Yesterday I called my credit card companies to let them know that I’ll be traveling soon.  I never had to do this before, but recently my credit card is refused outside of Japan or America, just because they are worried about theft. The only solution is to let the company know before I travel so they will not do a block on my account.  How convenient!

I was talking to the “24 hour banker”, and here’s part of the conversation:

Credit Card Company: “Where will you be traveling, sir?”

Me: “I’ll spend some time in Seoul, Korea before moving on to Hawaii for about a week.”

CCC: “I see sir.  About Seoul, is that North or South?”

Me: “Uh, it’s in the north part of South Korea.”

CCC: “I’ll check to see if it is a dangerous country, sir.  Please hold.”

Weird conversation.  How many people call their credit card company before traveling to North Korea?  I’m guessing it must be in the minority.

Anyway, I think I’ve got it all sorted out, now.  When did using credit cards become such a hassle?

I’ve taken care of getting most things around the house ready for our departure later this week.  For the first time we’ll be using the automated watering system to take care of our plants outside, and I set up the houseplants out there last weekend, too.  It’ll be interesting to see the condition they are in when we get back.

Tonight Kuniko will get back home, and in honor of the Japan vs. Mexico soccer match tonight I’ll be making the taco salad and Kuniko will bring home some sushi.  Mexico vs. Japan… in our dining room.

We had a low key weekend after the meat-fest on Friday night.  Saturday Kuniko and I went into town to do a little shopping for our trip.  The city of Kobe was having a fireworks show on Saturday evening, and it always completely shuts down the city.  They close the streets, and the trains become packed with people trying to get to Kobe, leave Kobe, or just pass through.  Our plan was to do our shopping in the morning and get home to sip champagne before dinner time.

The plan went off without a hitch, and we spent the evening watching a rented movie and enjoying barbecued corn and sausages (leftovers from the sausage party on Friday).

Sunday morning Kuniko went off to teach at a study camp for two nights, so I spent the day reading at home, cleaning house a bit, and relaxing.  I also watched a rental movie – The Watchmen – which I had always wanted to see but somehow forgotten to check out.  I quite enjoyed it.

Now I’m getting ready to go to work.  I have to work the next three days, but after that we head to the airport and then off to Korea and Hawaii.  Can’t wait!

Tonight after work I’m going out with a couple of ex-students for dinner and drinks.  We’ve been going out every few months for the past couple of years, and it is always a good time.  About a year ago I introduced them to the term “sausage party” as it seemed like it was always just four guys attending these parties.

In a stroke of literal-ism, I made a reservation for tonight’s dinner at a restaurant in Motomachi called “Bratwurst”, where they make their own sausages.  Tonight we will embrace the sausage party.

We’ve been watching the Olympics when we get home from work each day.  Because of the time difference we can enjoy about two or three hours of live events before it is time to hit the sack.  As you might expect, the events that are broadcast are pretty much just the ones that have a Japanese competitor, so we’ve been watching judo, volleyball, table tennis, gymnastics and swimming.  Luckily if I want to check out other events it is easy enough to find them on the internet.

Last night during women’s judo one of the athletes from China was facing Japan, and I was surprised to see that she looked like a man.  Here’s a picture:

This unusual situation led to interesting scenes like this:

It got me to wondering how exactly the IOC actually figures out the sex of the athletes.  I guess I’ll do some research during my lunchbreak today to figure it out…

Today at work I have my monthly production group lesson with about 40 new employees that started working in the factory this year.  They get all kinds of training, including English, although most of their work will be here in Japan. The class is always fun to teach.  It kind of reminds me of teaching at the high school level, in that the students are a little more inhibited and shy.  On the other hand, they are more willing to have fun in class and joke around.  Too much seriousness can be drag on language education.

So today I’ll teach that class this morning, and then go back to my regular schedule for the rest of the day.  The production classes make for a nice break in my routine – I’m looking forward to it.

Day by day the summer has been heating up, and today will be the hottest day yet.   We’ll be toting along our hand towels to mop up the sweat on our ways back and forth to work.  It is a hard season to be outside in Japan.

Meanwhile work is going smoothly.  I’m starting to think about the next course, the students that will attend, and it looks like it should kick off in October.  I can’t believe there are just two more months in the term.  It seems like I just started.

OK, off to march through the heat and get to the air conditioned train as soon as possible!

This weekend we indulged a little bit – Friday night we had a yakiniku dinner, Saturday I grilled up some sliders that we had before going to see the latest Batman movie, and then finally we went off to my workplace yesterday to enjoy a festival.

The festival was pretty interesting.  They held it during one of the hottest days of the summer so far, and there were huge fans blowing air and mist all over the place to keep the guests from passing out.  Only employees and their families were allowed inside, but we could walk around (almost) anywhere we wanted, and see some of the parts of the factory that we normally don’t have a chance to check out.  I wanted to see the port area, where they occasionally load train cars onto barges to ship to Kobe Port for loading on huge ships to go overseas.  I could also show Kuniko my office, and see where I spend every day.

This week is the last full week of work for us before our summer holidays – just about ten days until we blow out of here and head to Hawaii.  Can’t wait!

It is Friday morning, and after a week of vegetarian healthy meals we are starting to see some results.  I’ve lots seven pounds this week (probably due to sweat in this heat), and we’ve been diligent about eating low-fat foods.

But enough is enough!  Tonight we decided to go to a yakiniku restaurant for a meat infusion.  Tomorrow we’ve both got the day off, so we picked a restaurant that is Korean style – lots of spice and garlic.   Can’t wait – it’ll be a good reward for this week, and maybe we can gain back all the weight we’ve lost in one night.

Last night after work I waited around my classroom for one of my coworkers to come pick me up and take me to tachinomi.  Tachinomi is kind of a casual drinking place, where people have a beer or two and then head on home, without ever sitting down.  During a recent party I promised this coworker that I’d join him for a beer at tachinomi someday, and so we arranged to grab a drink after work.

But it didn’t turn out like that at all.

Through a little bit of scheming and switching and rearranging, I ended up having a sushi dinner on the company with the coworker and two of the receptionists from the ground floor.   I guess my coworker used “English with Bryan” to get the two receptionists to come along, and then figured that a restaurant upgrade was in order.  But all this was a surprise for me, and since it was the first time drinking with any of these people, there were plenty of surprises to go around.

Still, it was fun to talk to some new people, and we had some pretty good sushi, too.  I’m not sure who exactly is going to sign off on the bill, but it was a strange situation.  And strange situations are what attracted me to Japan in the first place.

So part of the deal with eating healthier is to watch our weight every day.  We’ve been using the same scale since I had arrived in Japan, and the other day Kuniko mentioned that she thought it wasn’t weighing correctly.  She had weighed herself in the nurses office at her school, and the number was quite different.

Last night we bought a new scale, calibrated it, and sure enough, when I stepped on the scale it was 3.5 kg lighter than the older scale.  That’s around 8 pounds difference.

So I love the new scale.  Never has weight loss been so easy.

We’ll keep at the diet and see how things go.  Unfortunately tonight after work I have to join a small drinking party, so I’ll probably be eating greasy food along with cold beer.  Bracing myself for bad news tomorrow morning on the scale.

Last night I changed our dinner menu at the last minute and made a Vietnamese style harusame noodle salad.  One of the ingredients I wanted to add was a hot pepper, and I’ve got some Thai peppers that I keep in the freezer for just this kind of thing.  The peppers are really hot, and you have to be careful while cutting and preparing them.  I was careful to use a plastic bag to protect my hands while cutting, but even after washing my hands afterwards I got a little heat surprise when I rubbed my eyes late last night.  Those peppers have some staying power.

The burn lasted about five minutes – long enough for me to spend scrubbing my hands again to try to remove any traces.

Dinner was great, though, and it was also one of the healthiest meals we’ve had in a while.  I made enough to eat tonight as well, so we’ll be hitting the leftovers instead of making something new.

Today I’m headed back to work after a productive and relaxing holiday.  I accomplished all the tasks I wanted to get done during last week, including wiring our living room with the internet, cleaning our sofa, getting our house cleaned, and seeing the doctor.  On top of that, there was plenty of time to relax at home and at the beach, see a movie, and celebrate our anniversary.  Mission accomplished…

This week I’ll be trying to put together a healthy menu during the week.  Both myself and Kuniko are trying to lose some kilograms before our trip to Hawaii.  Although we got some pretty good exercise during the holidays, back at work I’ll have almost no exercise during the day, so we’ll try to eat healthier to see if that helps.  Tonight, salad and hiyakko.

Yesterday I had a completely free schedule all day, so I ended up walking to the beach to enjoy the weather.  First I made sure to cover myself head to toe with sunscreen, and then left the house around 11 a.m.  Although it was hot out the weather was just beautiful.  A strong breeze was blowing to help keep the temperature bearable.  I walked along my regular route to the train station, and then decided on a different path to the nearest beach, and traveled through some neighborhoods that I hadn’t been through before.

Since I was approaching the beach from a different direction, I wandered along the hillside above the beach among the houses there, and sometimes I found myself skirting rice fields and people’s yards.  There wasn’t really any delineation between people’s property, which was kind of refreshing.

I spent about an hour at the beach, wading in the water, drying out on the sand, and even looking for shells.  The water temperature turned out to be warmer than I expected.  Next time I’ll bring my bathing suit.

Some pics from the day are here.

Previously the weather forecast for this week called for showers and clouds all week, but the last few days have been bright, clear and hot.  Brutally hot, actually.  I had imagined spending time hiking in the morning, but by 10 am it was clearly not going to happen.  Instead, I settled for a walk to the supermarket to buy stuff for dinner, and settled in at home to enjoy the AC and read some books.

Today looks like it’ll be much the same schedule.  I’ve got some parties coming up, so I need to save my money (and my calories) for Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

The retirement home that they have been building behind our house looks to be near completion, at least from the outside.  The parking lot was finished yesterday, and they put up lights and painted lines yesterday afternoon.  I’m looking forward to seeing when they turn on the parking lot lights – hopefully the ambient light won’t be shining in our windows.  Unfortunately, it looks like our neighbors the Yamaji’s will bear the brunt of that.  The only good point of all this is that the number of bugs flying around in our backyard has decreased dramatically.  They used the come in waves off the farm back there, and it was always a trick to get in and out the backdoor to the BBQ without some squeezing into the house.   These days – not so much a problem.

Well, back to reading some books and relaxing.  Hard to believe I’m awake at 6 a.m. on my day off.