Wednesday I went into Nishinomiya to work at a company called Furuno Denki. They make electronics and radar, predominantly marine electronics and GPS stuff for large ships. They are also moving into electronics for medical facilities, and overall they are a pretty big company growing at a rapid pace.

Myself and five other teachers came to their training center in Nishinomiya (they are big enough to have their own training center complete with support staff and full size cafeteria). Unlike previous intensive training sessions that I have done, it was a one day only affair. The students were divided by skill level, and through the luck of the draw I had the lowest level. It turned out to be a real challenge, since the material was aimed at kind of a simple business level it was very difficult for my students who probably could have benefited from a simple conversational level. One of my students was Chinese, and so she had no English education through junior high and high school like the rest of the Japanese people there – she had to struggle with pronunciation most of the time.

The other teachers were interesting to talk to, and I had a good time. I was pretty tired by the end of the day, so knowing that Kuniko was out at a drinking party I stopped in at a local kushikatsu place for dinner. Lately I have been craving kushikatsu. It is a style of eating that I had pretty much ignored for the first few years I was in Japan, but it is quite popular. The place near our house is really good, and the family that owns it is very friendly.

I was the only customer in the place when I went in, and I had a nice chat with the lady that runs it. She was dressed in kimono and was really putting on the hospitality for me. We had a nice chat and she kept me in fried foods and beer the whole time.

One of the curious cultural phenomena that I have observed is the popularity and status that comes with having a beautiful woman waiting on you in Japan. It doesn’t matter if you are paying her to do it, what matters is that you can afford the luxury or that you have the charm and wit to attract the women in question. Japanese guys love to be waited on by a beautiful woman, and they will spend a lot of money and effort to arrange the situation. While I personally see it as an act of vanity and self-delusion, I’ve got to say that I enjoyed the attention last night. For the first time, I can kind of understand why these old guys like to go out and get waited on. I still think it’s vain and self-delusional, especially if you start to think that it is somehow a reflection of reality, but I can understand their perspective just a little bit more.

Anyway, after having my fill of dinner I said goodbye and narrowly avoided a drunk old Japanese guy who wanted to take me upstairs to the karaoke place and sing with me. Talk about a horrible way to end an evening – instead I went home and relaxed until Kuniko got home from her party, and then we hit the hay. It was a long day for both of us.

Last week was fairly busy for me. Even though I had Monday and Tuesday off, I was teaching for Nozaki sensei from Wednesday to Friday. On Wednesday, I taught two classes at the Kakogawa International Center, with students that are English teachers themselves. I taught the class with Nozaki sensei in order to liven up what have been discussions about English conducted in Japanese. In a new format I spent time getting the students to use the English that they were talking about, despite a severe lack of confidence.

After class I went over to Nozaki sensei’s house and taught three afternoon classes, and one evening class. There were a few new students, but mostly the same kids I taught last year. The class mix was often different which made it more fun for me. It was good to see all the students. During the classes on Thursday and Friday I taught several classes of completely new students, and Nozaki sensei didn’t mention that I would be the teacher, so that was a little bit of a shock for them. They did well, though, and I think we all had a good time.

One thing I felt during the week was that I was glad to be moving on from the little kids into teaching a higher level. Although I really enjoyed the last year, I’m kind of glad to be moving on to something new. I can tell that I would get tired of the teaching materials and teaching them all over again for another year.

Saturday night Kuniko and I had dinner at Baan Thai with Inoguchi sensei and his wife. They hadn’t tried it before, and their frequent trips to Singapore made me think that they might like the food there. Turns out I was right – everybody enjoyed the meal. During the meal one of my old co-workers from Hamawaki came up and said hello – Kuroda sensei. She was there eating dinner with a friend – I was really surprised to see her there.

After dinner we headed down the street for some coffee and cake before calling it a night. Inoguchi sensei was fun to talk to, but it seemed to me that my Japanese wasn’t up to the task. With all this studying for the masters degree, I have been neglecting Japanese language. I need to find some time to study more.

Next week I’ve got a couple of teaching gigs lined up, and a couple of parties. Between work and play it should be another busy one.

It’s the end of Golden Week here in Japan and Kuniko and I have celebrated by not doing anything special. Kuniko was working, I was studying, and we both avoided travel and public places. Japan can be a big headache doing Golden Week – all the hard working people finally have a chance to take some time off, with predictably high fares for travel, crowded hotels, and jam-packed tourist destinations. It’s like going to an Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day – people come out of the woodwork and ruin the fun.

Instead we’ve got some tentative ideas about doing some fun things coming up while everyone else is stuck back at work. This week we’re going to tour the new IKEA store in Kobe (only the second store in Japan). Kuniko’s school has a special day off to commemorate its founding, and so we should be able to miss most of the crowds.

This week I’m going to cover three days of classes for Nozaki sensei, so it’ll be back to the little guys for a little while. I also will teach some junior high and high school classes, and on Wednesday I’m helping Nozaki sensei with one of her English classes at the Kakogawa International Relations Center. The class is being held in a very expensive city building built to foster international relations by offering support service for foreigners as well as teaching Japanese adults how to speak other languages. Nozaki sensei teaches there once a week, and so I’m going to help out a little bit this week.

Tonight Kuniko and I are hunkering down for a wine, cheese and movie night. We’ve got just a little bit of Delice d’Argental to kill off with a bottle of Malbec from Argentina. The movie is “You Only Live Twice”, featuring Sean Connery as James Bond in Japan. That should be an interesting cultural experience for Kuniko.

One of the things that is most difficult about speaking Japanese is knowing when to insert your subject, and when to drop it. Most native speakers of Japanese drop the subject of a sentence when they are reasonably sure their speaking partner knows what the subject is. This happens in English as well, but not nearly as often. There are a lot of jokes in both English and Japanese derived from one person not knowing exactly what the subject is while having a conversation.

Frequently English speakers learning Japanese have trouble with this, and start their sentences with “watashi wa…” which sounds in Japanese like “As for me, …” This is a common mistake, but even after figuring that out there are lots more gotchas waiting for the beginning speaker.

The other day I went to my local barbershop for a haircut, and the conversations with the older guy who cuts my hair are definitely the most difficult Japanese conversations that I deal with. A lot of the questions he asks me are heavily situation-dependent – something as simple as “oikutsu?” (How much?) means he wants to know how old I am if it is asked early in the conversation, but it could mean how much do I make in salary for a particular job, or even how much money I have on my person at that time.

It’s hard to learn the nuances of a language, and knowing the situation in which expressions are considered appropriate is mostly a matter of building experience through trial and error. Watching other conversations is a big help – I’ve found that at the level of Japanese that I speak the television has become my most valuable learning tool, where it was pretty useless my first two years in Japan.

Hopefully I’ll have more opportunities to speak Japanese in the future – teaching English is one of the worst jobs for learning Japanese.

Monday I had the day to study and work on my schoolwork, and in the evening I started teaching a new course over at a nearby Kawasaki plant. The same staffing company that had me working at Daikin the last two weeks set me up with an eight week course in Nishi Akashi, which is just one train stop away.

I met two reps from the staffing company who walked me to Kawasaki, handled the introductions and then split. I couldn’t help feeling during the introduction process that it was something that I could have handled on my own, but there may have been some subtle cultural and sales nuances going on that I was picking up on.

The Kawasaki plant itself was a huge research and development plant, and it was cool to walk by the motorcycle test track, and long straight road that unfortunately wasn’t in use while I was there. They also build gas turbine engines there. The security was pretty tight, but they are making a security pass for me so next time it shouldn’t be so tough to get in.

The class itself went very smoothly. Two weeks doing the intensive all day courses at Daikin really makes a two hour class seem like a piece of cake. The students responded well and I think we’ll get along well in the future. One student volunteered to walk me back to the station and we chatted in both English and Japanese about family, work and traveling.

The big challenge with this class is that the company has decided that the students should attend, rather than the students themselves. That can make for some motivation issues, as well as having the class at the end of their workday – they are tired out as well. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep the positive attitude going over the next eight weeks.

This week I might have another class or two with Nozaki sensei, as well as a three day stint teaching at her classroom while she is away. Still managing to keep busy…

Kuniko and I had a really nice weekend and we were able to spend pretty much two full days together for the first time in a long while. Saturday I met Kuniko in Sannomiya for lunch after her morning classes ended and then we went together to a concert put on by her students. The concert was a little shorter than ones that we’ve seen in the past.

As usual the concert was in the Rokkomichi area, the next town east of Kobe. I have really enjoyed visiting the area because it is a little more upscale than Okubo, but definitely a popular place to live. The feel of it is nice, and it seems like a great place to live. Unfortunately, it is a little out of our price range. Fun to visit, though!

We killed time after the concert by shopping and looking around town. I found a bottle of Bogle Old Vine Zinfandel in a tiny liquor shop, as well as an oddly shaped building designed like it was severely crooked. It was fun to explore a new area – and we wrapped up the exploration with dinner at a restaurant specializing in cheese.

In the Kitano area of Kobe there is a very nice (and very small) cheese shop that we often stop by to window shop. The prices are much higher than what you can expect to pay for similar cheeses at Carrefour, but the selection is staggering. Just about any kind of cheese you can think of from Europe is there. Turns out they have another store in Rokkomichi, this one with a restaurant up on the second floor. We had reservations for the evening, and so after looking wistfully at all the different cheeses on the first floor we went upstairs for dinner.

For dinner we split several dishes (a four cheese pizza and an Iberco pork roast) and had a blue cheese and salami salad for a starter. We finished with a cheese plate with seven types of cheese, and had a bottle of Italian red wine with dinner. We loved all the food – the cheese pizza was decadent, with some German cheese infused with herbs and also some smoked gouda and gorgonzola along with another cheese I couldn’t identify. The cheese plate had several cheeses that we hadn’t tried – but the best was a French brie-like white mold cheese called Delice d’Argental. Not for the faint of heart, it was the most creamy and delicate cheese I have ever had. The scary part was any of the cheeses you liked you could just order from your table and they would hand over a shopping bag as you left. We picked up two small pieces to take home – it was so good.

After dinner we hustled back to Okubo to take in a movie (a so-so 10,000 B.C.) and then finally came home to relax and sleep in.

Sunday’s plan was to go into Himeji to see the sweets Expo there. It is a very big event with confectioneries participating from all over Japan. Actually I helped with some of the English translations for a friend of a friend, so I was pretty familiar with what the event would feature. Kuniko had gotten tickets from a friend and so we trekked into Himeji for the day to check it out.

We caught a quick snack at a fast food burger place before going in (and that turned out to be a smart idea). The event was held on the grounds in and around Himeji castle, and there were a lot of people walking around town. As we got closer to the castle, it started getting harder to walk. By the time we got into the event, it was a mob scene.

Most exhibitions had lines that stretched forever, with waiting time for just one exhibition hall running up to three hours. Luckily early on we found a line that moved very quickly, so we got to see some sweets. Even then, most of the time we were getting jostled around.

Besides, there is something about seeing all these sweets – but shouldn’t we get a chance to taste them? They did have shops selling sweets all over, but the lines to these were 50-60 people long. The prices were also jacked up for the event, so after walking around for maybe an hour or two we decided to get out of there and go back to the station. They were selling the same sweets there for regular price and no lines.

I was a little disappointed with the whole adventure, but it was a beautiful day and we enjoyed walking around and seeing lots of people. I hope if they do it again in the future they plan a little better.

The rest of the evening was spent snacking on our take-home cheese, watching TV and relaxing. I was very happy to not have to put on my shoes and go to Osaka every day next week – but I will need to catch up on my schoolwork big time.

Friday I wrapped up the second week of intensive English courses at Daikin. The last day was the toughest for the students, but the easiest for the teachers. Just like last week we put them through speeches, interviews and role plays, and just like last week my students did really well. I was really proud of them. We even had a Daikin executive drop by to watch a speech, and despite making everyone nervous it did have the effect of showing the students just how real this all was.

This week’s students were all men, and that made for a slightly different atmosphere in the class compared to last week. I really had fun with Hikaru, Fuyuki, Kengo, Shinya, Taka, Daisuke, Takayoshi, Yasuaki, Naoya and Naoki. We bonded during lunchtimes and after class as well as during the lessons, and I think it made the whole thing run much smoother.

Again it was sad to say goodbye at the end of the week, and again I had a feeling of satisfaction in a job well done. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to meet up with them in the future.

I turned in all my materials and headed out after the class ended, and then caught a train into the heart of Osaka to meet up for dinner with the students from last week’s class, and ended up having quite a surreal adventure.

Just outside of the main station (Umeda station) in Osaka I ducked into a McDonald’s to use the bathroom, but I ended up having to wait a long time. Three schoolgirls sitting near the door said hello and invited me to sit with them while I waited. They introduced themselves and I was surprised how nice they were considering their outward appearance – they had the hiked up skirts, tons of eye makeup and long painted nails. They were very polite, and we had a good five minute conversation before the guy finally left the bathroom, and I said goodbye.

After McDonald’s I met up with last week’s students outside of the huge HEP5 building (it has a ferris wheel built on top of the building and it is filled with pink whales) and after catching up a little we walked from there to the restaurant where we had a reservation.

The restaurant was down some stairs, and appeared to be tiny from the outside, but was actually quite big. We walked past a big board with names and reservation times posted, and then into the restaurant itself.

I’ve been to a lot of different kinds of restaurants in Japan, but this was something new. The room was huge – like a giant cafeteria, but the floors were all tatami mats and tables. It was filled with hundreds of young people (Friday was payday) talking and drinking and getting out of hand. It was an image of Japan that I had always had before coming, but as yet hadn’t actually experienced. The social game was being played all around, and it was fascinating to watch.

In the middle of the room stretching from the back to the front was the kitchen, like a huge island surrounded by drunken salarymen. We were led to a private room in the back, and we stretched out on tatami mats and started drinking and eating ourselves. It was great to see everyone again and hear about their training – they’ve been learning Japanese business etiquette from corporate trainers at another facility.

Some of the group were drinkers and some weren’t drinking at all. Others obviously didn’t have much experience with drinking – alternating between drinks like gin and tonic and matcha milk, then back to whiskey or beer. Chika was the only girl in the group since Miyuki couldn’t make it, and so Chika was posted next to me and assigned as my designated alcohol pourer (Japanese cultural point). After a while I was able to move around the table and take some of the pressure off of her – it was something that she wasn’t used to yet, but as a female company employee it will become something she does quite often in the future.

At the end of a couple of hours of drinking everyone was feeling pretty good and it was time to wrap up the evening. I tried to pay more for the dinner, being the oldest man there (another cultural point) but the students insisted on everyone paying an even share of the bill.

On our way out we bumped into another group of new Daikin employees sitting out on the sea of tatami mats and talked with them for a while. I could tell my group was earning prestige points because I was along with them at their party, so I made sure to greet everyone in the new group, and finally we headed out the door. Everyone said farewell to me at the door, and shook my hand before saying goodbye, and then I headed into the main building to go home. I was still just a little hungry, and so I made a turn into the huge maze of tiny restaurants and noodle shops underneath the Hankyu building. Each walkway is lined with shops with red lanterns and full of people eating shoulder to shoulder and drinking down beer like they were on a time limit.

I stepped into a promising ramen place and had a bowl of tonkotsu ramen, and found myself getting into a conversation with a drunk guy returning from the Hanshin Tigers game with his high school age daughter. He bought me a beer and talked for a long time until I had finished up my noodles and he had started declaring his daughter as “number one beautiful girl in Japan!” Check, please!

The ride back on the train was delayed because of an accident, so I was stuck standing in the corner with people pressing in against me from two sides. A very drunk lady standing immediately to my left fell asleep leaning against me, and I noticed people watching me carefully to see what I would do. My primary concern was my new suit and whether she was going to puke on it or not. Luckily she woke up one station before mine and staggered off the train without incident. At my stop a couple of drunk and frazzled salarymen got into a fist fight briefly, but they were so tired they quickly gave up on the matter and weaved away in opposite directions. Finally I got home around midnight, still buzzing from the alcohol and my feet killing me from two weeks of standing up in cheap dress shoes.

It was great – the kind of adventure that makes me really happy that I live in Japan – but I’m looking forward to a quieter schedule for the next couple of weeks.

Going into my two week long “intensive English training” I was pretty stressed. There were a lot of firsts involved: my first time teaching for the OTC staffing company, my first time teaching a “corporate class”, the first time teaching in an all-day, all-week intensive format, and finally my first time commuting every day to Osaka for work.

I spent a couple of days ahead of time creating detailed lesson plans for the first two days, and had trouble relaxing. Kuniko could tell I was stressed – she did tons of little things to help me de-stress in preparation for Monday, and it helped a lot. She got up early every day and made me a bento lunch to send with me, and if it wasn’t for her I think the experience would have been completely different.

Finally Monday rolled around and I went into work with Kuniko early, taking the same train from Okubo to her stop in Kobe. From then on I was my own, and I had the opportunity to experience first-hand the rush hour into Osaka. At the three stops between Sannomiya and Osaka there were more and more people cramming onto the train. At one point people were wedging themselves so hard into the train that the people next to me were grunting in pain. I’m certain that people would have fallen over or collapsed if there had been room to do so. Each time the train stopped five or ten people would get off and about twenty or thirty would get on. I was squeezed into a corner, which turned out to be a good spot because people pushed in on me only from two sides. The corner spot was a choice spot, and I was lucky to get it most of the time last week. Of course the best spots were the seats, but they were filled long before I got on the train. I can’t imagine how exhausting and stressful it must have been for people that commute every day.

I popped out of the train like everyone else in busy Osaka station, and found my way to the Midosuji subway line. I had a long ride on that train, but it cleared out after only four or five stops and I got a seat. I could sit for about 20 minutes, and that was one of the only nice things about my commute.

On the first day we met as a group with the people from our staffing company, and walked over to the location together. Thereafter we were on our own. I was the first teacher there, and eventually met another six teachers also working for OTC. As usual it was an interesting mix of people from all over the world – Canada, Australia, England and New Zealand. I really enjoyed talking with Renalto, a Canadian guy that has been living in Japan for about eight years. He sounded like he had the same kind of feelings going into this as I did, and so we hung out quite a bit during the week.

We walked over to the Kansai Learning Center, a very large complex partially rented out by the Daikin Corporation for their new employee training. The place was quiet, and we gathered in a classroom for our final briefing and to receive our class lists, textbooks and materials. I had a few minutes to glance at the names on my class list, and then they sent us to our classroom. Renalto’s classroom was right next to mine, and we wished each other good luck and stepped inside. And there were already 10 nervous faces looking at me when I went in.

I guess I had envisioned having a few minutes to prepare before the students arrived, but they were waiting already, quietly watching as I unpacked my stuff and got prepared. I gave them a big smile, and launched into my prepared lesson, and we started getting to know each other.

Each day was divided into a general schedule, with six role plays that needed to be memorized and acted out by the students over the course of the week. They were also responsible for making a speech in English on the last day, as well as have an interview with me to assess their overall English ability.

To give you an idea of scale – there were 240 new employees from all over Japan on the first week, with another 240 scheduled for next week. They were divided into classes by English level (students took a listening test the week before), and each given a native English instructor for a crash course in “business English”. Big companies in Japan generally hire once a year after graduation, and new employees undergo training for more than a month before being assigned to a department and location.

These students were fresh out of college, and at the skill level I was teaching they didn’t have much success with English in the past. I’m sure they were pretty nervous about having to undergo a week of English training, and they were also apprehensive about who might walk in that door at nine o’clock and start teaching. Would it be a strict teacher? What if they can’t understand anything? Would they be embarrassed because they don’t speak English well? Would their new bosses be watching?

As always I tried to make sure that first and foremost everyone was comfortable and relaxed as much as possible. I spent the first 40 minutes or so introducing myself, having the students introduce themselves, and doing a lot of smiling and laughing. I found myself generally sticking to the schedule but often changing up things based on how I sensed the students were dealing with the material. By lunch time I was exhausted, and was looking forward to eating lunch. I ate together with the students in the classroom, and they had lots of informal questions while I ate. We spoke in Japanese and English during lunch, which also helped relax them. By the time we wrapped up the first day’s lesson, everybody was smiling and I was feeling really good about the rest of the week.

After the students left to gather with their friends in the main lobby area I went back to sign out and write some notes about the class for the company. While I was in there I overheard one of the students in my class outside in the lobby telling his friend how great his teacher was, and how lucky it was that they got a nice teacher for this week. It made me feel pretty good about the day. I told Kuniko later how the first day went, and what a relief it was – she just smiled, like she knew it would turn out that way all along.

Over the next four days I commuted to work in the crush of people early every morning, and the students and I just got more and more comfortable with each other. I put them in charge of parts of the lessons, gave them more flexibility when I thought they could handle it, and most of all kept them relaxed and smiling through the week. The role plays were difficult, and a speech is difficult to give in any language, but the final presentations went better than I had hoped. I noticed that many other teachers left as soon as the class ended. I was one of the few teachers that ate lunch with their students, and in conversations with some other teachers it seemed like their students were little more than annoyances, rather than people undergoing a stressful transition in their lives.

On the final day I gave each student an honest evaluation of their English skill (on an English form provided by Daikin) and told them what they can do to improve their English level in the future. We shook hands and I wished them good luck. I felt a little like I was sending troops into the meat grinder that is full time office employment in Japan, but each student said that they were happy with the class.

The highlight for me at the end was after they left on the last day. I stayed to clean up the classroom, and I collected the final questionnaire that the students had filled out. Each one said they were “very happy” with the instructor, and the notes they had written in Japanese about my performance during the week, well, modesty doesn’t allow me to write anything here. They were very happy with what could have been a very stressful and tiring experience.

The students invited me to go to a drinking party with them next Friday night, so hopefully our schedules will work out so that we can all meet again. I walked through the lobby on my way home on the last day and my students were stopping me to introduce me to their friends (in English!) and saying how happy they were – I felt like Super Teacher. The whole experience gave me a kind of satisfaction that I rarely got from teaching at the high school and elementary school levels.

The students last week: Yuuki, Ippei, Miyuki, Chika, Yoshihito, Kazuya, Rei, Daisuke, Shuichi and Taku, were all great people, and they’ve set my expectations high for next week’s class. If their attitude is half as good as last week’s class, I should have an excellent week. Going all the way to Osaka is hard work and very tiring, but in the end the satisfaction that I got with the students and their performance made it all worthwhile.

Kuniko and I are both in hangover recovery mode after a heavy night of drinking. I was hanging out with Antoine, and Kuniko was attending a farewell party for the tennis club in Kobe.

Antoine and I met in Suma, and did a loop hike up the hill and through the forest. At the top I produced a couple of cold beers from my backpack, and we walked the hour long trail through the forest with beers in hand. It was a nice moment – it would have been fun without the beers, but it made it even better with a cold one at the top. After the hike we had dinner at an izakaya in Suma that we had been to before with Nel when he was living nearby.

Antoine told me about his wedding plans – they are looking at getting married the last week in December here in Japan, to make it easy for his family to travel here. It sounds like they are aiming for a much simpler wedding than what they had considered before. Miwako’s sister works for a restaurant in Kitano, and she was going to help set up the after-party. I was surprised to hear the name of the restaurant: Graciani. That’s one of our favorite restaurants.

From there Antoine wanted to go back to Donkey and maybe play some darts. I hadn’t been back to Donkey in a long time, so we decided to hit Akashi. We found the place looking completely different. They had remodeled to get rid of the retail liquor shop that was part of the layout, and instead made another bar and added two more dart boards. They also were having a dart league night, so weren’t able to get any darts time. The Guinness was good, though, and we were served by the master’s daughter who was there to help out while the master and his wife participated in the tournament.

Since we weren’t able to throw darts we decided to have a “sports” competition over at the bowling alley. We played drunken ping pong, and I trounced Antoine – so we moved to billiards and I beat him three games to zip. Afterwards we walked over to where the old spooky Indian restaurant had burned down to see if there was anything new being built, but there was just an empty lot.

We wanted “just one more drink” but by then everything was closing up, so I bought Antoine a bottle of chu-hi for the road, and sent him off in the right direction. I caught a train towards Okubo, and sent a message to Kuniko to see where she was. To make a long story short she had been drinking too much, and had to make a pit stop in Tarumi on the way home. Luckily one of her co-workers helped her get home safely, and we took our hangover precautions and went to bed.

Next week I start a two week stint at a large company called Daikin, in southern Osaka. It will be a lot of commuting time, but hopefully the classes will be fun. Today we’ll take it easy, and then tomorrow I’ll make a temporary re-entry into the working world.

I love yakiniku. It’s the hidden underside of the otherwise relatively healthy Japanese diet. Literally “grilled meat”, yakiniku is served on a plate raw in bite-sized pieces, and then cooked by the customer on a gas grill that is usually built right into the table. You order meat by type – for example “beef rib meat”, or “chicken thigh meat”. They also usually have lots of Korean food at yakiniku places, so it’s a double bonus. Once the meat is grilled the way you like, you dunk it in a sauce and eat it. The sauce can be modified – they have spicy Korean sauces and extra garlic if you want to add it. It really brings out the inner carnivore. The only drink that goes well with yakiniku is cold beer, and lots of it.

Kuniko and I love yakiniku, but it isn’t the most healthy dish as there is sometimes a lot of fat on some cuts of meat, and inevitably all that meat and sauce and garlic leaves pretty stinky breath for the rest of the day (and possibly into the next!). Luckily Kuniko had a rare two days off, so last night we went and ate big at a local yakiniku place we wanted to try. It was run by a family and it was a pretty nice place. What it lacked in atmosphere it made up for in friendliness, and we had a pretty good time.

After dinner we walked around Vivre and Saty shopping and killing time before seeing “Cloverfield” in the theater. Before the movie I found a good price on a new suit (my next two-week gig is a business English class so I need to look the part) so that will be ready later this week. The movie was one of the rare ones that Kuniko and I felt completely opposite about – I liked it quite a lot and Kuniko didn’t like it at all.

Today Kuniko and I slept in and did a little bit of shopping at the drug store, and I’ve been studying all afternoon while Kuniko has been studying and baking. A nice slow day, and perfectly timed with the rainy weather.

Since my fun over at OTC I’ve been back to work at home studying – trying to catch up with my schoolwork. It’s not all nose to the grindstone – Kuniko and I have had some free time lately, and we’ve been having fun.

Yesterday we both had a day off so we slept in, and then went to Akashi and had a picnic under the cherry blossoms on the shore of the lake in Akashi park. It wasn’t just us – lots of Japanese people are enjoying “hanami” parties this time of year. It was fun to buy some special bento boxes full of food, a six pack of beer, and just relax and enjoy the beautiful weather.

I was also able to catch up with some ex-coworkers from Takasago Minami. I met up with Yamamoto sensei, Maeda sensei, and Fujimaru sensei in Akashi. We went to an izakaya and had lots of greasy food with beer, and then played a couple games of bowling at a nearby alley. Finally we met a former student of Maeda sensei’s for coffee, and then called it night.

It’s already Friday night, and we’re taking it easy at home. Tomorrow Kuniko has a big day at work – there is a big school party after work that she was in charge of organizing, so she’ll be coming home tired and (hopefully) tipsy. I’ve got no plans other than just caching up with homework and relaxing at home. This weekend we’re also planning on maybe getting some yakiniku somewhere, and perhaps seeing “Cloverfield” at the movie theater.

Looking forward to the weekend!

It seems like every week or so I get on here and say “now I can blog a lot more” and then I never do. Hopefully, this time is for real. My job at Nozaki sensei’s place is over (or is it?) and so I should have lots of free time for about a week and a half. Then it is back to work (temporarily). Recently, my professional life has been as confusing as hell.

Today I went into Osaka to attend a training session for a new staffing company that I am working for – OTC staffing. They mainly deal with corporate clients and they have been around a long time. The goal today was to get me officially inducted into the company register as a contractor with their company, to do two orientations, and for me to do a demonstration lesson for them so they can “assess my style of teaching”.

The demo lesson was the only thing that was making me worried. I have taught a lot of classes, but few have been observed by outside people, so I was feeling a little nervous going into it. It’s one thing to teach for a bunch of people, but this time it felt like I was going to be teaching for my livelihood. In addition they sent me a load of paperwork telling me about the style of teaching and sample content that they expected in the demo lesson. I spent a lot of time preparing for the lesson, and as the day got closer I was getting more and more nervous.

They scheduled the demo lesson after two orientation sessions, so I had to sweat it out all afternoon. The orientation sessions were pretty standard fare. I was the only one there today (because of my March schedule I couldn’t attend with the other newbies) so I got personal service from two of the trainers. They both did a great job, and I talked with a really interesting customer coordinator who really impressed me. We spent a lot of time laughing and talking about corporate life, and by the end of it I felt like we were good buddies.

Then, the demo lesson. I was expecting a class of about eight people, but they only sent three. One was a British guy named John, and the other two were female office assistants. John was a full-time employee and his title was “trainer”. He seemed nice enough. I was told to prepare for a two hour lesson, but I’d only teach 40 minutes. Overall, I thought it went OK, but I was surprised that John spent so much time flirting with the office assistants. The office assistants (both Japanese) enjoyed the attention, and overall I had the feeling that I was the only one taking the lesson seriously. It was a little frustrating to work so hard on a lesson and be nervous about it for so long and then have the “students” screwing off the whole time.

That was the only downer of the day. I got home by 5:30, and Kuniko was busy cooking me dinner when I arrived. We cracked open a bottle of German wine so I could blow off steam, and we’ve been relaxing around the house ever since. What a day.

I got a lot of information about work this month (two weeks at a company called Daikin), and it looks like I can make in two weeks what usually takes a month. Also I might have a job in May and June with Mitsubishi doing interviews of their employees, but that is still tentative. That also pays really well – I can make about double what I made at my normal school jobs. The work is harder, but if I can make a lot of money now maybe I can have more time later to finish up my degree and see about landing one of these cushy corporate jobs in the future. And be like John.

Today I just about wrapped up my paper. My schedule was a little different – Kuniko had a chance to sleep in and I had a chance to join her. She drove me to the local 100 yen store to do some shopping for my students tomorrow, and then I came home and worked on the paper until I had it finished. Tomorrow I’ll do the final edits, and then put it all together and send it off.

Tonight Kuniko has a dinner party with some coworkers, so I’m going to do a pork roast here at home with the new steam oven… it’ll be fun to experiment a little bit.

I had an interesting phone call last night from my old staffing company, W5 staffing in Osaka. They were the ones that set up my job at Hamawaki junior high school in Nishinomiya a couple of years ago. They are looking for somebody to teach elementary school kids in Kobe. The pay is pretty good, the hours seem nice enough, but I have to decide before I hear about the interviewing job at OTC. One day I don’t have a job and the next day I’ve got to choose between them.

It seems like I am always working on school projects lately. I’m in the middle of a small paper for my methodology class, but I should be able to kill it off tomorrow. After this paper there is a big open space ahead of me that I’m a little concerned about.

On Thursday of this week I have a last class with my Thursday students, and my last official class of Nozaki sensei’s place is next Monday. My lifestyle is going to change pretty significantly after that.

I wasn’t able to line up a full time job for a start in April. I probably could have grabbed something teaching little kids in Osaka, but after a year with little kids on my own I wanted to try something new. I signed up with a staffing company that provides native speakers of English to companies, and I’m going to a training session on April 1st. I’ll have to do a demo lesson for a bunch of company big-wigs, which is kind of making me nervous already. Then they have me scheduled for a week of intensive teaching at a large Japanese heating and cooling company called “Daikin”. After that week I have only the possibility of another teaching job through them, so who knows what will happen.

One intriguing possibility is a job that my contact at the staffing company mentioned – working for a couple of months as an interviewer for Mitsubishi. It sounds like a really cool job, and since I have quite a bit of interviewing experience they thought it might be a good match. It’s a 4-5 hour a day job in Osaka, with a couple of business trips to Shikoku and Kyushu so that I’d cover pretty much all of western Japan. I’ll get more details on April 1st, but it sounds pretty cool to me. I’m sure I’m just projecting all my hopes and dreams on the job – but it would seem to be a pretty good way to make some good money and still have time to work on my master’s.

Nozaki sensei also wants me around to cover some classes here and there, and she’s been training to be a tour guide in Nara so if I could cover a Monday or Friday now and then she would have an easier time traveling back and forth for the weekend rush of English-speaking tourists.

So professionally my life is one big question mark, but scholastically the march towards my degree continues. I should have lots more study time available in April, so that’s an upside. I’ll have more time to post on the blog, too.

That’s one big school/work update, and I’m sure there’ll be more later. Once I knock out my paper I’ll get on the ball and write more.

This week I’m teaching my last classes for many of my students. The only exception is Monday and Thursday – those classes will finish up next week.

The big excitement in the last class is that students can exchange the points they’ve earned by doing homework over the year for prizes provided by Nozaki sensei. There are lots of snacks, school supplies, and some toys in a series of big boxes, and the students can total up their points and go shopping. The whole experience is in English, although usually they keep a running total in their heads in Japanese.

Some classes I’m very happy to wrap up and say goodbye – yesterday I had a last class with the youngest kids. The class was always tough for me to handle because of the wide gap in ages and maturity. Based on my recommendation next year they’ll get split up into two different classes, and I think both classes will go more smoothly. In a class first, all the students thanked me in English for the prizes and presents, unprompted. Most of my other classes take the prizes as if they were already rightfully theirs, with no thanks at all. Of all my classes I was surprised that the young ones got it right. Today I’ll say goodbye to some of my better students – and that will be a little sad. They are moving on to junior high school, and I’ll miss teaching them.

It’s raining outside today, and rain is in the forecast tomorrow as well. I was hoping to do a day hike tomorrow and tote my schoolbooks up a mountain somewhere to read them, but that is looking less and less likely due to inclement weather. I’m determined to do something different – I’m starting to get cabin fever from all this studying. We’ll see what happens when I wake up tomorrow.