We had a quiet day at work today – just one meeting, and the most interesting part of the day was when a teacher would come in having just returned from a vacation somewhere. They would tell us details about their trip and hand out omiyage.

The meeting was not so interesting – they laid out the schedule for the term, and it seems like it’s going to be a very short term. I don’t remember the last two winter terms being so short, but back then I couldn’t understand what was going on at the meetings, so I guess it just blew by me. Now I look at the term and see that I’m only going to have a couple of classes with my first years, and then it’ll be exam time.

Despite it being such a quiet day, the teachers seemed to be hanging around well after lunchtime. I was beginning to think that I’d be stuck at school until five, but around three I saw an opening and snuck out of there.

On the trainride home my train made a sudden stop, and everyone started looking towards the back of the train. I’m not sure what was happening, but even the engineer from the front of the train went running back there. We’re on a local train, so I was worried about the express train that was following us – it isn’t too far behind. After a few minutes we got going again, but I have no idea what happened.

I made up some chirashizushi for dinner and it was hot and ready when Kuniko got home. After dinner we did a bit of shopping at Ito Yokado, and now we’re back at home. While we were walking back from Ito Yokado it started to snow, a light flurry of snowflakes started blowing across the parking lot.

Tomorrow we are planning on a roadtrip to Nara with Inoguchi sensei and his wife. If it is snowing, though, we’ll have to cancel. I’m hoping that the weather will improve, but I just checked the weather forecast for Nara tomorrow and it looks like snow all day. We’ll have to wait and see what happens…

It was pretty much an instant-replay of yesterday today. The studies are coming along, I got a chance to plan out the next few weeks, and I got all ready for tomorrow’s big teacher’s meeting.

Kuniko came and got me around 12:30. She took me home and cooked me fried rice for lunch, and so I cooked up some pasta for dinner. I went a little overboard and cooked up italian sausages and garlic bread, too. I loaded the sauce with so many mushrooms it was hard to get a bite of anything without having a mushroom in your mouth. I love mushrooms – what can I say?

We’re staying in tonight… Kuniko has to work tomorrow and then we have a three day weekend. We’ll be doing a trip to Nara with Inoguchi sensei and his wife on Saturday, we’ll have some friends over on Sunday, and then we’ve tentatively scheduled a hike for Monday. Busy, busy! Hopefully there’ll be lots of pictures by the time it’s all over.

I left Kuniko in a warm bed and walked off to work today. It was nearly dark as I walked around Ito Yokado, and when I got to the station there was nobody else there. Once in a while an express train would blow past me carrying a few people, but until my local train showed up I didn’t see anyone else.

Some people have longer holidays than I do, I guess. I walked to school and was the second teacher there. I spent most of the day bowing to people and wishing them a happy new year. I chatted with the vice principal, too – he was in a really great mood after having so much time off. A couple of teachers had taken a group trip to Singapore, so I scored some chocolate omiyage. The librarian had taken her family to Guam, and she told me all about her experiences there. It sounded like the whole thing was set up just for Japanese tourists.

Kuniko came and picked me up and together we went out to lunch at McDonald’s. We wanted to try a burger that they have for a limited time – it’s a double cheeseburger with Japanese mushrooms and a slightly sweet sauce. It was really good – I would it eat it again. They also had a shrimp version of chicken mcnuggets, and those were pretty good, too. A little expensive, though.

Tonight Kuniko went out drinking with some friends, and so I’m holding down the fort here. I made a simple dinner of rice and store-bought yakitori to go with some leftover kimchee. Tomorrow Kuniko has the day off again, and I’ll go in to work for the first half of the day. I need to start thinking about a lesson plan for my students and get ready for classes starting sometime next week.

We’re just wrapping up our long New Year’s holiday around here. Today was our last day, and tomorrow I have to go back to work. Kuniko has tomorrow off, though, so she can relax a little bit longer.

The last few days were spent mainly over at the Kageyama’s place enjoying some traditional New Year’s food (osechiryouri). I think I can speak for both of us when I say that I ate way too much. The food was delicious, and there was even some beef in there to enjoy as well.

New Year’s Eve was fun because we went over to Komori sensei’s house for a soba party. His son was there, along with some of his wife’s co-workers. We had a good time with them, and ate lots of soba and lots of nabe.

After that we made an after-midnight trip to Mikuriya shrine to do the first (and in my case, the only) prayer of the new year. We pulled some lucky fortunes, and so we both should have a great year ahead of us.

Yesterday Kuniko and her sister went shopping, so I stayed at the Kageyama house and hung out with her parents. It went pretty well – considering the language barrier. Kuniko’s dad and I worked on a laptop that he wanted to get cleaned up, and Kuniko’s mom served up a sushi lunch and takoyaki for dinner. Kuniko came back in the evening with a good haul from shopping, and then we came on back home at a reasonable time.

Today we almost went hiking, but the wind is just howling outside, so we decided to postpone. Instead we’re staying in and enjoying the last relaxing day before work starts up again.

We did another late sleep in today. I called my folks in San Diego to get the update on their situation, and it sounds like my grandparents are still having a really rough time. My folks are having a tough time, too. Not only do they have to deal with all the problems down there but they are both sick and they sound very, very tired. I hope that things will calm down soon.

Kuniko and I drove to my school in Takasago to get some things out of my desk. The only trouble was that the school was locked – we couldn’t get in. We did see that somebody’s books and shoes were next to an open locker just inside the door. Kuniko remembered the code from when she worked there, and so I got in the front door. I walked down to the staffroom and startled a teacher there doing some computer work. He literally jumped out of his chair when I walked in.

From there we mailed off a few more New Year’s cards and then came back home. We did some heavy cleaning of the bathroom, and enjoyed a nice mellow afternoon. In the evening we went to Sushiro, a conveyor belt sushi place. Every plate is 100 yen, so I wasn’t expecting much, but it turned out to be really good. I thought it was better than Rikimaru, where I usually go. For the price you really couldn’t beat it. Kuniko and I ate 21 plates of sushi between us. My favorite was the duck pastrami on sushi rice with onions, and Kuniko’s favorite was the Katsuo yuke – it was really spicy and delicious.

On the way home we bought some traditional Japanese desserts, and ate those while watching TV and staying warm in the kotatsu. Tomorrow is another day off – December 31st. I think we’ll probably go over to Komori sensei’s place for a soba party, but after that it’ll be a quiet evening at home and then Hatsumode at Miyakuriya shrine near our house. We may see the master of the yakitori there, too. Should be fun…

We slept in pretty late on Thursday and enjoyed a nice quiet morning. I took a nice long bath, we did some chores, and then I went into Kobe to meet up with Antoine and see “King Kong”. It was a long movie – a little more than three hours – and so it pretty much took up most of my day. I really enjoyed the movie. There were lots of memorable scenes, and since I haven’t seen the original it was that much more interesting. I’d definitely recommend it.

Kuniko wasn’t feeling so great so she stayed home. I caught some okonomiyaki with Antoine and then left him and headed back home. Before the movie I had enough time to go buy Kuniko a Christmas present. When I got home I gave it to her, and it was a success. She retired her old wallet and put the new one into active service.

It was really dead at school today. The vice principal wasn’t there, just a couple of teachers and the principal. I think the principal was keeping an eye on things to make sure we didn’t break into anarchy and steal all the staplers or something. Luckily, we remained under control.

Since there were so few teachers, the principal saw it as a great opportunity to get to know me better. We spoke for almost fifteen minutes in Japanese, and it was a real mental workout for me. Afterwards, I needed a rest – that’s how intense it was. It’s great practice, though, and I wish I could find more situations were I could have a conversation like that without it being my boss.

Arauchi sensei brought in his elementary school daughter today, and so I chatted a little bit with her. We tried to get her to use English, but she wasn’t up for it. She and a student from the school cooked up some soup for us, so it was nice to have some nice hot soup in the morning.

I decided that since the vice principal wasn’t there to check in with, I would just go home at the same time as yesterday. I packed up my stuff, and leaving just two teachers behind I walked out the door and towards the station. About 100 steps from the front door of the school I heard a car horn honk, and the vice principal went zooming by towards the school. I gave him a wave but kept walking. I hoped that he didn’t come to school just to bail me out…

Back at home Kuniko was entertaining an ex-student of hers from Kakogawa, Risa-chan. They were eating pizza and hanging out, so I sat in with them and chatted for a while. She seemed like a nice kid, and it was another good chance to practice my Japanese.

After walking her back to the station we did a little shopping for the evening’s party, and then came home and relaxed and got ready. That evening Chu-chu, Chiemi-chan and Ai-chan dropped by for dinner.

Tonight we ate nabe around the kotatsu and looked at wedding pictures. Chiemi-chan and I each had a shot of tequila, and then split a bottle of Thornton wine that my aunt and uncle left for me. It’s nice to be able to open up a bottle and know it’s going to be good – since I’m often stuck buying wines I know almost nothing about, it can be kind of a crapshoot.

We had fun talking and goofing around. Ai-chan showed us that she could fit her fist in her mouth – that was a nice trick. We ate three bowls of nabe, rolled chocolate cake, cream puffs, hi-chu, cheese sticks, kit-kats, you name it. We partied right up until around 10 o’clock and then everyone rushed to the train station to be able to get back in time.

We really had a good time with them. It turns out that they read this site fairly often, so they knew all about what our daily lives are like. I’ll have to keep that in mind when I’m writing from now on… we’re being watched!

I caught the late train to work today, which is actually the train I used to take every day before my schedule changed. I saw lots of people who I used to see every day, and it was fun to say hello to them. There were a lot of great reactions – one lady saw me and her jaw dropped (it really dropped!) and her eyes got huge. I said good morning and kept walking. It was nice to see everyone again.

At school I worked through the morning and I spent a little more time on my pet project, reading one of my favorite Robert B. Parker books in Japanese. I love the Spenser series because of the wit and humor, and also the unspoken bonds between some of the main characters. I’m trying to read a book now and see how much of that gets through in the translation. The books are actually pretty cheap if you buy them in Japanese, but they take a long time to read.

The other day Kuniko introduced me to a year end tradition in Japan, ousoji. It means, “big cleaning”. We are going to do an end of the year cleaning of my place, and we got started today. I feel bad because since I’m not familiar with the tradition, we are doing three years worth of year end cleaning. Some corners are pretty scary. We’ll keep fighting the battle over the next few days.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before the holidays, and then I’ve got lots of time off. I’m looking forward to having the time to enjoy the New Year holiday. We’ll be pretty busy.

I went to school this morning as usual, came in and got some hot water boiling as usual, and sat down and started studying as usual. Nobody else showed up for another hour or so. Usually there is a fair amount of early morning traffic, but today it was like a tomb.

Today through Wednesday are not official holidays, so I need to go in to work. There are only a few other teachers there these days, everyone else has taken paid leave to stay home or go on vacation. I’m saving my vacation for another time, so I just go in and study for a few hours, and then leave after lunchtime. It’s only a few hours work and I get paid for the whole day.

Today Kuniko beat me home, which is a decidely rare event, and she cooked up a dinner surprise for me – osuzushi. Translated it means “pushed sushi”, and it was a layered sushi rice dish with egg, nori, and tuna laying between rice layers. It was really good, and as a bonus it was very healthy, too.

Tomorrow is another quiet day at work. Wednesday we’re going to have some people over for a nabe party in the evening, so I’m looking forward to that. I’ll try to take some pictures with my new camera and get them posted up here.

Christmas day is no big deal here in Japan – just another Sunday. The real action tends to happen the night before. Usually couples go out or stay in and celebrate together by eating Christmas cake and/or Kentucky Fried Chicken. We decided to stay in. Kuniko provided the Christmas cake, but when I made a run over to KFC I was told they couldn’t get me four pieces of chicken until 8:30. I laughed at the lady and walked across the way to buy fried chicken at Lotteria.

We also had cheese fondue, and we would have had a salad but I forgot to buy one. So the meal was a little unbalanced, but it turned out great. We ate a lot. The cake was especially delicious – it was a chocolate cream cake with a layer of custard cream in there, too. So good!

We opened up presents from the family and got loads of great stuff – they were really nice to send us everything even though they were just here. Kuniko and I had agreed to skip gifts for each other this Christmas, but she ended up buying me a new digital camera that I’ve been lusting after for a while. Now I’m going to have to get on the ball and get something for her.

Now today is Christmas day, and we spent most of the day cleaning, organizing, doing laundry, and shopping for some return gifts for Kuniko’s coworkers. It’s kind of a pain to go out and buy gifts for people when they give you something – it’s a custom that I’m not sure I understand completely. Still, when in Rome…

We talked on the phone with the family gathered in San Diego since we’ll both be at work tomorrow and won’t be able to chat with them on their Christmas morning. It sounds like they are hanging in there in San Diego – my grandparents are going through a tough time right now and so my folks really have to help out a lot while they are there. It’s a tough situation any time of the year, but right at Christmas must make it that much more stressful.

Kuniko has cooked up some curry for dinner tonight, so we’ll stay in a huddle around a hot bowl of curry and rice. Tomorrow it is back to work – but I’m not sure exactly how much work they expect me to do. Should be interesting….

Yesterday was the best kind of Friday – a Friday where I didn’t have to go to work. It was a national holiday to celebrate the emperor’s birthday. As you might expect, Kuniko had to go to work. She actually only had to do two classes and then she could come home, so she wasn’t gone long.

I did two monstrous loads of laundry. I moved a laundry pole that I never use from the front balcony to the back, and then loaded them all up with towels. Most of the day I relaxed, watched TV, and did just a little bit of studying.

When Kuniko got home we did some shopping for dinner, and had a bowl of nabe. We tried a new flavor of sauce that turned out to be not nearly as exciting as the package led us to believe.

Now today is Christmas Eve, and Kuniko woke up feeling a little bit of a cold coming on. She’s in resting and we are going to take it easy today inside. We’ll go to Akashi to pick up our Christmas cake, and I’m going to try to get my hands on some Kentucky Fried Chicken to go with our fondue for dinner tonight. We’ll open presents and just stay inside and stay warm. The snow has mostly melted away, but it is still plenty cold outside.

Thursday was a weird day in a lot of ways. For one, the students had to come in today for a closing ceremony, and then they could go home. Because our gym is undergoing an earthquake retrofit, they decided to hold the ceremony out on the field. Since it has been cold, the powers that be said that the students could wear jackets out there. How nice.

I walked to school in the cold and wind, but there were no clouds in the sky and it seemed like just another cold day. About thirty minutes after I arrived, we looked out the window and could see drifting flakes. Suddenly, it started to dump snow. There was snow everywhere, and it was coming fast.

The students had already mostly arrived, so they huddled up in their classrooms and listened to the closing ceremony over the public address system. Then, they told all the students to get home as carefully as possible.

I walked around and took pictures, and I put some of them in the photo gallery. As usual you could tell that I was a California boy – taking pictures of snow… what a freak.

The snow was everywhere, not just in Takasago, and it was affecting trains and traffic. Cars were skidding all over the road, and my teachers were making arrangements to go buy chains for their cars to get out of there. Around noon I told the vice principal that I had better leave before they shut down the Sanyo train line, and he said no problem.

I walked out to the station, and they were only running local trains. They were coming and going on weird time frames, so luckily I wasn’t going too far. I had originally planned to see King Kong with Antoine in Kobe, and Kuniko was planning on attending a year end party for her school, but both events were cancelled and we ended up staying home, staying warm, and eating tacos.

Today was the last day of classes for my students for this term – there is a closing ceremony tomorrow, and then it is a fairly long vacation for the students. The teacher’s vacation isn’t quite as long, but things will be (even more) relaxed at my school.

I went in really early to school today – around 7 a.m. For the first time I was the first staff member there, right after the janitor came to open the doors and start the heaters. The janitor was really surprised, as were all the teachers that came in afterwards to see me already there working hard at my studies.

I did a lot of reading today, focusing on a couple of different sources. I also memorized some vocabulary, and fought an uphill battle to remember words that I have forgotten. It’s getting tough to keep everything that I’ve learned in my head. I’m just going to have to continue reading – it’s the best way to revisit all the vocabulary that I’ve encountered over the last few years.

Tonight we went over to Ito Yokado to have our New Year’s cards printed. It’s a big deal here in Japan, and this will be the first year I’ve done it. We’re running a little behind, though – we’ll be addressing cards the night before – yikes!

I had my lesson with the third year students, and that went pretty well. We chatted and looked at pictures of the wedding, and I got a few of them talking. I think they might have been a little nervous since Kuniko was in the next room, and since she is an English teacher – well, they might have been afraid to make mistakes. I’m not sure, though – maybe they are just tired from their exams – they seemed quiet tonight.

The bath is heating up now, and outside the cold wind is really blowing. I’ve heard a rumor of snow in Kobe tomorrow – yikes! The weather service is saying that this year’s winter will be the coldest winter in a long time.

It was one of those strange days with very little responsibility. I went into work and sat around for most of the day studying. I finished up the English version of the school brochure, and turned that into the vice-principal for the final rubber stamp approval. I had lunch in the cafeteria, a place were they hadn’t seen me in months. They rewarded me with an extra meaty gyuudonburi. Thanks, ladies!

Kuniko wanted to head into Umeda to look in the Hankyu department store. We heard from Tomomi-chan that they had an exhibition going of Kuniko’s favorite characters right now. So, I asked to go home early today at work and they said – no problem. I met Kuniko on the platform in Sanomiya, and then we took the train on into Osaka.

When we got to the Hankyu department store the front was decorated with her characters in different Christmas poses. We looked at them all, and then found out that the exhibition area was on the seventh floor. We went up to the top and only then looked at the brochure and realized that the exhibition had ended a couple of weeks ago. Nooooooooooooooooo!

Luckily we got a few things for Kuniko’s coworkers, and they bagged up our gifts with special bags featuring the characters that Kuniko loves. So in a way, we got souvenirs.

From there we looked around a little bit, Yodobashi camera, the giant bookstore under the Hankyu line, and when we were starting to get hungry we went off to find Outback steakhouse. We had been to Outback in Osaka several years ago with Antoine, and so it had been a long time. They have really good prices with full sized portions, and it’s amazing to go there now and remember how in America I used to eat everything and still want more.

Tonight Kuniko ordered up a plate of pasta and I had a medium sized cut of prime rib. I haven’t had prime rib since I’ve been to Japan, so it must have been at least three years since I’ve had a bite of it. It was delicious – so juicy and a really good sized cut.

The restaurant was pretty quiet. There was another foreign guy chatting with the waitress in English. The waitress was eager to talk to someone in English and the customer seemed like a guy on business in Japan and probably a little lonely for someone to talk to. We could easily overhear the conversation and we couldn’t help wondering about everyone’s motives.

We got out of there with full stomachs and walked back towards Umeda. We made an ill-advised stop for coffee at a place called either “Happy Muffin Café” or “Happy Muffins Café”, not sure which it was – and the staff weren’t too sure either. Everything was marked differently, a real branding nightmare. I thought maybe the coffee would settle all the food in our stomachs, but it ended up weighing us down even more.

Kuniko and I decided that we had enough energy to hit Kobe and check out the Luminaries. This was the third time that I’ve seen them, the second time with Kuniko. Even though it was getting late on Tuesday there were still crowds of people. The line up approach to the correct street said that it would be about an hour. We decided to be clever and we walked to the end of the procession and saw them backwards. It saved a lot of time.

From there we made our way back home, and tucked ourselves into bed. Kuniko has the day off tomorrow, but I have to go to work. I’m going to have one class and also an evening class with Miyake sensei’s students. That should be something to look forward to.

We had a party after school with some of the ESS students. At first they just wanted a party, and so I steered them into the idea of throwing a party for the other teacher responsible for ESS, Matsubara sensei.

Matsubara sensei is going to leave our school in a couple of days to have her baby early next year. She’s going to take two years off on maternity leave, and then come back. I was a little surprised that you can do that. She gets paid for the first year, but the second year is on her dime. At least she’ll have a job to come back to when she’s ready. Very interesting.

We gave her a card and joked around with her for a while, but the classroom was so cold that we couldn’t party too long. I got the students out of there after about an hour, and in that time they had consumed an incredible amount of food. Those girls can eat!

Now I’m home getting ready to cook up a pot of nabe. Kuniko took her car in to work today so that she could drop off the vegetables that we got from her father yesterday. I’m not sure when she’ll be back, so I’ve got the house warmed up and dinner at the ready.

These days life has been pretty good to me. I was thinking of the harder times after I left the winery and took off to join the internet revolution down in Silicon Valley. From that point until I walked off the job at RealCapitalMarkets in Carlsbad in 2002 things were pretty tough – financially, emotionally, you name it.

Soon after leaving RealCapitalMarkets I took a who-cares part time job at Barnes & Noble to try to make ends meet as long as I could. At one point I interviewed for a web job at an auto parts place, got the job, and then told them that I would need three weeks to travel across the country with my good friend Brian Haven. They told me that I couldn’t have the job after all, so I ended up spending a month with Brian Haven on the road – driving all over the map from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic That trip was a defining point for me and somehow really opened up my ideas of what I could and couldn’t do with my life.

My aunt and uncle helped me by putting me up at their place for most of a year while I sweated the interview for a job in Japan, and plugged away at my part time job. In my off hours I hiked like a maniac – covering all the major mountains in San Diego and east towards the desert. Each night we would eat big dinners and drink lots of excellent wine, tequila and beer. Once I found out I got the job in Japan I spent time getting ready tying up loose ends for what I expected to be just one year in Japan.

Since I arrived here, it has been non-stop adventure and I always feel like I’ve got the best job in the world. No stress, but definitely a challenge. I’m constantly working my brain over studying Japanese.

I was thinking the other day that someday I might look back at these three years on the JET program as the best of my life. Then I wondered to myself – why does it have to end once my JET contract ends? Maybe this is just the beginning.