Today at school I had loads of classes. There were three in a row with the same teacher, but luckily one of the classes was full of speeches by the students. The students in that class were eager to speak English in front of everyone, and people were competing to see who would go next. It was great to see everyone enthusiastic about speaking English.

For lunch I just had a couple of rice balls from the local convenience mart – I was still full from the big taco party the night before. After school I played several rounds of ping pong with the team. It’s a great way to kill time and warm up on these cold days.

On Sunday afternoon I broke down and ordered a Nintendo Wii over the internet. A Nintendo Wii is a video game machine, but the controllers are wireless and motion sensitive. If you are playing tennis, you just swing the remote like you would swing a racket. It’s really intuitive, and it has gotten a lot of good press since it’s launch.

Anyway, they are pretty hard to find nowadays, and people are selling them on auction sites on the net demanding huge price tags. I ended up buying it from the Amazon Japan marketplace, and paying about a 10,000 yen markup. That’s pretty hefty, but it’s nice to have it and I think it’s worth the extra money not to have to hunt around for it all the time. We bought our Nintendo DS like that seven months ago, and it’s still sold out here in Japan.

So today, surprisingly the Wii arrived, and I showed a lot of patience not to tear it out of the box and hook it up right away. Instead we did a little bit of shopping, and when we came back I hooked it up. We played a few games with it and it is really fun. I found myself really getting into the sports, especially the boxing game. At the end I was breathing hard with a light sheen of sweat on my forehead. Maybe this will be a good thing. I predict sore muscles for tomorrow.

Monday night Kuniko had a few friends over for a taco party at our place. By the time I came home from work, almost everyone was there. The tequila bottles were out, and the beer was flowing.

This week is exam week at Kuniko’s school. That means that the teachers can leave early most of the time. That’s how they beat me home and got a headstart on the alcohol.

We all sat around the kotatsu and ate tacos. It was this group’s first experience with homemade tacos. We had all met up in Kobe to eat tacos at a restaurant there – it was fun to see their faces as they bit into some homemade ones. Kuniko had also gotten some cheese and crackers to eat, so along with the chips and salsa it was a serious meal.

We drank and drank, and then drank some more. The tequila went down surprisingly fast – we killed off one bottle and got through most of a second. We were also drinking wine and beer. Everybody had a really good time, and some people looked like they might be starting to fade out a little.

Everyone got organized and ready to head out to the station. Kuniko and I were bringing up the rear after locking the apartment, and as we walked down the stairs I noticed one of the teachers start to slip. Before I knew it she was tumbling down the bottom third of the staircase and she hit her head on the hard cement at the bottom. The other teachers that were already down there came to her rescue, and we all examined her on the ground. My blood was running cold – it was really scary. She was conscious, but she had bumped her head pretty good and had some scratches on her hands.

We decided it was best to get her back inside and rest up a little bit, so Kuniko took her inside while I walked the other teachers back to the station. When I got back Kuniko had her stretched out on the living room futon, with an ice pack on her head and under some blankets. She had a pretty good bump on her head.

She kept apologizing over and over, and drifting in and out of consciousness. I was sure that it was just all the alcohol she drank, rather than a brain injury, but to make sure we called her brother, and he drove over and took her to the hospital. The next day she was at work and said she had gotten a clean bill of health.

When her brother arrived I carried her from the living room to the front of the house where she put on her shoes, and then she had the strength to walk from there. I held her up as she went down the stairs, and if we weren’t there she would have fallen again – she was really shaky.

So in the end, everything worked out OK. Kuniko and I were so beat by the time we got back that we stashed all the dishes in the sink and left them overnight. We went right to bed with bellies full of tacos.

On Saturday night we had a year-end party at the Denya yakitori. I left home a little early to do some brief shopping around Carrefour, Midori and IY, and then headed over to hang out.

I got there a few minutes early, and I was happy to find that the Master’s mother was there. She was helping with the preparations, and when I arrived she sat down and chatted with me for a while. She was in a talkative mood – she asked me all kinds of questions about married life, Christmas in America, and how much money I make. It was fun to talk to her, and at the end of the conversation she commented how much my Japanese had improved since I had seen her last – almost a year ago, if I recall correctly.

The party was fun – all the regular guys were there, and a couple of irregular guys showed up, too. We started off with nabe, and the master had some unusual fish – angler. It was a fatty fish, but the flavor was great. It tasted excellent in the soup.

We also had lots of yakitori, and some salad and sashimi, so the food was covered nicely. It was all you could drink, which was really nice. The master kept the booze flowing, and I made my way through many, many beers. One guy had recently come back from Korea and he brought a bottle of mysterious Korean liquor. It was white, cloudy and slightly sweet, and it tasted like there was no alcohol in it at all. Dangerous stuff.

At the end of the evening I switched to hot sake. Throughout the evening I had a lot of different conversation partners, and it really gave my Japanese a workout. I find that when I’m drunk or getting there, I will take a chance and use some more difficult Japanese. When I’m sober, I stick with what works and stay away from the advanced stuff.

One guy I’d never met came late, and came with his girlfriend. This party was men only, so the mood changed a little bit when they walked in. Everyone got kind of quiet for a little while, but the girl sat in the corner and just kind of spaced out while her boyfriend hung out with friends.

Some guys had come in cars, and so they couldn’t drink. That worked out nicely for me, when I left one of them offered to drive me home. I was pretty drunk by that time – I’m not sure if it would have been a good experience on the train. But, I got back safely, and went to sleep right away. Kuniko said later all she could hear from the bedroom was snores and hiccups.

I woke up today with a slight hangover but no lasting damage. Kuniko went off to a wedding, and I’ve been hanging out at home. Tomorrow we have a taco party with some of Kuniko’s co-workers, so I did a little bit of preparation for that. Kuniko should be home pretty soon, and we’ll clean up the house and get ready for guests.

Next week I have a really busy schedule at school. I hope it goes well – after next week things will go a lot smoother in the run up to our trip to America. Can’t wait!

The end of this week got a little exciting at school. On Thursday during one of my classes I saw the vice principal running as fast as he could towards one of the classrooms, and later I heard the sound of sirens. I knew something was up, but I couldn’t do anything to satisfy my curiousity until after my class.

The story was that the shop teacher was cutting wood with an axe (how could that have been a good idea?) and missed the wood and put the axe into his leg. I guess there was a lot of blood and the guy lost consciousness. The students sent someone to the office, and he was whisked off to the hospital.

I heard all this at lunchtime, and so you can imagine my surprise when the axe-man himself came hobbling into the the office unsteadily on crutches. He was wearing bloody pants with a jagged cut in them – not just from the axe but from the medics cutting away the fabric. Everybody was asking if he was OK, and if he could walk all right, and he waved off their concern and settled into his desk to take care of paperwork. They had even saved his lunch for him so he powered that down.

Later, I told this story to Kuniko and she said that it was Japanese style to come back to work.

I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t believe it. He was up and walking around on a stitched up leg, just hours after he had buried an axe in it. I think that if anything should earn you an afternoon off, it’s a self-inflicted axe wound. The thing that really surprised me was the reaction from other teachers – they were impressed that he kept up with his work. Sometimes the culture here really has me shaking my head.

Friday he came in, wearing a proper set of clothes, but he’s still unsteady on the crutches. He hasn’t had time to get used to walking yet, so he occasionally falls over or bumps into walls or students. I’d say that he could take the weekend to practice but he’s probably coming in to work to cheer on the students playing sports or something.

I’ll put it in on record right now – any axe wounds I sustain will keep me out of work a minimum of one week. I’m not coming back into work prematurely to go crashing into walls, no thanks.

Thursday night we went over to Kuniko’s parents’ to pick up the official “attending a wedding” dress, and we had a sukiyaki dinner. We haven’t had sukiyaki since we brought over my family just before the wedding – and that was more than a year ago! The sukiyaki was great, and we ate way too much before heading home with armloads of vegetables.

Friday night Kuniko had a work party (only the women from work), so I took my time coming home. I stopped at Kobe station to do a little bit of shopping and looking around. I realized after I stopped that the Luminarie has started – the place was pretty busy with people out to see the lights.

Bypassing the mess of people, I went into Harborland and had dinner at Panda Express – the only Panda Express I’ve ever seen in Japan. Sometimes I get a craving for cheap, fast Chinese food. It’s pretty greasy there, but it is good.

Afterwards I walked through the Hankyu Department Store on my way back. It was decorated really nicely for Christmas. They have a huge canal walkway with lights hanging from the soaring glass ceiling, and they looked like stars. They had arranged some into a big constellation of Orion, and at the end, surrounded by water canals and bridges was a huge Christmas tree.

Kuniko got home around 11:30 after a kind of surreal ride home on the train with her coworkers. Some guy was trying to rub his body against Kuniko’s friend, and they had to move to get away from them. The guy was hanging around still, so Kuniko started talking about the time she called the police and had a guy that was perverting one of her students arrested.

Now it’s Saturday morning, and Kuniko is about ready to take off for a Rotary Club dinner for her international students. I’ll be heading to Denya for an end-of-the-year party tonight, and I’m looking forward to seeing everybody there.

Today Kuniko and I met after work to go see a special exhibition of Pixar art that was being shown in a museum in Kobe. The exhibition was really well done. You could see not only concept sketches, but tons of interesting production and post-production art. I really liked the style of the work.

There was also a giant screen showing a movie of art concepts from various movies. When I say the screen was big – it was really big. It was a wide, wide screen – so wide that you were disoriented while watching it.

We enjoyed the exhibit for about an hour, and then headed back towards Sannomiya. We stopped in for dinner at a little soba restaurant, and then came home. Kuniko had to do some baking for her boss – she made little Anpanman cookies because he is a big fan. I’m hoping this will be worth a raise, or at least a little bit of time off on the weekends!

It’s getting near the end of the week, and I’ll be happy to coast into the weekend. I’ll be dropping in on Denya Saturday night, so I’m looking forward to some good yakitori.

The environment of a junior high school classroom in Japan is pretty active. Students get up and sit down throughout the class. At the beginning especially they are difficult to get settled down, and you’ll sometimes have students going over to open and close the windows and the curtains many times depending on their own personal comfort level. Then there’s the goofing off, the pencils dropping on the floor twice a minute, and the rubber bands being shot while the teacher isn’t looking.

All this activity can make for some pretty casual teaching plans. Some of my teachers like it organized, but even the most organized teaching plan isn’t remotely as structured as my high school lessons were. With high school there is more on the line, more things to cover, and students have outgrown all the little quirks that make teaching in junior high so unpredictable.

When I taught in a high school, I used to plan classes down to five minute increments. This five minutes is for greetings and questions, this fifteen minutes is for a listening activity, etc, etc. In my school now it’s a completely different story. For planning I usually plan two big activities, or a set of three smaller ones. Things take unusual turns so often that you can’t make a tight plan and hope it works out.

Making leisurely plans and following them loosely is a new experience for me, but I find that I like it more. The students obviously take more time to pick things up and so you’ve got to be able to adapt to the situation and change things that aren’t working. It also makes me a little more flexibile, which is always a good thing.

Kuniko and I are enjoying the warm environment of our place, thanks to the kerosene heater. We had two electric blankets last night, one for each of us, and I slept soundly.

Tomorrow we are going to go see an exhibition of Pixar artwork that is being displayed at the museum in Kobe. It’s only 1000 yen, and it might be fun to see some of the original art before it hit the screen. I really liked the style of the work at Pixar, especially in the movie “The Incredibles”. I’m hoping to see a lot more of that when we go tomorrow.

Wow, long time no write. Sorry about that. I was tired out after last week and I just kind of lazed right through the weekend. I figured I better get back in gear.

The weekend was a nice one. Kuniko was gone on Saturday but she was home all day Sunday, so we could spend some quality time together. It got seriously cold around here, and just today I broke down and bought some kerosene for the heater.

We saw a movie over the weekend – Casino Royale, and I also unsuccessfully entered a lottery for the chance to buy a Nintendo Wii. It didn’t work out, so we’ll have to keep our eyes open for a chance to buy one in the future. They look like a lot of fun.

Today we had trouble getting out of bed. It was pretty cold, and pretty early, and so we huddled with each other under the electric blanket and slept right through our normal bento lunch making time. The electric blanket that we have is one I bought about two years ago when I was single and not expecting to need a big one. It covers both of us, but if one person rolls over, the other person is immediately exposed. Kuniko is pretty defensive while she’s sleeping, so I’m usually the one that is exposed. Tonight we’re going to head to Saty and pick up a new one.

The train was late this morning, so I showed up at work about 10 minutes later than usual. I had a big day full of classes, but one was moved so I had two breaks during the day instead of just one. Maybe it was just Monday, but the students were tough to get motivated today. With the exception of the first year students, all my classes were pretty quiet.

The first years were full of energy as usual, though, and it is always a joy to listen to their rendition of “Stand By Me”. Both of the first year teachers were pretty tired out from working all weekend, so I think everyone was overwhelmed by the students.

One of the (few) nice things about living across the street from a 24-hour gas station is that it is really easy to walk across the street and buy kerosene. In Futami there was nothing nearby – you had to drive to the nearest station, fill it up, and drive back. 18 liters of kerosene is a little on the heavy side, so you wouldn’t want to walk all the way there.

Now, it’s just a few steps away. Today I went over and talked with one of the guys, who trained me on how it works. It was really easy, and I think we’ll be nice and warm this winter thanks to the heater.

The heater is running in the kitchen, warming both the kitchen and the living room. I’m tucked under the kotatsu, and I’m drinking hot sake and wearing a warm fleece top. It’s not even under freezing yet, but I’ve found my stay-warm setup for the winter. Bring it on!

It was nice to sleep in a little bit this morning, thanks to Kuniko’s lunch buy yesterday. I got an extra 40 minutes or so of sleep, and that made a big difference.

At work I spent most of my free time today translating a newspaper article that the vice-principal had passed out to all the teachers. The article was about the recent bout of bullying that has been in the news so much lately here in Japan. There were lots of interesting words, and I went through the article painstakingly until I understood every word.

In my classes, there were a couple of weird moments. In one of my classes, I noticed that a first year student had a button on his pencil case that said “Marijuana” with a big leaf. I was wondering if anybody realized the significance, but I think the answer is no. I always see weird stuff on my students – the Playboy brand is really popular here and I’ve seen 12 year old girls wearing Playboy socks and carrying Playboy pencil cases. I’m not sure if they know exactly what it really is, but it’s popular so they buy it.

In the middle of another class some school visitors came through the classroom. The vice-principal led in a group of visitors from Nepal. They were really disruptive, though – I was surprised. As soon as they walked in they interrupted what we were doing and started talking to the students, in a language I didn’t understand. Some of them walked over to the students and looked through their papers and books, and I noticed that they treated the students with a little bit of disdain. I liked the reaction of the students, though. They called out “Namaste!” to the visitors, and didn’t seem to mind that they weren’t so friendly. The kids at that age are full of wonder, and are really interested in anything that is out of the ordinary.

Tonight I made spicy peanut chicken to go with some leftover rice. It was pretty good, and afterwards Kuniko and I sipped port and hung out in the kotatsu. Tomorrow is finally Friday, and I think Kuniko is really ready for the weekend. She’ll be stuck doing some morning classes on Saturday, but she should be free on Sunday to relax.

I’m about ready to hit the sack, but I thought I’d sneak in this entry before I did. I was scheduled for a busy day at school, but one of the teachers called in sick and I got out of one of my classes because of it.

The classes that I did have were some of my favorite classes. The second year class I taught was full of curious and competitive students, and it was just the right mix for a three activity set that I dreamed up a while back. The students at my school know that I usually play games and have fun, so whenever I walk into the class just before the bell rings, there is often a huge round of applause and cheers. It feels good to go to work and have forty people so happy to see you that they break into applause.

I had just one first year class, and the teacher showed up late. I was there with the students after the bell rang, and they were all sitting there waiting for me to entertain them. I started the class just the same as if the Japanese teacher was there, and got things going. The teacher, when he showed up, looked a little perturbed, but quickly forgot about it. I apologized afterwards for starting without him, but by then he didn’t seem to mind as much as his face showed earlier.

The other two classes I had were with third year students. These students are used to having me with another teacher, Harada sensei. She was the one who called in sick, however, so they got to see me teaching with another teacher, Takagi sensei. Their styles are completely different, and I think the students were really surprised how little I do in Takagi sensei’s class compared to Harada sensei’s class. That’s part of my job, though – adapting to the different styles of all the teachers that I teach with.

Somewhere along the way today I developed a hardcore headache, and I’m nursing it even now. For some reason I’m trying not to take aspirin, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not. I took a hot bath with Kuniko and she tried working out the knots in my neck – hopefully things will loosen up overnight.

A few minutes ago Yamamoto sensei from Takasago Minami called out of the blue and told me that he was at Okubo station. A couple of days ago I asked if he could get some paperwork for me from school for my taxes, and he said he’d look into it. The next thing I know, he’s calling me at 9:30 at night telling me that he’s at the station. I threw on some clothes and ran down to the station, and he handed over the paperwork. We spent a few minutes catching up, and establishing that I owe him at least a couple of drinks, and then he took off.

Before he left he gave me a little bit of gossip from Takanan. Apparently the history teacher got into a little bit of trouble with one of the female students, and she complained. I don’t know more than that, but I do know that I wasn’t surprised to hear something like that about him.

I’ve got to head to bed soon. Kuniko bought some bread for us to take to school tomorrow, so we can sleep in a little bit instead of getting up at 4:50 a.m. to make bento lunches. I’m looking forward to that little bit of extra sleep.

Not much to report from the work front today. My classes went smoothly and nothing super exciting happened during the day. This week seems to be flying by.

Tonight I made up a simple dinner of miso soup, rice, tofu and kimchee, and Kuniko topped it off with some natto (yuck!).

The rest of this week will be a little heavier with classes, but I should have a full weekend to relax. The good news is that Kuniko might be able to take at least one day off this weekend, and maybe both days. I’m hoping it works out – she’s looking pretty tired these days.

We both got up around the same time this morning, and I got a chance to fill up my brand new bento lunchbox with tons of food. The bento fits in my man-purse, so I don’t have to go to work with my little lunch bag anymore. That means one more free hand I can stuff in my pocket and keep warm.

At work today I had a heavy schedule – five classes out of six. I did preparations for the classes early in the morning. They all went great but one, a new lesson that I had dreamed up. Actually, Kuroda sensei and I think that the lesson itself wasn’t bad – it was the student attitude that sucked.

The class was one that Kuroda sensei really dreads teaching. Not because they are behaving poorly – they are very quiet. Not because they are not smart – they have the highest test scores in the whole school. It’s because they don’t work well together. There is a lot of tension in the room whenever we teach. Some students have complained about others, and there are always people that won’t speak to other people. There are only about five students out of forty that will answer questions, and so that makes it pretty tough to get them excited and have a fun lesson.

Other than that class, everything else went smoothly. All of the students that I had coached to pass the STEP test ended up passing, and that made me very happy. They were really excited to pass that milestone, and hopefully next year in high school they can pass the next level.

I’m back home right on time, and I’m getting ready to cook up some yakisoba for tonight’s dinner. I’ve got a noodle craving…

Sunday I went into Kobe to meet up with a group of people that meet monthly – kind of a discussion group in English. I went about a month ago and enjoyed myself. I was invited to the original party by a lady in our school office, but this time she couldn’t make it.

The place we met was at one of the members’ houses. She lives in the ritzy Kitano district in Kobe, and we walked there from the station into nicer and nicer neighborhoods, until we found her place at the base of the large mountain that dominates the Kobe landscape.

The house was really nice, and decorated in a little more of a Western style than most Japanese homes I’ve visited. It did appear that the owner had a liking for ceramic dogs, however.

Besides myself there were four Japanese ladies that attended, and two Danish doctors that are working for the World Health Organization on a temporary post to Japan. Another member of that organization, kind of a support person that was originally from America, came along with the doctors to join in. Also, an Iranian doctorate student studying in Japan showed up. With this really interesting mix of people we settled down and chatted.

It wasn’t long before the discussion was deep in murky hypothetical waters, and we were throwing around the solutions to the world’s problems sitting among porcelain beagles that watched unblinkingly. It was interesting to see the speaking styles of the different people and sometimes you really wanted to tie it to their culture. The Danish doctor was very forward with his opinions, and he barely let anyone else talk. The Iranian woman turned every topic into a sad view of the world – she was depressing me from the beginning of the conversation. We asked her what her favorite book was and she went off on a long sad story that ended with one of her older brothers dying in the Iran-Iraq war. Yikes.

It was a marathon session over lunch, and by the time we had to adjourn I was ready to get out of there and meet Kuniko for a little sunshine and happiness. I met her in Kobe and we didn’t have much sunshine. The weather was turning awful. We skipped our planned walk along Kobe harbor, and headed back to Okubo instead. We did catch a tonkatsu dinner on the way home though. After changing out of our wet clothes it was nice to take a hot bath and stay warm in the kotatsu. Hard to believe, but this weekend is over.

Kuniko is off at work today, so after I nursed my hangover I spent the day watching downloaded TV shows, doing laundry and doing some shopping over at Saty.

At Saty I bought a new bento lunch box. I’ve been putting it off for a long time. The old one has lots of hard to clean areas, and it doesn’t seal correctly – especially if there is a lot of food in there. If it doesn’t seal it starts to give off aromas, and the furoshiki that I wrap it with had absorbed all those smells. While it didn’t smell bad, it didn’t smell clean, no matter how often I washed it.

So, it’s a new bento box for me. The new one looks like a traditional old-fashioned Japanese bento box, but the inside is all modern and airtight. I like it, and I can’t wait to put it into service on Monday.

On the way back from Saty I did some grocery shopping for dinner at Vivre, which is one of the supermarkets in that shopping area. They have more upscale items. It’s fun to shop there, but usually we do our shopping at Jusco near our house.

Since it is the weekend there were lots of shoppers out. The store had people giving away samples of food and products around the inside of the store. In Japan there seems to be a strong feeling that if you take a free sample, you should really buy whatever you took. I’m not sure why, but I’ve gotten some funny reactions whenever I take samples and try them. Some people don’t care if you buy it or not, and some people give me a strange look but keep smiling.

There is a really pushy older lady that occasionally works the sample areas. Last time I took a sample from her she got into this big deal about trying to get me take the product – I think it was chicken breasts. Today I saw her again and thought it would be a great time to rile her up a little bit. Today she was serving hot dog pieces. I walked by and took one, and before I even had it in my mouth, she was pointing at the product on the shelf. I smiled at her and chewed up the hot dog. It was pretty good, but the price was too high – I could buy it cheaper at Jusco across the street from my house.

I told her thanks, and said it was delicious. I put the toothpick in the trash (you aren’t allowed to keep the toothpick) and started to walk away. She was having none of that, though. “If it’s delicious, why don’t you buy one?” she asked. I smiled again and said “no thanks”, and that just pissed her off even more. She kept telling me to buy a package, but I politely refused and moved on with my shopping. She shook her head and started looking around at the other customers in the store to see if anyone had seen it. Nobody really had been paying attention, so muttered loudly to herself and walked away.

Here I am, on the front line exploring Japanese culture. Maybe I’ll go again tomorrow and ask her first how much the hot dogs cost before I take one.

Kuniko will be getting home around seven or eight tonight, so I’m going to get dinner ready for when she arrives. I’m sipping Tecate beer and I’m tucked into the kotatsu right now – which is an odd cultural combination. Tonight it’s Chinese food – mabodofu and gyoza.

Friday students from our school competed in a speech contest. Since I didn’t have classes all day, I went to the competition with them. Speech contests can be a little weird. There is a lot of very unnatural English being spoken. Also, students often try to use gestures to help liven up the material and as an aid to help them memorize it. The gestures frequently go over the line into “unnatural” territory. Too many gestures and you aren’t watching a speech – you’re watching a talking mime.

It was held in a large hall, and I sat up in the back near my school’s principal. A couple of the ALTs that I know from other schools came by to root on their students, too. A couple sat next to me and started goofing off during the presentations, making me a little embarrassed. They settled down after a little bit, though.

Our students did pretty well, but they didn’t have enough points to win. It’s pretty scary to go up there and do your speech – but they did it well, and I was really proud of them. I walked down and encouraged them before and after their speeches which seemed to keep them cheerful. I’m certain that I would really be freaking out if I was in their position.

After all was said and done, I headed into Sannomiya to meet up with Antoine and Kuniko. Antoine and I met up first and headed to a beer hall designed in a German style and owned by Sapporo. The beer there is very good – they have actual small lot beers and they are kind of unusual for Japanese beers. After a while we got a message from Kuniko saying that she couldn’t join us – she was feeling a little sick.

We went out to catch dinner at a Spanish restaurant in the new Kobe “Mint” building that was built in the center of Sannomiya. It was tough deciding where to eat, but that seemed like the most interesting selection. We sat at a nice bar in front of a giant pig leg attached to a stand with a bolt going through the lower ankle. The was even a hoof still on it.

The food was pretty good – we had a wide selection of cheeses and meats, and we even talked the chef into slicing off some of the pig meat for us to eat straight. It was really good – a spicy prociutto flavor that just kind of melted in your mouth. We had a bottle of Spanish wine, too. Overall it was great, and I’ll have to go there again with Kuniko sometime.

We made one last stop before heading back. The Belgian beer place was pretty busy, and we each had one drink “for the road”. I had a Cuban rum served straight up, and Antoine had a sho-chu tea. It was the first time I had heard of it but it sounded pretty good.

By the time I got home I was pretty tired and still a little drunk. Kuniko was zonked out, and I zonked out right next to her.

I came into work today to find the first year teachers buzzing about yesterday’s exams. I guess a student was caught cheating, and he had a couple of assistants helping him out. The teachers had to go to the student’s home and tell the parents, and by the time the teachers got there the student had already given them a different story. I guess it was a late night for almost everyone, and it was a good reminder why I’m glad I’m not a Japanese teacher.

Today, like yesterday, I had no classes because the students are taking exams this week. I spent the day studying Japanese, and chatting with other teachers. In the afternoon I helped some students get ready for the speech contest on Friday. One of the teachers that is helping the third year student prepare really laid into her for not having the speech totally memorized. She went on and on, and I could see the student slowly changing from someone who likes English to someone who doesn’t, right before my eyes. I tried to keep her smiling and enthusiastic, but this teacher was all about winning, winning, winning.

The good news is that I am going to go to root for the students in the speech contest on Friday. Maybe I can do something to help them relax before and after the very stressful event.

After work I cooked up a simple Chinese chicken and pepper recipe from a package and we had a nice easy (and healthy) dinner when Kuniko got home. Kuniko is going to be cooking with her students this week. She’s the only female in the first year teacher’s group, so she is automatically the one who will have to supervise. We went out tonight after dinner to buy supplies. Now she’s in the kitchen doing a test run, and hopefully I’ll be the guinea pig.

Tomorrow is my third day in a row without classes, and Thursday is a holiday for us. No plans yet, but we’ll see how the weather is. I’d like to get out and do something active.