I had forgotten how much whispering, running around, sudden meetings in spare offices and the last minute emotions that go into another announcement of teacher transfers. Today I sat back and took it all in. With nothing invested it is easier to focus on how people behave and how they handle the situation. I love watching people – if I could make money doing it I would.

The upcoming spring term is my lame duck term – I’ll be teaching classes for the term but then I’ll be gone forever and the students will have to get used to a new teacher during the fall term. This made it a little less interesting to see who I would be teaching with next.

The teachers filed up to the meeting room at ten o’clock, and the principal read off a short list of teachers that will be leaving and teachers that will be coming to replace them.

Overall, there weren’t really any main players making changes. I mentioned the two yesterday, and there wasn’t anybody else that really gets written about in this journal. We lost three English teachers, but gained one. They added a school nurse, so now we have three, and the part time teacher lineup changed quite a bit. Other than that, not much exciting happened. The history teacher will still be around to torment me next term, but with the light at the end of the tunnel, I think I can persevere.

The purpose of the rest of the day is for the teachers to meet and discuss the changes. They met as different groups – first they met by school year, then by groups, and then finally by subject. I had to stick around for the English meeting in the late afternoon, which meant I sat around the empty staffroom most of the day.

To compensate for all the free time I walked over to the bank to get some money, and I stopped in at Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch. It’s not my favorite place to eat, but I thought I’d just grab a chicken sandwich and run. It turned out that an ex-student of mine was working there, and she made my sandwich and then came out to say hello. Her coworkers were impressed that she knew me and we chatted for a little while.

Since the history teacher gave me a present the other day, he intends to cash in on the goodwill that he supposedly bought. In other words, he wants value for his money. I spent a lot of time dodging him today and yesterday, and I hope that this isn’t a trend that continues. Yikes.

As for the English meeting, it was a strange one. This meeting is where people traditionally take new roles and responsibilities for the new year, and since nobody wants to take on new work, the moderator would ask a question, followed by about 1-2 minutes of total silence as people stared at their paperwork hoping that the moderator would stop asking questions. This went on for 30 minutes. It would be painful to watch if you didn’t like watching people.

As I was coming out of the bathroom the principal took me aside and told me that one of the new English teachers is coming from New York – her husband had been working there at a bank. He said that her English is supposed to be top notch, and he spent almost a half hour with me talking about how he wants to improve the English level of his staff. It was fun to talk to him, but I’m a little frustrated that I can’t add more to the discussion. He doesn’t seem to mind though, and he expects me to sit and listen anyway since he is older than me and that is my role – nod and agree with everything.

Lastly, before I left for the day the vice principal pulled me aside and told me that he is being promoted to principal of a special public high school for the disabled and blind. When I get back from my vacation he will be gone. I was sad to hear that he will be gone, but I was glad to hear about his promotion. It was still top secret when I left – he said I was the third person to know about it. I’ll miss having him to chat with around the staffroom. I wonder if the next guy will be as relaxed.

Now I’m back home with some pork steaks marinating in the fridge. Kuniko should be home pretty soon, and then we can maybe kick back and relax for a little while. She’s got to work tomorrow, so I’ll be on the hook for laundry and cleanup duties. I anticipate that the biggest decision I’ll make tomorrow is what music to listen to while I’m working around the house.

We continue with weird schedules at school this week. The students came in today for a cleaning session, and the closing ceremony. We had the closing ceremony in the newly-refurbished gymnasium, which smelled like fresh paint and had a beautiful new floor. I hadn’t realized how crappy the old one was.

The ceremony was the same old thing, the opening words to the closing ceremony, the closing speech by the principal, the school song, the closing ceremony to the closing ceremony, and then we were out of there.

At one o’clock, the new students for next year came in and sat through an orientation session, and then walked around to buy their uniforms, textbooks, school bags, gym clothes, etc. I dropped by the orientation just to check it out, but I didn’t stay long. Not so exciting.

I spent some time talking with the principal in his office, and he confirmed that the job he mentioned to me before is located in Tokyo, and that’s a lot farther than I want to go for a job. He said that he’d keep his eyes open for anything else, so I’m hoping that it might pay off down the road. I’m not holding my breath, though.

Tomorrow there is a meeting to announce who is getting transferred, and who will be coming to join us at our school after spring break ends. This is a yearly ritual, and is always a hot topic for gossip with the teachers. Today I heard that Kimura sensei and Kawamura sensei will both transfer to Akashi Nishi high school, right near my apartment complex and across the street from Ito Yokado. I congratulated them – Akashi Nishi is what the Board of Education calls a “Super English High School”. They have three native English speakers there, instead of Takasago Minami which has just me. They have a big budget and really focus on improving English skills. It’s kind of a pilot program to see if adding more money and staff will make any difference in how well students learn English. Kimura sensei and Kawamura sensei aren’t our top English speakers, though, so I’m a little worried about them. I hope they do OK.

Kuniko had the day off today, and she had already made plans for dinner – salad udon. It was something new for me, and it turned out great. She cooked up udon noodles like normal, but then served them over lettuce, tuna, corn, and cucumbers with a somen sauce and a squirt of mayonnaise. Very, very good. With dinner we watched one of the movies we rented, “War of the Worlds”. Mah.

Tomorrow is my last day before a long spring vacation. My brother gets into town on Sunday night, so from there it will be lots of touring around and eating. Looking forward to it!

Tuesday was a holiday, celebrating the spring equinox. I was happy to take the day off, and because Kuniko was free too it was that much better. We didn’t do much all day but sit around the house reading in the kotatsu, eating up leftovers from the refrigerator, and relaxing.

I have been reading a lot of books in English lately, and it is a real pleasure to read at full speed in English after taking months and months to finish a Japanese novel. I spent most of Tuesday reading “Memoirs of a Geisha”. It’s my first time reading the book, and it is a lot of fun to read.

Monday the principal of my school came to me with a job posting – the prefecture is looking for a couple of people to work as “program coordinators” starting next year. The principal read the job posting to me, as it was all in Japanese. Of course, he read it in Japanese, so it was still a struggle to figure it out. As for the job duties, it sounds like a lot of communication between ALTs and the powers that be, and putting efforts into internationalizing various government branches. No teaching.

I meet all the requirements, except for one: exceptional Japanese language skills. I think I have passable Japanese skills – certainly not exceptional. So, on Tuesday I thought about whether to go for it or to hold out for a teaching position. When I went to bed on Tuesday I was thinking I should just give it a shot, but I’m thinking this morning that it probably would end up being a waste of time – mine and theirs. I can’t even understand Japanese TV and it is a struggle to read most documents and newspapers. And, I have really enjoyed teaching and I’d like to keep doing it.

Later in the day today I found out that the job may be based in Tokyo, so that pretty much wipes it out right there. We’ll find out more information tomorrow apparently.

Tonight Kuniko cooked up yudofu (tofu cooked in hot broth and then dipped into a orange ponzu sauce with grated radish and onions) and we ate that along with some leftovers from the other night on the side. It was a great dinner, and we were both very full afterwards. Now I’m going to do a little reading and hit the sack. Kuniko has tomorrow off, but I’ve got to go into work.

It was a very sleepy Monday morning, and so we got a late start to the train station. I arrived with plenty of time to spare, however, and settled in to work on the leftover vocabulary that I didn’t get to on Sunday.

The history teacher dropped by and gave me a present. This was a present of appreciation for helping him with the desktop publishing problem he had on Thursday. It also is a little bit of a guilt alleviation device for him; he knows that he takes up a lot of my time everyday, and this is a way for him to feel better about it. A year or so ago he took me out to dinner to show his appreciation, but I’ve avoided his invitations since then since he wants to use me as a wingman to help get one of the part time teachers at our school.

As for the present, it was a cocktail glass – handmade, Italian, probably way too expensive. Only one, but I guess I can have a scotch or a tequila in there sometime. Weird.

The teachers this morning were very busy with various exam announcements and getting the students through several different meetings and ceremonies. We didn’t have the big closing ceremony today, however – I guess that will happen later in the week.

The students were gone by 1 p.m., so the afternoon was a good chance for everyone to catch their breath. I sent a letter off to the California DMV to try to get a copy of my driving record. I’m not sure if they’ll send it to me all the way in Japan, but I need it to prove that I’ve had a valid license for more than three months before I came to Japan. Normally I could use my CA driver’s license as proof, but in a turn of bad luck I had it renewed just a month before I left, so the issue date is too recent to be valid.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty mellow – just studying at my desk and enjoying the peace and quiet.

Later on that night I headed over to Denya to have drinks and conversation with Atsushi-san. It has been a very long time since we’ve met up. We caught up on each other’s lives and ordered lots of delicious yakitori foods from the master. I got to spend some time talking with the master and it sounds like he is doing a fair amount of English study. He’s also busy taking a seminar about selling insurance. I think the master is always looking for ways to supplement his income from the restaurant – maybe he’ll end up selling insurance to people with their yakitori sticks.

At one point a group of three guys invited me over because they wanted to speak English with me. I indulged them for a while, enough for the guy to impress his coworkers. He invited me over by saying, “Will you enjoy me?” He said it twice before I realized he was trying to say “Will you join me?” I hung out with them for just a little while, until the conversation headed towards the length of schoolgirl’s skirts. Then I excused myself and headed back to hang with Atsushi-san.

When I got home Kuniko had just arrived, and it sounded like her dinner/drinking party was a success. I was glad to hear it. Tomorrow is a day off for a holiday, so we’ll get another chance to sleep late.

Kuniko and I are enjoying a nice easy weekend. Saturday we slept in and did a whole lot of nothing all day. I kept up with my vocab work, and we did a little bit of laundry. On the whole, not a lot to write about.

We did watch one of my favorite TV programs, 女王の教室, which means “The Queen’s Classroom” literally – I’m sure that it has another subtle meaning. The show on Saturday was a prequel to the original series which I watch occasionally with Kuniko on Saturday nights. I am able to understand about half of what is said – it’s pretty tough to catch everything and sometimes I have to ask Kuniko about some plot point that maybe I didn’t get.

It was very entertaining, though, and after that was over Kuniko and I stayed up late reading and finally went to bed after 1 a.m.

Today we slept in a gain and did lots of laundry, and then got the house cleaned up for Tomo-chan’s lunchtime visit. We made up tacos, and ate a nice big lunch. It was good to see Tomo-chan – I hadn’t seen her since our wedding. She seemed really happy and to be enjoying her married life. We talked in a mixture of English and Japanese, since her English is so good. It was really fun to chat with her and practice my broken Japanese.

She seemed to enjoy the tacos and guacamole, and it turns out that she is a daily reader of this journal, so she knew all about my experiences with Homo Sausages.

We gave her a packet of taco seasonings to take home – so maybe she can make tacos for her husband sometime. She had brought some desserts for us, and there were lots of really delicious looking cakes, and a cherry blossom cake that was really good. Lately I’ve been going crazy over the cherry blossom stuff.

After we walked her to the station we cleaned up the kitchen a little bit, and now we’re going to spend a quiet evening catching up with studying and maybe watching some TV. I think we might be able to skip dinner – it was a very big lunch.

Tomorrow it’s back to school for both of us, but there’s not much on the schedule – I think we just have a closing ceremony. Kuniko is doing a drinking party after school with her teacher’s group, and I am going to meet up with Atsushi-san at Denya for some drinks and conversation.

I woke up with Kuniko in the morning and together we cooked up some breakfast while she got ready. Right after breakfast I went back to sleep and then woke up once more when Kuniko was leaving. Then I went back to sleep one more time and woke up around ten in the morning.

I heated up the bath to superhot, and then spent about twenty minutes in there steaming. After the bath I cooked up another Homo Sausage for lunch with ketchup, mustard, and garlic salt. If you close your eyes you can almost imagine that it is not made of fish matter.

In the afternoon I was looking for some files in my computer and ended up on a trip down memory lane – I found some old backup email files from 1997-1999. It was fun to look at the emails that I sent and received around that time. Talking about my first website, chatting with Haven – chats which would eventually turn into the birth of our company.

I was able to merge all these old emails in with my current pile of email, so now I have almost ten years of emails stored on my machine. Efficient? No. Useful? Probably not. Still – it’s part of my history and it feels good to have them around. Maybe I’m an email packrat. I also found some old pictures that I forgot that I had – they were fun to look at, too.

Kuniko in fact did get home early, so we shopped for dinner together, and ended up deciding to make curry and rice. We made lots of curry, and watched “Howl’s Moving Castle” in Japanese with English subtitles. It was a good movie – I think I need to watch it without the subtitles and see just how much I am really getting.

This weekend should be very quiet. Kuniko has both days off, which is a rare thing. On Sunday we’ll have Tomo-chan over for a Mexican lunch – that should be fun. She is a really cool person.

I was in to work at the usual time, but everyone else came in late. I had lots of time alone in the staffroom studying and drinking hot tea. Finally a couple of teachers started to trickle in. Most of the other teachers didn’t come in today – they were working late the night before marking exams.

That left me with nothing really to do. I spent time chatting with Ageshi sensei hassling him about his junk food diet, and I did a little desktop publishing for the history teacher, who was having trouble with a document that he was trying to print.

I was out the door around 2 o’clock, a nice early day. The weather was blowing hard – heavy wind and rain. It wasn’t quite a typhoon, but definitely stronger than anything else this year.

When I got home I straightened up a little bit and then soon afterwards my students came over for an English conversation lesson. There was a new student there for a one time visit. Her name is Kumiko, just one letter away from my wife’s name. Easy to remember. Her English is good and she spoke with confidence. I could tell that some of the other students were not so thrilled that she was around. It really shook up the balance of the group.

Once they left I cooked up some teriyaki chicken donburi (with an extra helping of garlic) and when Kuniko arrived she said that she could smell it from outside our door.

Friday I have a day off, but Kuniko has to go in for her graduation ceremony. I’d expect that she’ll be home early, so we might have some free time together Friday afternoon!

Last night my mom called and told me that my grandfather, Spike Daniel, had passed away in his sleep. His health had been failing over the last few weeks, and last week I was lucky enough to get in one last phone call with him.

The last time I saw him was during my last visit to America with Kuniko. We had told everyone that we were going to get married, and I wanted to bring her by to meet my grandparents. Spike welcomed her into the family, and asked her all kinds of questions. After we left he said how much he liked her, and how much he supported me going off to live in a distant country.

Growing up I lived in Northern California with my folks and my grandparents all lived in Southern California, in San Diego. We visited when we could, but because of the distance I didn’t really get to know my grandparents that well until I moved down to San Diego in 2001. I lived in an apartment not too far away, and I would go and visit almost every week. My grandma would fill my stomach with food and we would sit around their table and talk about everything. I remember at first being a little uncomfortable because I didn’t know what to talk about, but they always made me feel welcome.

Later my friend Brian Haven moved in with me, and soon we were both going over to visit. Spike dubbed us the “Dudes of Leisure”, since we both only worked part time and spent every minutes of our spare time hiking all over the area.

One of the entertaining things about hanging out with Spike was that he was from a different era, and he would suddenly come up with these strange English expressions that somehow survived lingual extinction by residing in some corner of his brain. We dubbed them “Spike-isms”, and we recorded quite a few. He would say something funny, and we’d go scrambling for a pencil to write it down. You really felt like you were channeling into his past – fifty, sixty, seventy years ago people were saying these things! Some made sense, and the ones that didn’t were somehow even funnier.

Eventually Brian Haven moved to Pittsburgh to go to grad school at Carnegie Mellon, and I got into the JET Program and prepared to move to Japan. It was tough to say goodbye to my grandparents – they had become accustomed to my visits, and they didn’t have a lot of friends to take care of them.

Although we lived far apart, in a very real way I felt like he was here with me. He was a daily reader of this journal, often sending me e-mails to correct errors in my spelling or grammar. If I fell behind a couple of days in my entries, he’d send me a message to make sure things were going OK. He loved hearing about my students here and how they reacted to a big American guy as their teacher.

Spike lived a long time. He was always laughing about something, and he had a good philosophy on how life treats you, and how you should treat life. I’m glad that I had a chance to really get to know him during my time in San Diego. I will miss him.

It was one of those weird days at work. They were doing a special exam for the new first year students, part of a central exam that is taken throughout Hyogo prefecture. All of the teachers at my school were involved in some way, but my role was limited to standing by in case the listening test somehow broke – then I was to step in and do the listening test over the loudspeakers by myself. Luckily, no breakages occurred and I was sitting at my desk all day.

Anytime the teachers are really busy and they want to keep them from going somewhere for lunch, they bring in a free bento lunch. Today’s bento lunch was delicious as usual, and it made for a nice study break.

Most of the time the teachers were tied up in the classroom watching over the students, and then marking specific sections of the exam once the students finished them. In the staffroom the place was empty, with only an occasional teacher walking by. The vice principal told me that although most of the teachers would be staying late into the night marking, I had every right to leave at the regular time. I exercised that right and got out of there – later I found that all the other teachers had stayed at school until almost midnight marking exams.

I got home and cleaned up the house just a little bit. My second year students came over around six o’clock, and we had a good time talking about movies and Universal Studios Japan and plans for their third year of high school. They had some good questions for me about White day in America (there is none!) and my high school days.

After they left I got a phone call from Kuniko saying she was stuck at work late, so I went ahead and ate dinner. I attempted to make chili cheese dogs, but the hot dogs in Japan are too small. I found a new product called, of all things, Homo Sausage. The Homo Sausage is wrapped in plastic that you have to cut off, and inside it looks like a sausage without skin – but the form remains remarkably firm. I have a feeling I had bought hot dog flavored fish cake formed in the shape of a hot dog. But the size of the Homo Sausage was just right for the buns, and when you put chili and cheese all over it you could kind of believe that it was a regular hot dog.

Kuniko got home really late, and I helped her copy some DVDs of a choral competition at her school while she ate her chili cheese Homo Sausage. Her reaction was much the same as mine. I’m going to have to do something much better for Thursday night.

On Tuesday Kuniko called my school for me and let them know that I was sick. I was playing a little hooky, and it was nice to sleep in for a change.

Rather than do a lot of fun stuff I stayed indoors mainly, working on my Japanese vocabulary, doing the laundry and sorting out the house a little bit since we’ll be having students coming in two nights in a row.

A while back I was looking everywhere for a simple kid’s picture dictionary in Japanese, so I could find out the names of lots of simple daily things that slip through the cracks of my vocab study. I gave up my search after not finding anything comprehensive, and getting a lot of blank looks from employees and friends. Today I was looking at a Japanese language study site on the internet and found a review of a book that was interesting.

I walked over to the bookstore at Ito Yokado, and found the book there. I looked through it, and it was amazing. It had everything I needed, and more. Everything was illustrated and it was written in Japanese hiragana script so I can read it even if I don’t happen to know a kanji. The book is huge – it will take a long, long time to read it all.

Next to that book were two others by the same author, and they were just as impressive. One was a language usage guide for kids, showing with pictures what expressions fit what situations. It was huge as well. The other book was a smaller book that was filled with names for things based on various categories – things at home, foods, things at the store, things at an airport, etc. While the dictionary is organized alphabetically, this one was organized by situation.

I wish I had all these books after my first year of studying Japanese. For years I’ve been avoiding some fundamental words or expressions that I didn’t know – using language crutches to get around them. I bought all three books. They were big and expensive, but I think they will be invaluable from here on. A little embarrassing to be seen reading them, but who am I trying to impress?

In the evening I headed into Osaka, with my spare ticket to the concert because Kuniko was tied up at work. I showed up and met Yasu, and surprisingly got a message from Kuniko saying that she was unexpectedly free and could come to the show. We waited for her, and despite a slight train delay we had time to go meet Antoine and get to the show.

The show was really good – Cake sounded great and it was a really fine-tuned performance. There were a lot of foreigners like me at the event, which caused various reactions among our group of four. Antoine was completely at home, Yasu was pleasantly surprised, I was felt slightly uncomfortable, and Kuniko was also not too thrilled.

Kuniko and I don’t try to avoid foreigners, but we don’t go out of our way to hang out with them. In general they are noisy, they tend to ignore (or not know) the social rules of the Japanese, and there is this air of superiority that they carry – it is hard to describe. It’s interesting to see how my view of foreigners has changed over the time that I’ve been in Japan.

Cake played all their favorite songs, and some surprising country tunes, made a few references to Bakersfield, and then did three encores and left. We left soon afterwards, and began the long trek back. We’ll all be tired tomorrow morning!

By reading this journal you not only get to share in my successes and accomplishments, you also get to see the other side of the equation.

I went into work today a little tired, but feeling OK considering the late night last night. I was surprised to see that Inoguchi sensei called in sick. He had an easy schedule like me, though, so why not?

I had a simple day studying – no classes, just one long staff meeting in the afternoon. I sat through the meeting, and there was only one scary moment when it sounded like they may argue about smoking at school again. The last argument lasted almost an hour, and I wanted to get out of there to go catch a concert in Osaka. Luckily, the guy rolled over, and we were out of there. I had previously asked to leave early, so I grabbed my bag and went into the bathroom to change into suitable concert clothes.

I was out the door and I bought a ticket to Akashi, and then stored away my stuff in a locker there. From there it was about a half hour to Osaka. I was actually there early, so I walked around a little bit and browsed through the big bookstore in the Hankyu building.

Finally it was around six o’clock – about the time to meet Yasu, Antoine and Kuniko. Kuniko arrived first, and then Antoine, and I sent a message to Yasu to see where he was. He called me back a moment later, laughing. He told me to look at the concert ticket, and sure enough, plain as day it said March 14th on it.

I laughed and laughed, and then hung up with Yasu and then told Antoine and Kuniko that they had come all the way out to Osaka for nothing. I had given them the wrong date.

There was all kinds of good ways to look at the situation, but the end result was that it was pretty embarrassing and I felt bad that they had made time in their schedules for this. What was worse – Kuniko couldn’t go on the correct date, so we’ve got an extra ticket to try to get rid of.

The evening wasn’t a total loss, however. We went out to a Korean restaurant and had a really good dinner and a couple rounds of beer. We laughed and laughed and really had one of those warm dinners with good friends that you remember for a long time. Antoine was in rare form, and together we talked about his family coming to visit, my brother coming at around the same time, and how important it is to actually look at the tickets that you buy.

We got out of there early, since Antoine and I will be back the next day for the concert. Kuniko and I took the long train ride back, but we were both in really good moods, and we even remembered to get my luggage in Akashi on the way home.

On the way back we were talking about Inoguchi sensei taking a day off, since he didn’t really have any responsibility that day. I realized that I didn’t really have anything going on Tuesday, so we decided that I’d call in sick. Inoguchi sensei must be a bad influence on me…

Saturday Kuniko had to go all the way to the Kansai Airport in Osaka to see off one of her students, and I had to stick around and do my “community clean up” duty. I teamed up with Yasu’s mom to mark out a little bit of territory in the back of the apartments, and we chatted and raked up leaves. Actually, we mostly chatted.

The rest of the day was not so exciting. I did some shopping for White Day, as well as cleaning up the house for next week. It will be a busy week, so I’ve got to clean while I can.

Kuniko got back late in the afternoon. When she arrived at the airport she met up one of her coworkers, but together they were unable to track down their student. I guess she caught the flight OK, but it was a bit of a wasted trip.

We went over to Kuniko’s folks’ place for dinner and had lots of sushi, fried shrimp, and some excellent miso soup. It was fun to play with the cats and chat about our respective trips to Hokkaido. We’ve been getting rice from the family field now for a while, and that means that we are officially on the hook to plant rice when the season comes, in a couple of months. Kuniko is trying to get out of it by pleading that she is afraid of frogs, but I’m going to go out there and plant. It sounds like hard work, but I think it would be a fun experience.

Sunday we lounged around the house in the morning and then after lunch we met up with Inoguchi sensei and his wife to go to Nara. They picked us up in their car and we drove the long way to Nara, trying to avoid all the traffic through Kobe and Osaka.

The reason we were going to Nara is because of a special ceremony that is pretty famous around Japan, called Omizutori. It happens once a year at a famous temple in Nara, and so we thought we’d go check it out.

Once we arrived in Nara we had lots of time to kill. We walked through a museum looking some statues of Buddha and his servants that turned out to be national treasures. We had an early dinner at a tea house that was really good. We sat inside a little room on tatami and pillows, and they brought the food to us to eat. Strangely, I was the only one in the group who received a little table to make it easier to eat. They asked me if I was OK with chopsticks – I got the feeling that they kept some forks around just in case.

The food was traditional and quite good. There were lots of things – tofu, tea and rice (mixed together), mackerel sushi, beans, soup, eel and shrimp. It was delicious. Unfortunately Kuniko and I couldn’t finish – we still had food in our stomachs from lunch.

We went to one more museum to stay warm, do a little shopping, and drink some coffee in the café/restaurant. These were good chances to practice my Japanese, and it was nice of everyone to be patient with me. My language skills are still very choppy – I’ve got a long way to go to get speaking smoothly.

Finally it was dark so we went to the temple to see the ceremony. There were lots of people – thousands, I’d say, that came out despite the light rain. We found a spot in a parking lot far, far away, but we had a pretty good vantage point. As more people came, they were all carrying umbrellas and it made it very hard to see. Luckily, just before the beginning of the ceremony the rain stopped and everyone put their umbrellas down.

The ceremony itself is always vividly captured on film in books and newspapers – it involves big flames and sparks falling on the spectators below. Supposedly if you are hit by a spark it will help cleanse your soul. We were barely able to see the sparks, so it wasn’t likely we’d be hit by one. When they brought out the fire, they just kind of held it up there, and then walked around a little, then rotated out for somebody else. It was the single most anticlimactic thing I think I’ve ever seen.

I did my best to keep a brave face on, since Inoguchi sensei and his wife went through a lot of trouble and organization to plan the day, but inside I was thinking they need a little something more to this ceremony. The pictures are always really exciting, but now I realize that it is because they have their cameras set to extremely long exposure times to catch every spark’s trail.

After watching for about 10 minutes we headed back to the warmth of the car, and then made the 90 minute drive back home. Despite the less-than-exciting ceremony the rest of the trip was fun, and we enjoyed spending time with Inoguchi sensei and his wife. Kuniko and I had a late night snack and then hit the sack.

I posted some pictures from the day trip to Nara over in the photo gallery – go check them out!

With no pesky classes to get in the way I was one productive assistant teacher at work today. Most of the day I studied, but I still had time to walk around and chat with students and teachers.

In the late afternoon I had a really good conversation with the vice principal. We found ourselves almost alone in the staffroom since everyone else was stuck in meetings, so we tried to solve the world’s problems. It was fun taking to him – he’s got a pretty good outlook on how the world is going these days.

After talking for about 15 minutes I could tell he was getting tired. He thanked me for the conversation, and then gave me the secret signal that means I can leave early. I followed his instructions and got out of there about an hour early. Nice.

Tonight Kuniko and I are going out to catch a late movie, and then I’ve got to be up early for community clean up tomorrow. Kuniko has to work, but we should have some fun on Sunday and Monday to write about…

I had lots of free time today at school, and the situation looks to continue until at least the end of the month and beginning of next. I enjoy the free time because it gives me a chance to study, and also to walk around and chat with the students while they are doing club activities in the afternoon.

Today there were a lot of students in the staff room, so I chatted with anybody that was loitering around my desk. The students are completely comfortable with me now, and they seem to get a lot of satisfaction out of successfully completing a conversation with me.

I was working in my classroom late in the afternoon, and two floors above me I could here the brass band practicing a new piece of music. It was a very dramatic orchestra piece, it sounded like something out of a movie. I walked upstairs, and through the open teachers door and around quietly around to the front of the music room. Everybody saw me except for the music teacher who was waving his little wand like crazy. The students played on, but they had little smiles on their faces and some even snuck in a wave to me between notes.

They sounded great. It was cool to be in the same room and get the full effect. You listen to music so often in your life but it is easy to forget that all those tapes, albums, CDs and MP3s are really just a way to recreate the sound of a live performance. There’s nothing quite like the real thing.

The music teacher must have noticed that everyone was looking over his shoulder now and then so he stole a look back at me and seemed pretty surprised. I smiled at him, and he turned around and kept on waving the magic wand. I figured it was time to get out of there – I didn’t want to distract the students, so I gave them a big smile and a quick bow and got out of there.

After school I went across the street to Tsuji-san’s place to chat with her for a while. She is in the middle of preparations for a wedding this June, and her family and her fiance’s family are doing a lot of the Japanese traditional pre-wedding rituals. Tsuji-san was really frustrated with it, but it seems like she is accepting it as something that she cannot change.

Recently her future family-in-law came over to her parent’s house to deliver a huge sum of money and lots of expensive items, to compensate Tsuji-san’s family for taking away her daughter. Tsuji-san’s family will then have to pay for all the furnishings of the house, and that sum is traditionally more than what they received at this stage. There is lots of money flying around, and it seems like such a weird ritual to somebody like me. Tsuji-san is marrying a very traditional guy, though, and with that comes consequences. He is having her quit her job, and she’ll become a full-time housewife, making breakfast, lunch and dinner, and taking care of the household while he works long, long hours. That’s a common marriage model around here, and one I’m glad that I’m not a part of.

When I got home Kuniko was cooking away – and she served up a delicious curry dinner. It was nice to come home to a nice hot meal. Maybe I’m changing my mind about some traditions. <- That was a joke. We walked over to the local convenience store to pay a bill and did some shopping at Ito Yokado. It’s getting close to the weekend, and we’ll be kind of busy, I think. Next week will be even busier – we’re going to see a concert, we’ve got White Day on the 14th, and then I’ve got students over two nights in a row. Kuniko’s friend might come over, too. Luckily I have next Friday off.

I haven’t phoned in a lesson in a long time. Maybe the last time was during my first year of teaching, I’m not sure. It was a long time ago.

These days we are having lessons, but only four lessons a day, and they don’t count for anything, and the students know it. Why they even show up is beyond me. Anyway, today I had only one class, and dream up some activities, I just showed “The Incredibles” on DVD for the 50 minute period. I felt somehow guilty for not putting more effort into the class. I think if this situation comes up again, I’ll try to do something more interesting.

I spent one period with Miyake sensei helping her with her transcription, and we talked about all kinds of stuff in an informal way to help her with her vocabulary and listening comprehension. Then after school I had an ESS meeting, where we just hung out and chatted about each other’s vacations. We played three lively games of Jenga, and then everybody took off to get home early.

We had an English teacher’s meeting in the afternoon to discuss students that were on the brink of failure, but as it worked out there were only two that people were concerned about. After each student year gave their comments, the chairperson asked me to give my comments in English. It was nice to be able to contribute to the meeting in some way.

They are planning a new curriculum in our school starting the school year after next, called “International Understanding”, which will be managed by the English department. Our current principal is really into the idea of making our school more like an “international” school – focusing on a broader view of Japan in the world, not just Takasago in Japan. He’s been working behind the scenes to get things like this implemented, and we’ve had various international events recently, so it sounds like it is becoming a reality. I wish I could be around to play a bigger part in it, but it will be my successor’s chance to enjoy the new curriculum.

Kuniko got home a little earlier than usual, and she cooked up a great dinner of hamburg with a cabbage salad and carrots for dinner. It was really delicious. She made our bento lunches today as well, and they deserve a mention – she put in fried rice instead of white rice, and italian style pork strips that were awesome.

We’ll be hitting the sack early tonight – Kuniko is exhausted from a long day at work, and I’m going crosseyed from studying all day. We’re closing in on the weekend – can’t wait!