Wednesday morning we walked past the junk on the ground on the way to work, and then headed out on the train to Kobe. Kuniko always gets off at Kobe station, and I get off at Sannomiya station. There’s lots of time to chat, even though the whole train is quiet and you know that everyone is listening and trying to figure out what you are saying.

I had a really busy day at school, with five classes out of six periods. The classes themselves weren’t so tough, but there wasn’t a lot of free time. Before I knew it, it was time to head back home.

Rather than heading home, I went back to Takasago to meet with some teachers and hang out. On the train to Takasago I bumped into some ex-students, and they giggled nervously and said some quick greetings before getting off the train.

I walked to an okonomiyaki restaurant near the school to have dinner with a group of teachers. The occasion was the beginning of exams at Takanan, and everyone had played softball earlier in the day so people were sore and aching.

Mainly I hung out with Yamamoto (Satoshi) sensei, and we talked music and travel and English. I talked with a few other teachers, though, and we all got a chance to listen to Oki sensei talk about his terrible school. A couple of years ago he was transferred to an agricultural night school, and this is apparently the bottom of the totem pole for high schools in the area. Every time I see him he’s complaining about it, and tonight was no exception.

As for the food, it was really good. I’ve been to the restaurant before, and it is run by just one lady who cooks everything. We had some big orders, and other people also were there, so we ended up serving ourselves drinks. It’s kind of fun to pour your own beers, and by the end of the night I was getting pretty good at it.

After hanging out for a while, I decided to head home. I tried to pay my share, but they wouldn’t let me. So, I called it a night and left for the station. On the way home I walked by lots of snack bars and nightclubs – Takasago is a completely different town at night.

I took the train back to Akashi, and then transferred to the JR line and came home to Okubo. I managed to get some bathtub time before bed, so that was a bonus. Kuniko and I worked on solving an English test that one of her students took recently, and then it was time to sleep. The rest of the week should be just as busy.

The longer I live in Japan, the more I get used to it. The more I get used to it, the less often I have stories to tell – things that surprised me or crazy behavior that I observe. It’s only natural that living here I’ve come to expect certain behaviors, and so I think nothing of them now, but maybe when I first arrived I was flabbergasted. Sometimes, though, there are things that make me just wonder why.

For example, near our apartment there is a little station to put out your garbage. They are big on recycling in Japan – so there are certain days that you put out your burnable trash, certain days you put out your non-burnable trash, days to put out plastic bottles and aluminum cans, other days for cardboard, and other days for glass bottles. It’s quite complex, but if you have a little chart you can sort it out.

So there are little stations like this all over the place here in Japan, and so if you put the wrong garbage out on the wrong day it sits there until you walk by and notice that you screwed up, and then you take the garbage back and put it out on the right day. But maybe while you were at work that garbage was picked apart by crows, or swelled up in the heat and exploded, or started leaking vile fluids. So you leave it, and it sits out there until the proper day, smelling worse and worse. There is nobody who comes to clean that stuff up, and so it becomes smelly and ugly and it bothers everyone.

Or, maybe you put out something that the garbagemen won’t take. For example, a TV, or electronic components, or a bag of mixed recyclables and trash and non-burnable stuff like batteries. The garbage man comes, sees that it is bad news, and slaps a sticker on it that says, “Sorry, we can’t take it”. Then it sits out there. Who is going to venture back out there and take back the bag? Your neighbors might be watching – are you going to go out there and pick up the bag and show the world how ignorant you were? No way.

Near our place there is a couple bags of various things and a box full of other various things. They have stickers on them that say “Sorry, we can’t take it”. But it’s going on a month now, and who’s going to deal with it? The answer, according to everyone I ask is, nobody. It can’t sit out there forever, but it’s making pretty good progress towards that goal so far.

Anyway, every day we walk to the train station and pass these bags of crap on the street, and I wonder why they are still there in a country that prides itself on cleanliness. Maybe it’s just something that has slipped through the cleanliness cracks.

At school today we started with full-on classes after the exam, and it was very interesting for me. In the first year and the third year our classes are split in half, so there is a teacher with me and one group of students, and then another teacher handles the other half of the students in a different classroom. After the exam, they switched the teachers, so now the Japanese teachers of English are working with students for the first time. That puts me in a very unique position of knowing the students better than the teachers I am with. I’ve already built a little bit of rapport with them, and it’s fun to see the normally confident teachers off their game.

Matsunaga sensei was stunned with the behavior of the new students. She usually runs a tight ship, but her partner, Harada sensei, usually runs it pretty loose. It looks like she going to really have to work hard to whip them into shape. She seemed a little daunted by the task.

I had a good time chatting with some students between classes today. They are getting more and more confident speaking to me, and I do my best to make the conversation run smoothly, even if I have to work a little harder behind the scenes mentally. Sometimes they make mistakes, but I really try to prevent that from stopping the conversation – I try to work around words that they don’t know or concepts that they have trouble communicating. It’s a little bit of a challenge for myself, and I’m getting to the point where I can kind of figure out where students might be going with a train of thought.

Tonight Kuniko is coming home a little late – she’s got to babysit the study room students. I’m back home resting up and maybe I’ll watch a little TV tonight and work on my listening comprehension. Leftovers for dinner – and then probably right to bed. The week starts getting really busy from here on, so updates might be a little late in coming.

I was not so busy at work today. The teachers were reserving most of their classes to return and go over the recent exams, so I had just one class today with Harada sensei. We watched part of “Whale Rider” on DVD, since the textbook had a reading exercise featuring the story.

The reactions of the students were mixed, but it’s hard to get a grasp of the story from just the short pieces that we showed them. Overall I think they were happy to not have to study the same old stuff, and I was really happy to get a DVD player in a classroom and set a precedent. Hopefully I can do some more things with the player in the future.

Other than that class I was desk-bound, and so I studied like crazy and got ready for the rest of the week, which is a little more of a normal schedule. I’ll be busy with lots of classes each day, so I touched base with a few teachers to get an idea of what they were expecting.

Kuniko got home extremely early today – before six. We had some leftovers and are just kicking around the house. It’s a rare event that Kuniko has so much time free at home. I think she might celebrate by going to bed soon.

Here’s the weekend update – I’ve been getting lazy lately and have been writing a little bit less. Kuniko has been working both days this weekend, so I’ve been on my own most of both days.

Friday was a test day at school, and so I had no classes. I just hung out all day at my desk and studied. It has actually been a long time since I’ve had so much study time – I got a lot done. After school I met up with Antoine at a quiet little town called Imazu, which was just one stop away from my school stop. We sat and talked about his relationship with Miwako and how it is progressing. It was very interesting, and we might have some developments in the near future. Friday night was a quiet evening at home – Kuniko and I just watched some TV and relaxed.

Saturday morning Kuniko had to go to the opening ceremony of the prefectural sports event for disabled people, and so was gone during the morning. I received an order from Amazon and so I got a chance to start reading a book that I’ve been looking forward to, 13 moons by Charles Frazier. So far, so good.

Today is Sunday and Kuniko is gone to work – so I’m just hanging out here at home. Today is a special day for the movie theater – all tickets are 1000 yen. I went early and picked up two tickets for a movie tonight, and so when Kuniko gets home we’ll head over there and watch Black Dahlia. I’m going to cook a mexican soup for tonight’s dinner, so pretty soon I’m going to get that cooking. My mom sent some interesting ingredients so I might try some of them out.

That’s about it. It’s back to work on Monday, and I’ve got a normal week ahead of me. I’m going to meet some teachers from Takanan on Wednesday, and there’s a school concert that Kuniko and I are going to see together on Thursday. Friday night I might take a trip to Futami to buy contact lenses and have dinner at Denya. Other than that, pretty quiet.

Today in class I had a couple of interesting observations. At one point, the teacher I was teaching with, Mr. Harada, asked me to pronounce “aunt” for the students after telling them over and over how to pronounce it. He pronounced it the British way, and so when I pronounced it like “ant”, he was a little surprised. In that situation, we just went through it, and he was a good sport about it. I certainly wasn’t going to pronounce it another way, so it was up to him to adapt. Maybe he should have checked with me beforehand.

Another observation was that the students on a couple of occasions have had to translate English into Japanese, and they seem to prefer translating into katakana English – that is, words borrowed from English and adapted for use in Japanese. In many cases there are traditional Japanese words available, but the students prefer to use the ones borrowed from another language. Does this mean that the original Japanese words could be lost in the future by falling out of general use? I like the idea that the Japanese language is gradually sounding more and more like English.

I did some recording of listening tests in between classes today, and I think we’re all ready to go for the big test day tomorrow. I have no classes – so I’m going to go to work and just hang out and get paid. Nice!

Tonight we ate chicken tacos for dinner, and now we’re just chilling out around the house. Kuniko is in the middle of one of her long stretches without a holiday – she has to work both days this weekend – so I’m just trying to give her every chance to rest up when she’s at home.

I’m off to study kanji – I’m still not brave enough to bring the Nintendo DS to work and study there. When I’m punching away at the DS I’m sure everyone will think I’m playing Super Mario or something. That’s the big drawback to using it as a study tool for adults. There is a little bit of a stigma about using it. But in the comfort of my own home, anything goes…

At school today I had a surprising amount of birthday wishes, both from teachers and from students. Back when I had done my self-introductions, some of the students had asked when my birthday was, and I guess they remembered and made sure to swing by and wish me well.

As for the day at work, I had only two classes. One class was cancelled, un-cancelled, changed, and then finally cancelled in the end. So there was a little bit of suspense, but nothing more dramatic than that.

After work I met up with Kuniko in Sannomiya, and we went to have a birthday dinner at Baan Thai. It’s a really good Thai restaurant near the station in a risque neighborhood. It’s a tiny place, and it’s hard to get a seat without a reservation. Luckily Kuniko had called ahead and taken care of everything. We sat down and ordered some juices, and then picked some dishes from the menu.

The menu is pretty big, and there were lots of dishes to choose from. We picked out four different dishes, and when they arrived we had a variety of different flavors. Everything was awesome, and we were both glad that we ended up choosing Thai food. The more I ate, the more I liked it.

After dinner we caught some dessert at the Haagen Dazs ice cream store – somewhere I’ve never been before. It was pretty good – they had some flavors that I had never seen before. Finally we headed on home, and went to bed soon after with our bellies full.

I’m watching the Japanese version of COPS. There are some big differences. Most of the time they are chasing people for not wearing helmets on motorcyles, no domestic disturbances yet. They just chased down one guy who tried to run and led the cops through the city on a chase. The first thing they said when they caught him – “Are you OK?”

That’s some serious culture shock. Now the cops are eating ramen and fried rice instead of donuts. It’s fun to watch them suit up in kevlar and hit the mean streets of Japan.

I went into work today sleepy, but not sore – despite all the heavy lifting yesterday. My students were seriously sleepy today – hard to believe that they had three days off. Maybe they were harvesting rice, too.

I learned that my first year students have no idea who Britney Spears or Brad Pitt is. There is hope for our youth. They did know who the prime minister of Japan was, and they did know who Tom Cruise was. We’re doing a class on the third person, and so I introduced a bunch of people that I was sure everyone would know – and I was surprised at the result. It was an interesting experiment, though.

I had a scary moment when I showed up for my third period class with Harada sensei. She looked at me like I was crazy and told me that I was in the wrong classroom. I though I was in the right place, but she produced a schedule that showed me somewhere else. There was a moment of panic before I realized that she had an old version of the schedule. I ran upstairs and got the updated schedule and showed her, and so she had to put together a class right on the spot. She was a little embarrassed, but the students never cottoned on to the fact that we were improvising like crazy.

It’s evening now and I’m back home cooking some eggplant parmesan in the oven. Kuniko is due to arrive in the next thirty minutes, and I’ve got nothing planned this evening but a lot of ironing. I’m starting to convert from warm weather clothes to cool/cold weather clothes. It’s right at the turning point of the season – and the wardrobes are going to have to change.

Monday was a holiday, so we slept in a little bit, and then headed off to lunch at Kuniko’s parents’ house. They had bought a couple of bento boxes for us to snack on, and from there we headed to the family farm to do some work and kill time until our appointment with the rice polisher.

Kuniko’s dad had already harvested the rice, and so at around 3 o’clock we went over there and they had already processed the rice. The guy there used a machine to meter out the rice into bags, 30 kilograms at a time. 30 kilograms is around 70 pounds, so they were pretty heavy bags.

Everyone gathered around and tied them up, and then I threw them onto the truck. We got three truckloads out of there, and now everyone will have plenty of rice to last the whole year long.

It was a good experience – and despite carrying so much heavy stuff it wasn’t too tough. We came back to the homestead after that, and Kuniko’s mom cooked us a big dinner, with curry and sashimi, and we drank cold beer and just relaxed. It was a good end to a long weekend.

It wouldn’t be a visit to the in-laws without being sent home with loads of fresh vegetables. We had several bags, and even some birthday cake that Kuniko’s mom had made for me.

On the way home we hit Ito Yokado to take advantage of a sale and to see our old hangout. We even bumped into Yasu’s mom, and got to see pictures of Yasu’s brother’s new baby.

After that we came right on home and took a hot bath together. The nice thing about the bathtub is that we can both fit in this one. I’m hoping to take a bath every night this winter. Tomorrow is back to school – but I don’t have a really tough schedule this week so it should be a piece of cake.

It’s the middle of a long weekend, and I’d better get you up to speed on what’s going on. Friday was a pretty quiet day. I took it easy at school and got home right on time. I bought a couple of steaks and cooked them up with beans when Kuniko got home, and full of protein and energy I settled in for a long weekend of rest.

Saturday Kuniko had to go in to work, and I stayed home and sat on my butt watching TV and movies all day. I did a little laundry and some housecleaning, but that’s pretty much it. We had a nice dinner of yakisoba that Kuniko made, and after dinner I was feeling better so we went out to catch a late movie at the local theater. It was “Lady in the Water” and I’ve never been more disappointed in a movie. I’m still kind of in shock – what a weird one that was. It wasn’t weird like Adaptation, it was weird like “What was the point of that”-weird.

It’s Sunday today and we’re lounging around the house. For a time Kuniko was flirting with going in to work, but she got over the temptation and we’re in for the day. In the evening we’re going to head into Kobe to meet up with Antoine and his girlfriend – that should be fun.

Monday is a holiday, and we’re signed up to help lug around some rice that is being harvested at the Kageyama family farm. After helping to plant the rice a while back, it’ll be fun to get to see the final stage of growing it. Another first for me.

Signing off for now – more later!

I was still feeling crappy today, but the weekend is in sight, and so I’m just trying to get through the next two days.

My students were in a weird mood again today. In my classes they were joking around with me a lot and I’m starting to realize that they are really just starting to get comfortable with me. One kid between classes was whispering things like “Your breath smells bad” to me on a dare. He would look back at the other kid and giggle. I would just smile and shake my head and pretend I didn’t understand.

Some other students came in and asked me how to say “hair growth cream” in English. I’m sure they wanted to torment some poor balding teacher, so I played stupid and it worked nicely.

I had the afternoon free, and so I tagged along with the first year students on a field trip to a local sake brewery.

Interesting story – the school is practically surrounded by sake breweries. There are at least five that I know of, and since they are a big part of the local economy, the students went to learn more about it. Unfortunately they didn’t do any tasting for us.

I went with one group of students to Hakashika (White Deer) sake brewery. To be precise, we went to a sake museum rather than the brewery itself. The museum was full of some pretty nice displays, but there were a few cheesy dioramas in there, too. The students really enjoyed running around instead of being in class, and I guess I did, too.

I asked the age-old question of how to know whether to drink the sake hot or cold, and got the answer I expected to. As we walked back with the students I reflected on the fact that I have a job that lets me visit a sake brewery in the afternoon, and I think I’m pretty lucky. It was a fun change.

Spending the afternoon at the brewery put my studying behind schedule, but it was worth it. I caught up on the train home, and now I’m back and getting ready for Kuniko’s arrival home. We’re going to have a simple salad for dinner tonight. I always start throwing in exotic ingredients into my salads – tonight I’m going to try to resist the temptation.

Tomorrow is Friday – finally.

The biggest thing to report about Wednesday was that suddenly on Thursday night I started to get a sore throat, and then I woke up properly sick in the morning. The sore throat was bad, and I was already sniffling and coughing. I’ve never had a cold come on so fast.

Despite being sick I went ahead and went into work. I had some good classes, and they gave my voice a workout. In a couple of them I had to read some long passages, over and over again. I kind of hoped the teacher would take my condition into account, but no such luck.

At the end of the day we had an award ceremony, and it went on and on. It seemed to me that nearly half the students in the school won some kind of award or another. I usually stand in the back for those kinds of things, but I found myself sitting along with all the other students after the first hour or so.

Finally, we went and did cleaning, and during the cleaning there were some crazy kids across the way screaming out English phrases. At Takanan it was hard to get anyone to even speak English, but here they are screaming out English unbidden. I enjoyed listened to them shrieking out things like “Jelly is delicious!” and “Koro was disappointed!” The other teachers were a little concerned, but in the end they just let them go for it.

After work I met up with Kuniko in Kobe. There was a grand opening of a new Hanshin department store in Sannomiya (oddly named “Mint”) and so we went over together to check it out. It was fun to look around. There were lots of people doing the same thing we were, and it took a while to cover the place. We found some interesting restaurants on the top floors – including an oyster bar and gumbo place, and a branch of a ramen restaurant that Kuniko and I used to like to visit near her old place in Shin-Osaka.

We came on back and had ramen at home, in an attempt to save money and soothe my throat in one shot. The ramen totally hit the spot, and not long after that I went to bed and crashed. Kuniko is really covering a lot of the household chores while I’m sick, so I hope I can get well soon to pitch in and help.

At school today my kids were all on goofy pills or something. Everywhere I went there were some shenanigans going on. I would walk with my teachers right by two boys struggling to pull each others eyeballs out of their sockets, and then five minutes later they are giving each other hugs.

My classes reflected this weird behavior a little bit. The lessons seemed a little more free-wheeling today, and we had a bit more improvisation. I taught with four different teachers, and all of them react to improvisation a little differently. Generally, it’s not a good reaction, though.

I haven’t been up to play ping pong with the team lately. Due to some scheduling conflicts, their practice begins later in the day, and I’m usually gone by then. In fact, I haven’t been able to visit any clubs since Sports Day.

Most of my free time was spent studying up on vocabulary, and I’m keeping right up to speed, learning about 5-10 new words a day. At home I’m using the Nintendo DS to work on writing kanji, and that is just about the best way ever to learn it, short of attending elementary school in Japan. I’m loving these new ways to study a language – technology is making it a lot easier.

Tonight we’re having some pasta that we smuggled home from Italy, and I opened up a bottle of wine to taste while I’m waiting for Kuniko. The pasta looks delicious – I can’t wait for her to get home.

We’ve got a three day weekend coming up – Monday is a national holiday. I’m looking forward to getting some down time. We may get a chance to meet up with Antoine and Miwako, and hopefully Kuniko will get a day off in there somewhere.

As expected, it was really tough to get out of bed this morning. We dragged around in the morning, but finally ended up making it on time for train, and we spaced out together until it was time for Kuniko to get off at her stop.

By the time I got to work I was fully awake, and greeting all my students is a great way to get the day rolling.

I had two third year classes, and then two first year classes. The third year students did pretty well – we alternated between them making presentations and reading about “Whale Rider” from their textbook. The first year students are learning a new game called “Punch Game”, where they punch in a certain direction, and that direction corresponds with a form of “X is”. He is, we are, you are, I am, etc. It’s fun to do, but I just learned the game myself, so I was a little slow. I’m sure after teaching the lesson over the next two weeks I’ll get it down.

There is a speech contest coming up in a couple of weeks, so I’m helping coach two students who are interested in doing it. Our school can only send one, so I don’t know who is going to win out. We’re spending a few minutes a day on pronunciation practice, and they are supposed to decide who is going to represent our school by the end of the week. It’s interesting to note that the students who want to compete aren’t necessarily the best speakers or the most confident, they just seem to be the most brave. There are a few students that I would like to see compete, but for one reason or another they aren’t interested.

I left work on time, and came right on home to clean up the dishes from our hospitality Sunday night. Kuniko has a meeting after school, so she’s expecting to get home late. I’m going to try to cook a healthy meal tonight – all that greasy (yet delicious) food from last night is going to cause some permanent waistline damage.

Kuniko and I pulled off a really relaxing weekend. Saturday Kuniko had to go in to teach in the morning, but she got back at a reasonable time and so we went out to rent some movies and catch dinner.

For dinner we went somewhere that I’ve been wanting to try – Big Boy. It is apparently the same restaurant as the Bob’s Big Boy restaurants back in America, so we went there hoping for some real American family-style restaurant food. Unfortunately, other than the atmosphere and drink bar, it was completely different. The main dish they served was hamburg. It’s really popular here in Japan, but I don’t like it because it’s so greasy. Take a burger patty, and fry it on a hot skillet, and then serve it up on the same skillet, so all the grease is still floating around on the bottom – yuck.

The had a variety of things that could cook on the skillet, and so we got a combination, and enjoyed the free drink bar. The chicken was actually really good, though, and they served it with a yuzu pepper paste on the side that was delicious. If it wasn’t for the chicken, it would have been a big strike out.

After the rental place we decided to go on to Carrefour and Ito Yokado, to take care of all our import food needs. We scored lots of good stuff, and came home kind of late. That didn’t stop us from watching one of the movies we rented – Adaptation. That turned out to be a pretty crazy movie, but oddly entertaining.

Sunday we lounged about most of the day. Kuniko got her hair done and right after that we met up with the Denya gang minus the master, who was stuck at work. We all met at Gochisomura, the family-friendly-large-size-izakaya-style restaurant right next door to our place.

It was fun to see everyone, and we drank and ate way too much while talking and sharing stories. There was an incident where we found some floating bits of black plastic in some of the beers, so we returned them all and got a free round on the house. The food was pretty good though.

After drinking there, we brought the whole gang, twelve people, over to our place, and crowded into the house to check it out. Before everyone said that they could only stay for 10 minutes, but by the time the tequila, sake, iced coffees, and cold beers were through they had stayed for more than an hour. We had fun sitting around the living room and playing with the kids, too. They had a lot of energy and were really enjoying the exploration of a new house.

We walked everybody back to the station, and then did some drunken (on my part) shopping before heading home to crash. It was a lot of hospitality for a Sunday night – and tomorrow we’re back to work so I’m sure it’ll be tough getting up.