It’s the middle of the week, and I’m convinced that the weather is playing some part in the doldrums that Kuniko and I have been in lately. We’ve both been getting home on the late side, and with almost no energy from teaching lethargic students we don’t really do much when we get home.

Lately it hasn’t been so hot as humid, and the walk to work and back sometimes feels more like a swim. I buy a cold drink at the convenience store before setting off for work in the afternoon, and even on the way home at night I’ve got a good layer of sweat going. Sounds like fun, huh?

Last night Kuniko cooked up some shisomaki for me – it’s my favorite yakitori dish, and it turned out great. We watched a little TV and then headed to the air conditioned bedroom to mark papers, play Nintendo, and use the computer.

The heat did drive me to get a haircut yesterday (finally). After a bad haircut experience last time I thought I’d put it off as long as I could. Kuniko mentioned the other day that I probably have reached that point, so I went off in search of a haircut.

First I went to the place I tried last time, hoping for some improvement, but they were closed up. Instead I walked back home using the back roads, and I walked past a small barbershop that was open. I decided to try it out, and it turned out great.

There was a guy getting finished up at the moment, so the barber’s wife sat me down and I read the newspaper until he was ready for me. He was a talkative guy, and it was great practice for me to try to keep the conversation going in Japanese. He did a really good job with my hair, and did all the old fashioned barber routines like shaving, shampooing, and even a strange kind of neck massage involving snapping his hands together on my shoulder blades. His wife had coffee ready for me when I was finished, and the barber and I watched TV and chatted while I drank my coffee. It was a really good experience, and now I’m actually looking forward to my next haircut.

Well, my computer is heating up the room too much so I’ve got to sign off and call it a day. I’m leaving for work in a few hours, and so I’d better get ready…

We had a busy Sunday and I’m still kind of recovering. I ended up (unintentionally) sleeping late and I’ve been struggling to get my act together this morning.

Tonight I’m working late, and I’ll be doing late classes until Thursday of this week, so hopefully I’ll have time then to write up the weekend and what’s been going on.

More later!

Finally getting around to posting about last weekend. Sunday we had three of Kuniko’s international students over to make lunch, and then afterwards the Okamotos over for a taco party.

After a slight mixup at the station (one student caught the wrong train and came a little late) we did a little bit of shopping and then came back to our place to cook up lunch.

Kuniko’s idea was to show them how to make some traditional Japanese dishes, so together they made oshizushi, shogayaki, and tempura. I generally tried to stay out of the way but occasionally I would step in and help out. I helped Myra (from India) peel shrimp, and showed her some of the tips I picked up peeling shrimp living with my aunt and uncle in San Diego. I also helped Barbara (from France) grind down some raw ginger into a usable paste for the shogayaki. Hinzy (from America) acted as kind of a supervisor for the group, and did a lot of work with the tempura.

Lunch turned out to be quite big, and by the time we finished (and had dessert from the grumpy baker on the first floor) I was stuffed. We played a little bit of Wii to burn some calories, and then headed to Saty to take some purikura to commemorate the event. From there we sent them home and headed back to get the taco stuff ready for dinner.

A couple of impressions from lunch… Kuniko gave them all the instructions in Japanese, and generally they did OK. I was surprised how each of the students relied on English for communication, despite coming from three different countries. I guess it would be tough to fumble through Japanese since everyone is studying at a different level. Still, I would think that they would welcome an opportunity to speak some Japanese.

Another thing I noticed was how hard it was to think of them as high school students. They acted much more mature than the students that I’m teaching nowadays, and hanging out with them in a relaxed party atmosphere made it that much more difficult. I had a good time talking with them, and I think they really enjoyed the afternoon.

I was pretty full by dinnertime, so I was a little worried about hosting a decent taco party, but in the end we did OK. The Okamotos came on time at the train station and we walked them over to our place. They marveled at how close we were to the station… they live in the sticks, 30 minutes to the nearest train station by car!

Although we live closer to the station, our place is pretty small compared to their house. The benefit of living way out in the country is that you have more space to build, and so I’m sure they also were wondering how we could live in such a small space.

The taco party was nice, and we chatted and ate while looking at vacation pictures and talking about how things are going. I noticed again that Ikuko stuck to Japanese and hardly spoke any English at all. It seems like she is studying English at home (she’s got all day long at home with nothing more than laundry and dinner to do) but she didn’t seem to want to try and use it. I think she has just lost a lot of confidence in her English skills.

Her husband is a really quiet guy, so it was a little tough to get him to relax and enjoy himself. He doesn’t really drink (so tequila was out of the question), but we played a little Wii and he kind of loosened up a bit.

Afterwards we walked them back to the station and said goodbye, and Kuniko and I chatted about them on the walk home. She kind of felt like I do – Ikuko has a lot of free time during the day and it seemed like a good opportunity to study, get a degree, teach students in her home, or do something more. Her English was really good, and it seems like a waste to just let it slide away.

So we were pretty tired out after all the entertaining, and the worst of it was that it was Sunday and we had to go off to work the next day. We had a great time, but I’m was in desperate need of an energy boost.

In a couple of my recent classes I have been writing some kanji on the whiteboard to illustrate how to remember the days of the week in English. My students are at the age now where they are just starting to study how to write kanji in school. They freaked out the first time I wrote some kanji on the board.

When I first learned to write in Japanese, my teacher was really strict about what order you write each stroke of the kanji with your pencil or pen. I remember her saying that the order of the strokes is preserved in history because they can tell from carvings on ancient weapons from thousands of years ago.

My personal feeling is that as long as the end result is the same, what does it matter how you do it? While that philosophy might not fly in politics and government it certainly seems fine for writing the alphabet.

Anyway, my students are spending lots of time at school every day doing the order just the right way, and that makes them ideal critics for my haphazard writing style. Their criticism also extends to numbers and the alphabet. It’s good for them to see that it is OK for someone to write in a different way, but they are always astonished to see someone flout conventional wisdom like I do.

A while back while playing Brain Training on the Nintendo DS I noticed that the handwriting recognition software wouldn’t recognize how I wrote the number “5”. Apparently, everyone in Japan writes it the same way – the whole bottom section first, and then one horizontal line across the top. I had to change how I write the number to be able to use the software. I wonder if the American version of the software is the same?

Tuesday was a very hot, very humid day. It was a good reminder of the upcoming Japanese summer. I was sweating like crazy, and although this usually has pretty good weight loss benefits it doesn’t look so great when you are walking around town. It doesn’t feel so great, either.

To beat the heat I stayed inside during the day and then brought a hand towel along to mop up the sweat during the walk to work. Once I arrived there I fired up Nozaki sensei’s air conditioner and was chilling at a nice 25 degrees for the afternoon.

The air conditioner is absolutely mission critical for my classes, especially the younger students’ lessons when me march around, jump up and down, and sing songs. Today’s first class was with the youngest students.

For the first time Kento (the only boy in the class) decided to do the class without his family members hanging around in the hallway. I was glad to hear it, and I was glad that the family can get on with their lives for at least an hour. Kento arrived almost 20 minutes early, so that gave me time to play games with him and get him comfortable. He’s a really quiet kid and seems overwhelmed with being outside his home. He played games with me but the only real reaction I got out of him verbally was when I said “Ay-yi-yi” for some reason. He thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard me say.

The other classes went swimmingly. I really like the older students on Tuesdays because after the young kids they seem the most mature people in the world to me. Today was also the only Tuesday of the month when I don’t have a junior high school class. I went home and beat Kuniko back by about two hours. I made up some risotto from a package and served it up with a loaf of garlic bread and some prosciutto with grated Parmesan cheese and parsley. It wasn’t bad.

At home it’s really hot – we had the air conditioners running tonight and maybe that will be a regular thing for a while. Summer is really here, I guess.

Monday night I had a lesson over at Yuka’s house, so after my regular lessons I walked over there and rang the doorbell. But, nobody was home.

I got there around 6:55, and the lesson is usually from 7-8, so I was a little surprised. Then I was worried that maybe I had the wrong day. I decided to go kill a little time at the nearby convenience store browsing the junk food, and when I came back about five minutes later Yuka’s mom was just pulling into the driveway.

She was surprised that Yuka wasn’t home, so she guided me to Yuka’s bedroom where we usually do the lessons, set me up with an iced coffee, and tried to get in touch. Turns out she was running late, and Yuka showed up around 7:25 or so. Her mom was pissed.

Yuka came in and apologized to me quickly in English, and we started the lesson. I wasn’t too bothered with it – as they say in the industry, shit happens. Trains are late, boyfriends are hard to resist, homework is almost finished, etc. It was only 20 minutes or so, so who cares? Yuka’s mom came up a few minutes later and told Yuka to apologize Japanese style, which is to get down on your hands and knees and bow your head to the ground – it was pretty hardcore. I insisted that everything was OK but I realized that how I felt about the situation was really not part of the equation here.

After her mom left we finished up the lesson. We went to eight o’clock, the usual ending time, and she paid me for the full hour (which wsa nice). Anyway, it was an interesting peek into raising children in Japan, and how much discipline is emphasized, at least at Yuka’s house.

Sunday I got up early (for me) and left Kuniko conked out in bed to head to a conference in Osaka. The conference was on “Teaching English in the Japanese Classroom” which is a very broad topic indeed. In certification-crazy Japan the organizers made a very clever play and offered a certificate if you write a paper after the seminar is over. For this reason alone I expected a lot of attendees.

It took me an hour to get to Osaka on the second-fastest train and then I transferred to the loop line and rode a local train to the bottom of the loop at Tenouji. I’ve been there before, but only to quickly transfer somewhere else – this was my first time to look around the area. The station was pretty big, and the surrounding area had lots of stores and restaurants. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard, so I hurried over to the seminar venue and registered.

The organizers were also quite clever in not only charging the attendees for the seminar, but they also had three different textbook publishing companies there with booths overflowing with books. No doubt they helped sponsor the event, because they often would make announcements about this book or that book now available.

I sat towards the front and center and looked around at the other attendees. It seemed like about 70% foreign and 30% Japanese. I was sitting next to a Japanese lady who I chatted with for a while. Her name was Naho, and she teaches at home to young kids (kind of like what I’m doing). Her husband was at home taking care of their baby boy while she came to the conference and she seemed a little worried that he might not be up to the task.

As for the conference itself, it was all in English and really well done. The speakers were all professors at various colleges in Japan, and since teaching at that level is one of my long term goals it was interesting to see them in action.

First, I was really impressed with the depth of their knowledge. Everyone not only knew their field and the current trends, but they also had a really good sense of how things applied to their Japanese students. I also noticed that their vocabulary tended to be much better than mine. I guess it’s high time I went back to school and got a vocab upgrade.

There were four speakers throughout the day, each one lecturing about 90 minutes. All the topics were about helping students learn to speak English better, and they gave study tips, teaching advice, and lesson ideas. Very practical, useful stuff. On another level, almost all the tips can be applied to your own situation studying Japanese – although I didn’t mention that out loud. Now I have some new strategies for my own studies.

During the day I spoke with most people in English, but Naho complained that her head was getting tired from all the English so we mainly spoke in Japanese. We had lunch together and some coffee afterwards, and it was a good exercise for me to speak about more technical stuff than the weather and travel plans. She was really nice and we’ll try to stay in touch.

After it all wrapped up I found a couple of textbooks that I ordered, and then hit the road. The weather was still pretty crappy, so I made it to the train station and then rode the train through the big storm to get get home to Okubo. Overall it was a good day – I learned a lot and was inspired to work harder on my own Japanese and college studies.

Kuniko had dinner ready for me when we got home: a tofu salad and some nacho potato wedges that she made from a kit she had brought home from New Zealand. Dinner was great, and we just relaxed at home and stayed dry. Tomorrow it’s back to work…

Saturday was a nice easy weekend day, and I stayed busy doing laundry, cleaning, and taking a long walk around town to enjoy the beautiful weather. Kuniko had to work Saturday, but she has Sunday off (finally a day off!) and she can relax then.

While walking around I walked past a Zelda video game for the Nintendo DS, and it was reasonably priced so I picked it up. Of course the whole game is in Japanese, but as it turns out it is a really fun way to study. As I read along there comes a time when an unfamiliar kanji comes up, and when this happens you just tap the kanji and the correct reading appears. I learned a lot already (I didn’t know 海賊 – pirate), and I learned that I have been reading some words wrong all this time. Anyway, it’s a fun game and usually play it with my dictionary sitting right next to me.

Saturday night Kuniko got home on the late side, so we had some pizza (half Korean and half bacon and mushroom, with little sausages rolled into the crust) and beer and celebrated the end of her 21 day work week.

Tomorrow she’ll be relaxing but I won’t – I have a conference in Osaka to attend. The weather is also supposed to turn stormy, so I’m not looking forward to leaving my exhausted wife behind to brave rainy weather and the unknowns of Tenouji station.

These last couple days I’ve been working hard trying to buy a computer in America and have it shipped to Hawaii so that I can pick it up this summer when we’re there visiting. I think I finally found a way to do it, but there are a remarkable amount of roadblocks and obstacles to overcome to do it. Who knew giving somebody money could be so difficult?

That got me to thinking about banking in Japan versus the United States. I could write for a long time about my good and bad experiences in banking in both countries. Today I just want to talk about one interesting difference: checks.

In Japan, there are no personal checks. There’s a big difference right there. Towards the end of my stay in America I had started moving away from using checks, and started moving towards using my debit card to take money directly out of my checking account.

Japan is a cash-centric society, so most people carry around lots of cash all the time. Nobody blinks an eye if you use the equivalent of a $100 bill to buy a soda. The situations when you might normally write a check are handled electronically by ATMs and banks. For example, all my utilities are withdrawn automatically from my bank account every month. Otherwise, I use cash to buy stuff on a day to day basis. If there is a big purchase, I go to the bank and withdraw the cash, or use a credit card that is linked to my bank account. Easy.

The really cool part of the Japanese banking system (and there aren’t that many cool parts, to be honest) is the electronic wire transfer system. From an ATM I can put money into any bank account that I like. It costs about $2 to do normally, and the people get the money the same day. I signed up for online banking so I can do it from my home computer for free. You can even buy big items online and just send them the money right away – it’s just as easy as a credit card.

Anyway, as you might expect there are lots of differences, and working in both systems really highlights those differences sometimes. Hopefully I’ll get this all worked out before the trip to Hawaii…

Roaches. They are not the most popular thing in our household. After never really ever have seen a roach in America I had some in my old apartment when I first moved in upon arriving in Japan. Since I killed them off and sealed up some holes, my experiences with cockroaches were really just in the occasional restaurant.

Last night after work I saw a cockroach go running into the small air conditioner in our bedroom. That was a big surprise, because our house is pretty clean and airtight. After thinking about it I realized that they had probably done a bug cleanout in the vacant apartment two doors down – maybe this guy was looking for new digs.

I tried a little bit last night to get him out of there, but it’s a pretty big piece of machinery and there were a lot of places to hide. Cut to this morning, and I pulled the air conditioner off the wall and took the thing apart looking for the little bug.

After an hour of taking the thing apart, cleaning it up, and putting it back together there was no roach to be found. I figured it had either left the room or went out whatever hole he came in.

So I put the AC unit back on the wall, plugged it back in, and turned it on to test it out. And a little cockroach came flying out on a cushion of cold air. Ah, ha!

Unfortunately for him he didn’t have a parachute, and he landed squarely on his back. I did a quickdraw with a newspaper and flattened the little guy. Roach problem solved.

After all that adventure I’m going to have to get ready for work now. Today I have a couple bad students, so I may need to have a chat with one or two of them. My little talks with them seem to be pretty effective.

This evening I had four classes, so it was one of my busier nights. One of the highlights was my junior high school class. A student from one of the other nights was absent, so she asked if it was OK to come to tonight’s class.

Her normal class is pretty quiet because nobody nows each other very well. Tonight’s class is really tight and they joke around and are really comfortable trying to speak English. I thought it was a good chance for her to see what other classes were like and realize that being a little less shy might help.

Between classes I got a message from Kuniko – she had locked herself out of the house by leaving her keys inside when she left in the morning. She had gotten out early today but she ended up having to kill five hours until I got off work. She went and saw “300” in the theater, and graded her student’s exams in Starbucks until it was time to come pick me up. Bad luck!

I usually don’t post much more beyond my daily activities, but I just finished watching Michael Moore’s Sicko, thanks to the magic of the internet.

I’m not sure why I decided to download it, but it may only be because I had the opportunity to check it out after reading about how it leaked on the internet two weeks before release.

So I watched it, and I thought it was a really good movie.

I think most people reading this probably have more experience with the health care system in America so there’s really no point in me talking about my experiences. The most interesting thing about the movie to me was how Moore would take viewers out of America into other countries and see how things work there.

Moore’s movies tend to be over the top in terms of how he presents his arguments, and often times I really can’t bear to watch because it’s like he’s taking a joke way too far. Even so, intelligent people can sniff that out and make decisions for themselves about what is likely to be exaggerated and what is likely to be the real deal.

Anyway, the American health care system is completely screwed up or maybe I’m a communist pinko. Possibly both.

In Japan health care isn’t free, but it is subsidized by the government. I really don’t spend much time in a hospital or at a doctor, but when I have gone nothing has cost more than $10-15. Pharmacy visits are really cheap as well, so I really can’t complain. Older people in Japan go to the doctor as a way to kill time during the day – they socialize with their friends and talk the ears off the doctors, nurses, and other patients.

In Japan, I can go to any doctor (or hospital) I like, which I find really nice. I remember working in America and getting some very complicated paperwork about how much I had to pay for this and that and where I was allowed to go and how I had to make a phone call at certain times before treatment at a non-plan doctor or hospital. What a huge pain in the ass. Now going to a different doctor just means I have to fill out an extra sheet of paper for my file.

Probably the single most important thing I can relate to Americans living in America is to take a look at your country and lifestyle from an outside perspective. Take a foreign newspaper. Read about America on a British or South African news website. Sometimes you can see things you didn’t before.

Oh, and go see Sicko. I’d be interested to hear your reviews of the movie.

As you might expect, teaching young kids can be an interesting job. One of the things I love about teaching is that the students make every day and every class interesting. Each class is more than just going through the textbook, and the dialog between the students as we progress through the lesson is what I like most.

One of my students asked me out of the blue if it is OK to fart in America, and so I had to analyze that question a little before coming up with a suitable response. It’s not just a simple question of whether it is OK or not – it depends on the situation. In the end I told him that it generally isn’t acceptable to fart in public, and if he had to fart to please go to the bathroom. He assured me that he didn’t but it did make me wonder why the topic even came up.

Such is the level of general discourse in my classes.

After I wrapped up three classes I made the short walk over to teach a private one-on-one lesson with Yuka. Yuka is a first year high school student and she’s trying to really boost her English speaking level. Mom is footing the bill for a private tutor, and so I work with her three times a month in an effort to get her more comfortable speaking English.

The walk to her place is really nice – it’s a ten minute walk through a quiet neighborhood. During one part of the walk I cross between two big rice paddies and even though the pathway is narrow and paved you are completely surrounded by water and rice seedlings. One of my more interesting commutes.

The classroom at Nozaki sensei’s house isn’t always available to me on Mondays so I go to Yuka’s place and we talk in her bedroom. I personally would prefer somewhere a little more public (like the living room) but the mom wants it that way and apparently Yuka doesn’t mind.

We usually just chat, and I try to get her to form some opinions in English, and talk about what she does. Her vocabulary is pretty limited though, and I think she needs to do a little more basic memorization before she can really excel at English.

Kuniko and I both arrived home after 8 p.m. so we had a very simple dinner of tonkatsu and rice and then went to bed. Tomorrow I have one more night class and then I’ll be free and clear in the evenings this week.

Saturday passed with not much going on – I stayed home and did all the weekend chores at once. Since Kuniko was at work all day I just puttered around the house and cooked some dinner (zucchini bacon casserole) for when she got home.

Sunday she was back off to work and I took the opportunity to go hiking with Antoine in Kobe. On the way to Kobe I got a cryptic message from Antoine asking if it was OK to bring a special guest, and I said sure.

When I arrived there I was surprised to see that he had brought along his (ex?) girlfriend Miwako. It was nice to see her, and I was a little surprised that they were still hanging out together. Apparently breaking up is a little hard to do.

Despite some initial awkwardness once we hit the trail and everyone was sweating things settled down. Antoine and Miwako still have some unresolved issues I think, and maybe they wanted to be around a third party to lighten things up.

We hiked to the lake in the mountains above Shin-Kobe, alternating between following and leading a big pack of YMCA youths and volunteers. After about an hour long hike in the heat (it’s getting humid lately) we decided to pack it in and head back to Kitano to have some lunch and cold beer.

We ended up eating at a French cafe in Kitano. It was a nice light lunch and the cafe was staffed by about half and half Japanese and French people. The owner was French, and he made a big production about scolding our server because he couldn’t understand what she wrote on our bill. She had written in English, probably because she is studying it and wanted us to be able to read it, but the owner was kind of jerk to her and so I wasn’t that impressed. I’ll skip that place next time.

We did some shopping in Sannomiya and then walked to Kobe Harborland to wander around and sightsee. Antoine and Miwako were getting along really well and I think having me around was defusing some tension between them – they didn’t really want me to leave. After a couple hours of walking around we sat on the patio of Mosaic in Harborland and had more beer. It was a really slow paced Sunday and I was really happy to get out of the house and just relax.

We finally went our separate ways around five in the evening, and I beat Kuniko home by about 20 minutes. She made dinner tonight – nikujaga and “german potatoes”. They were both really good but they barely put a dent in the pile of potatoes that we got from her folks last weekend.

After dinner we went to K’s electronics so that I could but a printer (also scans and copies!) and then went to the Kageyama residence for a little Happy Father’s day gift giving.

We stopped in Ito Yokado on the way home and we didn’t really get to bed until after midnight. It was a really busy day, and tomorrow is Monday. Must get some sleep…

Friday I left home early and went to Takasago to visit my old school on their culture festival day. It felt really weird to be walking through the town of Takasago again. On the way to the school a (crazy?) lady called out to me saying that I was going the wrong way – she said the factory was down the other direction. I just smiled and kept walking.

At the school there were a few teaching standing around outside guiding visitors, and so I got a chance to see Mr. Hayashi again, although we didn’t really have a chance to talk much. I went inside the school and I was guided to the staff room by Yamamoto sensei.

Not only were they expecting me but they had a bento lunch for me as well. Another teacher was absent so they gave me his lunch – thanks! We sat and talked and ate, and I got to say hello to my ex-coworkers as they walked by. Afterwards I walked the hallways with Maeda sensei, and it was great to see all my old students again. They were really happy to see me, and it was tough to try to say hello to everyone… it’s like suddenly meeting 600 of your friends… who do you say hello to first?

I stopped by the ESS room and was really impressed with what Brenda has done with her classroom and the club. The place looked great, and I think the students are really active. I talked with Brenda and with Nozaki sensei as well, and they seemed really happy that I visited.

Walking back to the station at one in the afternoon I couldn’t help but notice that Takasago was like a ghost town. It really felt empty and dead, and to be honest it kind of creeped me out. Maybe it was the contrast with Okubo, maybe it was just after leaving all the hustle and bustle of the culture festival, but it was spooky.

Overall it was a fun day, and I’m really glad that I stopped by. Afterwards I had some extra time so I took the Sanyo train to Akashi. On the Sanyo train I bumped into an ex-student, so I chatted with him in Japanese until I got to Akashi. There had some coffee at a coffeeshop there, and then took the JR train to Higashi Kakogawa to go to work. As I was heading to work I passed a few ex-Takasago Minami students and it really struck me how deep my connections are with the town of Takasago after three years of teaching there.

I had just two classes to teach at work, and then I was out of there and headed home. Kuniko wanted to celebrate Friday night with me so we went out to dinner at the local yakitori that I like and that Kuniko had never been to. We really enjoyed the evening and drank lots of cold beer with our meat sticks.

One of the cool options that I am only just figuring out after four years in Japan is that many restaurants will make a bento lunch for you to take home that night and eat the next day. Maybe it’s because you will be hungover, or maybe because your wife will be mad at you for drinking all night and won’t make you a lunch. Whatever the reason, you can just ask and they’ll set you up. I decided to ask for a bento for Kuniko to take to work on Saturday, and the master hooked us up with a custom-made lunch for her. Nice!