those guys are really hard to understand.

Tomorrow is the last day of midterms, and therefore the last easy day for me for a while. I’ve got a full schedule on Wednesday, but my classes are all planned out and I think they’ll end up being fun. After Wednesday things should start settling back into a normal schedule.

On Monday Kuniko leaves for her school trip to Okinawa. She’ll be gone for most of the week, touring Okinawa, seeing the war memorial, eating lots of good food, and trying to keep track of squads of schoolgirls as they run riot all over the island.

She wanted to do some shopping for the trip, and so I met her in Kobe in the afternoon to look around with her. She bought a new dictionary to replace the one that died, and it sure is a nice one. It has some shortcuts that makes things quicker, but I’m sure there’s a lot more that it can do. It’s also got a secure digital card slot and a USB connection, which is pretty cool. Theoretically you could load up a document in English or Japanese in the dictionary, and then translate it piece by piece.

Kuniko bought me a present at a T-shirt store. I’m a sucker for the bad English T-shirts, and this one is great. It has a cartoon drawing of a beer – above the beer it says “GET A BEER. I think I need some cheer me up make.” Excellent!

We also got some other critical items, and then had dinner at AsianDays, a dimsum restaurant that has an all-you-can-eat special that’s a great deal. We were starving, and we ate big. I love just going crazy saying I’ll take 4 of these, and 2 of these. You can’t be shy in a place like this.

By the time I see Kuniko on the weekend she’s usually pretty tired out, and I was really hoping to get her rested up for her trip. We went home early and relaxed around the house, did a little studying, and then went to bed early.

The next day we slept late. Once you get by the guilt of staying in bed that long it’s really quite refreshing. We got almost 12 hours of sleep, and Kuniko looked like she could do more.

We did some more shopping at Carrefour, and I was shocked to find steak knives there on sale – I’ve had to find them in fancy stores because steaks are a little different here, and somewhat (if you’ll excuse the expression) rare. I had paid 450 yen for each of the four steak knives that I had found – That’s 4 bucks a knife. At Carrefour I found a set of three steak knives for 80 yen – That’s three for 80 cents. Ouch! I bought two sets just out of principle.

I also made a great discover while searching through the French wines in the wine section. They had misfiled some 2003 Hangtime Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir, and so I picked up a bottle for 20 bucks. It’s hard to find Pinot Noir here, and it’s one of my favorite varietals. I’m hoping the wine survived it’s long trip over here.

I managed to get Kuniko home for another nap, and then we went over to her folks place for dinner.

Earlier last week Kuniko’s father had sent me a present through Kuniko – some beer coupons. I’ve never seen anything like them, but you present the coupon at any store, and you can pick two free bottles of beer (633 ml each!). He gave me six coupons, so I’m stocked on beer. To pay him back I bought a six pack of beer at Carrefour – it’s a mixed six pack from all over the world – two from Italy, one from Canada, one from Spain, one from Tahiti, and the last one from England. I presented him with the cold beer and he had a couple with dinner.

We had chirashi sushi (literally “mixed up vinegar rice”) with sashimi on the side, some bean sprouts with pork, and a big slice of broiled fish that was really good. It was a very healthy dinner and it tasted great. I’m eating good over here.

Kuniko drove me home and I said goodbye from there. I hope she’s well rested for her trip and the kids don’t drive her crazy!

After just a few hours at school I was out the door and off to the Takasago train station. A ten minute train ride and then I was back home and relaxing in the afternoon. Soon it will be so hot that this option becomes less desirable, but for now the weather is perfect for an easy day at home.

I went out to Suma tonight to meet up with Antoine. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to meet up. I got there first, so I sat out on the beach next to the train station and watched the sun set over the mountains to the west. It was the first time that I’ve watched a sunset at the beach without the sun disappearing below the waterline. A south facing beach will do that, I guess. Through the magic of cellular technology I asked Antoine for a favor, and a few minutes later he came walking up with a couple of cold beers. It was a good way to relax after a long day at work (for him!), and after about half an hour we took off for the izakaya.

The izakaya that we go to in Suma is a chain, but it’s pretty good and it’s definitely in a convenient place. We loaded up on grease and beer and spent the evening talking about all kinds of things, including Antoine’s future, how things are going with his girlfriend, and the state of women’s rights in Japan.

After thoroughly exploring these and other topics, I walked him back to the station, and then I went back home via the Sanyo line. We’re hoping to meet up in the near future again, maybe this time with Nel and Struan involved – two guys who we haven’t heard from in a long time.

Today exams started for my students, which meant that I had lots of time to hit the books, without those pesky classes getting in my way. I did some memorization, grammar review, and after five hours I was spent.

Some of the teachers were doing a softball game today, but I noticed that I wasn’t the only one bowing out of the game. I snuck out right around 1 p.m., and came on home. I did chores the rest of the day, catching up on laundry. You’d think my place would stay clean for longer than a few days, but I just tend to come home and spread out, and before you know it you’ve got stuff all over the place.

My dinner was a simple curry and rice, and after dinner I walked out to Carrefour to pick up a few things for the weekend. I had a lot of fun shopping in the foreign food section there – it’s the part of Carrefour that I’ll miss the most once it pulls out of Japan.