We spent Sunday morning tucked into the kotatsu watching movies, and we especially liked Nacho Libre – it was the right kind of stupid movie at the right time. As Meg Ryan says in her coffee commercials on TV in Japan, “Ii asa ni naru!”
After a simple lunch we caught a train and went to Kuniko’s school to sneak in and do some guerrilla paper cutting. I had some heavy cardboard that I needed to cut for my classes next week, so Kuniko volunteered the use of her school’s big paper cutter.
It was actually the first time that I have been around inside the school – before I spent some time in the waiting room but today we looked around Kuniko’s new staff room, and I walked the (very clean) hallways of the school. It has to look nice – it is a private school and they want it to be nice for visitors and prospective students.
They had two fishtanks in the hallway, and I was very interested to see that they had guppies. The guppies were really beautiful, and someone had separated all the males and put in the in one very crowded tank. Maybe there were a hundred guppies all freaking out in one tank hoping I would feed them. It kept me occupied until we got the papers cut and then got out of there.
We walked back to Kobe station to get some more exercise, and then took the train to Akashi. There we crossed the street and went into Akashi park to walk around and enjoy the cherry blossoms.
It was really good timing – just about a day or two past the peak time, and the rain from yesterday had moved on. The weather was a little cloudy, but I guess we had to take what we got. I took quite a few pictures (you can see them in the photo gallery), but I didn’t go crazy. I know I have hundreds of pictures of cherry blossoms at home from the last few years – no need to go wild this time.
We walked the park for about half an hour, and then headed back home to get organized and have dinner. I picked up some takoyaki from Vivre (it is supposed to be famous) and we snacked on that (it was really good).
After dinner Kuniko did battle in the kitchen and ended up with two dessert dishes – sakura mochi (my favorite) and mini strawberry cheesecakes. She’s taking the desserts to work to give to her new coworkers. I think that will make a good impression.
We took some of the desserts with us to her parent’s house tonight in the evening. They were just wrapping up dinner, and we sat around the table talking about Niro’s new computer (he’s really excited about that) and the upcoming rice planting. We promised to come back next weekend to help him set up the computer.
As usual we came back home with lots of vegetables, and after putting everything away we wrapped up the day with a hot bath and then we crashed out. Starting tomorrow we’ve both got new students and new classes to teach. Can’t wait…
