I thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in this morning and seeing Kuniko off at the door. She’s a real trouper – she’s driving to work today which is a major pain in the ass in Japan. The commute is scary, and the toll roads are expensive. But the good news is that we’ll meet again in Kobe soon and drive to the airport together.

Since her car is so small, and there is quite a bit of luggage and people arriving, we’ll probably have to split up things a little. Still, we were both up late last night, too excited to sleep.

We’ll get them all settled into their hotel tonight, and then tomorrow we’ll take them over to Kuniko’s parents for dinner. Hopefully we’ll have some time to walk around Futami a bit and look around. I guess it depends on how hard jetlag hits them.

More later!

Today we slept in again, getting our sleep while we can. My back is still bothering me, so I popped some aspirin and did some stretches. Unbelievably bad timing, I’m telling you.

Kuniko and I had a long discussion about what to do about the photo albums for the wedding. Along the way I managed to hurt her feelings, we came up with three different ways to do it, and in the end decided to just do something very simple. Now I’m in the doghouse with a week left until the wedding.

We went to Kuniko’s parent’s place to pick up some wedding stuff, and a big blanket to keep us even warmer, as it’s getting colder these days. Then we stopped into a few stores on the way home. We went to Uniqlo, which is my favorite clothing store in Japan. While we were shopping there I bumped into one of my students. He is a cool third year student. My big memory of him was when Kuniko and I were teaching his class together. She used to walk by him and he got a dreamy look on his face. So you can imagine his surprise when she came walking up next to me and said hello. He didn’t know that we are married, so he asked if she goes shopping with all the English teachers – maybe Kimura sensei is next? It was a good joke, but I only got it after Kuniko explained it to me later.

But we weren’t finished breaking hearts. We left and went to lunch, and on the way back to the car parked in front of Uniqlo we walked by two women, one of whom I recognized as somebody I say good morning to every day on my way to work. She had a look of surprise, and I smiled and said hello, and Kuniko was wondering who that was, and I think everybody walked away surprised.

We stopped in at two more stores on the way home, and now we’re back here getting everything prepared to drop off at the wedding place tomorrow. Actually, I’m doing the website and Kuniko is doing all the preparing. I better wrap this up and help out. I’ll probably post a little more tomorrow before I head to Osaka to pick up the family. Maybe we’ll have a guest blogger soon!

I woke up Saturday morning with a tweaked back. I don’t think there was any specific time when I did it, but it’s pretty painful. It feels like I just need to stretch it, so that’s what I’m trying to do. Bad timing. Getting old is a bitch, I guess.

First thing I had to do was community cleanup. I worked side by side with Yasu who had invited Kuniko and I over for breakfast after the cleanup job. We staked out a small corner and snipped branches for a while. Not a tough ordeal. I came back after cleanup, took a shower, grabbed Kuniko and went over to Yasu’s place.

They had a great big breakfast set up, and we ate like kings. Yasu had made French toast for us, and those were great. I think I had four pieces, and I still had my eye on the ones on the plate when we left. They are really nice people, and they will be going to both the wedding and the second party.

Kuniko had to go into work for a little while, and then afterwards she ran off to Osaka to pick up some things for the wedding. I spent the afternoon doing laundry and talking with my folks. They are getting close to coming to Japan – it’s just a matter of days now. They sounded really excited about it. It’ll be fun to see them at the airport in Osaka.

It was a pretty mellow day otherwise. We cleaned house and did some chores and laundry. Just getting ready for lots of busy times ahead.

I’ll work on getting my back back into shape, and we should be good to go for next week. I’m still not sure if and/or when I’ll be updating the site while my family is here. I have a feeling I’ll be busy showing them around. We’ll just see how it goes, but I’m guessing there won’t be daily updates for the next few weeks. A little more spotty, I guess – sorry!

Kuniko and I split up some bakery breads for breakfast and took some to work for lunch. We’re skipping the bento lunch today because we will have to go into the wedding place one more time for some last minute decisions.

At work we had a short schedule, with only four classes lasting 40 minutes each. The classes were shortened to make room for a speech our school is attending at the community center near the train station in town.

Before the day ended two of my classes were conducted by a visiting professor from one of the local junior colleges. He is an American guy – he came to our school last year, too. I wasn’t too impressed with his lesson last year. He just pointed the kids towards a web page with lots of English games and activities, and then walked around making sure they understood everything. He gets paid a lot to come here, but whether he guides the kids on the activities or someone else does – I don’t think it matters a great deal.

Anyway, today was much the same as last year. He speaks one or two words of Japanese, but mainly he tells the students how to do things in English, which is great. The activities that the students did were created using an online website, and they were Jeopardy-like quizzes. The kids really enjoyed them, and for the most part it was a successful lesson. The students’ skills on the computer varied quite a bit, so I walked around and helped here and there. The students liked getting help from me rather than the strange short old foreign guy from New York.

One of the kids followed a wrong link somewhere on the website, and ended up with a tough question from somebody elses quiz. It was about landfills, and so one of the Japanese teachers asked me what a landfill is. I thought to myself that it was a pretty tough question for a high school English quiz. As it happened the guest teacher came by and saw it. He pointed at the screen and said, “That’s not mine!” in a defensive voice. That confused the student and the teacher, and they both thought that they had done something wrong. The guy could have calmly apologized and put in the right web page, but he just kept saying “That’s not mine!” in a louder and louder voice. I was beginning to think he might have snapped, but he shook himself out of it, and I set up the kid on the right page.

At the end of the lesson he pulled me aside and showed me his web page. I politely watched as he showed me his page, and he clicked on link after link to various internet resources. He led me to a movie script archive and said “Name a movie, any movie! They’re all here, and they’re free!”

I mentioned “Gone with the Wind” off the top of my head, and he said “Oh, that’s easy”. As you might have guessed, he couldn’t find it on the list. I just smiled politely and thought about how much money this guy was making to be bumbling through this lesson. I’m thinking I should do something cool on the web and show them how it’s really done sometime.

After classes ended I got a really nice wedding gift from the first year teachers, a set of cherry blossom ice cream bowls with pink plates and gold spoons. It was a really nice thing for them to do. I took all my stuff with me to the train station, locked up my gear in a coin locker, and then went with the rest of the students to Takasago City Culture Center.

The students all lined up outside under a sky that was threatening rain. We were a little worried that everyone would get rained on, but as it turned out only a few drops fell. My job was to walk around and chat up the students. We joked around and talked about how exciting the speech was sure to be. Little did we know….

Once we got in, everyone got settled, and they introduced the speaker. He was an older guy from a college somewhere in the area. He started the speech with everyone awake, but within 45 minutes nearly half the audience was asleep in their chairs. I was struggling myself to stay awake, but in the end I made an activity out of estimating the number of people still conscious in the auditorium.

The speaker made no attempt to make his speech interesting. It was mind-numbingly boring. He just spoke and spoke, never checking with the audience for feedback, no visual aids, no pictures, illustrations, or props. I haven’t done much public speaking, but I do know that keeping your audience engaged is an important part of it.

The students weren’t the only ones crashing in their chairs. I’d say about 40% of the teachers were asleep, too. Down the row from me Mr. Yamamoto was sleeping soundly. Around 90 minutes into the speech he started snoring.

At first it was just heavy breathing, but soon it turned into audible snoring that had some of the students who were still awake looking. I started giggling to myself, and the students near me saw me giggling and I think that undermined my status as a teacher a little bit. After a few minutes, an embarrassed teacher came over and woke up Mr. Yamamoto. I steadily looked the other way so as not to cause him further embarrassment.

As soon as the speech ended I wandered to the lobby looking like I was stepping out for a cigarette. I walked along the front of the building, took a look around the corner as if I was wondering if there was a restaurant around here, turned the corner, and BOOM – I was gone, baby. Fourteen days off in a row, oh yeah.

I hightailed it to the station, raided the stuff from the locker, took the train to Akashi and put the stuff in a locker there. Then it was a train to Kobe to meet Kuniko. We had dinner at Taro – one of my favorite ramen places – and then we went to the wedding place to make some final decisions.

Actually, it was pretty easy tonight. We did a run through of how we are supposed to stand, which hand to hold the gloves, how and where to kiss her, etc. I’m sure I’ll forget all that the day of the event.

Finally, we headed to Starbucks for a nightcap and then went home collecting my packages on the way back. The last stop of the night was at Denya. I stopped in to chat with the gang about the second party. They are really looking forward to it, and they asked me all sorts of mysterious questions, including how much I weigh. Sounds scary.

Life is just getting busier and busier. It won’t slow down until the end of this month after my family returns home to America. For now, time is flying by.

Thursday I had just one class in the afternoon – the last “restaurant” lesson. The students really were into this one, and when students were acting out the parts of waiter and customers up on stage, other kids would hoot and comment. The funny part was every once in a while, they would make comments in English. Another cool thing was the students would try to improvise occasionally, ordering things that weren’t on the menu and making the waiter do a double-take. I found myself laughing along with the students, and really enjoying the class.

I set my standards pretty high for keeping the classes entertained while they are learning. I’m always interspersing questions and feedback from the students in between my “lecture” times. My lectures by necessity usually only last a minute or two because they are in English – and that is a lot to digest for the students. By keeping the questions and activities coming it keeps the students interested, or at least, awake.

I get lots of positive feedback from the students. They say that my class is their favorite, or that my class is always very interesting. You can see it in their faces when they show up for the class – they look a little livelier, and they know they are in for a show.

All of this compares favorably to the atmosphere of most high school classes. Students stare at their text or notebooks and listen to the teacher talk for 50 minutes straight. There are exceptions, of course, but that seems to be the standard all over Japan.

Since I had only one class I expected to get a lot of studying in, but instead I mostly tied up loose ends since next week my vacation starts. There were a surprising amount of things to take care of. I wrote a script for our listening test, and wrote some sample lessons in case they need them while I’m gone.

I continued to receive money from some of the teachers. Today the office manager gave me some money, and the English teachers all chipped in to give me money. It’s a nice gesture and a Japanese custom, but it sure feels weird to me.

I sit with the first year teachers, and they have decided to pool their money and get me a gift. They were talking about what to get in Japanese with me right there, and I’m not sure if they think I can’t understand, or if they don’t care if I know. It was weird to hear all the discussion about what I might or might not have at home already.

I left school and did a short lesson with Tsuji-san, and then I stopped in for a 1000 yen haircut in Befu on the way home. The barber was surprised to see me again. He was wondering if I planned to live in Japan forever. I said that was the plan, and I think he was trying to imagine this old American guy walking around town forty years from now.

The week of nabe continued at home. Kuniko cooked up some kimchee nabe that was delicious, and we ate a lot. Maybe too much, but we don’t want to let the vegetables go to waste. Lately it seems like we are having trouble with the balance of eating too much or wasting too much. It seems to be a fine line.

I’m tired out in front of the computer and it’s getting close to eleven o’clock. Kuniko is headed to bed and I’m not far behind. Today was a busy day, and there is a lot of stuff to write about, but I’m just exhausted right now and couldn’t begin to do it justice.

I made a speech in front of the teachers at the morning meeting in Japanese, had a couple of good classes, and then came home and had a private lesson with the three high school girls that Miyake sensei has sent to study with me once a month.

After that, Kuniko’s friend Jimi came over for dinner with her boyfriend, who turned out to be a kick in the pants. We split a bottle of red wine between us, and communicated as best we could while Kuniko and Jimi reminisced. He was lots of fun, and the more he drank, the more outrageous he got.

After a big dinner of kimchee nabe we walked over to Ito Yokado to do purikuras. We waved them goodbye, and then came on home. Now I’m sitting here trying to stay awake. This might be one of the nights where I’ll have to let the details slip away.

We finished up the open high school lessons today. Nobody could be more happy about it than me – the beleaguered singer of a band thrown together during desperate times. I don’t think I’ll be pursuing a solo career after this.

The class itself was fun – the students were all girls except for one boy, who was clearly and completely embarrassed with being surrounded by girls, and with our cheesy lesson as well.

The teachers at school are starting to realize that my wedding day is coming up, and people have been stopping by to say congratulations. Tomorrow I’m going to have to make a short speech in front of the staffroom, so today I was practicing what to say. Speeches are no big deal in your own language, but in a foreign language it is another thing entirely. I can’t just “wing it” in Japanese.

After school some of the teachers that had open high school got together at a local okonomiyaki restaurant to drink beers and tell stories. The food was good, and it was another good test of my listening skills. Even though I seem to do better at Japanese when I have a couple of beers, the Japanese speakers around me were harder to comprehend the more they drank.

The place is run by a lady who is really nice, but she was busy making us food so she told us to serve ourselves from the draft beer tap and just tell her when we take a glass. Self serve beer? Oh yeah. Suddenly the foamy head of our beer was a lot smaller – cutting into the owners bottom line.

One of the teachers, Sakano sensei, pulled from the wrong tap and got a giant glass of shochu. That’s a pretty strong undiluted drink, in a big mug. He hammered it down, though, and turned a nice shade of pink the rest of the evening.

I came home relatively early, and Kuniko and I took a look at the pictures that had been delivered from the portrait studio. These are the pictures with us dressed up in traditional Japanese clothes, and they turned out really nice. I’m going to take them into work in the next few days and scan them into the computer.

We’re both tired already, and it’s only Tuesday. Three more days to go before the weekend. And counting.

Kuniko and I struggled to get out of bed this morning, make our lunches and breakfast, and then finally lurch out the door towards the station. It is still a good comfortable temperature, thanks to some clouds and a little rain now and then. It makes the mornings a little easier to take. Soon it will be so cold we won’t want to get out of bed.

My schedule was pretty tight all day long, with just a few minutes here and there to squeeze in conversations with my co-workers. The classes that I had went really well – the kids seemed to be more into the lessons today.

Today in the afternoon our school was hosting an open high school event, where students from junior high schools around the area could come and see some propaganda, see the sports clubs in action, and take a sample class. As usual I was doing the English conversation class.

The students had fun with the class and seemed to get over their shyness pretty quickly. Some of the girl students really impressed me with their English, and the boy students were less shy than normal. It was a good group. We held the class outside, and sat in a circle and played guitar and sang songs and I’m not making this up.

The sight of all of us hanging out having a good time and learning a foreign language was more than enough to draw administrators with cameras, and I’m sure we’ll be featured in a future school publication.

I invited a few more people to the second party, and got some positive responses. It looks to be like a good group of people there. I hope we have time to talk to everyone!

On the way home from work I picked up some ingredients for a nabe dinner. Thanks to Kuniko’s parents, we’ve got loads and loads of vegetables. We’ve got so much that we’ve decided to have nabe week here at home. We’ll be eating a different kind of nabe all week in a bid to rid ourselves of vegetables. Tonight was tan-tan nabe with gyoza, shitake mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, onions, and enoki mushrooms. Yum!

Tomorrow night Maeda sensei and Yamamoto sensei and I are going out to eat okonomiyaki after week to celebrate the end of the open high school lesson. Kuniko will be home alone, continuing nabe week. Luckily, I’ll be back to help out with the vegetables on Wednesday.

Sunday Kuniko went off to work early, and I managed to squeeze in a few hours of extra sleep. Afterwards I bummed around the house during the day and then went into Kobe to meet Kuniko after her work ended. I took the opportunity to do a little bit of shopping at the import food store, as well as a drop-in at the bookstore to look for some practice exams for the upcoming Japanese test.

Kuniko had taken a bunch of leftover food that nobody wanted at her school – some sandwiches, and a giant bag of yakisoba. I threw them in my backpack, and from there we went to catch dinner at Wendy’s. There are a couple of Wendy’s in Kobe, and I haven’t eaten there in years, so it was fun to go check it out. They have chili there – I had totally forgotten about chili cheese fries. Kuniko bought me dinner and I had a work down the gastronomical version of memory lane.

Finally we headed over to the wedding place, and made lots of important, and expensive decisions. It took a long time before we were out of there – several hours of sitting in the same place. I’m really looking forward to not going back there after the wedding is over.

By the time we left there we were hungry all over again, so we ate the hijacked sandwiches while we walked back. It is a little rude in Japan to eat and walk, but we were both hungry so we did it anyway. They hit the spot.

We got back to Futami exhausted, and crashed right into bed. This week is going to be a monster week of classes and preparations. I’ve got a tough schedule at school, and home is looking busy, too.

I was telling Kuniko while we were walking to the train station this morning that I actually am starting to feel guilty enjoying all the holidays this week. The first two were guilt-free, but having another Friday before the weekend seemed like too much. Oh well, I guess I’ll get over it.

My morning was filled with classes, and in the afternoon I was busy preparing lessons for next week. That meant that I didn’t have any time to study. When I don’t study I can feel the words disappearing from memory by the minute. Maybe this weekend I can catch up.

After school I met with Tsuji-san to practice conversation, and then I got home about an hour before Kuniko. Neither of us were all that hungry, so we just had some cheese and crackers for snacks, and then I watched Survivor while Kuniko did some sewing. Another wild Friday night!

Saturday is a free day for us, but Sunday Kuniko has to work and then we’re meeting for the last time at the wedding place. We’ll make the final decisions, and then we can concentrate on getting ourselves ready for the big event!

Kuniko and I slept in a little bit today, enjoying the public holiday as much as we could. I had a light hangover, but I got over it pretty quickly. We spent the day relaxing around the house, doing some things to prepare for the wedding, napping, and doing some shopping both at Ito Yokado and also at Carrefour.

In the evening we went over to the Kageyama household in Kakogawa for dinner. We wanted to deliver some pictures to Kuniko’s sister who is in town for another wedding. We had a dinner of katsudon, fish, and some shrimp shu-mai that we had brought as omiyage.

Everyone chatted about the upcoming visit from the family, and things are really starting to firm up for the first week of their visit.

Kuniko and I both took a bath (separately), and then watched a little TV while talking with Kuniko’s sister. She is going to make the bouquet for our wedding.

Finally we wrapped things up and headed out the door, but not without being laden with fresh vegetables, omiyage, and rice. It seems like every time we go over there we bring back more and more food. It’s starting to get out of control. We’ll have to eat hard to keep up with all the food we’ve got now.

It was a weird day at school, right in the middle of a week broken with holidays. I had just two classes, so it wasn’t too tough. In Matsubara sensei’s class one her student’s mothers had passed away yesterday, so she had gone to the memorial, and she had lots of things to organize at school for the student, who was going to miss the next week.

In Matsubara sensei’s class we held a spelling bee. It wasn’t really that official, the rules were not quite understood, but in the end everyone at least spelled a word correctly.

In the afternoon I was free to study, so I focused on grammar. I’ve done a little better on grammar lately, but will it be too little, too late? Soon enough I’ll find out.

After school the ESS club joined up to watch a scary movie. There were two other girls who weren’t in ESS, but the group that was there is really the core group. Some of the second year students have been busier chasing boys, so my group is the girls that prefer studying and goofing off to fraternizing with the men.

I hit the road around five o’clock, and caught the train back to Futami. Soon after I was over at Denya meeting up with Atsuji-san. Kuniko was out drinking with Chiemi-chan this evening, so it worked out great that we both had someone to party with.

Atsuji-san spent a lot of time in the states, mainly in Colorado but also in California. His English is great, and we enjoy drinking together and switching between languages. As each of us drink more, we switch between languages more often. So, it can get kind of confusing.

The master and I talked about the upcoming wedding, and we were thinking about the second party, what everyone will do, and a Denya party with my family. Everybody is getting really excited about it. Atsuji-san is going to try to take the day off to come to the second party, so that was good news.

I had brought along the hot peppers that I had grown on my back porch. They grew from the seeds that Sara had sent me a long time ago. I let them ripen on the vine for a long time, and they turned a brilliant red color. Finally last weekend I harvested them, and I had five or six. I ate a few at home, and I brought the rest into the yakitori for the master.

The master asked me how to serve them, so I advised grilling it. He grilled it up on right in front of us, and then he cut it into three pieces and poured ponzu sauce over it. It was sweet and delicious, not spicy at all.

I told him that eating it raw would give you plenty of heat, and so he cut one up into rings, wrapped them around some grilled sausages, and served those. They were very spicy – Atsuji-san and I were sweating. The master cut one up and gave raw pieces to the two part time workers, and also one to another customer. They were gulping water like mad, and the customer looked like he was in genuine pain. I’ll never forget the look on his face – total shock. How could something be that hot?

I split around eleven o’clock and walked in the door just a minute or two ahead of Kuniko. She also had a good time tonight. She told a great story of trying to find a restaurant that wasn’t packed in Sannomiya. Tomorrow is a holiday, so everyone was out drinking.

I’m going on day two without hunger. I don’t know if it’s physiological, mental, or metaphysical. Whatever the case may be, I’m not hungry. Will I ever be hungry again?

Today Kuniko had to go off to work, so I made up a lunch for her while she was in the shower, and made a breakfast for her before she left. Then I went back to bed and slept until almost noon. There goes my theory on home productivity. I definitely do more studying at school.

I had lunch, half a sandwich with a small cup of noodles that we had in the cupboard from a long time ago. They tasted good, but I had the feeling like I didn’t need to eat them, really.

In the afternoon I caught up with studying, spending two hours to memorize 100 words. Just about 500 more words to go. Oy.

Kuniko is cooking dinner tonight, so we’ll see what she comes up with. My dinner last night was pretty uninspiring I think (corn soup and garlic cheese toast), so she’s going to liven it up a little bit.

Tomorrow I have to go back to work, but Thursday Kuniko and I both have the day off. No plans yet, but we’ll have to do something fun.

I woke up this morning completely not hungry, and as I type this at around 6:30 p.m. I’m still not hungry. I have completely lost my appetite. I made some rice balls for Kuniko and I to take to work, and I ate those at work not because I was hungry, but because they were sitting there and it was lunchtime. Maybe I need to give my body some time to finish up whatever it is working on.

This is a weird week for me. I have a holiday on Tuesday (to celebrate the foundation of the school) and a national holiday on Thursday. I was telling Kuniko that every workday will be like a Friday. If I’m working this week, at least the next day will be a day off. I guess you could look at it like if you are not working, tomorrow you will have to work, but I’m an optimist.

Today was Halloween, and I didn’t do anything special at school other than show off the jack o’lantern that we made in ESS to the students in my first year class. They were very impressed. The jack o’lantern is already starting to decay – I don’t think it’ll make it past Wednesday.

The class was a lot of fun – it had one of my favorite students in it. Her name is Miki Tanaka, and I think she was born without the “shy” gene. She will try anything in class, she isn’t afraid to act out in a dramatic fashion, and she has the whole class in stitches whenever she says things. She doesn’t seem to play to the laughs, though – she acts like everything is happening naturally.

Today she volunteered to be a customer in our “restaurant”, and her friend was the waiter. We needed one more customer, so I picked one of the boys to join her at the dinner table. They sat down together, and we had lots of giggles just because there was a boy and a girl in a pretend dinner situation.

The boy hadn’t studied at all, so she guided him through it, flagged down the “waiter” when there was problems, and really did a bang-up job. Everyone was laughing and enjoying the show, and Miki just kept on plowing through.

She has a personality that is really rare among my students – she is beyond cool and into weird and eccentric. My classes with her are very interesting.

A student came running up to me before the class and kept saying that there was a bug in the back of the room, and she was acting afraid of it. I was in my “English only” mode, so I pretended I couldn’t understand. Her friend came running up behind to translate for her, and in a case of supremely bad timing, the girl turned to point at the bug and cracked her approaching friend across the nose, knocking her to the floor. I couldn’t believe it – I have read mystery novels where people are killed by somebody smashing their nose so that the bone fragments go into their brain and they die. That was the first thought that went through my mind as the girl lay stunned on the floor, but apparently it didn’t happen. She got up laughing, and after I confirmed that everything was OK, she chased her friend around like she was going to hit her back. A near-fatality in my classroom!

After school Mr. Yamamoto asked me to join him for a practice session for our open high school lesson. Mr. Yamamoto is into alternative forms of teaching. He is the guy that wants to take the students outside in the sun and play guitar to them and sing in English and let butterflies land on their heads and inspire them to study English as a life-long pursuit. So naturally, that is what he has planned for the open high school lesson.

Maeda sensei and me are the suckers who will be singing “It’s A Wonderful World” during the lesson, while Yamamoto sensei strums away on guitar. We had a practice session after school, and I yowled through it as best I could. I had warned him that I couldn’t sing, and he didn’t seem to care. After we finished, he said I sound just like Bon Jovi, and then he burst out laughing. I didn’t know whether to thank him or agree with him.

Finally I was heading out the door, literally walking down the hallway towards the exit, and the vice-principal came out an office and said goodbye. “By the way,” he said, “Tomorrow is a regular work day.”

He laughed at my expression as I think my jaw dropped open. Everybody has been saying no school tomorrow, and as it turns out, that is just for the students. The teachers have been saying they aren’t coming in, and as it turns out, that is because they are taking a paid holiday. The vice principal said that it was perfectly OK to take the time off since I have plenty of leave available, and he is right. I received five days of special leave for my marriage, so I might end up my contract with extra holidays, which I would just hate to do. I went back inside and took the day off officially.

I’m planning on staying home all day and studying inside. I want to compare that with my productivity at work. I’m hoping that it is close to the same. I’ve got lots of work to do to get ready for the big test in December.

Tonight Kuniko gets home late, so I’m going to have to figure out something for us to eat for dinner. I’ve got some ideas, but when you aren’t hungry it’s harder to dream stuff up. Maybe a small easy dinner tonight.

Kuniko came in late last night, with stories of the wedding and lots of pictures. I had tasked her with doing some research for our wedding, and she did a great job. A regular Valerie Plame.

On her way back she bumped into a large group of foreigners in Halloween costumes. She said they were acting out – screaming, yelling, running around, jumping the ticket gates and ignoring the law. I caught myself saying, “foreigners, yikes” out loud. I guess I mean foreigners other than me and my friends.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but there is a large contigent of foreigners here who come to party, sleep with as many people as they can, and ignore what people might think of them. They often are fresh out of college, and see this as a good opportunity to continue the party. Unfortunately, a lot of these folks are on the JET program.

Sunday Kuniko was back out the door, and I enjoyed a day studying at home. I did a lot of laundry, and had a chance to read for pleasure in the sunlight falling on the black leather couch.

If you look at the pile of garbage that we’ve accumulated between the last garbage day (Thursday) and tomorrow, it’s huge. Tonight after eating a delicious nabe dinner that Kuniko prepared, I had a stomachache, and I think I know why. All that garbage had to come from somewhere. Kuniko seems to think that we’ve not been overeating, but my stomach is telling me a different story. I’m going to eat less tomorrow and see how that goes.