Sunday night Risa-chan and Anthony came over to see our place, tell us all about their wedding in Brunei and also, to eat tacos for the first time.

It was a good night. We had to pull some crazy tricks to get everything to fit in the refrigerator – ours is just too small for more than two people (or even one Japanese and one big American guy). We drank tequila, beer, and a sweet Muscat from Italy. The tacos turned out pretty nicely. I’m never sure how much heat the guests can take, so I err on the side of caution and offer plenty of hot sauces to add on top. We had Risa and Anthony spinning their own tortillas and making their own tacos, and I think it was a unique dining experience for them.

We exchanged presents, too. Anthony and Risa had brought back omiyage and other souvenirs from Brunei, and we gave them a couple of wedding presents, and a can of refried beans (Risa liked the beans). They went back to Akashi with a couple of armloads of loot.

By the end of the night Kuniko and I were both feeling pretty awake, so we put aside the dishes to wash tomorrow and watched National Treasure on DVD. It’s a great movie – clever, Disney family fun.

1. central heating
2. a taco shop
3. automatic sprinklers
4. guns
5. local beers
6. kissing in public
7. insulation
8. rude waiters
9. clothes dryers
10. SUV’s

Friday I went into Sannomiya to meet up with Antoine. We met up under the movie theater signs near the Hankyu station, and then from there went to the Belgian beer place. Antoine was covered with sunburn from being outside all day – he had to work at an English camp and ended up spending almost two hours outside in the hot sun.

A cold beer in an air conditioned room did a lot to improve his condition, and we sat and chatted while watching a middle-aged Japanese woman hitting on guys down the bar bfrom us.

It was good to catch up with Antoine – last time we met up as a group and so we didn’t get to talk too much. He’s worried a little bit about his future – the next year will be his last on the JET program, and then he’ll need to find something else. He really enjoys teaching small groups – maybe doing private teaching will be something he’s interested in.

He was craving sushi, so we went to the same sushi bar that Kuniko and I went to the last night. The sushi chefs recognized me and smiled, and we were served giant pieces of sushi again – awesome. Antoine asked for some lemon for his drink, and he ended up getting a menu in English. I asked for a lemon, and he got the lemon, cut into slices on a plate. The lemon request really shook them up – they were talking about it behind the sushi bar for a while.

From there we walked around and tried to get some exercise, and finally wrapped up the night at a yakitori type place that seemed to have a big emphasis on fried foods. We ordered some healthy stuff, though: a tomato, sliced and served with some mayonnaise on the side, and some mushrooms cooked with a pretty good sauce.

I picked up some donuts for our breakfast the next day on the way home and then came home and crashed next to Kuniko – I’ve been on a sleep deficit lately.

No problem, no hangover.  Just a little sleepy. Kuniko made me a fantastic lunch and breakfast, and after that I marched off to work. Kuniko called in sick yesterday to take the teacher’s test, so now she has to go into work today and play the barely healthy teacher role.

More and more teachers are trickling into work, and it’s nice to see some familiar faces. I worked straight through the morning – focusing on kanji and new vocabulary. I learned the word 赤字 (pronounced akaji), which means deficit or ‘in the red’. The kanji symbols make the word easy to remember. The first one means ‘red’, and the second means ‘letter’. Too cool.

As I write this there is a news crew in the next room interviewing some of our students and teachers that went on the trip to Australia.  The principal told me that I should stick around through the interview just in case they wanted to talk to me.  Hopefully I’ll be out of here by 2:30 – I need to meet up with Kuniko in Sannomiya.  We are going to the wedding place again to make some more decisions.

Things are going to be fairly busy this weekend.  Friday night I am going out with Antoine for a boy’s night out, Saturday Kuniko has a business trip but I have a free day.  Sunday Risa-chan and her husband Anthony are coming over for dinner.  They recently got married in Brunei, so I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot of photographs.  I’m going to cook up tacos – it has kind of turned into my signature dish these days.

Just got back from our trip to the hotel in Sannomiya.  Kuniko talked with the hair and make-up person, and they discussed the plan of attack.  It’s a very Japanese way to do things – they just talk about different things and let you look at a lot of pictures.  Very few decisions to be made at this point.  The way they dance around decisions and discuss things is very foreign to me – but that’s what makes it interesting.

After the wedding place we went into Sannomiya searching for a wedding present for Risa-chan and her husband.  We struck out at several stores, and when we started buying stuff for ourselves instead of them we knew it was time to leave.  We went to a sushi restaurant near Sannomiya station that was recommended by the ALT association in my area.

Usually a recommendation from a foreigner publication would be the kiss of death for me, but instead it turned out to be quite good.  It’s a chain restaurant, but there are very few locations, and it has a really cool “So this is Japan” feel to it.  We sat down and ordered and got huge pieces of fish on tiny lumps of rice.  The fish was fresh and delicious, and the pieces were way too big to fit into your mouth.  Some where nearly impossible to eat, and it’s the kind of place only advanced chopstick users should go.  The menu was all in Japanese, and you order directly from a sushi chef.  The chef offered to cut ours into smaller pieces if we liked, but we both got the feeling that it would be like cheating somehow – like having your mom cut your steak.

After dinner we tried a few more stores looking for the perfect gift, but ended up surrendering and heading home.  Now I’m back, I’m tired, and I’m ready for bed.  Tomorrow I’m going to go back to Sannomiya to meet up with Antoine, so it’ll be déjà vu all over again.

On Wednesday I spent the morning working hard on my studies at school, and starting to put some work into our first lesson for the first years. The other first year teachers have agreed on where to start for this term, so I’m cleared to make up some new lessons. I’ll work on it gradually over the next few days, but we are still two weeks away from classes.

This was the first day back for the vice principal – he’s been out sick this week. The last time I saw him he had talked to me about checking in with him before he left, so I was determined to put in a long day today so that he would see that I’m not some slacker. When two o’clock came and I still hadn’t come to his desk to ask if I could go, he came by my desk and said I could leave anytime. I think he was feeling a little guilty or something, or maybe he thought that I was. I put in another half hour or so and then took off.

I went home and soon Kuniko came back from her teacher’s exam. She said right off the bat that she failed. She seemed pretty sure of it – I guess the native English speaker interview was tough and she was matched with some great speakers. Also during her Japanese language interview one old teacher was actually kind of yelling/arguing/repeating and throwing her off. Maybe that’s part of the interview, but Kuniko was confident that she didn’t make the cut. The official results aren’t until the end of September, but we’re not holding our breath.

We met up in Akashi with Yuri, Tamura sensei and her boyfriend in the evening. Tamura sensei also took the teacher’s exam, and so there was some steam to blow off. We went to a restaurant that Yuri and Tamura sensei had been to before, and ordered various things from the menu including garlic and lettuce pizza, “Mexican” tacos, spaghetti carbonara, garlic bread, camembert cheese, and a tomato salad that was excellent. We drank lots of beers – Kuniko, Tamura sensei’s boyfriend and I kept the pace. It was good to relax and joke around, and it was great practice for listening in Japanese. I’m still too slow to speak at parties, but I guess that will come eventually.

On the way back home we were drunkenly walking through Ito Yokado and they had their “50% off frozen food” sale. They have it fairly often, actually, so we never pay full price to keep the freezer stocked. We picked out a whole load of stuff for our lunches and emergency dinners, and then came on back home. With a glass of pineapple juice, two aspirin and a vitamin, we assured ourselves of a hangover-free morning tomorrow.

Today the history teacher was trying to convince me that most homes in Japan cost $20 million.  Each.  Including the land.  Yeah right.

I figure he got some decimal places screwed up in the conversion, but there is no way.  I ran it by Kuniko and she agreed – things are expensive here but not that expensive.  The history teacher managed to rope in another teacher into the conversation, but as soon as the history teacher left Tanaka sensei gave me a look, like “Sorry he bugs you so much…”

Things are still pretty quiet at school – the vice-principal has been out sick the last two days and so teachers come in, assess the situation, and take off soon after.  I’m sticking to my same old schedule, though.  

Kuniko cancelled her party tonight, and so we had om-rice for dinner.  Afterwards we did some last minute preparation for the big interview tomorrow.  It’ll be interesting to see how it goes – I know that Kuniko will do well whatever happens, but we’re not sure what the format is, so that makes it tough to study for.

Well, I’m tired out from studying and I’m ready to hit the sack.  I’ll just take a quick peek at a kanji book that Kuniko got me and then go to bed.

I was back at work for the second to last week of summer vacation.  I ended up studying a lot more than I expected to.  Things went well though, and I worked with little interruption throughout the day.  The history teacher came by two or three times to ask me questions about CNN news, and the background and history of some English words like “angel” and “pull out”.

After I finished all my grammar, kanji, and vocabulary study Yamamoto sensei caught me reading “Holes” in Japanese and made a big production about how great that was.  He’s got a really loud voice, and as he heaped praise on me all the other teachers on this side of the staffroom looked on smiling.  He exclaimed that every time he comes in I’m at my desk studying, and it seems like I’m learning a lot.  I appreciated the compliment, but not the attention.  I’d rather study quietly and modestly.

One thing that struck me today while I was studying was how rarely I’m used by other teachers.  Today I was watching Oshita sensei listening to English conversation on CD, and thinking how rarely he actually talks to me.  I represent a very rare commodity in Japan – a native English speaker on call.  In a country where it can cost up to $50/hour just to talk toa native speaker of English, it seems strange for him to just ignore the opportunity.  Obviously he has an interest in studying – he just doesn’t want to speak English.  I try my hardest to find people in Japan to speak Japanese with – it’s harder than you think!

I left work around 2:30 and headed home.  I cleaned house just a little bit before Kuniko came home.  She is gearing up for her big interview on Wednesday, so we’re going to work on studying for it tonight.  

We went over to Ito Yokado and bought some groceries for dinner, and bumped into Ishii sensei and his wife.  He used to be the computer teacher at Takasago Minami, but he was transferred.  He knew both Kuniko and I before we told everyone our big secret, so when I told him several months ago he was really surprised.  Today I met his baby for the first time, and his wife for the second time.  His wife is really beautiful – she’s much younger than him, and I found out earlier from Komori sensei that she used to be his student.  Wow!

Kuniko cooked up a great dinner of nikujaga and soumen noodles.  We drank the rest of the pinot noir and practiced Japanese and English as she cooked.  The meal turned out really well.

This week should be pretty crazy for Kuniko.  She’s going to a work party tomorrow night, the interview on Wednesday, we’re going to the wedding place on Thursday night, Friday night she’s got another work party, Saturday is a business trip for her school.  Very, very busy.  Comparatively, I have tons of free time. I’ll try to enjoy it while it’s around.

Kuniko and I went over to the yakitori to have dinner and a few beers tonight.  We had a chance to chat with the master before things got busy, and talked him into collecting the addresses for the people that I want to invite.  We ordered tons of food and really ate too much.  The master has a fairly new part time worker working for him, and he was ordering him around trying to get him to do the right things in the right places.  He’s not as cute as the other part time guys, so Kuniko was a little disappointed.  

After the yakitori we went over to Ito Yokado and did some quick shopping, and now we’re settling in for the evening here.  The weather has been slightly rainy, and a little cooler.  Kuniko actually said that she felt cold on the way to the yakitori – that was a big surprise.  

Tomorrow we’re both back to work, but neither of us has classes to teach.  I’m not expecting to be able to teach until September, so I’ll just be studying away until then.

We spent Saturday evening with Kuniko’s parents, celebrating her mom’s 52nd birthday.  We had brought along a platter of sushi, two boxes of gyoza, and some different slices of cake to enjoy afterwards.  

I really enjoyed myself, mainly listening to the conversations around me and chipping in when I felt I was capable of a coherent sentence.  The conversation was fairly easy to follow, but now and then I’d miss somebody’s name, and then I’d know all about their living conditions, marriage plans, etc and not know who we were actually talking about.

Kuniko’s folks are really excited about meeting my family when they arrive, and I think they are realistic about how much we can communicate.  They asked me lots of questions about whether they are used to sitting on the floor or on chairs, and they are looking for ways to make everyone comfortable.  I told them that my parents were just as excited to meet them.  

Today Kuniko was up and out the door fairly early.  She looked exhausted – she wasn’t able to fall asleep last night.  I made her a lunch while she was in the shower, and we had a quick breakfast before she hit the road.  She’s just keeping an eye on her club activities, so she’ll be back at a reasonable hour tonight.

Last night I stayed out with Struan late.  We went to a yakitori, to the underground sushi restaurant, to Donkey, and finally to the spooky Indian restaurant.  At the yakitori one of the waiters was really talkative and enjoyed chatting with us.  We tried a variety of yakitori things – they were pretty good.

At the sushi place we had a small plate of sashimi and a couple beers, apologizing to the master that we couldn’t eat very much.  It was pretty quiet in there, so he didn’t mind.  From there we went to Donkey, and there was a whole squad of foreigners there playing darts.  Struan and I played for a little bit, and I was throwing darts better than I think I’ve ever thrown in my life.  Lots of bull’s-eyes, and it got the attention of the other people in the bar.   A couple of Japanese girls cheered my name every time I threw the darts, and then when Struan stepped up they didn’t say anything.

It was getting late, and I was starting to worry about the last train.   Struan convinced me to stop in at Bombay, the Indian restaurant in Akashi.  Apparently the owner is in jail, so a friend of his opens it up at night and sells drinks to pay the bills.  The restaurant part is closed, apparently.

There were a lot of foreigners there, too, and so we sat and stared at our drinks for a while and waited for something fun to happen.  Kuniko gave me a call and was wondering where I was – I hadn’t expected to be out late tonight, so she was worried.  I decided it was probably time to get going, so I scrambled to the station and missed the second to last train out of town.  I had to sit on the platform for 15 minutes until the last train came, and then I finally got home around 1 in the morning.  

I spent my whole day at school reading “Holes”, and ended up leaving around 1:30.  The vice-principal came by as I was leaving and asked me to check in with him before I leave next time.  He wants to know where I am, and so even though I’ve been on a routine lately of leaving in the afternoon, I think he’s still worried what other people might think when they see me walking around when I should be at work.  

When I got home Kuniko had already left to take one of her international students to the airport.  I went right to sleep, and slept for a few hours in the air conditioned bedroom while the heat blazed away outside.

I had promised to cook dinner for Kuniko, so when she got home in the evening we had pan fried steaks with garlic sauce, mushrooms, a small Caesar salad, and a tiny Japanese sized baked potato.  We also had a bottle of Hang Time Pinot Noir that went pretty well with the red meat.  It turned out to be a pretty good dinner.

This weekend Kuniko had a psych exam as part of her teacher’s test, and we’re going to go over to her parent’s house to celebrate her mom’s birthday with sushi and possibly, gyoza.  

Today at work they had to cut the power for about three hours in the morning.  I had come in at my regular time, that is, early.  I managed to get a lot of electronic studying done in the air conditioned well-lighted room, and so when they cut the power around nine o’clock I was already ahead of the game.

The room stayed cool for a surprising amount of time.  I took a seat near the window, and studied by sunlight.  I had a few visitors – the vice principal came by to ask me how many classes I had in a week.  I saw the paper he was filling out and it was a board of education evaluation.  Even though I’m scheduled for 15 classes a week officially, I skip three of those classes by teacher request, and I have ESS and three other periods marked off for meetings and for teaching English to other teachers like Miyake sensei and Mori sensei.   I made it sound like I’m slammed with classes, in the hopes that my successor catches an easier schedule next year when he/she arrives.  In reality I have the easiest schedule ever, and I’m taking advantage of it to hit the books hard.

Another visitor was Kobayashi-san, the cute office lady that I’ve rarely spoken to.  She tends to avoid me, and if I catch her looking at me and smile she turns away quickly and rushes off.  So, I was surprised to see her show up at my desk.

She had some mail for me, since the regular mail lady wasn’t in today.  It was just junk mail but I confirmed it was for me and said thanks in Japanese.  She smiled and left – a much calmer exit than she usually makes.  Later I was in the office and I talked to her a little more, admiring the lunch bento that she had brought.  It wasn’t half as cool as mine, but I didn’t mention that.  She actually seems pretty nice; I think she’s just a little gun-shy because of all the attention she gets from certain male teachers.  

In the afternoon I went over to Tsuji-san’s place and we talked.  I paid careful attention and found that most of our discussion was held in English.  I’d like to use more Japanese, but either I can’t say what I want in Japanese or things fall quickly back into English at the first sign of miscommunication.  I might have to think about getting a little more strict, maybe cutting the session in half and trying hard to speak only one language at a time.

You’d think that since Kuniko and I are living together I’d have a lot more chances to speak Japanese, but we’ve got a weird kind of communication scheme going.   I speak my mind freely in English, Kuniko generally speaks in Japanese for small daily things, and English when we’re talking more in depth.  If Kuniko is talking in Japanese, I tend to respond in kind, but not always.  It’s hard to explain, but it works well for us.  Anyway, I think we’ll get the chance to use more Japanese once Kuniko’s exam is over next week.  I want to make sure that she’s in an English frame of mind these days.

Tonight I’m heading into Akashi to meet up with Struan.  It’s been a long time, and we need to catch up and see what’s going on.  Struan is starting his third year of his JET contract, the same as me.  He was pretty hesitant on whether to re-contract, but in the end he decided to stick around.   I don’t know what we’ll be up to tonight, I’ll report more later.

Kuniko was feeling better last night, and she seemed OK this morning.  She cancelled plans to go meet her co-workers in Umeda tonight, but I’m not sure if she’s going to uncancel them or not.  I was happy to see her feeling better though.  

Summer is just flying by.  It has still been hot, but it’s just a tiny bit cooler these days.  The cicadas are getting more and more scarce, and soon enough they’ll be gone altogether.  Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I’m looking forward to the days where I don’t have to carry a sweatrag wherever I go.

At school I returned to my study schedule.  I’ve downloaded some old exams from the previous years proficiency tests, and it looks pretty grim.  Things for me are starting to slowly come together, but I doubt everything will be clear by the day of the test.  

The place was really quiet today, and even the vice principal was out the door at 12:30.  I lasted until one o’clock before I followed him out the door.

Kuniko had taken the day off to go into Kobe and visit a friend of hers for lunch, and she came back around five p.m. looking exhausted.  It turns out she got sick while in Sannomiya, and so she still wasn’t feeling very well.  She brought a bottle of Amino Supli, and so she drank that, I cooked up some udon noodles, and after dinner she seemed to be getting better.  We’ll see how a night of sleep helps.    

I’m glad that I decided to go into work today. Even though I skipped yesterday nobody seemed to have noticed. Today was payday, though, and I went in and stamped my pay slip. If I wasn’t around to do that, it would have been pretty conspicuous. Other teachers showed up for that and then disappeared. I stuck around until about 1:30, and then took off.

At lunch time the history noticed that I hadn’t brought a lunch to work, and so he invited me to go out for some lunch. I was hoping to be out of there and heading home for lunch, but he had caught me. I went with him to a chinese food place near Seiyu, and we talked and ate. He only smoked two cigarettes while we were eating, and so I feel like I got off easy.

Today I checked out the vocabulary that I’ve been working on, and I found some interesting statistics. I’ve memorized about 2800 words, but at any given time I retain only 80% of them. What 80% I retain is always shifting around, so words that I thought I knew last week may slip away and need review. There is a solid core of words that I use over and over, and those are the ones that I tend to use in conversations. It’s the more obscure words that I have trouble retaining. Words that are about obscure or intangible things like “moral education” and “prejudice” are tough to keep in my head.

If you could peek into my head you’d see me thinking in English, with Japanese words flying around like tomatoes in a food fight. I can string together nice messy Japanese sentences, tiptoeing around words or themes that I don’t know how to express. Flashcards help me keep things in my head, but at more 2500 words, it gets tough to find time to review them all in a timely manner. I’m using some pretty advanced flashcard software on my old iPAQ PocketPC to rotate through the words that are the toughest for me. So far is has been much more effective than traditional flashcards, but it’s still a challenge to keep all those words.

Now I’m home, and I’ve got some time to myself to clean, do laundry, repot a plant, wash dishes and other fun stuff like that. I’m playing the stereo loud and enjoying some brain relaxation time. Tonight we are going to put the deep fryer back into action and make fried chicken. I’m looking forward to some unhealthy food tonight – I weighed in this morning at 173 pounds. My goal is 167 pounds (76 kilos), so I’ll make it extra tough by eating lots of fried chicken tonight.

My fried food diet

Today was a pretty relaxing day at home. I ended up skipping work today, and I have a feeling that all the other teachers did the same thing. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow. Kuniko also had the day off, so we alternated between studying and doing fun things. We went to a nearby video place and opened up a new account, so now we can rent out videos and DVDs now and then for a lot cheaper than the movie theater.

Today we rented “A Few Good Men” and watched that. We had a simple lunch of chirashizushi that Kuniko’s mom had made. All in all a very mellow day.

Rather than go over again to Kuniko’s parents house, we decided to stick around here tonight. The last few nights they have cooked up big meals and I was feeling kind of bad – like we were imposing on them. Next Friday is Kuniko’s mom’s birthday, so we’ll probably take her out to a sushi restaurant and eat big next weekend.

We just wrapped up a leftover dinner – we had leftover pumpkin wrapped in pork (hard to imagine, but very good), soumen noodles (I added jalapenos to the dipping sauce for me), leftover guacamole and chips, and finally some camenbert cheese on ritz crackers. I’m still stuffed.

Tomorrow it’s back to work, kind of. I’m going in but I’ve heard that they may still be doing work in my office. I’ll go check it out, though. Kuniko has a regular day at work, so at least one of us is back on a schedule.

We’re back from the second night in front of the gravestone. Today we spent relaxing around the house, eating fresh guacamole, and studying here and there. Around five o’clock Kuniko’s sister dropped by after shopping in Osaka, and all three of us went to Kuniko’s parents’ house, and then on to the gravesite.

This time it was still light out, so it was easier to get there. I was a bit more familiar with the routine so I was able to hold my end up OK, and after paying our respects at the gravesite, we headed back to the aunt and uncle’s house to pay our respects at the altar.

After we took care of that, the uncle produced two big trays of sushi out of nowhere, and insisted that we sit and eat. It was apparent that nobody else had known about this, so it threw our dinner plans off track. He was quite insistent, too – making sure that we couldn’t escape.

We sat down, and he kept coming in with more food and drink for us, and once we got started eating he left to sit with his wife in the other room – they were eating dinner in there and watching TV.

It was an odd bit of hospitality, but the sushi was pretty good and the beer was cold, so we enjoyed it. We ate a lot, and finally got up to go. They came out to say goodbye and to pack up the food that we couldn’t eat so that we could take it with us.

From there we went back to Kuniko’s parents’ place and ate some of what our original dinner was supposed to be, and Kuniko and I took home some leftovers to help out. We watched a little baseball on TV, and then had some cake and hit the road.

Tomorrow is kind of a weird day for me – I’m supposed to go to work technically, but actually I think I’m not really expected there. Not only is it still kind of a holiday, but they are waxing the floors, so if I do go I won’t be able to sit anywhere and I’ll be unable to take advantage of the air conditioning. On Thursday Mr. Yamamoto said that I shouldn’t come in, but technically he’s not really in authority. So, I think I decided to stick around here and hope for the best. We’ll see how it works out.