Coming home from work last night with a load of groceries I walked through our neighborhood to get to our house, and because of the warm weather all the neighborhood mothers were outside talking and watching their kids play. Everybody said hello to me, and the kids were especially friendly.

I guess they are learning a song at school, because all of the kids were singing it at one point – at the top of their lungs. Since it was so hot yesterday I had opened up the house, so it was very easy to hear the screamed song. Luckily it was a very short song, so it was more cute than annoying. If it happens all summer long then it may move more towards annoying, I guess.

Since today was the last sunny day for a while according to the weather forecast, I grilled a couple of chicken breasts and made a small salad as a side dish for dinner. Kuniko got home around the normal time, so we drank cold beer with our chicken and recapped our days. Things are a little less stressful for her at the moment. Her students are behaving, the training teacher that she is in charge of has settled into some sort of routine, and she was able to get off work at a decent hour.

Today is Friday, and I should be able to get to work before the rain starts falling. Not so lucky on the way back, though. I’m going shopping for supplies for the taco party tomorrow, and then we’ll come home and rest up. It will be cocktail night tonight – I can already tell.

Tuesday at work I found that every single one of my students was tired out and had trouble staying alert during their class. It was easy to find out why – everyone had stayed up until 3 a.m. the night before to watch the Japanese team play in the World Cup in South Africa.

The Blue Samurai’s squeaked out a victory, and apparently it was the first victory for a Japanese team on foreign soil. Anyway, this set off a media blitz and now everyone is excited for the team’s chances to at least make the next round.

Among all this excitement I found out that the next game for Japan is this Saturday. Unfortunately about a month ago we had scheduled a taco party with the Fukumi’s and the Yamaji’s. We’ll go ahead with the party, but I have a feeling that some people will be leaving early. Too bad the opponent isn’t Mexico – then we’d have a suitable theme.

Last night on the way home I stopped at ‘Kitano Ace’ in Tarumi, a small import food store to get some tortilla chips. The place had the usual stuff, but they also had a Hawaiian beer called Tsunami Lager. I’ve had it before a long time ago, and my memories were that it was a flashback to the American microbrews that I used to enjoy so much living in the USA. I bought a bottle for old time’s sake (and at 480 yen a bottle it wasn’t cheap), and drank it after getting home.

That was an old beer.

I don’t usually have problems with imported beer – it is generally pretty fresh, but this bottle was probably 2-3 years old. Completely dead taste, and the carbonation was sharp and astringent. Ugh. I think I’ll avoid that beer in the future. Or maybe that store.

“Charlie Phoenix was born at 6:15 on June 14th. She logged in at 8# 3oz. Parents and baby doing fine. A picture to follow.”

All the action these days is happening far from here, in Portland Oregon, where my brother and his wife Susan are at this very moment working on giving birth to a new baby. Hopefully we’ll hear soon what is going on and see how it all turns out.

Many people seem to be excited about the World Cup action in South Africa. I’ve been watching now and then, but I haven’t been really following it carefully. Many of my students follow it, so I’m doing my best to follow along as well. So far it has been fairly interesting, but I really don’t like all the drama with the fake injuries and complaining. Kind of takes away from the reality and prestige of the sport, I think.

The rainy season continues here – and I’ll be carrying an umbrella for the rest of the week dodging raindrops. Hopefully the rain will wrap up in about three weeks and then the heat will come in a big way. The other night we turned on the air conditioner for a few minutes, and that marks the first time this season using AC. It’s just a matter of time before we ramp up the cooling equipment again.

I had an “artificial” long weekend this time, and I made the most of it. Friday I followed a carefully orchestrated plan to run some errands at the city office, get a complete physical examination at the doctor’s office, and send out three packages at the post office. As it worked out, I finished everything before noon, so I had the afternoon to relax and use the pressure cooker to make pulled pork for sandwiches.

The city office went very smoothly. There was a big line for the department that I was inquiring about, and so they had distributed numbers. I took number 14 and sat down to wait for my turn. I was surrounded by other folks waiting around as well. Seemed like a normal bunch – although one guy smelled a little rank. The guy called off numbers, and when he called out for number 10, nobody answered.

This caused a big scene.

For some reason, they couldn’t believe that nobody would answer – so they spent about five minutes calling out number 10 again and again. After the continuous calling, I looked over and realized the guy calling the numbers was looking directly at me while he called. Then I looked around and saw that everyone else was looking at me, too. I knew quite well that I was holding number 14 – I didn’t even dignify their stares with a glance at my card. I just looked back. But it was clear that everyone figured that since I was foreign I had no idea what number was being called. What’s more, I think a few people looked kind of pissed because I was holding everything up.

But I wasn’t holding anything up. I has holding number 14.

Finally, the guy came over to me, and changing to English, said “Ten?” I just held up my card with the number 14 written on it in bold, and he bowed his head and went back. I looked back at the people around me and suddenly I wasn’t so interesting anymore. Jesus Christ!

Number 10 never showed up, so I got my business taken care of and I was back out and headed back to Okubo. The post office went pretty easily. An old lady tried to cut in front of me in line, but I’m so used to that now that it doesn’t bother me at all. When she cut in front I took two giant steps out of line to the left so that everyone could see that I was no longer at the front of the line. Once the old lady got her stamps I moved up and took care of everything pretty quickly.

At the doctor’s office I signed up for a physical, and I was a big hit with the nurses. At first they assumed that I spoke no Japanese, and so I was able to overhear some interesting conversations. The physical took about 90 minutes, and at the end of it I got a clean bill of health and was set free to go eat something for the first time that day.

Back home I cooked some pork in a pressure cooker with some beer and BBQ sauce (thank you Costco), and it turned out to be a pretty good pulled pork dish. For the rest of the weekend Kuniko and I were eating pulled pork sandwiches, and they really hit the spot.

Sunday the rainy season officially hit, and we were confined to our home for most of the day while it came down in torrents outside. Luckily we had enough wine and pasta to survive.

Now this week it is back to my regular schedule, with a big taco party at the end of the week. Should be fun!

About a month ago one of the American on-site inspectors that works at the same company as I do went back for a visit to his hometown in America. At the time he asked me if I wanted anything, and I requested a bottle of TUMS for the next time I eat too much hot sauce or yakiniku. He said no problem, and off he went.

Although he was scheduled to be on holiday for a week, he just got back yesterday. Turns out he was stopped as he tried to come back to Japan, and sent back because his visa was not correct. So he had to cool his heels in America until he got a new visa, and while the paperwork was moving along slowly he sat around and didn’t get paid.

Finally yesterday he came back to work, and I bumped into him coming out of the station in the morning. He apologized for taking so long on the antacids, and we joked about his situation – it was pretty embarrassing for him (and maybe for the customer he works for). Now everything is back to normal, and today he promised to deliver the aforementioned TUMS. When I first heard about his troubles coming back to Japan, the image that flashed through my mind was his luggage being searched and some alarms going off because of way too many TUMS. Luckily, it wasn’t the case.

At the end of the day two of my former students stopped by the classroom to visit. One gave me a souvenir from his recent trip to Hong Kong, a small canister of chocolates. It was good to talk to them – one is very busy recently and the other has some slow time, so they are balancing the load a bit between them. We made tentative plans to catch a beer in the near future.

Off to work – today is cloudy in the morning but it should heat up this afternoon. I might even be able to roll up my sleeves on the way home.

I’m very slowly getting into the cool biz spirit – yesterday I went to work without a jacket, and today it is without a tie. The weather is cloudy and warm, with plenty of humidity, so the open neck is much appreciated.

I can tell I am used to living in Japan when I felt a little self-conscious yesterday without a jacket. Actually on the way to work I bumped into one of my students who is a salesman, and he was without a jacket and a tie, so I guess it is time for me to loosen up. I hope they recognize me at work…

Last night was low-key as Kuniko was working late helping with one of her students. The student that ran away came back, and she made a visit to the home to check in and see how things are going. Who knows whether the girl will stick around, but I’m hoping she does for Kuniko’s sanity. She was pretty stressed while the girl was missing.

This week is a four day week for me. I took Friday off to run errands, send packages, and have a doctor’s appointment. Should be a busy day on Friday, so I’m using my work days to rest up in anticipation. I’m going to need to schedule creatively to get everything done. One of the things I really don’t like about Japan is that things are not designed for families of two that both have full time jobs. For example, the post office is only open from nine to five, so if I want to mail something internationally, I either have to take a day off (like this week) or bring my packages to work and mail them at lunchtime (which is not cool).

I also need to return my insurance card to the city office, but because they are only open from nine to four, I have to take a day off to do it.

Why doesn’t anyone complain? Because usually only one person per family works full time, and so it is rarely a problem. When both people work, then things get complicated.

For the second day in a row I came home last night bushed from the workday. I don’t know why this week has turned into a slog, but every day when I get home I can feel it. Last night I was hoping to stay up and watch my favorite Japanese TV show but we abandoned the attempt and instead went to bed around 8:45. What wimps…

This weekend is going to be a little strange. On Saturday Kuniko has to attend an overnight school event so she won’t be back until late Sunday evening. In addition, we’re having a new internet service provider come in and install new internet on Sunday. So if you don’t get any new posts after Sunday you know something bad happened. Hopefully it will be smooth.

After the last three night of Japanese food I think we are taking a different turn tonight as we have two beautiful avocados sitting on the counter. We may make avocado toast on bagels – thanks to Costco bagels are easy to come by these days.

It is back to work for both of us this week, and getting back into the swing of things proved to be pretty tough. I was pretty bushed by the end of the day, and I’m not exactly sure why. Probably a hard weekend of sitting around the house listening to music and drinking champagne.

The buzz at work mainly is revolving around a new contract that was officially announced the other day. This means a full production schedule for the next six to eight years, which is always good from a long term standpoint.

This week (as anticipated) our dinner menu is pretty much only Japanese food. After spending a week in Canada Kuniko was craving food from home, so we’ve been eating lots of very healthy foods. Tonight Kuniko should get home earlier than I will, so we’ll see what is on the menu this evening. The refrigerator holds no clues at the moment.

OK, I’m off to try drinking some coffee to amp up my energy levels this morning. Maybe that is all I need to start my day on the right foot.