There was a big quake to the east but here in Kobe it was very quiet. Everybody is fine and no damage to report here. I’ll write more tomorrow – we’re tired out from watching so much TV news…

I had a great time with my former students from Mitsuboshi last night. They are a great group of people that really enjoy spending time together, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether they use Japanese or English – everyone is relaxed and talkative. We caught up on what they’ve been doing, and enjoyed some pretty good izakaya food in the process.

As always, Maki had a lot of interesting stories about his quest to get married through an arranged marriage. He’s been working at it a long time, but he hasn’t quite found success just yet. Jun, Ai and Naoko also filled us in on what they’ve been up to (in English). I was struck by how willing to speak about private issues they were when using English.

I shared a train ride in the same direction with Naoko. She recently got married (to a Kawasaki Heavy Industries worker) and is living at the KHI company housing in Higashi Kakogawa. She related a scary story – she was mugged near the station at Higashi Kakogawa recently. I was shocked – quiet, sleepy Higashi Kakogawa? Some guy pulled a knife on her and took her wallet, and then ran off. She called her husband who came as quick as he could, and together they talked with the police, but unfortunately no results. Scary story!

Partly because of that story I went to the station to meet Kuniko who arrived home pretty late and walked her back. I guess you never know when crime will strike…

Tonight’s original plan was to go out with Antoine, but he reported in as under the weather, so we’re postponing the get-together until another time. Instead Kuniko and I will just hang out in Okubo tonight as she has to work early on Saturday.

Tonight kicks off party week… I’ll be meeting up after class with some former students, the gang from Mitsuboshi Belt. It has been a long time since I’ve seen them, and they were some of my favorite students ever. We’ll go out to a place near Shin-Nagata station to catch up tonight. Hopefully I’ll be home fairly early as tonight is a school night, but no such restrictions will be in place the next two nights – hopefully I’ll have some time to recover my energy on Sunday.

Last night Kuniko got home earlier than I did, and cooked up spaghetti with a crab sauce that knocked our socks off. We were pulling bread out of the freezer to defrost just to soak up all the extra sauce on the side of the bowl. So good. We washed it down with a Ravenswood Zinfandel, so life was especially good.

OK, I’m out the door and back to work. Hopefully I’ll be up at this time tomorrow to update…

Part of the end of each teaching term is an effort by the scheduler of my classes to reach some kind of equilibrium between all the students. During the term there are many business trips, overseas transfers, important meetings, and it is just about impossible to have everyone end up with the same amount of classes. The last couple weeks of the term are therefore reserved for adding and moving classes around to fit the overall schedule better. What ends up happening is that whichever days don’t end up getting filled with moved classes are mine to enjoy on my own. Usually I take these days and work on planning for the upcoming term, thinking about what worked well and what didn’t in the previous term, and organizing my documents and computer for the new students. But sometimes I go hiking.

This term will end with a couple of days available for this sort of thing. I like having the extra time – because I’ll certainly be lacking it once the classes kick in.

Around here the cold is continuing to hang on, and other than a long weekend a couple of weeks ago I’ve had to continue wearing my old man underwear to stay warm going to and from the office. But there is hope – some of the plum trees around our neighborhood are blossoming, which means that the cherry trees are a few weeks away from their annual presentation. That means hanami party – and I’m hoping that we can enjoy some good ones this year.

For the last couple weeks I’ve had a stiff neck. Usually it is worst when I wake up, and slowly gets better during the day. I guess this points to bad sleeping posture, but nothing much has changed as far as pillows and blankets go. At work I try to stretch my neck but wearing collared shirts makes it a little tough to get full extension. I guess this is just what it’s like getting old. Ick.

I’m looking at the last three weeks of classes for my current students. We’ve got lots of stuff to do to wrap up the course, and I’m trying to spend some time reviewing what they’ve done in the past as well as some exit interviews to try to measure their progress. Some of my students I’m sure have made a lot of progress, while some seem to be exactly where we started. The most improvement was from the students that studied at home, while the least progress was from students that just came to class and answered my questions. Something to think about for the next round of students in April.

We did spring cleaning the other day, and in a bid to keep the number of trash bags to a minimum we’ve been doing it room by room. Now the bedroom is cleaned out, but I’ve got a lot of heavy trash bags to take with me when I leave to work. I can’t believe we had so much crap in our closet! I better get going if I’m to gather all these bags and hit the road. More tomorrow….

Our Friday night yakiniku party was everything we’d hoped it would be. Possum Chip was slightly different from traditional Japanese yakiniku places, and that meant spicier food, a little taste of curry in the bibimba, We ate plenty of meat, and left the place with our meat cravings satisfied for at least another month.

Since we both had Saturday off we took a long walk along the beach from Okubo to Akashi, and then on Sunday I spent most of the day catching up on my American TV shows and playing video games while Kuniko was off at a seminar. All in all a pretty relaxing weekend.

The end of this week promises to be exhausting but fun. I’ve got three drinking parties in a row, from Thursday to Saturday, and I’ll be able to catch up with some good friends in the process. I have no doubt that next Sunday will be a sleep in kind of day.

It is finally Friday, and we’re both happy that we both have Saturday off. Unfortunately Kuniko has to attend a seminar all day on Sunday, so we’ll party hard tonight and pay the price tomorrow. Our destination is a small Korean-style yakiniku restaurant near my office called “Possum Chip” which hopefully is actually a Korean word, although I have no idea. We’ve heard good things about it, so we’ll go to check it out after work today. Probably our bodies will be completely saturated with garlic tonight and tomorrow, so I think a quarantine tomorrow at home is probably the best bet.

Yesterday I was supposed to go out to run some errands after work and finished much earlier than I expected. When I arrived home there was a strange car parked in front of our house. I walked in and…

It was Yamaguchi sensei and Kuniko talking over orange juice in the living room. Yamaguchi sensei had brought over some shampoo that she recommended. We talked a bit and then she headed home, and Kuniko and I whipped up a quick dinner out of leftovers. It was a nice evening relaxing around the house – not much to report, though.

Tonight I’ll be on my own for dinner – Kuniko is away at her cooking class – so I think I’ll make some quesadillas and play some video games. Boring, but with this cold weather it sounds really good right now.

We’ve got a lot of events going on this month. Some are casual, some more formal, but our social calendar is pretty full. Winter is over, and it is time to get out and hang out with friends again. This week is pretty normal, other than a yakiniku date on Friday. Starting next week things will get more interesting.

Also a quick shout out to Kawasaki – they started running Kawasaki train cars on the Metro North line between Connecticut and New York. This winter was pretty tough on Metro North, and I know that my students were working very hard on getting these cars running. From here the rest of the 300 car train order will be built in Nebraska and put into operation gradually as they are being built. I rarely get to talk about work stuff here, but as this is public info I guess it’s OK…

Quick post today and I’m out of here and off to work…

Last night on the way home my train was delayed about 15 minutes. This is kind of a weird situation, because since my train runs every 15 minutes, I actually caught the train before mine at the my regular time. The only problem was that there were a lot more people on board.

When I first arrived in Japan I was astonished by how many people ride the train during rush hour. Normally it isn’t a big problem for me – I can choose my train and it is rarely crowded, but on many other commutes people face crammed trains every day. The first time I saw it I remember thinking that they wouldn’t let the train leave with this many people on board. But of course they did.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to catch a corner when an old man fearing his placement moved deeper into the train. I squeezed into the corner and watched as more and more people crammed and levered their way on the train. There is a really interesting move for only the most desperate where they turn around, push their butt into the crowd, and reach up above the door to push themselves through. Since the person is not making eye contact with the people he/she is pushing aside with their butt, there is apparently no embarrassment.

Once they get the doors closed you are surrounded by total strangers pressed against you, and all rules about personal space no longer apply. Years ago I got off a packed train with the shape of a woman’s face painted on my black jacket – her foundation had left a nice little silhouette on the side of my coat.

I’m always impressed how despite these packed conditions, people rarely get angry with each other. Even though it is a pretty stressful situation, everybody knows there is nothing to do about it but hang in there and wait for the their stop. This sense of group working together to get through a tough situation is interesting – I couldn’t imagine the same situation in America without some people getting upset/angry/threatening lawsuits.

So yesterday I got home just a few minutes later, with no makeup on my coat, and with a little deeper appreciation for public transportation. Sometimes there are sacrifices to be made, but for the most part they’ve got it figured out here in Japan.

Friday night Kuniko and I bellied up to the sushi bar for a delicious sushi dinner at Nadaya. The place was booked for the night, and every time a group of people left soon after some new customers took their spot. We sat in the best seats – front and center in front of the display of fish and also in front of the head sushi itamae. As usual we had the makase course, letting the itamae choose what we ate and when we ate it. Only occasionally we asked for this and that to tailor our experience just a bit.

Next to me an older couple were sitting, and at one point the older guy next to me jumped into a conversation that we were having asking about me and showing astonishment that I could eat sushi. This kind of thing happens a lot, and as usual I switch to “just off the boat” foreigner mode. The guy likes telling me all about the wonders of Japan, the restaurant, whatever, and I nod and smile and speak some broken Japanese to show that I’m doing my best. He was nice enough to start pouring his sake for us, and wouldn’t accept more than a small glass of ours. We got into a little trouble from the wife of the master for mixing two types of sake, but everyone was drinking and nobody really cared.

Anyway, after talking with him while we were eating it was clear that he had a good time, and he shook my hand and said “Nice to meet you” in English as he left, and internationalism strikes again in the heart of Kobe. Good times.

This weekend Kuniko and I indulged in the beautiful weather by climbing mountains in Suma, and then grilling burgers outside on Saturday night. Kuniko’s homemade burger buns were great, and held together nicely considering the giant burger patties I ended up making.

Sunday was relaxation all day long, and only late at night did the rain come in and start pouring. Last night the rain woke me up a couple of times, and it seems like it will be raining most of today and tomorrow as well. The warmer weather is nice, though. So I’m grabbing my umbrella and heading to work now. The end of February is here, and I’ve just got a couple more weeks with my current students.

A couple of days ago the Japanese company Rakuten, who bought Buy.com last year, announced that they had made a special arrangement where customers from Japan can buy selected merchandise directly from Buy.com. One of the categories of merchandise they promoted heavily was wine (Buy.com had made an arrangement with Wine.com), so it wasn’t long before I hit the website to check it out.

I was excited about what I saw. Lots of good California wines available, and the prices were not marked up 100%+ as most overseas wines tend to be when they retail in Japan. In fact, although the prices were in yen they were pretty much what I’d expect to pay if I was living in California. So you can imagine that I was getting pretty excited about this new service.

Then I popped a bottle into my shopping cart and saw that it cost more than $20 to ship a bottle. The scale slid upwards from there – two bottles cost around $30, and a 12 bottle case cost more than $100 to ship to Japan.

What? Are you kidding me?

We usually buy our wine these days from Costco. They ship enough merchandise to Japan that it doesn’t cost them very much money at all to move high volumes of wine as well. We can buy many California wines for about 800 yen ($9) a bottle, no shipping. I guess when I heard about the new system at Rakuten I was hoping that they would have a similar shipping system in place. But I guess not.

It’s nice to have the option of buying good wines at good prices, but until they figure out a better shipping method I don’t think anybody in the Japanese market is going to pay $20 to receive an $8 bottle of Gnarly Head Zinfandel.

There are lots of other problems with California wines in the Japanese market, and this is just another one. I guess it means I’ve got to go back to America more often and stock up.

In part of my everlasting quest to keep my music collection organized I have been spending my free time this week rating songs that I have in my collection. Right now I have about 36,000 songs in my collection, of which about 10,000 have been rated. There’s still a significant amount that haven’t even been listened to, so I’ve got a big job ahead of me. My goal has been to rate about 2000 a week using my iPhone, and so far I’ve been keeping the pace. There are a surprising amount of good songs in my collection that I might never have run across otherwise – and that’s the point of doing this exercise I guess.

In some Kuniko news, she found out that her next school year’s work and club assignments are exactly the same as this year’s, so things will continue to be on the easier side. She’ll also teach some special courses to high school students again, and it sounds like she is looking forward to flexing her English skills in front of some students that recognize them. So I guess both of us have “more of the same” next school year.

I’m sipping hot chai and getting ready to hit the road right now. Rain has been coming and going overnight but it should be a nicer day, and the weather is even starting to warm up slowly. Good news for the weather wimps among us.

After work last night I went over to Junpu to meet the Denya gang and catch up. It was the first time in a long time seeing everyone – the Master, his brother and his family, and the other Denya regulars who I drank with routinely back when I lived in Futami. Everyone looked good, and we caught up over drinks and teppanyaki dishes. I couldn’t believe how big the Master’s brother’s kids had become. They were chattering away in Japanese despite their parents’ best efforts to get them to speak some English. Once they got comfortable with the environment they started speaking, though.

The staff at Junpu did a really good job and the food was excellent. I was glad that we could spend our money at a local place. After dinner we went our separate ways, but the master talked me into stopping for one more drink at a place near our house called Jin. I walk by the place twice a day but I had never been inside, so my curiosity got the best of me and we went inside. The inside of the place was completely different from the image that I had in my mind – sort of like a comfortable living room with lots of alcohol – and the owner was a friendly lady who seemed to know the master well. He had grown up in Okubo so he knows a lot of the people and stores around the area, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. After a quick drink I begged off because it was a school night, but I got the sense that the master was ready to keep the party going. Sorry, dude – I’ve got to get some sleep!

The temperature is slowly rising and we’re starting to get a little more comfortable walking to and from work. But it is still definitely cold, and even though spring is around the corner we were eating steaming hot bowls of oden last night. Actually it was the first time this year for oden, and it really hit the spot. It was a good way to kill off the potatoes and daikon that we got from Kuniko’s parents, and with a simple kit from the supermarket we filled it out nicely with other items. It was the first time for me to try “hanpen” はんぺん – an airy piece of fish cake that floated on top of the boiling soup. Very good.

At work yesterday there was a big revelation from one of my students, but unfortunately I can’t discuss it here. Hopefully when the time comes (maybe this fall) I’ll be able to talk about it more. Sometimes it’s a bummer to keep all these secrets…

Tonight I’m headed to Junpu to meet the Denya gang for dinner. The other day I stopped by Junpu and reserved a table for 8. The guy was really happy – the economy is bad here too – but after I left I wondered if I should have told him that it was going to be mostly Japanese people. I hope he doesn’t spend a lot of time studying English in preparation for a bunch of foreigners showing up…