Last night I watched the end of Survivor (finally), and now that I know who the winner is, I can go back to reading news and websites online.  Every so often I do these blackouts to avoid having the end of a show spoiled, and it is usually pretty easy to avoid the information.  Once in a while I get burned, but overall it tends to work.

So I’m looking forward to catching up with all my internet haunts today and the rest of this week.

Yesterday my first production group lesson went really well, so I felt pretty good about that and I’m looking forward to the next time I teach them.  My lesson planning focus now shifts to two long lessons at the end of this month when I will teach the new white collar employees.  Somehow I have to work in cultural diversity into the lesson, as a request from HR.  Maybe it is because there are now a few foreign-born employees now (like me).  If this trend continues this company will soon be dealing with a lot of work culture conflicts I’d guess.  Should be interesting to see.

This morning at work I’m going to teach a new group of students.  It will be a monthly class focused on the new employees training to work in the factory.  Usually my students are the white collar designers, executives, engineers and salespeople.  However, even the factory workers get exposure to English as they work with foreign inspectors, and they sometimes have to work based on English documents.  However, based on previous class experience, most of them have had only junior high school and high school English classes, and those don’t really prepare students for speaking.

Today we’ll kick off the class, and hopefully the students will warm up to it.  Only English, for 45 minutes – it can be a little overwhelming.

I’m taking a moment today to really reflect on the security that I enjoy living in Japan.  Nowhere is perfectly safe – but Japan comes as close as I’ve seen.  Now I wouldn’t leave my front door unlocked, but it seems to me that just about anything else goes around here.  In summer time some people leave their cars running in the parking lot of the supermarket to keep the interior cool while they are shopping.  Very young children walk to elementary school without assistance from adults.  It is normal to walk around with around $500 in cash or more in your wallet.  And I haven’t worried about my car stereo getting stolen.  Ever.

So I don’t want to take that for granted, and I hope it stays like this for a long time.

Last weekend, much like the rest of them, was all about food.  Friday night after work Kuniko and I met in Sannomiya and visited a Turkish restaurant that she recommended.  It was my first visit, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the staff were Turkish and the food was very, very good.  We were more than satisfied with the four dishes that we ordered, and it served as a reminder that our visit to Istanbul is just about three months away.

After dinner we stopped in at a different wine bar than we usually visit for a drink and a talk with the owner, and then we were back home to get some rest.  It may have been Friday night, but Kuniko had to get up at the regular time to go to work on Saturday.  It’s a tough schedule for her…

Saturday was raining all day, but luckily Sunday was beautiful.  We made our now-habitual walk to the beach to sit and listen to the (tiny) waves, and then on the way back we did some shopping for lunch and dinner.  I bought some tiger prawns and a filet of yellowtail, and we grilled them up on back porch in the sun while sipping sparkling wine.

We kept the grilling going in the evening, too.  I grilled some new onions that Kuniko’s dad had given us, and also some tiny little erengi mushrooms in a pack of aluminum foil with butter and tabasco.  Yum!

We’re getting started on a regular work week today – should be a pretty normal schedule, though.  Back to work!

Last night after work Ms. Fukumi called to arrange delivery of some goods that they had brought back from their trip to San Francisco.  We invited her to stay for some cocktails and dinner, and so we had a small party of three to look at the photos from their trip and talk about their adventure.  It seems like they had a great time.

The highlight of their trip was the time spent with my parents up in Glen Ellen.  They did some wine tasting, had dinner, and spent one night before heading back to the airport and home to Japan.

My mom sent along some goodies and my dad sent along some wine, so we’re all stocked up for the time being.

One of the interesting holidays in Japan is School Foundation Day.  Each school celebrates the date upon which it was founded, and that means that each school has a holiday every year where pretty much everybody else has to go to work.

Today, Kuniko can enjoy that day off.  I’m getting ready to go to work, and she can relax and sleep in this morning.  I know I just enjoyed ten consecutive days off, but I still feel a little envious.  Lucky girl!

As with every visit from Kuniko’s parents, we received a bunch of homegrown vegetables.  The theme this time was lettuce.  We have about six onions, and two heads of cabbage, but there are four heads of lettuce to kill off.

Last night we killed an entire head by ourselves by cooking beef in a Korean style stir fry, with plenty of yakiniku sauce and spices, then wrapping several pieces of the meat in cold lettuce.  It was the same way that I ate yakiniku when I was visiting Korea, and it brought back good memories.  We also got a container of kimchee, so hopefully I’m not too garlicky today.

Tonight Kuniko has a party, so I’ll be on my own.  I guess it’s salad time…

We had a really nice Golden Week holiday, with lots of time to relax, exercise, eat and drink.  The weather also cooperated perfectly with only one day of bad weather during my ten days off.

Last weekend we had Kuniko’s folks over for dinner, and we caught up with them.  They looked healthy and happy, too.  They are really excited about going to the USA with us for the holidays.

Yesterday we had the whole day to ourselves, and so we worked on killing leftovers, we spent some time on the beach walking in the water, and generally getting ready mentally to get back to work.  I’m not sure how it is going to go today with my students – hopefully everybody else in ready to come back, too.

Last weekend was officially a three day weekend for most people, and we celebrated by having the Fukumis over for dinner.  I thought the dinner was a success, although the steaks were a little more rare than I had hoped they’d be.  The pasta and everything else was delicious and more than made up for the pink steaks.

Although I was back on my feet and moving fast the next day it took Kuniko a couple of days to get back to 100%.  Today she is headed back to work, and hopefully her condition will be better.  I guess it is hard to party like a college student once you hit your 30s and 40s.  At least, that’s just what I’ve heard.

Today I had big plans to do a solo hike until I checked the weather report. Rainy day today, and outside it is falling pretty steadily.  Change of plans – indoor day today, and I’ll work on some projects that I’ve been meaning to get to.

This morning after waking up to my alarm at 4:30 it was with great pleasure that I turned it off, and I’ll leave it off for the next ten mornings.

But before we get to all that time off and sleep, we’ve got one more day to work through.  I’ve got a busy schedule during the day, and an extra class early this morning, so it won’t be easy.  Right now all the students are short-timers, and everybody is looking ahead to the holiday, so I’m sure we’ll have a good time in class.

After work tonight we’ll go catch Iron Man 3 in the local theater, and then tomorrow we are hosting the Fukumis for dinner.  Hopefully I’ll be blogging now and then during the long holiday…  we’ll see.

For some reason Kuniko and I have been counting down the workdays left until the long holiday.  Every morning we drag ourselves out of bed at 4:30 am and say, “X more days…”, like some strange kind of overworked zombies.  Then I move downstairs to get some coffee going while Kuniko hits the shower.

Two days left.

Yesterday after work I shared a train ride with one of my new students.  He originally was so overwhelmed the first few classes, but I’m now seeing lots of improvement as he gets comfortable.  Yesterday he held a conversation with me in English voluntarily after work in front of a train full of people.  Those are monster steps in the right direction, and I was very happy to talk with him and see his confidence grow.

OK, off to the shower to complete the waking process and then head to work.  Two more days…

Yesterday after work we jetted off to Costco and made a surgical strike, picking up only the things we needed and skipping the areas that we knew had nothing of interest.  Right in the middle of our shopping spree we ran into Micchi and Takkun – old friends from a long time ago.  They live in the next town but we almost never see them.  Micchi was eight months pregnant and Takkun looked much older and more mature.  It just goes to show that life is still running along, even if you don’t happen to notice.  It was really good to talk to them, and I’m hoping everything goes well for them next month with their new baby.

Once we got home we ate some Costco ribs while unpacking all the goodies and putting them away.  After almost two years of watching me, Kuniko decided it was the night for her to actually try to play Skyrim on the PS3.  She was afraid of getting hooked, but I think she’ll be OK.  It lead to a few moments of panic during the initial game, too.  Skyrim is such a deep game that it’ll take a while to get used to it.  Still, to watch her play for the first time was kind of a big moment.  Another addict is born (possibly).

Heavy, heavy rain right now so we’re thinking about driving in to work (again).  Al Gore would not be happy with us.

Yesterday Kuniko was a little tired out from our all-you-can-eat weekend, so we drove to work early in the morning.  As it happened she was coming home at the same time I was, so I even caught a ride back.  It will happen much the same way today, as we’re planning a Costco run after work to stock up for the upcoming long holiday.

That also means that I’m on my own for burning calories.   I wonder if I can convince the company to buy me a treadmill for the office.  We can hold the classes while walking in place, thereby improving employee health as well as English pronunciation.  Every time they make a mistake I can turn the speed up one notch.

On second thought maybe that isn’t such a good idea.

OK, off to gather up the Costco list and get ready for work…

This weekend we had the opportunity to eat at two of our favorite restaurants.  On Friday night after work Kuniko and I met in Motomachi for a couple beers at Rokko Beer Diner (they were debuting a new Weizen beer) and then we walked over to Sannomiya to eat dinner at Oliva.  Oliva serves Spanish food, and it had been years since we had been there.  For some reason I thought we ought to go back and give it another try since we’ll be eating the real thing this summer.

The food was excellent as usual, and we really enjoyed the variety of tapas that they had to start off with.  The atmosphere is also very good there, even though it is a tiny restaurant.

Saturday Kuniko had to work most of the day, so I prepared steak fajitas for dinner.  I’m not sure but it might have been Kuniko’s first experience with fajitas.  She loved them, and we killed everything in one sitting.  That and a couple of margaritas made Saturday a fun night.

Then yesterday night we went to a concert put on by some of Kuniko’s students in Kobe.  The mandolin guitar club always does a yearly concert, and Kuniko wanted to see some of her students performing in the club.  We caught the last part of the concert only, and then headed into Akashi for dinner at Chiro.  Dinner there was excellent as usual, and the homemade pasta with pepper sauce and shrimp was the winner of the night for me.  The chef and the manager came out and gave us a warm welcome, so it was almost like VIP treatment.  Nice people there.

Now it is time to get back to work.  This week is my last week of work before Golden Week – I’ll get ten days off in a row starting next Saturday.  It’ll be hard to concentrate on my work with such a big holiday coming up.

Yesterday I taught my first class with the brand new employees at our company.  They have just entered the company at the beginning of this month, and they are undergoing various forms of training for the next six months.  They’ll get on the job training after that, so they’ve got a long road of learning ahead of them.

I had fun talking with the students, and they did very well on the activities in class.  One student is from Bangladesh, which seems to indicate a continuing theme of internationalization at the company, albeit at a very slow pace.

At one point in the lesson the students asked how long I’ve lived in Japan, and I said that now it is getting close to ten years.  Later in the lesson someone asked me if I spoke Japanese, and I gave my standard answer: “Just a little”.  The last thing I want is the students thinking that they could speak Japanese to me and get away with it, so I have to hide my abilities for now.

The student who asked me if I spoke Japanese listened to my response, and shook his head.  “You’ve been here ten years,” he said, “You should be able to speak very well.”  Let’s hope nobody figures it out.