Today I met up with Kuniko’s parents and a couple of her uncles to help plant rice. Kuniko had to go to school, so she missed out on the adventure. I had my shiny new boots to use that day, and I’m glad I brought them. Kuniko’s dad was wearing a Gundlach Bundschu hat that my folks had given him – by chance so was I, so we made a matching set.

The rice planting is a pretty modern operation – a tractor runs around the rice paddy in a specific pattern, and it is really interesting how it delivers the plants into the mud. They load it with what looks like squares of sod – young rice plants ready to go into the ground. As the tractor traveled there were lots of tiny frogs jumping like hell to get out of the way.

The tractor looked like fun, but unfortunately I didn’t get to try it out. Maybe next year. In fact, there wasn’t a whole lot for me to do – just watch and help load the tractor with more sod when it ran out.

We planted two rice paddies. There were a couple more, but Kuniko’s folks did that work yesterday, so it was a relatively easy day. When we finished up we spent a couple hours cleaning the tractor and the trays that the young rice plants had been growing on.

They had a strange machine for cleaning the trays, and me and one of Kuniko’s uncles tried to figure it out. It had power, but we couldn’t figure out what the power was for. We pushed the trays in one side, and the were rinsed with water on the way through. I figured it was heating the water, but after a while it was still cold. Finally somebody walked by and told us to turn it on, and so we followed the cord back a ways and found a switch. Once it was on, the thing automatically received the trays, cleaned them, and spit them out the other side. At least I wasn’t the only one that was clueless.

After everything was taken care of I helped with a little modification to one of the barns at the family farm. It was really just Kuniko’s dad working, and four guys standing around offering comments.

Kuniko showed up around 3 p.m. and was my ticket out of there, so I headed back to the Kageyama household and we drank coffee and relaxed a bit. We snuck out of there before her mom could cook us dinner, and did a little bit of shopping at Carrefour on the way back home.

I’m tired and I’ve got a sunburned neck, so I’m off to bed. It was a good experience today – I’m looking forward to doing it again next year. I managed to take a few pictures. You can check out the pictures here.

Saturday morning I had the place to myself – Kuniko was off to school to teach a few morning classes. I did a little laundry, a lot of studying, and had a some snacks for lunch. By the time Kuniko got back in the afternoon I was ready for a nap, so I slept just a little bit and then I was ready to head into Kobe to meet Nel and Antoine.

We had a good time in Sannomiya. We started at a pizza restaurant. There aren’t many restaurants in Japan dedicated to pizza, so this was a unique experience. Also, they number every pizza they make, so you can see exactly how many pizzas they have made before yours came out of the oven. As for the quality of the pizza, it was a little bit bland. The toppings were a little thin, but satisfying enough. We had a “Worker’s Pizza”, which had different meats and garlic, and a “Mexican Pizza” which had just a slight bit of spiciness, but otherwise didn’t seem very Mexican at all.

Afterwards we went and shot pool for about an hour, and from there went to a Japanese German beerhouse that I’ve wanted to try. I think it is owned by Sapporo, and they had a few homemade beers there that we could try out. One was quite good, but the other one, a wheat beer, didn’t taste very good at all. The waitresses were dressed like St. Pauli girl, so that was a big plus.

Nel and Antoine have two different directions they are heading after JET. Antoine will be looking for a job in the area, and Nel is looking for something in Tokyo. We talked about our different job strategies, and also about how we first met. It was good times. Hard to believe that we all started this adventure in Los Angeles about three years ago.

I came on back home and found Kuniko already crashed out – she has been working so hard lately. I curled up right beside her and went to sleep. I gotta plant rice tomorrow!

This morning I had to watch a pervert at work on the train, but despite that I had a pretty good day. The pervert is always on this train, and although I wasn’t exactly sure that he was a pervert before, I’m convinced now.

He was sitting a few seats away from me, and suddenly he got up and walked down the length of the train car to sit next to a sleeping woman who was nodding off on her way to work. I watched carefully, ready to go over there and catch him in the act. The guy looked around casually, and then started looking carefully at the sleeping woman. He tried to look down her shirt, and kept watching her from various angles. Right about then my stomach was turning, but there wasn’t much to do. I kept a close eye on the guy, and the guy next to me was watching carefully, too. I had to get off soon afterwards, but hopefully that guy was keeping track of what was going on.

My day at school was pretty uneventful. I spent a lot of time talking with students, and I spent some time looking at logistics for the Europe trip. I was lucky enough to get out of work right on time, despite all the madness involving preparations for the upcoming culture festival.

On the way home the train was free of perverts, and I got home with the idea to head over to Carrefour and look for some rubber boots to use during the rice planting on Sunday. I was in luck – I found a pair of size 27 boots that I squeezed into for only 900 yen. I also picked up a few other valuable things and then headed home for dinner. I made up some vegetarian yakisoba that turned out really nicely.

Soon after Yasu came over with omiyage from his trip to Tokyo. We sat and drank beers and talked about his trip, and also our plans for the future. We switched to sho-chu when we ran out of beer, and the conversation turned philosophical. It was fun to hang out, and he stayed until it was time to meet Kuniko at the train station.

Kuniko had been at a long meeting, so she arrived home really late tonight. I feel bad for her because she had to work both days last weekend, and she’s working both days this weekend as well. As soon as we got back we went right to sleep.

Strange weather today – lots of clouds and the threat of rain all day. Today was the first day I wore short sleeves which must be some kind of weather indicator. Yesterday it was plenty warm, and when I got prepared for it today mother nature threw clouds and rain at me.

I caught a later train than normal and shared the ride with one of my students. He is a second year student and is a big fan of kickboxing, 80s heavy metal, and volunteering to help animals. Interesting guy. We spoke mainly in Japanese until we got to school. He was really nice to talk to.

At school I dreamt up a lesson plan for an “International Understanding” lesson for the history teacher. It is the first in a set of two that I agreed to do. It should be fun – I’m going to say some very un-Japanese things, and I hope the students enjoy hearing them.

Between classes I had some spare time to think about the trip to France and Italy this summer. I flipped through the guidebooks and realized that there is no way that we’ll be able to do everything that I’d like, so we might as well take a leisurely pace and enjoy the trip. I’ll continue working on little details and we’ll see how it goes.

Kuniko arrived home late tonight, and we had a very simple dinner of leftovers. We had lots of cheese and crackers to kill off, and even some curry and rice that was still floating around. She was really tired from her day, so I anticipate that we’ll be getting to bed early tonight.

Tomorrow is Friday and I’m tentatively planning on a visit to the yakitori tomorrow for dinner since Kuniko has a long meeting after work – she won’t be back until nearly ten o’clock. Saturday I’ll be free during the day and then heading into Kobe for pizza with Nel and Antoine. Sunday is the day of the rice planting. Since nobody seems to have size 30 rubber boots laying around for me I might end up playing a very peripheral role. We’ll see – if it rains all bets are off.

Once again we were sleeping in this morning and missed making lunches. Maybe we are staying up too late at night? It was nice to sleep in a little bit, though. I got to work right on time, with a big list of things to do.

Surprisingly, I knocked out what I thought was a big list in less than 40 minutes, leaving me with two classes in the day and lots of free time to study. The longer I work here the more of a handle I get on how things operate, and I’m able to use my time efficiently. I’m not sure what to do with all my spare time, though. I use most of it for studying, averaging about four hours a day. I’m sure my next job won’t allow me so much free time, so I’m trying to enjoy it now.

The history teacher came by today and wanted to ask me about the TV show “American Idol”. It was broadcast on cable here for the few people that have cable, and the history teacher was following the show religiously. He was puzzled with the end, though. I didn’t watch the show, so I don’t know all the details, but apparently a pretty normal looking guy won out in the end against a pretty good looking girl. The history teacher was perplexed – she was clearly more attractive, why didn’t she win?

In Japan, at least in mainstream music, the appearance of the artist is as important or more important than how well they sing. They need to look good, they need to be able to dance, and then, finally – they should be able to sing. This isn’t all Japanese music, just the most popular stuff that is on the TV and radio all the time. There is an underground music culture in Japan that is less concerned with appearance and more with music, but most people don’t know about this obscure music or don’t care about it.

This morning was another sleep in for Kuniko and I. Between the two of us we managed to sleep in too late to make lunches to take to work. Oops. We did get out of the house on time, but a jam in the ticket machine at the train station caused me to be ten minutes late to work. The good news is that I always come in more than an hour early, so no big deal.

Today was a bookends type schedule – a class in first period and a class during the last period. Everything in between was free. The first period class was student interviews, and I held them completely in English. The students did much better than last time, so I was encouraged with their progress.

I had to pick something up at the local shopping center, so I walked out there and while I was there got a bowl of noodles for lunch. When I got back, a teacher gave me a donut filled with anko (red bean paste) and so that was a fairly substantial dessert. Then the history teacher dropped off a hot dog that he had bought for me – I was pretty full by the end of the day.

My last class was a first year class, and my co-teacher was a substitute – Nozaki sensei for Mori sensei. The class had a great reaction when she arrived, and they stayed loud and active during the lesson. Nozaki sensei was surprised – she said that the particular class is always quiet when she teaches it.

Speaking of Nozaki sensei, she and I spent some time talking between classes. She is trying to get out of the study group with Hayashi sensei and Miyake sensei. Her English is really good, and she says she is tired of doing the study group and having Hayashi sensei correct her accent. I told her that if she doesn’t like going, don’t go. Besides, if you are going to have someone correct your accent, make it a native speaker. Hayashi sensei’s accent is stronger than hers – she should be teaching him.

After school we had a teacher’s meeting, and once again there was a minor insurrection among the teachers. They seem to be flexing their muscle against the principal. This time it was about having teacher’s pictures in the PTA handbook. Interesting – this may be building up to something, but it is likely that I won’t be around when it blows up. Something fun for my successor.

Tonight for dinner Kuniko cooked up curry and rice. We have curry a lot as kind of a self-defense for all the fresh vegetables that come our way from Kuniko’s folks. It uses up a bunch with each batch, and lasts for a long time. We’ve still a bunch a veggies to eat, though, so we’ll have to figure out another veggie-heavy dish. Maybe yakisoba…

We dragged our tired bodies out of bed this morning and reluctantly headed off to work. I went in for just my morning class, and then soon afterwards took the rest of the day off to solve my visa issue once and for all.

I’ve been taking lots of time off lately – an hour here and there, sometimes half a day to take care of things relating to my visa. I feel pretty guilty about it, which shows you how well I’ve adjusted to the Japanese workplace. My school has been really flexible, though, and as long as it doesn’t conflict with a class it is no problem.

Before I left for Kobe, Nozaki sensei asked me for some help. One of her ex-students had sent her some phrases that she has run into in America, and she asked her to interpret them. Nozaki sensei didn’t know exactly, so she asked me. The phrase was a big surprise for me.

“Falsie manufacturers live off the flat of the land.”

Lots of things to delicately explain, and it took me about five minutes to get through it carefully. I like the phrase, though, and I’ll have to remember for some other occasion.

I caught the train to Akashi, and from there to Kobe, and then walked to the immigration office in the south of town. I paid 10,000 yen for two permits – one to live in Japan legally and one to come and go as I like. I put all the papers in a folder and fifteen minutes later they called me up and gave me my passport with a brand new visa that lets me live in Japan for the next three years. This is good news – now I can safely take our trip to Europe in the summer and be able to come back.

On my way back I went to the Akashi city office and updated my foreigner registration with the new information. They were very helpful there, and I got through the paperwork fairly quickly.

On my way out I considered how far I had come in three years. When I first arrived somebody had to talk through the whole operation – now I’m doing it on my own. It’s a nice sense of satisfaction and independence.

I finally got home around 3, and then I called my mom in the US to wish her an early happy birthday. It sounded like they had a pretty good birthday party for her tonight, so it turned out to be good timing.

Tonight I’m going to try to cook the gnocci I bought the other night – it’s pasta night. Tomorrow I’m back to school for the whole day, and I’m looking forward to a pretty light week.

It was a nice relaxing weekend for me and a tough working weekend for Kuniko. She was out of bed and off to work early on Saturday morning. I spent the day at home doing laundry, cleaning, studying, and generally getting the house organized.

When Kuniko got home around four o’clock, we had just about an hour for her to relax before heading to her parents house for dinner. Dinner was delicious, as usual – hand-wrapped sushi rolls, and gyoza on the side. Kuniko’s dad came in later – he’s busy out on the farm. He gave us lots of farm products to bring back home – strawberries, lots of onions, a head a cabbage – it was a big haul.

Sunday we got to sleep in just a bit, and then Kuniko was off to a Rotary Club meeting for some of the international students that they are sponsoring. Since one of Kuniko’s students was invited, Kuniko had to go, too.

While she was gone I spent the day studying and squeezed in a game or two of MarioKart on the DS. In the evening I went into Kobe to meet up with Kuniko after her meeting to have dinner.

On the way there, on the JR platform in Akashi, there was a guy in a really nice suit slumped over on the bench asleep. As I got closer I noticed a giant puddle of puke on the ground around him – I guess he drank too much. He was a mess, and it was interesting to watch the people around him and their reactions. Sometimes I see the odd puddle of vomit while walking around in the mornings, but this was the first time I saw the birth of one in public.

I met up with Kuniko near the Hankyu train station in Sannomiya, and from there we headed to the restaurant to check it out. It was a Thai restaurant that I had heard good things about, and I had made reservations earlier because I had also heard that it was a popular but small place. We got there a little early, and they turned us away, saying that we would have to come back right at the reservation time. We walked around a little bit and came back, our stomachs audibly growling.

The place was packed, and we actually shared our table with another couple across from us, with a wooden screen giving us privacy. In Japan I’ve shared tables with strangers before – that’s no big deal. The screen was there to afford us a little privacy, but you had to worry about maybe your foot or leg hitting the people across the way. Interesting.

We ordered a few things and were really pleased overall. We had fried garlic and pepper shrimp, and a fried pork dish covered with onions and spices. The shrimp had a really amazing sauce that we couldn’t get enough of, and the pork dish was nice and spicy – it had us sweating. We also ordered pineapple fried rice, and it was served in half of a pineapple. It was a little too greasy for us, but it was still delicious. For drinks we had juice, and I had a coconut juice that was just awesome.

We did just a little bit of shopping after dinner, and then headed home. We blended up lots of fruits and yogurts to take care of the strawberries we got from Kuniko’s folks. We also got into a bad situation with Tetris – we promised not to go to bed until one of us defeated the computer. It took almost 40 minutes to get that accomplished, but finally Kuniko did it. We went to bed exhausted – which is a bad way to go to sleep on a Sunday night.

Not a really tough day for me – in fact it flew by. I had kind of a grueling stretch of three classes in a row in the morning, but after that was done I was free for the afternoon. I spent most of the time marking the journals from the three classes, and then I had about an hour free later to enjoy my book and do a little bit of studying.

After school I headed into Kobe to meet Kuniko for a Mexican dinner. She is working through the weekend, so it is our only real chance to celebrate the end of the week.

We ate some great tacos, burritos and even some fajitas. Everything was really good, and we walked back to the train station with stuffed stomachs. On the way back we stopped in at a new import food shop, and I got a chance to buy some fun stuff that I can’t find normally. I got some fresh gnocchi, a can of iced Kona milk coffee from Hawaii, and some Jell-o, which was reasonably priced for a change. They had lots of other stuff I want, but I’ll wait and enjoy it gradually.

I think this year I have had a chance to talk to more students than the last two years combined. The first year I was here I was a little shy about talking to the students – and they were really shy about talking to me. Now I’m settled in and everybody just expects to see me, and they are comfortable chatting any time. Bad timing to leave the school – somebody else will have to build this all up from scratch. But that person will bring new ideas and new life to the position – maybe that is a good thing.

I taught two classes today, and I spent an hour with Miyake sensei working on her listening comprehension. Between classes I went shopping in town for some teaching supplies, and ate the bento lunch that Kuniko had prepared. It was a big one – so delicious!

I got my studying quota done today, but just barely. By the time I left at 4:30 things were calming down at the school, and I am all set for Friday’s lessons.

I went over to Tsuji-san’s place and spent time chatting with her. She is getting really nervous/frustrated about the upcoming wedding. Mainly it is all the Japanese traditions that she is stuck obeying. Her fiancee’s family are really traditional, and her father is fairly traditional as well, so she is kind of stuck doing things she has no interest in. The one thing that she is enjoying is planning her honeymoon in Spain. She has spent lots of time there in the past, so it will be a good chance to see old friends and introduce her husband to a part of her life.

I tried to give Tsuji-san some encouragement – once the wedding is over things will settle down, and it will all be just a happy memory. It’s easy for me to say that now, but from her perspective, it is a long way off.

We compared the information on our flights and destinations – and the more I look at our trip the more I think we are trying to do too much in too short a time. I’ll spend some time this weekend looking at our options. I don’t want to be rushing around all the time, I want to be eating and drinking and taking pictures all the time.

Kuniko expected to get home late tonight, so I’m just hanging out. I’ve got a healthy dinner on deck, tofu with ponzu sauce and sauteed bean sprouts. More later!

Today was one of my busy Wednesdays. I had four classes, and then the ESS meeting in the afternoon. The classes went pretty smoothly. The first class was a first year class, and I’ve got that lesson plan so wired into my head that I don’t even refer to my outline and notes anymore. By the end of the lesson, we’ve taught the students how to apologize politely.

My middle two classes were with the advanced English students. One class is taught by Tsutsumi sensei, and it is 35 boys and 6 girls. The class is pretty active, and the students talk back and forth with the teachers during the lesson, which is a good sign that they aren’t shy about speaking up.

In contrast, the next class is taught by Yamamoto sensei, and it has 35 girls and 7 boys. The teacher is not the relaxed Yamamoto sensei that is my point of contact at the school – this is another Yamamoto sensei – a kind of hyper-active under-confident English teacher that I have taught with the last few years. He is not confident with his own English, and especially in a situation with a native speaker in front of the top English students he is uncomfortable. He usually hides in the back of the class and clarifies things in Japanese – he tends to stay away from English. The class is quiet because he keeps strict control over utterances.

My goal today was to create a lesson plan that would draw out Yamamoto sensei and also to create a more lighthearted atmosphere among the quiet students in his class. I managed to get the students to relax a little bit, and I managed to get Yamamoto sensei up to the front of the class to act out a dialog with me, but other than that, it was more of the same. I know the students in that class and they are a lot of fun on their own – they just don’t want Yamamoto sensei to get mad at them so they clam up.

I have a couple of allies in that class, however: a boy and a girl that are really good at English. They volunteer when I ask questions and they really put in the effort when it matters. I like them a lot, and they have saved my bacon many times by providing answers in an otherwise silent class.

In a big surprise Kuniko got home at a reasonable hour. We had leftovers from the other night and just sat around relaxing. She played lots of Tetris on the gameboy, and I read a couple more chapters of Cold Mountain. We were both asleep by eleven o’clock in the evening.

This morning it was exceedingly hard to wake up. Kuniko and I get up pretty early, and usually somebody goes out there and makes lunch for the both of us. Sometimes it’s one of us, and other times it is both of us. This time, it definitely wasn’t me. I wasn’t even aware that Kuniko had gotten up, made lunch and taken a bath when she woke me up.

I don’t know why I was tired, but I headed off to work and found a pretty relaxing sanctuary there. The student teachers were buzzing around, and the I had just a little bit of studying to do to fill my quota of vocabulary. I spent almost two hours poring over travel guides for France and Italy, because everyone knows half the fun of a trip is planning it out.

I did take the time to call the guy I interviewed with on Saturday and officially told him that I am going to keep looking. He was very nice about it, and told me to keep in touch – maybe someday down the line. So, now, full steam ahead to “Another Job Land”.

My classes today went really smoothly, and before I knew it I was out the door and heading home. I picked up some ingredients for an attempt at gumbo, and sliced it all up and put it in the rice cooker. We’ll see how it turns out in about an hour.

My mom called with some bad news – my grandmother passed away today. They had just moved her up to a care facility in Sonoma, and my mother was there with her when she died, so I was at least glad to hear that. I’ll write more about that a little later.

Monday morning I went into work and had a fax waiting for me on my desk. It was the contract from the job that I interviewed for on Saturday. The contract was a little weird, and I was expecting that because the guy had said that it was a homemade contract based upon other English conversation schools.

One of the clauses that was interesting was that you got ten days of paid vacations a year, but then you are required to take specific times off during the year – New Year’s, Golden Week, etc. Coincidentally, those holidays add up to exactly ten days. In other words, you can’t take time off on your own. If you do take time off, they deduct 3000 yen an hour from your paycheck. Ouch! Also there were a couple of other clauses that sounded weird, and some things didn’t match up with what we talked about during the interview, so I think the contract really pushed me into deciding not to take the job. I thought about it during the day and eventually when I talked with Kuniko after school she supported my decision. Tuesday I’ll give him a call and tell him the bad news.

One really nice thing that happened today was that my only class of the day, an afternoon class, was rescheduled to the morning, so once I finished that I had the rest of the day to relax and study. I had lots of vocabulary to work since I slacked off over the weekend, so that kept me busy during the day.

At school we have the student teachers for a couple of weeks, and they all introduced themselves today. They seem like a pretty good group. The history teacher was already putting the moves on some of the girls in the group, and it probably won’t be long before they are hiding in classrooms to avoid him. No student English teachers this year, so that is too bad. We need some fresh new faces teaching English.

I got home early because of my schedule change, so I put together the ingredients for a salad and had it ready for Kuniko when she arrived home. I received guidebooks for France and Italy in the mail from Amazon, and so I’ll be hard at work figuring those out over the next month or so. It’s going to be an exciting trip.

Saturday morning and Kuniko and I both headed into Kobe. I was in Kobe to interview for a job, and Kuniko wanted to do a little shopping while I was interviewing. We split up in north Kobe and I headed on to Shin-Kobe station to catch the subway under Mt. Rokko to the other side.

On the other side of Mt. Rokko lies Tanigami, a fairly small town that grew quickly with the new tunnel to Kobe. It was a ten minute ride through the tunnel, and then I got out in a fairly large station, complete with a supermarket and McDonald’s. It looked like a big commuting station – people catch a bus to the station, and then catch the subway into Kobe.

I had a little time so I walked around and checked the place out, and then soon after Toshihide Iguchi came walking up and said hello.

This guy is pretty interesting. He moved to America when he was 18 years old, and has been living there ever since. Now he is planning to move back to Japan, and start up an English conversation school. He has no experience, though, just a lot of money and a desire to succeed.

He has already hired one teacher, a woman who will move from Chicago to start a new life in Japan. He’s looking for one more teacher, and he’s trying to decide between me and one other guy living in Japan.

There are lots of things to worry about if I take this job. First, it’s a new school, so there are no students right now. Mr. Iguchi has never run a business in Japan, and hasn’t been here in so long that he really doesn’t have any idea of what to expect marketing-wise. The more I talked to him, the more I saw that he would be depending on me to advise him on a lot of things. The bad news is that I don’t know much about English conversation schools, and hardly anything about how to run a profitable one.

Mr. Iguchi told me that as the business grows he sees me taking over more of a management role, and he hopes to open several branches, so he might want me to run a branch for him.

The hours didn’t sound great either – and they may end up being the reason I don’t take the job. I would work from noon or 1 in the afternoon until 9 or 10 at night. That means that I would see Kuniko for only about an hour each evening. Also, I would have to work weekends, so I wouldn’t get to do much with her together.

I also found out that Mr. Iguchi once worked for a Japanese bank in America, and was directly responsible for that bank losing 1.1 billion dollars. He covered up the fact, and ended up serving time in jail. The bank was kicked out of America, and Mr. Iguchi wrote a book about the whole experience. This was a long time ago, but it does weigh on your mind that your future boss lost more money than you will ever make in your life.

For his part, he seemed pretty excited about working with me, and I sense that the job is mine if I want it. He’s faxing me a contract to take a look at on Monday, and I promised him that I would let him know yes or no by the end of the week. Lots to think about!

After the interview Kuniko and I met up in Sannomiya, and together we killed some time walking around town. We had a drink at Starbucks, and then headed over to the movie theater to see “Daisy” – a Korean movie with Japanese subtitles. I’m happy to report that I understood about 90% of the subtitles. It was a pretty good movie, with a typical Korean “over-the-top” plot. I won’t give any away, but it was anything but subtle.

After the movie we walked into Kitano and went to Star Child’s burgers. It was Kuniko’s first time there, and she had a big avocado cheeseburger. I had a fried egg burger. It was really good, and we walked out of there stuffed. We came on back and crashed out pretty early. Tomorrow we’re going to spend some time cleaning house and getting organized for the next week.

I had a very busy morning schedule today – three out of four classes. Once I knocked those out, however, things got really quiet. I had the afternoon free, so I walked around a visited each of the sports clubs that were practicing. I watched the kendo club, the ping pong club, the badminton club, and the basketball clubs (boys and girls).

At each club I sat and watched for about 10-15 minutes. Sometimes students would come over and talk to me, sometimes nobody had the nerve. Everyone would stop and wave or smile at me, though.

When I went over to watch the basketball teams the girls all said hello and came over. Some of the team members are pretty active in my classes, so they were happy to get a chance to talk with me outside of the classroom.

Okamoto sensei, the girls’s basketball coach, was sitting there, so I sat with her and we talked about the clubs, what I’m going to do next, and her family. The nice thing about watching the club with her around was that I didn’t feel like some kind of pervert watching 16-year old high school girls running around on the court.

After school I met up with the English teachers and we went to a local Takasago restaurant to have a welcome/farewell party for the teachers that came and left this year. The place was a really nice restaurant/pub that I had never been to before. Takasago is not known for upscale restaurants, but this place was really nice.

Dinner was pretty good – I had the meat dish which turned out to be a short, thick hot dog wrapped in a tender piece of beef. The rest of the course was quite good – seafood spaghetti, French onion soup, a salmon and potato salad, and even some pastrami with mozzarella cheese cubes.

The party was a little stiff – there were a couple of speeches, which is part of the experience of a Japanese party. Usually these kinds of parties work in stages, with the next one seeing the party becoming louder and the final stage is outright anarchy, with people walking around pouring drinks and lots of hysterical laughter. Most work parties that I have been to in America have jumped right to the final stage, but it takes a little work to get there here in Japan. If the mix of people is just right, things become fun quickly.

Unfortunately there were a lot of new people and people that haven’t met yet, so it took a while, and by that time it was time to go. I had a good time, though, and since the entire conversation was in Japanese, it was good practice for me.

Another thing that struck me while I was sitting there, surrounded by twelve English teachers, was that only three of them had decent English skills – at least decent enough to teach the language. Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with that? Today Mori sensei tried to get me to repeat her example sentence “I step your toe” to the students – why is someone like that held up as an example to students? I guess it all adds up to job security for me, but it was still a little disturbing.

I came home relatively early, and Kuniko and I played lots of Nintendo DS before eventually hitting the sack. Tomorrow I have an informal interview for an English conversation school job in Kobe. We’ll see how it goes!