It’s been cooling off around here, and the blanket is turning into a great investment. According to my Yahoo! weather page, it was supposed to rain today, but no rain turned up, and I was carrying around an umbrella for naught.
I had only one class today, and it was during the last period. I just sat around all day doing lesson planning and then finally had the class at the end of the day. It is one of my favorite classes – the students are fearless and will try to pronounce any word you say… they don’t worry about embarrassing themselves like so many other students do.
Normally I have an ESS meeting today, but everyone was studying, so I had no attendance. Funny how everyone shows up when cupcakes are being made, but otherwise, it’s a ghost town! I talked to a few of my members, and they apologized profusely – they felt bad but they’ve got some serious studying to do.
I was walking through the teacher’s room, and one of the teachers started yelling at one of the students. The only problem was that I was standing in between them when it happened. The student didn’t know she was getting yelled at, and I thought that for some reason I was. Not knowing the language makes things interesting around here.
I made “gyuudon” tonight – beef over rice, with some stir fried sprouts on the side. The sprouts are dirt-cheap, only about 20 cents for a large bag, but they go bad fast – I need to cook them up within a few days of buying them. The gyuudon is just thin sliced beef over rice with some onions – it is very good with the right marinade and hot sauce. Yum! Pretty cheap to make, too. The beef was about $3.00 for a large package… and it’s great quality beef. They have some seriously nice meat available at almost every store – Kobe beef is available as well, but it’s much more expensive, and probably merits it’s own course.
After dinner I dropped by the yakitori to chat with the master a bit. He gave a good review on the taco, although he said it was a “little spicy”, which translated from Japanese probably means that it was way too hot. At least they won’t give me any more grief about the “spicy” food that they serve….
Tomorrow is Friday, and this weekend should be a busy one. I’m a judge for a speech contest at a high school near where I live – the pay is good, about $80 for three hours work. Afterwards, Mr. Hayashi wants to go out for lunch to congratulate Miss Kageyama on her victory, but I’m lukewarm on the idea. I’d rather relax at home in preparation for the 40k hike I’m doing on Sunday. It’s going to be a long walk – and I’ll need the rest!
