On Friday I had the usual four classes in the morning, although I got my new schedule and it looks like things will get a little shaken up in the near future. I should have about the same amount of classes, but a few afternoon classes. My body is already used to opening up my bento lunch at break and knowing that my day is essentially over.

During my break in the afternoon one of the English teachers, Higuchi sensei, came over and chatted with me for about 45 minutes. She is nice on the surface, but you soon realize that she is one of the most pessimistic people you’ll ever meet. Today was the first time that I noticed that it lasted for more than a few minutes. It is actually part of her personality.

For example, she started out the conversation with “Well, you must hate it here already!” From there it was me putting a positive spin on everything, and her looking at the same thing from the worst possible viewpoint. I felt bad for her – it must be exhausting to look for the bad part of everything. After a while I tried to think of things that nobody could argue a bad side for – but she was just unwilling to look at anything positively.

Today was the last working day of the month, so I had to turn in the paperwork for the company I work for. It was my first time doing it, but it went pretty smoothly. Now I should get a paycheck in about two weeks and then I’ll finally see the fruits of my labors.

I came home and opened up a bottle of sake to enjoy while I waited around for Kuniko to get home. She got home on the late side, tired from a long day at work and we hit the hay pretty early – she has to go right back to work on Saturday morning.

One universal truth about sports day in Japan is that the day after all the students want to do is sleep, all day. They don’t want to learn, they don’t want to listen, and they certainly don’t want to explore the in’s and out’s of English conversation for hours on end.

It was into that situation that I walked on Thursday morning, with four classes in a row filled with sleepy students. The first class was nearly asleep within ten minutes, despite my most exciting stories of life in America and my side-splitting tales of cultural mistakes that I’ve made in Japan.

Luckily the second class I had went much better. I was teaching two nearly deaf students, and I went to their special classroom and really just hung out with them for an hour. They were the last two students in the school to officially meet me, and we had a good time looking at pictures and talking about their interests. The girl in the class is really good at sports, and she really tried hard to speak English. The boy didn’t want to be left behind, and so he tried really hard to get through to me. Their speech is tough to understand, but we were communicating, and that’s the goal of the class, I guess.

My third class was super-sleepy. The teacher in that class (who will remain unnamed to protect her identity) came up with a really boring, passive lesson plan, and so we had to just grind through it. I felt bad for the students – and I promised myself to work on this teacher a little bit in an effort to jazz things up a little bit.

The last class was pretty good. It has the highest level of English in the school, and the students did presentations today. They were all great, and some were excellent. I can’t get over how well some of the students speak, and they are still just in junior high.

Since I have some experience working as an interviewer on the English proficiency exam, I spent time working with one of the students today. She was really nervous, but I had Harada sensei with me, and together I think we made her feel comfortable. We’ve got to get her ready for the exam coming up in two weeks, so I’ll be helping out here and there after school.

After school I was sitting at my desk studying, and a student came in and looked distressed to find only me in the immediate area. He hesitated only a second, and then came up and asked me in English for some chalk for his classroom. I asked him what color, and he listed what colors and how many he needed of each. His English was perfect, and I think he kind of surprised himself how well he communicated. I jumped up to get the chalk. I don’t know if we’re even supposed to give the students chalk, but if he asked for the keys to my apartment in perfect English I would have handed them over. I wanted to show him that he communicated perfectly by instantly fulfilling his request. It’s times like this when I really enjoy doing what I’m doing.

The commute home was a piece of cake. Tonight we’re going to have kind of a “clean out the fridge” night. I’m going to make a salad, and we’ll just kind of snack. Tomorrow is already Friday – I can’t wait to catch up on sleep this weekend.

I was off to work today to participate in the school sports day. It was my first sports day at my new school, and my first junior high school sports day. I was eager to find out how it would be different from my old school.

Mainly, it was pretty much the same. There were races and relays, and a few kind of weird games to play as well. I was surprised that there were actually dances, performed by different groups of students. The baton club did a dance, and each school year’s boys and girls did some exercise routines. In my high school sports days, it was just events – no dancing around.

I really didn’t have anything to do, so I walked around and talked to various students, parents, and teachers. Everyone was really nice, and as usual it was a good way to talk to students who are normally too shy.

One thing I thought was interesting was that they did some of the exercises with the handicapped students. They even built a makeshift frame that went around the wheelchair-bound student, and another student stood on top of the frame at one point while the other students paired up and stood on another student’s shoulders.

Even Habatan, the official mascot for the upcoming prefecture-wide sports festival, made an appearance. It was the cheesiest Habatan costume I’d ever seen. Maybe homemade. Some of the P.E. teachers were goofing around in the costume, and they got a lot of laughs from the students.

We had a surprising amount of guests at the event. The school was surrounded by cars, and people filled up the seats to watch the events. Students from a local kindergarten came by to watch for a while, too. They were really cute – even my students were fawning over them.

I even got a chance to run in one of the events. There was a teacher relay, and I ran only about 100 meters, and passed the baton on to Kawai sensei. It was fun and easy, and the students were impressed. They said I was the fastest teacher, but they must be mistaken – maybe it is just an illusion because I am tall – I’m sure I’m not fast. No teachers were injured, and we came in last place behind all the other students, so it was considered a success.

The day ended with a victory for one of the first year student classes – a big embarrassment for the second and third year students. There were lots of speeches before and after, and then we all pitched in to help clean up the grounds. I helped put away chairs, we got everything done by 5:30 or so.

At six o’clock the teachers boarded a bus for a post-event party in the nearby town of Ashiya. It was at a Japanese traditional-style restaurant. The food was pretty good, and they had a new fall seasonal menu that I really liked. My favorite was your own bowl of nabe, with just a bit of parmesan cheese over the top. The old-fashioned teachers were thumbing their nose at adding cheese, but I liked the flavor. But, I love cheese no matter what it is in or on.

I drank happily with my new co-workers, and talked with some people that I don’t normally get a chance to talk to. It was fun, and they asked lots of questions about me and life in Japan. I get the slightest sense or disappointment from the teachers that I’m not a totally green foreigner. Part of it is that they want to see me experience things for the first time, and part of it might be that they enjoy the dependence I would have on them. In my workday I rarely ask people questions because I’ve already been through most of this at my first school, and all that experience has paid off. Maybe at this school they are used to people coming that don’t have a clue.

We wrapped things up with closing comments, and a closing ceremony. When you have a closing ceremony for a drinking party, you must be in Japan. If there was an opening ceremony, then you’re gonna need a closing ceremony, no matter what condition the participants are in. They finished the evening with everyone standing up and singing the school song. They really belted it out, too, and I looked on with some bewilderment because I don’t know the words. I think most of my teachers didn’t really want to sing the school song, but since the principal and vice-principal were there, they had to go along with it. Just my sense of the situation, though – I could be wrong!

I got home around 10:30 in the evening, and Kuniko was still up trying to write a letter of recommendation for one of her students in English. I helped her jazz it up a little bit, and then we hit the hay. Spending all day out in the sun really wore me out.

Pictures from the day here.

Today everyone was busy getting ready for sports day tomorrow, but we managed to squeeze in a few classes. I had just two classes today, which is a lot less than usual. I had lots of extra time today, so I got some good study time in. Lots of students came by my desk to see what I was up to.

The students are not shy about walking up and seeing just what exactly I’m doing. Some of them will sneak up on you and put their arm around your shoulders, others will pat me on the back as they walk by, and I think on a whole junior high school students are more touchy than high school students.

Towards the end of the day I went outside and helped kids pound stakes into the ground with a sledgehammer. The students followed me around, asking me questions about Kuniko and about my life in Japan. Two girls wanted to pull out one of my eyelashes as a souvenir. What is it about hair as a keepsake with these guys?

I had a very smooth commute back home and I’m just relaxing and watching the Tigers game on TV. Last night we got a TV stand over and Saty, and we brought it home and put it together. Now the TV setup looks much better. Instead of sitting low on the floor it is quite a bit higher. For some reason it makes it look bigger. We’ve got two DVD players (one that plays only Japanese DVDs and the other that plays DVDs from anywhere), and a VCR. We don’t have any tapes to test it out, though, so I’m not sure if that will work or not.

Dinner’s ready, so I gotta run. Tomorrow is sports day at school, and a party afterwards. Hopefully I’ll have a ton of pictures to post!

I was back in action at school after a relaxing weekend. Kuniko had a chance to sleep in, and she only had to work half a day today, so the end result was me going to work alone.

I had four classes in a row in the morning, just like most of last week. The students were especially full of energy today. I had one tough class second period. A boy in that class is mentally retarded, but he still comes to class. The other students discovered a few words that would set him off, and so the whole class they were whispering the words to make him freak out. The teacher I was with, Harada sensei, had to deal with it, but it made for a distracting class – it was tough to teach in there, and it was tough to learn. It really seemed like a bad idea to have that student in the class – sure he is with other students and is part of the group, but he wasn’t really paying attention and he was hurting the ability of the other students to learn.

I had a lot of hallway conversations with students that I ran into at the matsuri Friday night. They were impressed with Kuniko and they feel a lot closer to me somehow. Some of them were staring into my eyes to see the color, and a couple of girls requested a hair from my head as a souvenir. Sorry, I need those.

In Kuroda sensei’s class we had a bomb of a lesson. The activities that I dreamed up took much longer than we expected, and we couldn’t do all the things we wanted. We have the lesson again tomorrow, so we’ll make some modifications and hope that it goes better.

At lunchtime, the broadcast club put together a show all about me. I had filled in a survey, and so they read my answers to the questions, and then read a Japanese translation of what I said. They played a couple of the songs that I brought, but just the Japanese ones. I was hoping they would play some foreign stuff, too, but no luck. The Japanese stuff I picked out was a little on the wild side, and I was pleased to rock out the school during my lunch.

Finally in the afternoon, they had more marching practice for sports day on Wednesday. The students are really getting worked up for this. I spent the time sitting on a bench in the shade watching them march around. They are missing a lot of classes for this, but I guess it’s part of junior high school life. The P.E. teachers have to have something to keep them busy, and they are working really hard to make it a successful event.

I headed home right on time, and was shopping for groceries across the street from our place by 5:15. Kuniko was already at home making up dinner, and we cracked open an alcoholic beverage and ate a couple of big om-rice dishes.

Tonight we’re headed to Saty to pick up a TV stand, and then I’ll spend the rest of the evening putting it together. I hope it’s easy, with lots of pictures in the instruction book.

Tomorrow I have some relief with just two classes. I’m going to try to catch up on my Japanese studies, and maybe get some time in doing some research on the web. T minus two days to sports day.

Today since Kuniko was off at her school’s sports day event, I took the chance to head for the hills and do some hiking. Since I have a commuter train pass I can take the train as far as Sannomiya for free – so I took the train to Suma and hiked the mountain there.

It was a beautiful day, and the views were great from the top of the hill. I could see as far as Wakayama, Osaka, Awaji Island and even out to Shikoku. I took some pictures, enjoyed relaxing in the sun, and ate a couple of rice balls at the summit. On the tail end of the loop I cut back into town, and bumped into a large group of older people hiking together.

Hiking is pretty popular among older people in Japan. I’m not a big fan of the trend here. If you say hiking, people think of meeting at a certain place at a certain time, to hike with a group of people to set checkpoints, getting a card time stamped – it’s like a sporting event or a race. When I hike, I want to go alone or with a very small group of people, go at my own pace, and just enjoy nature.

Anyway, the trail at the end was clogged with old folks who were talking and having a great time, but I had to figure out a way to pass them. In the end I left the train early and went back into Suma.

All was not lost, however. I stopped in at a liquor store on the way back. From the outside they had a lot of high end beers lined up in a big refrigerator, and upon further inspection I found a bottle of English cream stout. I bought two and brought them home, and now I’m back relaxing and enjoying the relatively cooler weather.

Later this evening Kuniko will come home exhausted from her day, so I’m trying to figure out something interesting to make for dinner. Inspiration is bound to arrive any minute.

During one of my classes on Friday morning a large bee came swooping in one of the windows and all hell broke loose. I’m used to this – nothing disrupts a class like a bee coming in the window. The students run away from the bee like it is hunting them down, and the teachers generally just try to keep everybody calm until the bee leaves the way it came in.

Today the bee (and I say bee because it is the best way to describe it – it’s quite a bit bigger than any bee from California) flew around freaking the kids out for a few minutes, and then found a place on the roof and just sat there hanging out until the end of class.

The students kept looking behind them as they studied English, and when the bell finally rang they jumped up and ran to the broom closet, and picked someone to try to get it out the window again. The kid chickened out, though, and Matsunaga sensei hinted that maybe I should take care of it.

The students gathered around me and one of them handed me the broom, and so I pulled up a chair near where the bee was sitting around, and then swung the broom hard in a sweeping motion towards the window. The bee was sent across the room and smacked into the closed part of the window, and by the time he recovered we had slid the window around the bee, and it was erratically flying away.

The students were impressed. They were singing my praises the rest of the day, and rarely have heroes been so exalted. I gave everyone high fives, and then finally made it out of the classroom. Bryan, the Bee-slayer.

At lunchtime the teacher in charge of the broadcasting club asked me if I could bring in some music that I like for the club to play. They are working on a segment for the lunch radio broadcast at school called “About Bryan”, and they want to play some of my favorite music. I had told them a few songs before, and they went out to the record store to buy the CDs, but (not surprisingly) they couldn’t find the music I like.

After school ended I changed my clothes into something more casual, and then headed to the station to meet Kuniko and Antoine. On my way out the door all the students commented on my casual dress – it was their first time seeing me in shorts.

Antoine was running late due to some problems with his website, so Kuniko and I did a sneak preview of the Nishinomiya matsuri. As it turned out, today was the kid’s matsuri. I had never seen one before – it was really cute. They parades little mini-mikoshi shrines that they built through part of the city, starting and ending at the Nishinomiya shrine.

The parade was led by my students. There was the baton club, and also the brass band. There were some people carrying a full sized mikoshi at the front of the parade and another at the tail end.

When Kuniko and I arrived, we got a chance to see many of my students lining up. I also got to introduce her to Matsunaga sensei and Higuchi sensei. They were there to support the baton club. We also met my school’s principal, and he said lots of funny things to Kuniko and had her laughing.

Finally, after everyone took off on the parade we walked back to the station and soon met up with Antoine. Together we made our way back just in time for the end of the parade of kids.

While we were there we bumped into a whole squad of my students, and they crowded around us and wanted to know what the story was with Kuniko and Antoine. I introduced Kuniko and everybody yelled out her name. Kuniko was trying to hide behind me, Antoine was just smiling at everyone and probably wondering if there was something more interesting he could be doing on a Friday night.

Some of my girl students were talking to Kuniko, trying to get tips on how to marry a foreign guy. Finally, we were able to extract ourselves, but it was so much fun talking to all the students. They were very cool.

We made our way to a yakiniku restaurant in the station and had some beers and relaxed over all-you-can-eat meat. The food was pretty good, and we had a lot to catch up on. After talking and eating I think we decided that we’re going to have a movie party at our house in the near future with Antoine and Miwako. Hopefully we can pull it off soon.

Kuniko and I said goodbye to Antoine and headed home from the station. Kuniko has sports day at her school on Saturday, so she has to go into school and sit around in the hot sun all day. Luckily she gets Monday off for compensation.

Pictures from today are here!

At school today I had another set of four classes in a row throughout the morning, and an afternoon free. My students had to endure a pretty brutal class with Harada sensei. She was especially strict, and I was surprised how often she yelled at them. They were doing presentations, and I think she ended up making them more nervous than when they started.

Later she came by my desk and said that some of the students had complained about her, and she acknowledged that she was pretty tough on them. I’m still new here, so I’m not going to get too involved – just stay back and see what the lay of the land is.

In the afternoon I sat around the staffroom and chatted with some of my teachers. One teacher, Kawai sensei, is really curious about America, so I talked with him in Japanese about America. Another teacher, Matsunaga sensei, is an English teacher and knows quite a bit about American culture – she was really interested in the conversation as well. She insisted on speaking only English, so I had to have a conversation with each of them at the same time and switch languages back and forth between them. It was a good experience, but I noticed that my Japanese was really rusty, especially talking about heavy subjects.

I tried to play a few games of ping pong at the end of the day with the table tennis club, but just a few minutes into playing they adjourned to do strength training – so I took my cue and left. I had a nice easy trip home and made up some Mexican chicken and beans for dinner.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Nishinomiya matsuri. I’m meeting up with Kuniko and Antoine and we’ll check it out together. Not sure what the matsuri will be like, but I’m looking forward to checking it out.

We got a late start this morning, and arrived a bit late to catch the usual train. Instead we sat around at the station for a few minutes and caught the next one. I got to work just a little bit later than normal, but nobody really noticed.

At school today I had the first four periods full of classes, but then the afternoon was free. The highlight of my day was working with the first year students. Part of the lesson is to sing “Country Road” with the students. Everyone has a lyric sheet and pronunciation guide, and we listen to a tape and sign along. The students really like it, and I’m getting pretty used to singing the song by now.

One of the noisy students in my class was belting out the song, yelling the lyrics rather than singing them, and enthusiastically sang “West vagina, mountain momma…”

I looked around to see if anyone else heard it, but nobody caught it. I was laughing, and I had a little bit of trouble getting back under control. The second time we sang the verse he sang it correctly, so I was relieved that it was just a random pronunciation mistake.

In the afternoon I went out to watch our students marching around the grounds in preparation for the sports day coming up next week. I sat in the shade with Harada sensei and a student who had sprained his ankle and enjoyed the show. The student had lots of questions for me, and Harada sensei wanted to vent her office politic-based frustrations. I ended up quite busy for the 90 minutes I was out there, and to be honest I was just as ready to go back inside when the bell rang as all the students were.

On my way back I bumped into Shiokawa sensei, who is the teacher in charge of one of the disabled students. They try very hard at my school to give the disabled students every possible chance to have a “normal” junior high school experience. For some of the students it is possible to come pretty close. Other students are in wheelchairs and are barely conscious of their surroundings. Shiokawa sensei’s student, Kohashi-kun, is one of those students. He is in his wheelchair almost all the time, and cannot speak or communicate in any way. He is entirely passive, but that doesn’t stop Shiokawa sensei from rolling his around with the other students on the marching field.

Shiokawa sensei offered to let me push Kohashi-kun back to his classroom, so I took over and walked slowly through the students through the school. Kohashi-kun’s mom comes to school almost every day to help out, and she was there today. I met her once before, and she remembered me and said hello. When we got to the elevator and went upstairs, she met us at the top and snapped a couple of quick photos of me pushing her son through the school.

She seemed really happy to have me help out, and I’m glad she was happy. It wasn’t like I have a deep relationship with her son, but because I’m a foreigner the moment was photo-worthy. Still, it was a good way to wrap up my day.

Kuniko got home early tonight, and I heated up some newly purchased Rosarita refried beans and made tacos, along with a salad and some leftover curry. Now we’re just relaxing and enjoying the evening – it’s unusual to have so much free time together.

We bought tickets to America last night, and as soon as the tickets are confirmed we can start thinking about making the trip. It’ll be at the end of December/beginning of January – it seems like a long way off.

Kuniko left even earlier than normal today, but not before she made a bento lunch for me. I showed up at work to find a nice surprise there – one of my teachers went to Costco and filled my request for refried beans and a big block of cheese. I scored eight cans of refried beans for just about 120 yen a can. I pay about 360 a can at Carrefour, so I saved big bucks. The only trick was lugging them back home – they were heavy!

My morning was pretty free, but I picked up an extra class with Harada sensei, and then had three other classes in a row. The class with Harada sensei was all about pronunciation, and she made just as many mistakes as her students. It illustrated how important it is for a native speaker to teach pronunciation. Hopefully her mistakes illustrated this point for her students.

I taught an English class with two disabled students. We didn’t do much English learning, mainly we sang songs and did basic conversations. The students got really excited about the songs, and I had to learn the songs quickly and act them out with the students. Some of the songs involved saying parts of your body in English, and it was apparent when I didn’t know the next verse – everyone else was touching their nose and I had my hands on my knees or something. It was teaching English at the most basic level. This will be approximately the level that Antoine will be teaching every day. I don’t know if I could do it every day.

There were three English teachers and two aides to help teach one 45 minute class to two disabled students. That’s a lot of manpower to use up, but I will only be teaching those students once a month.

I spent lots of time chatting with students today – it’s a lot of fun. The students constantly test me on their names – they say it quickly and then come back a couple of hours later and ask me what their name is. It’s tough – I miss more than I hit, but I’m getting better at it. The look on their face when I remember is worth it, though.

I’m back home now and relaxing around the house. Kuniko is going to cook up some eggplant pasta tonight, so I’m boiling the macaroni in preparation. We want to get New Year’s plane tickets to America wrapped up this week. Nobody was working over the holiday weekend, so we’ll have to work on it this week. Can’t wait!

We had a long weekend here, and managed a lot of relaxation time. The event to watch out for was a typhoon that was approaching, but at the last minute it headed north out to sea and we just caught the edge of it.

It was a noisy night – the wind was whipping through but it never really got too crazy outside. Everything that started on our patio stayed on the patio, so that was a relief. When were walking around Okubo the next day we did run across somebody’s wig on the ground, so there were some casualties.

Kuniko and I used our free time to do some clothes shopping, and got some supplies to keep the house running through the week. We spent an evening over at Kuniko’s folks catching up with them and picking up some rice for our bento lunches. Also, we got signed up for the rice harvest. Since we helped plant it, I guess we’ll help harvest it too. I’m eager to see the next step in the process.

Tonight we had some leftover curry and watched “Dead Poet’s Society”. It was nice to just relax and take in a movie. Tomorrow it’s back to work for both of us, but Kuniko has another two-day weekend to look forward to. A couple of two-day weekends in a row is something very rare recently.

I had another busy day at work, but I did score some fresh vegetables from one of my teachers, Kuroda sensei. I gave her a taco the other day, and so she must have felt a little guilty and wanted to return the present. The veggies were grown by her mother, who apparently has retired and pursuing gardening as a new hobby.

My classes went without a hitch. Every time I walk to my next class I pass students all rushing around killing time before their next class, and everybody calls my name in passing to say hello. I do my best to answer them all, but sometimes there are way too many people saying hello. It is still a little overwhelming – I just haven’t gotten used to it.

I took the train home, but instead of going to Okubo, I got off at Akashi and then caught a train to Takasago. Tonight was the welcome/farewell party for me and Brenda, and so I got to go back in time a little and revisit my old school.

At Takanan I said to hello to my old co-workers, and sat around talking with Brenda. She is settling into her new job and it seemed like she had a lot of free time at work. I was in the same situation, but I used that time to study Japanese. She is spending that time right now surfing the web on her computer, which I guess is a good time-killer.

One interesting thing was that she came up with the idea to give her first year students Western-style names. She downloaded a list of the most popular names in America, and she had the students choose from the list. It sounded a little weird – somehow to me it seemed like a bad idea, but I’m not sure why. I know that when I learned Spanish I had to pick a Spanish name (Pancho). I was amused to hear from Mori sensei that the most popular name among boys was “Bryan”. Ha!

Brenda also talked about how she has had trouble keeping the history teacher away – something I know a lot about. I got a chance to talk with some of my students as well, and it was fun to talk my ESS students, who are all in the process of choosing colleges. Time flies – I remember when they were just a bunch of scared first years peeking in my classroom door nervously.

We walked from the school to the restaurant, and there was a really big turnout – around 20-25 people. I sat in the middle next to Brenda on one side and the principal on the other. The food was pretty good, but I was there for the conversation. Mostly I was stuck talking with the principal, who really enjoys the fact that he can communicate with a foreigner. We talked about all kinds of stuff, and the more he drank the more obscure the topics became. I was also on the hook to translate to Brenda, despite being surrounded by English teachers.

Some teachers chipped in and bought a big bouquet of orchids for Kuniko. They were beautiful, and I really appreciated all the nice things that everyone said about me. It was really good to see everyone again, and think that even though I’m having a great time at my new school in Nishinomiya, I wouldn’t mind at all working at Takasago Minami again.

The school nurse, Yamamoto sensei, offered to drive both Brenda and me home, along with the baseball coach Morita sensei. It was really nice of her to do – since I’m a little farther away now, and I had orchids to carry. In the car on the way back I translated for Brenda and we talked for a long time. I think she is just starting to speak to the teachers, but the language barrier is pretty tough. I hope that she will be able to make progress, though.

It was a really fun night, and everyone seemed to have a good time. I came back and gave Kuniko the flowers, so now we have some color in the house again. Kuniko got me a present today – a neck massager to work on my still sore neck. I don’t know what I did to it, but the neck massager works pretty well.

I’ve got the next three days off, since Monday is a holiday (Respect for the Aged Day). Time to relax!

My morning schedule had me busy with four classes in a row. The first two were classrooms that I had visited before. The students were happy to have me back and we talked a lot before class started and after it ended.

The third class was another self-introduction. In this class there were some really good English students. One student had gone to Spokane to do a homestay. His English was really good. He didn’t have a lot of vocabulary, but he knew how to have a smooth conversation. He and several other students asked some great questions and we had a good time during the class.

The fourth class was teaching to two students in the disabled category – they were both deaf. One was completely deaf in one ear and the other had limited hearing ability in both ears and used some devices in his ears to hear.

These guys were really cute – first year students and really excited about being at a real junior high school. It was a challenge for me at first – I’ve had no experience teaching disabled students, and so I was pretty nervous. The students were just as nervous, but instead of standing in front of them I asked the teacher if I could sit down with them. I used my book full of photos from America to get them started, and soon they were comfortable.

These guys have trouble speaking Japanese – let alone English, so most of the class was in Japanese. I used English the whole time, but they were so into the pictures and they had so many questions, most of the talking involved the teacher trying to interpret what the students were saying in Japanese!

By the end of the class they were both really comfortable, though, and we had them speaking a little bit of English to me. The students from the next classroom, two third year students with hearing problems, also came over after marveling at the size of my shoes. I talked with them a little bit and they were really happy to meet me finally.

In the afternoon I was free, and then I went to help one of the first year classrooms do clean up duty. One of the students asked me how to say “mechanical pencil” in English. I told them, not expecting much, but they kept repeating it after me until they had it memorized, and then they fanned out and started telling other students in other classrooms. Soon the hallway was full of kids chanting “mechanical pencil, mechanical pencil”. Imagine 60 junior high school students running around saying “mechanical pencil” over and over – it was quite a scene. I couldn’t stop laughing.

After school I hung out with some of the different clubs. I watched the judo club, the kendo club, and even paid a visit to the track and field club and baton twirling club. All the kids love it when I drop by, and the baton club girls really enjoyed watching me nearly sprain my wrist trying to twirl a baton.

I squeezed in a few games of ping pong with the ping pong club. Even though most of the time they beat me pretty good, they kept saying “Bryan is strong, Bryan is strong!” It was fun, but I had a little sheen of sweat on me as I headed home.

I’m back home now and getting some leftovers ready for dinner. Ever since this morning I’ve had a stiff shoulder and neck, so I’m drinking cold beer to maybe relax the muscles, and I’ll take a steaming hot bath after dinner to see if that helps. Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be back at 100%.

The weather lately has been nice and cool, with an occasional rain shower. That has made it very easy to sleep, and it makes it a little harder to get up in the morning. We’ve got a pretty low stress morning routine, and we’re out the door and on the train with a few minutes to spare.

At school I had two morning classes with Kuroda sensei. I was teaching the second year students, and Kuroda sensei insists that for my classes we should just play games and have a great time. I’m not sure how much English we learned, but we had fun today. I did a couple of activities, and the most popular was playing pictionary in groups. I made it a little tough, though, with words to draw like “friend”, “difficult”, and “delicious”.

In the afternoon I taught with Harada sensei, and had a serious round of questions from her students. There were a couple of really tough questions – like what my views are on discrimination in America, and what are some the big differences between American culture and Japanese culture.

I was out of there right on time, and walked to the train station with my umbrella in the rain. Three first year students going home in the same direction called my name and chased me down, but soon found out that there wasn’t much to talk about once they caught up with me. I switched to just a bit of Japanese, and that helped a little bit.

Tonight Kuniko is due in late, so I’m just kicking around the house. I did some cleaning and now I’m doing my best to understand what people are saying on TV. Now they have some poor Japanese woman trying to read very difficult kanji to other Japanese people. I can’t read the simple kanji, let alone the difficult ones, but it’s nice to see a Japanese person struggling with kanji.

This week is flying by – Friday I’m going out with my old teachers and also my successor at Takasago Minami. I’m looking forward to hearing all the gossip and stories from my old school.

I had four classes today. They all ran pretty smoothly, which is pretty common these days. I introduced myself to three classes, and had a second lesson with the fourth class. The fourth class was with Matsunaga sensei. She runs the class by the book. She always seems to have an idea of what she wants to do, but she only tells me a little bit about it before hand. I don’t mind, though – we get through the lesson easily enough.

I gave some leftover tacos to some teachers at my school. They couldn’t eat them at school for lunch, because they eat with the students and it would be horribly unfair to enjoy some delicious tacos right in front of the students. They said that they would bring them home and eat them for dinner. Hopefully they’ll remember that they are in the fridge.

At the end of the day I had my first class with Harada sensei. She is one of several Harada senseis at my school. She really tries hard at English, and so we often talk so that she can improve her English. She’s really nice, a little dizzy, but when it comes to English she puts a lot of effort into it.

Our class went really well. She had done a lot of preparation with the students for the class, and they were a little shy but I think they had a good time. At the end of class after most of the students had left, a girl student from another class came in and started giving Harada sensei a hard time. The girl was saying that Harada sensei probably couldn’t communicate with me at all – her English was probably really bad.

I could tell that Harada sensei was hurt by the comment, and I’m not sure why the girl said it, but I defended her in Japanese, telling the student that Harada sensei had lived in America for almost a year, and her English was really good. That shut the kid up, and after we left Harada sensei told me that that particular student always seems to give her a hard time.

I tried to cheer her up. Even though they are just 12 year old kids, the things they say can sometimes hurt your feelings. I think it helped a little bit, but she’s got to put a little less stock in what these kids say and have a little more confidence in her abilities.

The JR trains were delayed heavily on the way home, but strangely enough I got home earlier than usual. How? The trains were running about 55 minutes late, so the train that I caught was supposed to be at that station 55 minutes before. It didn’t matter to me – I got in and arrived at Okubo about five minutes earlier than normal. Did that make sense? I doubt it.

Kuniko is in the kitchen cooking up macaroni au gratin, so I’m looking forward to a delicious dinner tonight. I’m going to try to stay up a little later tonight – I’ve been going to bed kind of early lately, and I sleep straight through the night and wake up tired. Maybe I’m getting too much sleep lately?