I caught the late train to work today, which is actually the train I used to take every day before my schedule changed. I saw lots of people who I used to see every day, and it was fun to say hello to them. There were a lot of great reactions – one lady saw me and her jaw dropped (it really dropped!) and her eyes got huge. I said good morning and kept walking. It was nice to see everyone again.
At school I worked through the morning and I spent a little more time on my pet project, reading one of my favorite Robert B. Parker books in Japanese. I love the Spenser series because of the wit and humor, and also the unspoken bonds between some of the main characters. I’m trying to read a book now and see how much of that gets through in the translation. The books are actually pretty cheap if you buy them in Japanese, but they take a long time to read.
The other day Kuniko introduced me to a year end tradition in Japan, ousoji. It means, “big cleaning”. We are going to do an end of the year cleaning of my place, and we got started today. I feel bad because since I’m not familiar with the tradition, we are doing three years worth of year end cleaning. Some corners are pretty scary. We’ll keep fighting the battle over the next few days.
Tomorrow is my last day of work before the holidays, and then I’ve got lots of time off. I’m looking forward to having the time to enjoy the New Year holiday. We’ll be pretty busy.
