Kuniko and I slept in late this morning and had a great chance to catch up on some much needed sleep. There was a light rain falling outside, and we could barely hear it as we faded in and out of sleep in the morning.

We got up around 9 o’clock and had some pumpkin pie for breakfast, and Kuniko started to get ready for the wedding that she is attending in Osaka. Once she was all set I made us a quick lunch of sandwiches, and then I sent her off at the station looking like a million bucks.

I had the day to myself, so I’ve just been doing a little bit of laundry, studying Japanese passively (reading Japanese books that teach English), and watching some TV. For dinner tonight I made up some nabe, and it turned out pretty nicely, even though I was the only one around to eat it.

Kuniko will be back either late tonight or sometime tomorrow, so I’m going to hang out tonight and see if she shows up. I’m watching Japanese language videos on the computer and just relaxing. Tomorrow Kuniko has to go in to work for part of the day, so I’ll be free to do some fun stuff here at home. I just need to figure out what that will be.

Friday was a pretty calm day at work. I had three classes, I spent some time talking with Yamamoto sensei and Maeda sensei about the upcoming open high school lesson, and mark lots of journals to return to the students.

I had a few good conversations with my students, who seem to be just getting more and more comfortable speaking to me in English. Some students in the hallways still avoid speaking English – they are more comfortable with Japanese. I lure them into a trap by starting the conversation with Japanese, and then suddenly asking them something in English, which catches them surprise. Mostly they answer in English without even realizing it.

After school, I went into Kobe to meet up with Kuniko and take a look at some of the restaurants that host wedding “Second Parties”. The first place we looked at seemed great on the website and in a magazine, but when we got there it was completely decorated like something out of Aladdin.

We nixed that restaurant right away – just a little too cheesy for us. The next place was more promising, but just a little dark inside. I like dark restaurants and bars, though, so maybe it will be a contender. The chief chef talked with us and he seemed like a really nice guy. He also seemed really flexible about what they could cook and what they might do.

The last place we checked out was called “Colonial Living”. It was the lower section of a big office building and had some unique architecure. I liked the feel of the place, but for some reason it was fairly dark, too. The guy that guided us around seemed a little on the snobbish side – not nearly as friendly as the other guy we talked to. We peeked around the place, and then took some brochures and left. They seemed pretty serious about the party, and seemed to think we would be serious about it, too.

The second party will hopefully be a much more casual affair than our wedding reception – just drinking and eating with our friends and family, and having a good time. Less speeches, less formality, more fun.

While we were out we managed to get a hold of two slices of pumpkin pie to take home, and we had dinner at the gigantic sushi restaurant. It is gigantic sushi, not a gigantic restaurant. The same guy served us this time, and he seemed to remember us.

Finally we went to catch the train and found that there was an accident somewhere along the JR line. We took the Hankyu line instead, but since everyone else was doing that, we had a seriously crowded train. People just kept packing in and shoving, and when you are on board you can’t believe that they let the trains run with that many people. You are literally pressed against everyone around you, and I had to do a constant pushup against the wall to keep from squishing Kuniko. It was jammed for almost five stops before it got better, but it was definitely the most packed train I’ve ever been on.

During previous years the ESS has had some kind of Halloween event. Usually it involves makes something edible, but this year the students wanted to make a jack o’lantern. A couple days ago I found some real American-sized (and colored) pumpkins on sale. I bought one for 2000 yen, and today we hacked into it.

The students were super excited about it – they were dying to get their hands on it and begin the surgery. I had the pumpkin on my desk throughout the day, and teachers kept asking me about it. It was a good introduction to Halloween, which is only just catching on here. They aren’t trick or treating yet, but they like to buy Halloween candy and gifts.

We laid out some newspaper, and thanks to some tools that I brought along we were able to open the medium sized pumpkin up. Everybody got a chance to stick their hands in and pull some goop out, and everybody was saying “ewww” and the Japanese equivalent of “gross!”

I forgot my camera today, but I took some pictures with the school camera. Tomorrow I’ll download the images and try to get them posted here tomorrow night. There were some good pictures of girls mutilating pumpkins.

They also wanted to watch a movie, but we had one person that said “no scary movies!” I ended up renting “Haunted Mansion” as a compromise – I figured that it was made by Disney as a family movie so how scary could it be. We watched the first half, and one student screamed out loud a couple of times – she was easily frightened, I guess. Everyone else gave her a hard time.

At 5 o’clock we sent everyone home, and I left the jack o’lantern in my classroom – I’m sure it will reek of pumpkin tomorrow. The other teachers are eager to see it, so it might take a tour of the school tomorrow afternoon.

Tonight Kuniko is bringing home some shuu-mai from Ito Yokado, so we’ll be eating well. I started running again in the mornings, now that the weather is cooling off. I noticed that it has given me a big appetite.

Wednesday is always a busy day for me – I had lots of new lessons, and they are all in a row so it is pretty exhausting. By the end of it I was drained out. I took the last period of the day to rest up, and then the visiting students from Taiwan showed up.

A while back our school had invited a group of high school students from Taiwan to visit our school. Today they showed up, and our school had really rolled out the red carpet for them. It was very interesting because their students didn’t speak Japanese, and our students didn’t speak Chinese.

When I arrived they had seated the Taiwan students in the big meeting room, and they all sat quietly and patiently in their school uniforms waiting for the visit to start. Our students were in class still, so the history teacher was in there doing some sort of entertainment patter in Japanese, broken English, and shattered Chinese. The students sat there trying to figure out what the heck he was saying. He asked me to go in and say hello, and as soon as I walked in everyone burst into applause like someone had just done a magic trick.

They were all smiling, and I said hello and introduced myself in English. Everyone answered back in English, and it seemed like they really knew their stuff. I promised that I would be back, and went over to search out our students. They started arriving, and everyone sat across from a Taiwanese student. The speeches started soon after.

The group had brought a translator who spoke in flawless Chinese. I eagerly waited to hear his Japanese and when it came, it was pretty bad. Not as bad as mine, but not very good. You could see on my students’ faces that they knew what his native language was.

Of course everyone was taking pictures, and they staged an international handshake, exchanged gifts, and it all seemed pretty forced to me. The students were patient with it, and finally after it was all over, we divided them into groups and toured them around school.

This was a great time for the students to try to communicate, and it was fascinating to watch. They had to use English to communicate, it was the only language that they had both studied. My students did pretty well – I was proud of them. Nobody got frustrated and quit, and people were making friends and smiling a lot. I talked with a few students in English and they were quite good – better than my students, I’d say.

My group was with Ms. Tsutsumi, and it was all girls. The Taiwanese girls wanted to see everything, take pictures of everything (especially the cute boys on the sports field), and it took quite a while to get everyone back in the meeting room to wrap things up.

As we walked around Takasago Minami students that were not involved often came up to say hello in English, and occasionally Chinese. They wanted to participate, and they weren’t so shy about it. My students also got to speak with me more in English. They would consult with me about an English expression, get it right, and then ask the Taiwanese student.

One other interesting observation was that my students were complaining that the male Taiwanese students were not so interested in talking with the male Japanese students – they were far more interested in the girls. Also, the Taiwanese girls weren’t shy about calling a Japanese boy over for a picture if they thought he was cute. I think their aggressiveness really took my students by surprise.

It got to 5 o’clock and there were still students roaming around the school under the guidance of the history teacher. I snuck out of there, right on time for my usual day, but early for the event. I think I missed the closing ceremonies and handshakes; maybe I missed a group photo if I’m really lucky.

Overall, I think it was a success. Once you got the speeches and the bravado over with, the students could get to know each other, and that’s what really mattered. The Taiwanese students gave out little cards with their cellphone number, e-mail, and their address in Taiwan to our students, and so maybe they will try to stay in touch over time. Inter-Asian diplomacy has been pretty crappy lately, so things like this can only be good.

I went to bed last night and just plain forgot to post about yesterday. Maybe because yesterday wasn’t such an exciting day. I only had one class to teach, and the rest of the day was doing legwork for all my classes today.

We had an after school staff meeting, and included in that was an announcement that we’ll be getting 30 computers in the staffroom, and they will be distributing them to teachers that don’t have computers. They spent 20 minutes telling people not to panic, don’t let your students use them alone, and don’t be afraid of new technology. It was almost comical.

Kuniko got home early, so we used the opportunity to sneak over to Befu and go to the DIK store, which had been renamed to a tamer “DAIKU”. Insert DIK joke here.

We got some planters, a hot water pot, and some planks for a construction project, and then came back home and had cream stew for dinner. Kuniko had made it up, and it turned out great. There are lots of leftovers, so we can enjoy it over the next night or so.

Now, it’s Wednesday morning, and I’m getting ready to head to work. Tonight we’ll be doing some more wedding planning here at home. Things are getting down to the wire!

I was up on and off throughout the evening with pain in my shoulder and some good bruises tattooed there. Fortunately, the pain isn’t as bad as last year, so I should be OK by the end of this week.

Today I would normally do lots of studying, since I have only one class on Mondays. Instead I spent the whole day on preparation for the rest of the week. I prepared for today’s class, and also I did prepwork for two other classes on Wednesday. As a result I am feeling pretty guilty about not studying even one word of Japanese today. Maybe later tonight I’ll succumb and memorize some words.

My class today was a new lesson on ordering in a restaurant. I wanted to make it a fun lesson, so I pushed two desks together, put a tablecloth over them, lit a candle and set two places with a couple of teacups instead on wineglasses. It was the first thing students saw when they came in and they were all impressed. I was hoping that feeling would last through the lesson, and remarkably, it did. They tried their best and later when I had them dressed up as waiters delivering imaginary food they hung in there and did a pretty good job.

I spent some time talking with one of the office ladies while we were copying things in the copy room – she told a great story about her niece who is getting married to an English guy. She had them over for a get together along with a bunch of other family, and it amounted to almost 20 people. For a Japanese household, that’s pretty big. She commented that this gentleman’s disposition was much different from mine – she said that I am always bright, cheerful and outgoing when she sees me, and this guy seemed kind of quiet and introspective. He’s planning on bringing his Japanese wife back with him to England next year. It was a nice, kind of unintentional compliment from somebody I don’t normally speak with very often.

Today I had a really good time with my students, especially the third years who were hanging around the staffroom after class. We joked about this and that, mostly in English, and seeing how relaxed they are with me reminds me how soon it will be that I’ll have to start over making some new students comfortable. I was thinking more and more that I can’t imagine doing something else besides teaching. Maybe I am just in a great situation now – if I had unenthusiastic students would I still like teaching? That’s going to be a big question for me as I get ready to change jobs soon.

I’m sure I’ll have more deep thoughts about this later on, but for right now everything is going just fine.

I cranked myself out of bed Sunday morning fairly early with a pretty good headache. It was probably from all the different drinks that I had at the house party last night. While we ate lots of nabe and sat and talked I drank two glasses of Aomori, two glasses of sake, two glasses of red wine and one glass of white, and a beer. It’s not the amount that got me, just the diversity of weird things in my stomach.

First thing I did was to go to Ito Yokado to buy socks for my new matsuri outfit. Last night they delivered some brand new official matsuri clothes for me to wear. One of the wives demonstrated how to wear it, and so I was pretty sure I could figure it out. I got the socks and came back, and Kuniko told me that the master had called and wanted me to go to Denya right away. I took off and met the gang in front of the yakitori, and then we went inside and they helped me get dressed into the outfit.

There was a white undershirt, some white pants that tied around the waist, some white tabi shoes with soles built into the bottom, and then a wool wrap that I wore around my midsection to keep me warm. The wool wrap doubled as a pocket to carry my valuables, so it was quite useful. Over the whole thing I wore a colorful happi, sporting the bright orange and blue colors of the area we were representing. The collar said that I was a member of the fireman’s group – but I was just borrowing it, so it was no big deal.

The master bought me a rice ball from the convenience store next door, and then we walked to the matsuri. The crowds were building, and we walked by some of the other groups on our way down to find our other members. I got a lot of stares, especially since I was wearing the traditional outfit. The last two years I just threw on the happi, but this time I looked like I was serious about it.

We went all the way to the harbor and stood around by the sea, dipping our toes in, drinking sake out of paper cups, and then we all headed up to meet up with the mikoshi (portable shrine). Once we got there somebody had a case of beer that they distributed around to people, and so some folks had sake in one hand and beer in the other. Police vans full of cops drove slowly by on the way to the matsuri to provide security, but they didn’t seem to mind that everyone was sitting around drinking in public at ten in the morning.

At first the shrine is on a rolling platform, which works great for moving it around on flat surfaces, but once we got inside the shrine grounds, we removed it from the platform, and then carried it around the shrine. The first time around went so smoothly, I couldn’t remember why it had seemed like such a difficult chore the last two years. During our trip around, lots of people were pointing and staring at me, and I heard lots of talking about me. I had plenty of old guys around to give me advice, and at one point somebody stuck a TV camera in my face. I posed for a few pictures for some photographers, and I was somewhat of a minor celebrity, if not a major curiosity.

We had some time to kill in between laps around the main building of the shrine, so we walked around, talked to some people, and had some lunch at a restaurant across the street. Everything was going great, and it seemed like it was going to be a really easy day.

We went in for the second lap, and everybody grabbed the mikoshi and we set off. This time, it went really poorly. First off, everybody seemed to be a lot weaker – in the back corner they kept dropping it. Our leaders, instead of mixing the people around and moving stronger people there, just kept toughing it out. Then at one point we dropped the mikoshi hard and it came down on some poor guy’s ankle. Everybody started calling for an ambulance, and then instead of giving the guy space to breathe, people crowded around him. The police helped a little bit, but they seemed a little confused. Then, while the guy is still on the ground waiting for the ambulance, a couple of fights broke out between our drunken guys and some people in the crowd. Then a couple of our own guys were pushing and shoving. They finally got the injured guy out of there, and so we continued on, but there were more and more fights. The policemen would come and prevent them from fighting, but they wouldn’t do anything else. In the end they had to take some of our guys away, and that left even fewer people to carry the mikoshi.

It was another hour or so before we could get the mikoshi back to where we started, and by that time, I had had about enough of carrying around portable shrines. On the way back we had bumped into the branches of a cherry tree and rather than move the mikoshi around it, one of the Denya gang had torn the branches down in a brutally impromptu pruning session.

By that time, Kuniko, Antoine and Miwako had arrived, so we got to chat a little bit. This was Antoine’s first real matsuri, so it was interesting to get his thoughts on it all. Kuniko had taken a few pictures of the events while I was lugging the mikoshi around, and she got to hear people all around her pointing and talking about me while she watched anonymously.

While the four of us walked around the matsuri, Kuniko bumped into some of her students. I stayed away – Kuniko is trying to keep me a secret from her students. Unfortunately they sniffed out the truth, and so I introduced myself to them and they were sufficiently shocked that I am sure the whole school will know about it tomorrow.

Rather than stick around for the evening lap we all went back to our place and I took a shower while they sat around and talked. From there we headed to the closest okonomiyaki restaurant and had a feast. We sat and talked and ate, and then moved to 31 flavors in Ito Yokado for a dessert session. At around 8 o’clock Antoine and Miwako headed home in Miwako’s car – and we headed back to our place. Before we could get there the master called and wanted me to bring along my happi to return it. He said that it would be my last chance to carry the mikoshi, and although I was mentally finished carrying the mikoshi, it seemed like we should head over there.

We got there and had to wait for a little while for the master and the mikoshi to show up. It was back on it’s wheels, and full of kids when it arrived. I was relieved to see that the barn where the mikoshi is stored had wheel grooves that matched the wheels on the mikoshi platform – we could just push it right in there. The master said I should put on the happi and help put it inside, so I dutifully donned the happi and stepped up to the mikoshi with the other members, still wearing the clean nice clothes that I had changed into after my shower.

You can imagine my shock when everyone pulled the heavy mikoshi off the wheels and started bouncing it around on our bruised shoulders again. Kuniko was sitting there waiting for me, and I decided that I had enough – it looked like they were going to take a while before they put it in. I returned my happi to it’s owner, and we drove home from there.

Kuniko was nice enough to massage my bruised shoulder, and then we crashed out. What an exhausting day – and I have to go to work tomorrow…

This morning we got up at the crack of dawn to throw in the first load of laundry. With a bit of foresight last night we loaded up the machine and hung out some, so we had a good start. Living together makes for some huge piles of laundry – today’s was a biggie.

Kuniko and I split the workload of cleaning the place up, and Kuniko made up some delicious nabe for lunch. Just as we sat down to eat the nabe, the doorbell rang, and it was three Japanese Jehovah’s Witnesses. They spoke perfect English, and offered me a pamphlet – they wanted to talk more, but courteously left when I said I had some nabe on the stove.

We talked with my folks a little bit on the phone, and soon afterwards Kuniko was out the door and headed to Osaka to go drinking with some of her old coworkers. Tonight I’m going to head over to a dinner party with one of the Denya regulars. I’ll be heading out the door pretty soon.

Tomorrow is the matsuri, so I don’t want to be too hung over for that…

We brought the students back to school on Friday and tried to teach them with normal classes for one day after four solid days of exams. The result was as you might expect, a load of exhausted students who had a hard time paying attention.

Despite this, we pushed through three classes today. My students were really looking forward to going home and getting some rest. They were also looking forward to their sports clubs – they cancel sports club practice just before and during exams, and so now they’ll be staying at school late at night and on the weekends to practice hard.

I got home a little earlier than usual, and Kuniko made it back soon after me. She had a good field trip – they had made pottery, had a picnic, and at the end they had eaten chocolate ice cream. By the time she got back, she wasn’t so hungry. We postponed our nabe feast until tomorrow, and instead we went shopping over at Ito Yokado and I bought some sushi and some Chinese sesame pork.

It was a pretty mellow evening, especially for a Friday, and we were in bed relatively early. I think we’ll need the energy for this weekend.

Thursday was the last day of exams for the students, and the last day of preparation the teachers had before they have to get back to classes. I spent the day continuing to cram vocabulary into my brain with the idea that maybe they will come in handy someday. Now I am exclusively studying for the exam, rather than studying for my own benefit. I’ll keep this up through November and take the exam in early December.

On the way home from school Kuniko sent me a message saying that she was off early today. We ended up meeting in Ito Yokado, and going on a grocery shopping spree. We bought ingredients to make our own ramen, and plenty of supplies for the weekend.

Back home we ate big bowls of steaming hot ramen, with cuts of pork, Chinese bamboo, green onions and bean sprouts floating around in among the noodles. After dinner Kuniko watched some Japanese TV and then did some marking – I watched the latest episode of ‘Lost’ on my computer, and then went to hit the sack.

This weekend should be a lot of fun. We’ll be cleaning house on Saturday, but Saturday night Kuniko is going into Osaka to have dinner with some of her old co-workers. I’m heading over to one of the Denya regulars’ house for a house party. Then Sunday I’m going to go to the Futami matsuri once again and try to injure myself. Antoine and his girlfriend will probably come by, and Yuri, Tamura sensei, and her boyfriend will probably all meet us for dinner afterwards.

I negotiated an early exit from school and went into Kobe in the afternoon to meet Kuniko for another picture session. I arrived early, so I went shopping at an import food shop for chili. I got four packages of Stagg chili – oh, yeah…

When I arrived I was ushered right into the dressing room and an older lady who cackled at my Japanese helped me change into my outfit. It was a stark contrast from yesterday when two young women helped me get dressed. The lady did a good job, however, and the outfit was a lot simpler this time around.

I met up with Kuniko in the hallway, and she was all dressed up in her wedding dress. She had her makeup and hair done, and she looked great. From there we went to the studio for some pictures, and then all over the wedding palace taking pictures in different areas. It was actually pretty fun to do so much posing. At first we really enjoyed it, but after a few hours we got tired.

The photographers were really nice guys. They led us through the routine, and one of them held onto my camera and took lots of pictures with it. I could post some pictures right now, but it doesn’t seem right. Maybe after the wedding ceremony.

We got out of there fairly late, and headed home – exhausted. Luckily Kuniko had cooked our dinner in preparation the night before, so it was pretty easy to heat it up and eat. We had oden and beer – a beautiful combination. I haven’t had oden since last year, and it really hit the spot. Every time I sipped the beer it made me want to eat oden, and every time I ate oden it made me want to drink beer.

Today at school I spent the morning coming up with my next lesson for my first year students. I’m planning on doing a lesson on ordering food at a restaurant. More on that next week. I had a couple of pieces of bread for lunch, and then snuck out of there early to meet Kuniko in Kobe.

Actually, I left on time, but I had wanted to confirm that it was OK. There were unfortunately no people around to check with, so I just left.

Kuniko and I met in Kobe to have some wedding pictures taken. The place where we are getting married is going to take pictures of us in our wedding gear on Wednesday. We wanted to have our picture taken in traditional Japanese clothes. Our wedding place also can do that, but they were charging an arm and a leg for the service. Kuniko shopped around and found a cheaper place that looked good.

We showed up and talked over what we wanted done, and then Kuniko went in to get her makeup, hair, and kimono started. I had an extra 30 minutes or so, and so I walked around the area and did some sightseeing before coming back. Kuniko was sequestered away in a private room, but they came and had me change into my outfit.

They explained to me how to put on the inner layers, and left me alone to do that myself. As I was taking off my pants I realized that I made a poor choice in underwear for today’s event. I had no choice but to stand there as two female employees came back in and suited me up. They couldn’t stop giggling while they got me dressed, but I think that might have been more to do with my bad Japanese.

Finally I was all suited up and I came into the studio. Kuniko and I saw each other and we had completely different reactions. Mine was “Wow! You look great!” Kuniko just looked at me and laughed.

We did lots of different poses. It was the first time for me in a long time to have my picture taken professionally. They did a great job, and Kuniko pulled through even though she was wearing a very heavy kimono.

They had tons of pictures already loaded up on the computer for us by the time we changed back into our regular clothes, and Kuniko and I tore through them, discarding lots of them right away. We finally settled on two pictures, and they will be delivered to our place sometime in early November. I was dying to get the whole load of pictures – they had the data right there in the computer in front of us, but they were charging about $1000 for a CD with all the photos. Yeah right. We just got the two pictures, but it was a little sad to see all the other great shots of us getting flushed down the digital toilet.

We came on back home on an insanely packed train – I barely made it inside. Kuniko and I did a little shopping at Ito Yokado, and then Kuniko cooked up tonight’s dinner (oyakodonburi) and tomorrow’s dinner as well (oden).

Tomorrow we’re having more pictures taken in Kobe, this time in our official outfits. We’re trying to take advantage of this easy week at school.

Today the exams started for my students, and for the teachers it was the first day of a relaxing week. I put in lots of study time in the morning, and after lunch the teachers went over to the gymnasium to play a few games of soft volleyball.

I was wearing some old leftover sweats and a T-shirt that I use for sports and it seems to me that I should probably have a little bit nicer clothes to wear when I’m exercising. That might be something I ask for during Christmas. I think I really stood out – everyone else was well dressed for the occasion.

The fun began with a speech and an opening ceremony, just like most things in Japan. The principal and vice-principal said a few words. They actually weren’t going to play because they had a business meeting off campus (which means they went out drinking). They asked a PE teacher to lead us in some warm-up exercises to get started. I thought it was funny to see them doing exercises with us, even in their suits and ties. There is always a sense of doing the same thing as the group here, and that was a great example.

There were three teams, not enough for a tournament, so the captains of each team played rock, scissors, paper to determine who would play first. We won the round, so we got to sit, and we automatically won second place no matter what.

The first two teams played three grueling games, each of them close, and they walked off the court exhausted. Our team rolled over and died and we lost two straight games. They awarded the winning team a case of beer in tall cans, and the second place team (us) got a case of beer (regular cans). It was strange to see that the other team won nothing, even though they won more games than we did. In fact, the only game we won was rock, scissors, paper.

After all the sweaty fun I headed home to take a shower and relax. I oooked up breakfast for dinner – scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, and fried potatoes with some fresh peppers that I harvested from my little pepper trees out on the patio.

Kuniko enjoyed the dinner, and she’s on the schedule to cook tomorrow. I wonder what it will be? Because we both have exams this week we have more free time, so she will be getting home at a reasonable hour.

The next two days after school we’ll be meeting in Kobe to have our pictures taken in various outfits. No digital cameras allowed, but maybe I can take a picture of a picture and do something with that on the website. No promises, though…

Sunday we tried to sleep in a little bit, and then we were off to Osaka to see a concert. However, our first priority, as usual, was food. We wanted to go visit the Indian restaurant that we liked so much in Shin-Osaka. When Kuniko was living there I was always visiting – making the trip from my place in Futami all the way to Osaka to visit. We would often go to this Indian place. The curry is great, they make a garlic-cheese naan bread, and the people that work there are really friendly.

Our lunch was really good – it was all you can eat for 1200 yen (around $11). The naan bread was bigger than my head, and really good. I got seconds on the tandoori chicken but contented myself with finishing up Kuniko’s curry and naan bread.

We thought about walking around the neighborhood, but we didn’t have a lot of memories of the neighborhood. When Kuniko was living here we would mainly have dinners and stay in at her apartment. Kuniko said that there were lots of perverts walking around, so she has some scary memories of those guys. All in all it sounds like she’s glad to be free of that place.

The concert was at the Blue Note in Osaka, which is a blues club that was really well designed. There is cabaret style seating, and we had two tickets reserved for us by one of the members of the performing group. The group, Takarabune, had sold out the show, and this is a pretty nice venue, so I was really surprised.

Kuniko predicted that the show would be a little more jazzy than their regular show, and it turned out she was right. This was the lead singer’s last show before she moves away to Tokyo and gets married. One of the other members was taking over, and so they kind of passed the torch at the show.

After the show the members lined up to say thanks to everyone as they left, which was a really nice touch. I got to meet Kuniko’s friend who seemed really nice, and she was happy that we enjoyed the show.

We did a little shopping afterwards since we were in Osaka, and although we didn’t buy anything major we did walk past a flower stand that was selling conventional pumpkins for Halloween. They had a human head sized orange pumpkin for 1500 yen. I might come back and get it next weekend for our ESS Halloween activity.

We arrived back home and did some shopping for our dinner. Kuniko bought ingredients for nikujaga (meat and potatoes) and while we wandered around we walked by a stand selling kimchee. The guy gave us a sample, and it was spicy and delicious – much better than the regular stuff that you can buy in stores. We decided to go ahead and buy it, but we found out the hard way that they only sell them in bunches. That made the price for our little bag of kimchee almost 1500 yen. That’s $14 worth of kimchee. They priced it per 100 grams, but the minimum they sell is 500 grams. Sneaky.

Granted, the kimchee is delicious, but the way they sell it is misleading. I doubt that if we bought kimchee made in North Korea by Kim Jon Il himself it would be so expensive. But it is so delicious, and it was a great match with our dinner.

Monday it is back to work, but we’ve got a relatively easy week because of exams.

It was fairly warm at school Friday. The clouds have started to roll in, and it looks like we’ve got some rain in our future. We had a morning awards ceremony, and they used to opportunity to cajole the students into doing their best on the exams next week. The awards part of the ceremony went kind of long, and my next class was abbreviated to 20 minutes.

Other than that short class I had just one other class, and once that was wrapped up it was 12:30 and I was eating lunch with the weekend stretching out before me. Oh yeah…

After school I went over to Tsuji-san’s place and we talked in Japanese and English for about an hour. She gave me a birthday present (chocolates!) and a belated birthday card. It was fun to figure out what the card said – good reading practice.

Kuniko came home late because of the STEP test at her school, so we had a late night dinner of macaroni and cheese, with a Chinese salad that I had picked up at Ito Yokado.

The rain started coming down this evening and it rained right on through the night. Kuniko and I kind of slept in a little longer than we should have, and Kuniko had to dash out of here to catch her train.

I’ve just been doing chores around the house, watching Japanese language videos, and wishing the laundry would dry in this rainy weather. I went over to Ito Yokado to look at some new undershirts. I found some on sale that were still pretty expensive. I wasn’t sure about the size, so I asked one of the clerks to help me out.

While I was talking to her I had a little out of body experience and I couldn’t believe that I was piecing these words together – making a full, complete sentence. Unbelievable! I’m speaking Japanese! What a cool feeling – all that hard work is starting to pay off.

I’m not sure what the plan is tonight but we have to go return the movies from last week, and we’ve been having a craving for gyoza from Oshou. We might stop in there and bring some back. I could go for a cold beer, too.

Tomorrow we’re heading into Osaka, hopefully without getting rained on, for a concert by Takarabune, the acapella group that Kuniko’s friends are members of. We’ll try to do a little shopping while we’re there – we need a few things for the kitchen…