It is finally Sunday, and we’re getting ready to go back to our working ways.  Although I had nine days off, Kuniko just had three in a row, so it is a little easier for her to back into the swing of work.  It’ll take me a little bit longer, I think.

Golden Week was really good to us.  I got a lot done here at home.  I installed a drip irrigation system for the front of the house, which went a lot smoother than I expected.  It was fun to rig it up, and I set up an automatic timer than controls things.  The only thing I couldn’t find were some small plastic valves to turn on and off certain branches.  Luckily I found some on the internet yesterday, so I ordered one and hopefully it will fit the bill.  If the weather is good next weekend I’ll head back out there to finish the job.

Saturday Kuniko and I went out to the beach, and spent a couple hours sitting on the sand, collecting shells, and walking along the coast.  This is the year of the beach for us – we’ll spend a lot more time on the beach before the year is up.  It felt great getting warm sand between my toes.  And it is hard to believe that it is only about a thirty minute walk away from our house.

I also finished my movie marathon.  I’ll post some reviews of the remaining four movies coming right up…

Golden Week is moving along – and pretty rapidly at that.  Yesterday both Kuniko and I had days off, so it was nice to spend time doing things together.  We did some hiking on Sunday and Monday, so I’m going to take some time to rest up the muscles before another trip on Wednesday.  Kuniko has to work half a day today and a full day tomorrow, but after that we should have some more time together.

The new shopping center has been fun to visit.  This is a big holiday week, and that means tons of people that normally wouldn’t be there.  Yesterday we had to give up on the grocery store because people were lined up 40 minutes to buy eggs for half price.  No thanks, guys, we’ll go to the next supermarket down the way.  The other downside of the new setup is that each section has its own cash register.  That means if you want to buy some beer, meat, veggies, fish and milk, you would have to go through five different cash register lines.  I’m not quite sure if this is a temporary system or a permanent one.  Here’s hoping it’s temporary…

This morning I watched the first movie of my marathon, “Waking Life”.  It is now about ten years old, but visually it holds up well.  I went in without knowing anything about the movie, and I was impressed with the visual style.  It was kind of like watching a movie about art, but also the movie was chock full of philosophy and monologues about what it means to be awake, dreaming, and alive.  I’ve already sort of formed my own sorts of opinions on these matters, so there were few moments of enlightenment.  It was refreshing to see some topics discussed that don’t normally make it into a movie.  At some points in the movie, the monologues had such urgency and energy that you had to wonder if there was somewhere better to channel it, but people like to talk and reflect, and this movie gives you a front row seat.   Overall I’d say that it if it was filmed in a traditional style it might border on unwatchable for me, but in the end it was the use of color and animation that made it interesting.

Next up, “There Will Be Blood”…

There are a couple of exciting things to look forward to today.  Today is the grand opening of the newly remodeled supermarket in town.  We usually went to the old market (Vivre) after work just about every day to buy stuff for dinner, so we are both very interested to see what the new place looks like.  It has a different name (Oishis?), but that it all we know about it.  I’ll check it out when I get home tonight.

In addition, Kuniko is attending a party tonight to get to know the new teachers in her school.  She’ll be out having fun this evening, so I’ve got to figure out what I should do on the Friday before nine days off.  I’m sure I’ll have some ideas during the day today.

And finally today at work I get a chance to teach the new employees one more time.  The first lesson was OK, but the next one is a little more intense.  We’ll try to cover formal introductions, exchanging business cards, and even writing business e-mails in English.  It is a lot to pack in while trying to avoid boring them to tears.  Let’s hope it works out…

Since I don’t have any big plans this Golden Week, I had the big idea to select five movies for five days off, and take them in each day.  The tough part here was choosing which movies to watch.  Re-watch old favorites?  See some new movies that have come out recently?  It’s a tough call.

Luckily I got in touch with Drew Underwood, my cousin once removed in Maui.  He’s a movie buff and quickly had a list of movies for me to check out.  Here’s the list:

1. Waking Life

2. There Will Be Blood

3. Chasing Amy

4. 50/50

5. 25th Hour

So, the plan is check one out each day, and I’ll try to blog a quickie review of each movie here once I’m done.  Something else to look forward to during the holiday week…

I’m starting to put together some plans for the upcoming nine days off in a row – but still nothing dramatic or exciting.  One is to go hiking with Yoshi near the end of the week.  We’re going out to Takedao to hike the abandoned railroad.  Yoshi said he hasn’t done the hike since he was five years old, so it’ll be kind of a flashback to his childhood.  Kuniko has never done the hike, so it’ll be an all-new experience.  It has been about three years since I’ve done it, and it is a great hike.  We’ll follow the river through the countryside along an old railway, through long, dark tunnels until we get to the end.  It’s about a half-day hike – and there is a lot of bang-for-the-buck.

Other than the hike, there is not a lot on my schedule.  I’m sure as we get closer to the weekend I’ll have some more events, though.

Tonight the plan is to work on some of the spices and foods that we brought back from India.  I’ve got some ideas on what to cook, but I’m not sure exactly how it will turn out.  It’ll be my first time making dosas, but the other dishes I’ve had some experience with.  Can’t wait!

Yesterday I met the group of new hires for the Rolling Stock company, and taught them some basic English for about two hours. The overall impression I have is that their English level is above average for the company – which makes my job a little easier. There is even a Swedish employee who speaks English and Japanese fluently, so I don’t think I’ll be seeing him in any of my classes. I was glad to see that there are a few more international employees working around the factory in Hyogo.

My goal for this week is to put together a good teaching plan for the next time I meet these students on Friday. The HR department wants me to teach them formal introductions and telephone English, so I’ll start with that plan and see how it goes.

Last night after work Kuniko invited me to go out to eat, so we ended up at the Italian restaurant here in town, called Da Lorenzo. It is a pretty good place considering it is in Okubo, and the cook was all alone, so he was the waiter as well. He did a great job – as usual we had a delicious meal for a reasonable price. Also, plenty of Moretti beer…

Today at work I have a chance to teach a double lesson to the newly hired employees at Kawasaki Rolling Stock. There are around 30 new employees, and I’m going to spend about 90 minutes with them to see how they do in an all-English environment. The idea is to teach them a couple of times this week, and then maybe in six months or so after they have settled into their training schedules I think I’ll teach them again in small groups on a more regular basis. It should be fun today to see how they do in class.

This weekend we had a chance to go out on Saturday after Kuniko’s school’s concert, to a restaurant called 全州. It is a Korean restaurant, and when we arrived the place was packed. As soon as our reservation time came up two people left, and we took their seat. The place was very small, and filled with Korean people, most of whom spoke Japanese. The food was great, and we made the mistake of over-ordering a bit. It was a good mistake to make, though – lots of great food, especially the japchae.

This week should go pretty quickly – it is the last week before Golden Week. Can’t wait for a whole week off!

This week is just about wrapped up, and we’ve just got one more work week until Golden Week. It seemed so far away just a couple of weeks ago, but time at work is absolutely flying by. Since about 90% of my time at work is teaching classes, that makes things go quickly.

Tomorrow Kuniko and I will attend her school’s mandolin guitar club performance in Kobe, and then afterwards we’re off to try a Korean restaurant in Sannomiya that was recommended by one of my students. Since the weekend is rainy, I think I’ll spend much of the weekend indoors.

We’re also starting to plan our trip to Bali in December. Choosing a place to stay is first on the list – should it be a hotel, resort, beach house? We’ve also got some flexibility in terms of length of stay. How much relaxation on the beach is enough, I wonder?

Yesterday afternoon during my last class of the day my student took me out into the factory to give me a guided tour in English. The tour was not for my benefit, but as a practice for another tour he’ll have to give in English tomorrow. It was a good opportunity to practice important stuff like “watch your head” and “please stay on the safety path”, but also to make sure that I could understand what he was saying in the noise of the factory floor.

It was only my second time into the factory, and it was pretty interesting. This is the biggest train making factory in Japan, and we saw them building not only the regular commuter trains for customers inside and outside Japan, but also my student showed the building of the bullet trains and explained that process as well.

We spent a little more than an hour on the tour, and I think the actual tour will take longer, as the guests are sure to ask many questions as they go. It should be an interesting time for my student today – I’m looking forward to hearing his recap on Friday.

Kuniko is back at it, taking baking lessons from a friend in Kakogawa, and that means lots of yummy stuff for me. Last night I came home to a pizza, green olive focaccia bread, and orange rolls for afterwards. The cooking lessons are a good way to get out of her regular routine, and I think Kuniko really looks forward to them.

Meanwhile at work classes are going really, really well. I’m liking my group of students so far, and they are putting a lot of effort into the class activities. I hope they can sustain that effort over the next five months. One student is so talkative I can barely get a word in edgewise. That can be good and bad, I think. He is a little bit overconfident, so in the near future I’ll have to get him to come back down to earth and think a little bit more about his English before it comes out of his mouth.

I’m also starting to line up projects for Golden Week – coming up at the end of this month. I’m thinking about putting in a drip watering system outside so that I don’t have to bother the neighbors to water our plants every time we go on a trip during the summer. Also I want to take a closer look at the wiring in our house and try to run some LAN cable through the basement under our living room. Time to get some tools and do some home improvement!

Last night we had the great pleasure of digging into some leftovers from my parents’ visit. My mother had brought some big foil trays and loads of ingredients to make homemade enchiladas for our family and friends. We spent a weekend going through two big trays, but luckily there was a small tray that we stuck in the freezer. We pulled it out yesterday and it tasted great.

The enchiladas were a big hit when my folks were here. Enchiladas don’t make an appearance in Japan very often, so it was a good experience.

I think we’ll be working on clearing the freezer over the next few weeks. It was jam-packed!

On Sunday we were driving to Kuniko’s school in our new car, and out of the blue we were rear-ended at slow speed. The guy behind us was driving a Mercedes Benz, which is a good car to be hit with, and he leaped out of the car and apologized when we got out to check out the damage. I think he probably felt like crap when he hit us, and then I jumped out of the passenger side and he must have thought, “Oh man, I gotta do this in English?” The look of relief on his face when Kuniko stepped out of the driver’s side was perfect.

Anyway – like most things in Japan – it works differently around here. The first thing he said was “I’m so sorry!” in Japanese, and Kuniko said, “No, no, don’t worry about it” in Japanese, and then we drove off to the side and exchanged business cards. I took pictures of both bumpers, but clearly ours was the loser. His license plate did most of the damage, but it really is just some deep scratches and one or two punctures through the bumper. The next step is that his insurance company will call our Honda dealer, and they’ll pay for everything to get back to normal. They’ll give us a car to drive while ours is being repaired, so it really won’t affect us much. And in the end, nobody was hurt, and that’s the important thing.

For dinner we finally visited the Thai restaurant that opened here in Okubo. First there was an Indian restaurant, and now a Thai restaurant – Okubo is getting more and more international. This place was designed to look like a street market in Thailand, and they did a good job of recreating the feel of eating from a food stand. The food was above average – not as good as our Japanese standard Baan Thai, but better than any others we’ve tried in Japan. And considering that it is a few minutes walk from our house, it is very much more convenient. The price was a little high for what we got, but I’m fine with that. The staff were all Thai, and very friendly (especially to a fellow foreigner like me). So overall it gets a good review, and I’ll try to go back as much as I can to help them stay in business. Okubo is full of old people that probably are not big fans of Thai food. I don’t know if they’ll be able to make it.

We’ve finally reached the end of a pretty busy week. I think we’re both looking forward to some time off this weekend. Kuniko has a wedding to attend on Saturday, but I think we’ll both be able to relax on Sunday. Can’t wait!

Behind our house yesterday they started to dig up a portion of the farm, and soon I expect that they’ll start working on building the retirement home back there. We received some paperwork saying that they have changed their original schedule, and now they’ll be working from April to August. I feel bad for the poor workers who have to be out there in the summer doing physical labor – it is brutally hot around here at that time. But it’ll be interesting to watch the progress daily from our patio.

Yesterday was a rainy day, at least until the afternoon, which had the effect of killing any chance of a hanami party Wednesday after work. Since Wednesday is “no overtime day” at work, many people schedule parties with their coworkers that evening to ensure that they’ll be able to attend. And since this is the peak of the cherry blossom season in Kobe, I think a lot of people had plans to sit under a tree yesterday evening and drink their selves silly. Sorry folks – maybe today.

The rain wasn’t quite hard enough to knock off the blossoms, however, so I expect that Friday night will be the last hurrah. I’ll also go out Friday night to a welcome party with some of my students, and we may find a lonely cherry tree to park under for the duration of an alcoholic beverage or two. I can’t imagine living in parts of America where they get so strict about open containers of alcohol – that wouldn’t really work here.

Last night we finished off the last of the leftovers from my parents’ visit, but we’ve still got a freezer full of bread that various neighbors dropped by while my parents were here. I’ve got to figure out a way to kill off 3 loaves of bread and a bag full of rolls. Luckily the freezer buys us some time to figure something out.

Yesterday at work I was busy meeting new students. One new student lives in the same town as ours – Okubo – and he lives just down the street from our favorite Indian restaurant, Swaad. I recommended the restaurant to him, and he said that he had been there before. I guess he wasn’t as enamored with it as we were. Once we get to know each other better I’ll try to get the details.

As far as the new students go, my overall impression is that they are a little bit higher level than average, so I’m looking forward to working with them on some more challenging projects. One student grew up in America from age 1 to age 8, but since has not studied English at all back here in Japan. It will be interesting to see how much of that English knowledge we can unlock during this term.