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.

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!