As I’m usually doing something fun on Friday night or just tired out from the weekend, I usually wait until a lazy Saturday morning to update the site. As a result, I probably tend to forget all the juicy details from the previous day. I’m sitting here right now and I can’t remember much of Friday at all.

I had three classes, and one new lesson. The new lesson is on shopping, and it’s almost a mirror image of the previous lesson, except with a new activity (students take dictation). The new lesson went pretty smoothly, despite a few unexpected things happening. Mr. Yamamoto insisted on pairing up a boy with a girl for one activity, and that was a big surprise. The class looked around at each other and the boy and the girl were acting like somebody had just made them get married.

They were quiet and did everything but work together. They intently stared at opposite corners of the room, and carefully avoided eye contact with each other of the other students.

I left work an hour early just to try to slowly burn some of my time off. It turns out that I’ll probably wrap up my contract at the end of next year with way too many paid holidays. I’d like to use it up, if possible.

Since I was going home a bit earlier than usual I shared a train car with a bunch of my students, who were quiet and well behaved since I was there. I chatted in English with one of my first year students who got to go to Australia this year. She was happy for the opportunity to speak some English with a native speaker. Other passengers watched us carefully (and perhaps, suspiciously).

I cooked up Mexican style lime marinated chicken breasts, some mexican rice, and served them with a flour tortilla and some chips and guacamole dip that Yuri had found a while back in Carrefour. The dip was so-so, but everything else turned out OK. Kuniko was tired from her long day at work, but we managed to stay up past midnight talking about the wedding, our days, watching a goofy TV show, and just relaxing. She has to go into work tomorrow, so it’s like a Thursday night for her, and it an authentic Friday night for me.

Today I had just two classes, and an ESS meeting at the end of the day. The classes went smoothly enough, and the students were full of energy (surprisingly). The ESS meeting was supposed to be about planning a Halloween event, and eventually we got to that, but I had to sit through a lot of schoolgirl gossip before we could make any decisions.

It is interesting to hear about various teachers through my student’s eyes. Some teachers who I think are great come across as nerds to the students, and I’m surprised who they think is attractive. They are unerring in their accusations of which teachers are perverts – I guess it just shows through.

We did play an English game, involving listening skills and grabbing a pencil case before other members could grab it. The game went well, but for the most part the rest of the time was spent in Japanese. Crazy, giggly, teen-girl-Japanese. I was completely lost. I suspect that I’d be lost if it was high school girls in America. Is this what it’s like to get old?

After school I had a conversation with Tsuji-san across the street. We sat down and talked for about an hour, and at the end she gave me an early birthday present. Her sister in a fairly successful musician in Hiroshima, and she gave me her first CD to enjoy. I’m looking forward to checking it out.

I’m back home now – eating edamame beans and drink Chu-Hi. This Chu-Hi has been in the refrigerator for way too long, and we need all the space we can get in there. Kuniko sometimes drinks Chu-Hi, but she doesn’t like these particular flavors. I’m making the sacrifice. It’s an alcoholic beverage, but it’s nearly impossible to taste the alcohol. It’s just like drinking 7-Up.

Kuniko has a meeting after work, so it’ll be a late dinner tonight. We’re having a healthy dinner after last night’s Indian feast. I bought some bean sprouts (moyashi) and some tofu. I sizzle the sprouts up just before Kuniko walks in the door tonight and we’ll eat lots of veggies for dinner.

Tomorrow is Friday, and then it’s a three day weekend. I’m looking forward to relaxing and enjoying some time off.

I slept in a little later than I should have, and that threw off our morning routine today. Kuniko made it out the door a little later than usual, and hopefully she got to work on time. She was working hard making us lunches while I slept away blissfully.

When I arrived at the train station today, there were two guys holding political posters. One guy was just a stooge holding a poster, and I was surprised to notice that the other guy holding the poster was actually the guy on the poster. He was saying thank you personally to everyone that left the train station that morning. How often do you see that in America? I was very surprised. I’m not sure if he won or lost, but I can’t imagine that if he lost he would spend time thanking everyone. If he won, you’d think he’d be busy at his new job. I nodded as he said thank you to me, and there was something in his eyes – he was watching me carefully. Weird.

As I walked to school there was a tiny drizzle, not enough to open my umbrella. The people I walked by looked at me, and then looked at my short sleeves, and then finally at my umbrella. They must think I’m crazy. I got lots of comments at school – aren’t you cold? People are surprised that I am wearing short sleeves. A week ago we were running the air conditioner – how soon people forget. I’m very much enjoying the cool weather.

In the morning some first year students were lined up waiting to talk to Yamamoto sensei, and looking at their faces reminded me of being a freshman at high school. They are going into the staff room – not a safe place for them. They look scared, even some of the regular visitors. Yamamoto sensei starts into them and they have that “caught in the headlights” look. It totally reminded me of my high school days.

I had a full plate of classes today, and the ones with the second year students were fun. My lesson was a kind of combination lesson on predictions, statistics, and the culture behind flipping coins. Over here, decisions are sometimes made by a game of janken, or Rock, Paper, Scissors. The students are always amused that I don’t know how to play it correctly. There is a song to go with it, and it’s serious business. I broke out a bunch of pennies and had kids flipping coins and counting heads and tails. One pair of kids managed to flip their penny right out the window and onto the school grounds two stories below. In the end, it was remarkably even. 80 students flipping coins 20 times each – we ended up with about 51.3% heads. Next we’ll try typing Shakespeare.

As I was eating lunch I noticed the office lady walking by wearing a printed blouse covered with horse memorabilia. I resisted the urge to mention my most recent experience with horses – that is, eating raw horsemeat in a sushi shop. She probably wouldn’t have been amused.

During the last period we had a presentation to show how the trip to Australia went. They had video from a television news piece that ran here on NHK, and also some home video from Hayashi sensei and Tsutsumi sensei. It was a really great presentation. You really felt like you were there. The students involved did a great job, and it was cool to see the projects and the practice we worked on so hard being put to use out in the field.

I met up with Kuniko for some more wedding planning in Kobe, and we made lots of decisions. Colors, flowers, place settings, all kinds of stuff like that. It took a long time, and we were starving to death by the end of it. From the wedding place we walked to an Indian restaurant that we had last visited two years ago with Hayashi sensei and Komori sensei after a trip to Kyoto. The food was still good. The dessert was still weird – this strange cheese-flavored ice cream with Indian milk tea. Despite that, everything else was delicious. I even took a doggy bag home.

Now we’re back and exhausted. What a busy day. From here on out, things will get mellower for me, although Kuniko still has three solid days of work to go before she can relax on Sunday.

The weather continues to cool off, and we even had rain in the forecast. I was spared a wet walk to work, but once I got there, it started raining pretty hard.

I had one class in the morning, and I also did some lesson planning and some tutoring for Miyake sensei. She gave me a bottle of apple jam to go with the yam jam she gave us a week or so ago. We’re going to have to eat more bread in the near future.

In the afternoon I had just one more class, and it went smoothly. I memorized around 35 new words, and around 5 o’clock I was out the door and headed to the station. I sat with a bunch of my students, who were under the impression that I couldn’t understand Japanese. I usually have trouble, but I was able to track their conversation pretty easily.

Our school bans cell phones at school, but every student carries one in their bag, hidden away. The students were talking among themselves trying to figure out if it was safe to whip it out with me there. If I was a regular teacher, they would wait, but I’m occupying some sort of gray area, and they didn’t know for sure what to do.

I bought some raw fish for dinner tonight, tuna and a white fish. I’d tell you what the white fish was called, but I couldn’t read the label. Kuniko says it is called “kanpachi”. Helpful? I guess it’s a kind of yellowtail, which is what I was going for buying just on sight.

We had a bit of rice on the side, and Kuniko ate lots of natto as an appetizer. I still can’t eat the stuff, even the smell is too much for me.

After dinner we looked in Ito Yokado for a birthday gift for one of Kuniko’s exchange students. We struck out, though, so we came back here to watch a little TV and relax before bed. Last night Kuniko got in so late that we had time to eat, clean up, and then go right to bed. It’s nice to have a little time to relax tonight.

I’ve had some pretty good jobs over the years. Some were easy, some were hard. Some were challenging and some were no-brainers. I’m totally convinced that my job right now is my favorite job ever.

Today I had only one class during sixth period, so I had loads of time to do whatever I liked. Of course I studied like crazy. I love cramming new words into my head and hoping they’ll pop out correctly at the appropriate time.

The other teachers buzz around my desk as they go to and from classes. Students drop by and chat with me now and then between their classes. The principal stops and chats, the history teacher makes his customary visit, the vendors walk by me quickly so they don’t have to talk to me.

The door to the staffroom was wide open, and since I’m right next to it I could enjoy the cool breeze blowing through. I could just relax, kick my feet back, and study at my leisure (which, by the way, is the best way to study).

There will come a time when I’ll be huddled up next to the kerosene burning heaters in the staffroom, but for now I’ll enjoy the time.

I’m back home and prepping dinner for me and Kuniko. We’ll be eating spicy Korean style beef and vegetables over rice. I tried making the plain broth soup that they serve in restaurants over there, and we’ll have some kimchee on the side, so it should be really good. I hope I’ll be able to wait until she gets here.

Despite what I previously wrote – we weren’t on the hook for a concert today. It turns out that the concert is in a couple of weeks. That left the whole day open for Kuniko and I to relax. We did even more laundry, slept a lot, and ate leftovers for lunch.

After lunch I went into Akashi using Kuniko’s commuter pass and did some shopping that I needed to do. I came back with a Robert B. Parker paperback that I’ve had my eye on for a long time. I spent most of the rest of the day lounging on the couch reading it.

We’ve been craving sushi, so we went out for sushi in the evening at Riki Maru. There was a fairly long wait – Sunday nights are big “eat out” nights around here. We ate all the sushi we could and left for under 2000 yen – that’s a great deal!

Now we’re back home and trying to get back into that work frame of mind. It was a huge thing to both have a day off on the same day – and I can tell it was a big help for Kuniko.

Today Kuniko was out the door early, and so I threw the first of many loads of laundry in the machine, and set about cleaning the house a little bit. I didn’t do too much because it was so early and I didn’t want to wake up the neighbors. I wonder just how loud my footsteps are down there.

Around lunchtime I went over to Ito Yokado and did a little bit of shopping, nothing major really. The store is still full of Hanshin Tigers mania – the clerks have to wear these embarrassing cardboard hats. I feel sorry for them. It’s really a ridiculous looking hat. I’d take pictures but I feel too sorry for the people wearing the hats.

I watched Survivor, mopped the floor, took a nap, talked with with mom on the phone, and that’s about it. It feels good to relax a little bit, but Kuniko is the one who needs it more than I do. I’m going to try to have everything ready for her when she gets home later tonight, and then she can just relax.

Tomorrow, depending on our energy level, we’ll be heading to Osaka to do some shopping and take in a concert at the Blue Note. It’s the acappella group that is comprised of a few of Kuniko’s friends. There is a chance that we will have them perform at our wedding reception, but they are changing lead singers and we’re not sure if it will be a good change or not. Between the ocarina solos, acappella groups, and speeches by Japanese and foreigners it should make for a very interesting reception. Karaoke has been strictly prohibited.

Kuniko and I got a chance to meet up with Komori sensei in Akashi Friday night. It has been a long time since we’ve seen him. He looked great, was full of energy, and we powered down the okonomiyaki and drank lots of beer.

He seems a little happier with his new school now, which is good news. Last time we talked he wasn’t so enthusiastic. His English is still great, but this time I used a little more Japanese than I normally do. He offered to play a song at our wedding reception on his ocarina. My only experience with an ocarina is playing Legend of Zelda, so it should be interesting. The wedding reception itself is shaping up to be quite a mix of different styles and activities. I’m not sure what to expect.

We didn’t stay out too late – we had dinner and then split off on our separate ways. Kuniko and I bought some donuts for tomorrow morning’s breakfast, since she will have to leave early to get to her school’s Sports Day.

Kuniko did check the website for the teacher’s exam today, and it turned out that she didn’t make the cut. They only hired 12 English teachers out of 200+ applicants, so it was pretty competitive. She doesn’t seem that disappointed, though, and I think that might be because she is pretty satisfied with her private school experiences lately.

I’ve got a day full of laundry planned tomorrow – hopefully it will be sunny enough to dry things out.

A big day today for a day with only two classes. It started out with an early start with Kuniko to the train station. I had a bag full of goodies for my ESS party later that day, and as I sat them down on the seat next to me, the train took off and they started to fall off. Kuniko was watching from across the tracks waiting for her train and later she said I had a pretty funny face when it happened.

I arrived at school very early, and did lots of data entry for my handheld computer. I’m going to need to memorize lots of words, starting next week. My overly ambitious goal is to memorize almost 1500 words over the next two months. That’s 25 words a day, including weekends. Yikes!

I got the word that Mr. Hayashi wouldn’t be around for his class with me today, so I had to go it alone. Ordinarily I might push a few buttons and complain because my lessons are designed around two teachers, but since I’m going to be bailing out on classes for two whole weeks in November I really don’t have the right to say much about it.

Later on in the day Mori sensei asked me if I wanted to meet the girl from Australia. I didn’t know what she was talking about, and so she explained that the secretary from a school in Australia was visiting. She is staying with Mr. Hayashi for a couple of days, and then continuing to Tokyo to sightsee there. I didn’t know anything about it, but that’s OK – I’m busy enough with classes that I probably don’t have time to chit-chat.

During my first class with Yamamoto sensei we did lots of complaining with the students, and they did a pretty good job. One of the students complained that Yamamoto sensei is a scary teacher, and he was genuinely hurt by the comment, I think. In my opinion he is a bit scary – I think the kid was right on the money. After the class Yamamoto sensei was still talking about it. I can’t believe that it was the first time that a student said he was scary. He’s got a really aggressive teaching style.

The history teacher walked by at one point with a couple English teachers and a tall blonde girl that was really good looking. The history teacher was grinning from ear to ear – I’ve never seen him so happy. They walked by my class a few times, but I didn’t stop it – I just kept teaching.

Later he came by and told me how exciting it was to talk to Rebecca, the secretary from Australia, in English. She had said that the school grounds were beautiful, and the history teacher said that she was much more beautiful. Yikes! The history was absolutely giddy – I think it was the highlight of his year so far.

After school we had an ESS party. I had purchased a lot of goodies for them, and we ate and drank while playing BINGO in English. They ate the food like they hadn’t eaten in two days, and complained loudly that we should be playing BINGO in Japanese. I scolded them a little and told them that it was an English club – deal with it. The prizes were a big hit – strange candies that I had brought back from America.

They stayed late listening to music, and everyone said goodbye without even a thank you for providing all the snacks. It’s a thankless job, public education.

I helped some students practice for the speech contest, and then ran across the street for a conversation with Tsuji-san. After that was over I was headed back home. On the train were a bunch of people dressed up in Hanshin Tigers jerseys. The Tigers are on the verge of clinching the league title – they just need to win one more game. These guys were headed that direction, but the game was already underway. They must have just been going down to Kobe/Osaka to party.

I got home and turned on the game, and they were ahead 3-0 in the middle of the game. I sliced up chicken and vegetables, and when Kuniko came home I cooked up a huge pan of yakisoba. We ate way too much, and still had a few leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch.

The Tigers won their game and clinched, and that means that things will be crazy tonight in Osaka, and a little wilder around this part of Japan for a while. Most stores will have special sales, and the Hanshin stores themselves will discounts of around 50% on most of their merchandise. Now’s a good time to buy that giant screen TV we’ve been considering…

Wednesday is always busy, and today was no exception. I encouraged my second year students in Matsubara sensei’s class to work hard on their presentation. I practiced for the STEP test with the third years, and then I had two really good classes. The first was with Maeda sensei’s class. They are alwasy into whatever I do, and they listen carefully and are eager to react to what I do. It’s one of the few classes where I can look at all of the students and see them all looking back at me, instead of sleeping or chatting with a neighbor. In high school, that’s pretty rare.

After my classes I practiced for the speech contest with a couple of my students. I studied for just a little while, and then it was time to go home. I guess the nice thing about having lots of classes is that time just flies by.

Kuniko got home relatively early (for her) and cooked up a vegetable stir fry that was delicious. She put in carrots, bean sprouts, eggplant, onions, garlic, and green peppers. Then at the last minute she added tofu and sizzled it all up with some Chinese sauce. It was so good – we thought we’d have leftovers but in the end we ate the whole thing.

The Hanshin Tigers were playing baseball on TV, and I watched just a bit of that. They are almost ready to clinch the division. Komori sensei promised that he’d host a sushi party the night after they clinch – it could be as soon as this week. That is something to look forward to – it’s been a long time since we’ve met up with Mr. Komori.

It’s not even nine o’clock and I’m already thinking about heading towards the bedroom. Tomorrow should be a comparatively easier day. Only two classes!

I say good morning to a lot of people on my way to and from school. I’ve got a routine down, and most people along the way know when I’m coming and are ready to great me with a smile or a “good morning” right back to me.

Today as I was walking down the stairs to leave the station at Takasago a lady that I see everyday was walking up the stairs. As she looked up to say good morning her foot slipped right out of her show and she almost fell over. I stopped and checked to be sure she was OK, and she was – but her face was bright red with embarrassment. I’ve never seen anybody turn that red that fast. I’m not sure if she’ll be in a greeting mood tomorrow.

I had two classes about complaining today, and they went much, much better. One was with Ms. Miyake, and one was with Ms. Tsutsumi. The students seemed to enjoy the lesson a bit more, even though it’s a fairly difficult topic.

Speaking of Ms. Miyake, she gave me some homemade yam jam that she made over the weekend. I brought it home and had it on some bread with Kuniko and it was delicious. It had little bits of vanilla bean in there, too. Yum!

I helped Ms. Miyake with her English homework, and we talked about the upcoming wedding. She is more excited than I am about it, I think.

The history teacher got his tooth properly re-installed, and his grin is much toothier now. I managed to avoid him most of the day, and had to seek refuge in the nurse’s room a couple of times to dodge him.

I had the nurses look at a strange bump on the outside of my wrist. It feels like a lump of bone – it’s very hard and there is no matching lump on the other side. It only appears when I bend my wrist down. The nurses decided that it is probably swollen because of some kind of injury, and I need to give it a rest. They gave me a cold compress and some ice, but that didn’t seem to do anything. I’ll keep an eye on it over the next week or so.

I was lazy and didn’t cook Kuniko dinner tonight. Instead we went to a yakitori down the street – not the usual one because Tuesday is the night that Denya is closed. This place wasn’t as good as Denya, but the price was pretty good. Some of the food was really greasy, though – just what we were hoping to avoid.

After dinner we did a little bit of shopping at Ito Yokado, and now we’re back home. Tomorrow is a full day for both of us, but at least for me it only gets easier after tomorrow afternoon.

It’s the start of a five day week. It’s been a while for me, so I reluctantly walked out the door and out into the increasingly cool weather. It’s nice to not be covered with sweat as soon as you leave your bedroom.

Only one class today, and I managed to screw it up pretty good. I’m doing a pretty new lesson on complaining. It’s pretty tough, and the class today is pretty quiet to begin with. The are pretty shy, I guess. We went through the beginning of the lesson, and my class was just sitting there looking at me blankly. This happens sometimes, but it has never been this quiet. The teacher, Mr. Yamamoto (not the guy from the concert, this is the other one), sat quietly reading the lesson notes that he probably should have read before the class. I hinted to him strongly that maybe we needed a little Japanese injection, and he wasn’t getting the hint.

I’ve got two or three top notch students in this class, and they hung in there with me through the lesson. I really appreciated the student’s patience. They must have been wondering why the lesson sucked so bad. Also, the students were in the last class of the day after a three day weekend, so I think they were not so interested anyway.

The history teacher was walking around with a missing front tooth. I guess he was eating some noodles and his tooth fell out. It’s going to cost him around $1000 to get it fixed at the dentist. This is the second tooth that has just fallen out. It sounds like he’s got some serious dental issues. It was hard not to look at the big gap in his teeth every time he laughed.

He was happy because he made some dating progress. I’m not sure if I would call it progress, but for him, it’s a start. He told me he asked one of the employees at the dental office out to dinner. I was surprised that he was so brave. I asked some questions and found out that he is taking out the entire staff of the dental office – the dentist and five assistants. He’s buying everyone dinner, and he’s hoping to get at least one phone number out of it. Seems like an expensive fishing trip to me.

Kuniko got home early tonight and we had a dinner of “chukan moyashi”, which is just like cold chinese noodles except we switched the noodles with bean sprouts. Kuniko made a special sauce and we cut up vegetables, egg, and ham, and placed that on top. It turned out pretty good – a healthy dinner for us. Afterwards we did a little bit of shopping at Ito Yokado, and then came back for some hot cocoa.

Kuniko also filled out a census form tonight. The government is holding a census, and so she filled out my part for me. We also started to look at some music to play during the reception. They gave us a list of music to choose from, but they said we could bring in anything we wanted. Any recommendations for good background music at a wedding reception lunch? Kuniko and I have a favorite song – but the lyrics are a little over the top for a wedding. Still, we may find a way to play it.

I’m tired and it’s cool enough that I’ll be able to sleep straight through the night. Tomorrow I’ll have another go at that class and see if I can make it a bit more successful.

Sunday came around and Kuniko was off fairly early to take the TOEIC exam. She has to retake the exam every few years to keep her score current. She got a really high score last time, and she’s a little worried that it’ll be hard to match that. The other night she got the results for the private school teachers test that she took a while back. She got the highest score possible, so she was pretty pleased with that. That means that it will be easier to get a job in the private sector if the public school system doesn’t take her next year. We won’t hear from the public school system for another week or so.

I kicked around the house for a while and then went into Osaka to meet up with Yamamoto sensei to see a Ben Folds in concert. Yamamoto sensei had invited a friend of his – someone he met through an online auction. I couldn’t catch her name and she didn’t offer me a business card, so she will remain “Yamamoto sensei’s friend” for the rest of this narrative.

Yamamoto sensei introduced her at first as his ex-wife, and later let me off the hook and told me it was a joke. I spoke in Japanese to her, and only in English to Yamamoto sensei. We did OK, but very often we had to repeat things in one language or another to get it right.

We got to the venue, and it was actually a concert hall attached to a shopping mall. I’ve been to this mall before, and I had no idea there was a concert hall attached. The mall has the distinction of having a dog restaurant. I’m going to let you guess whether it a restaurant that serves dogs, or if it’s a restaurant that serves dog.

We had some iced coffee and then got in line for the show. There were about a thousand people there, and everyone crammed into a relatively small venue. Yamamoto sensei had been there many times before, and scouted out the perfect place for us to watch.

The show was great. It was my first time seeing Ben Folds, and it’s kind of a piano/rock show. I knew some of the songs, but most of them were new to me. Yamamoto sensei knew every song and sang them all. He danced quite a bit, and it is with a little bemusement that I write this as most people reading this won’t know what a funny sight that must have been.

Ben Folds said a “konnichiwa” to the crowd at first, and from then on talked to us conversationally in English, not really caring that most people didn’t know what the hell he was saying. He played an interesting version of a Dr. Dre song set to piano melodies. His bass player sang a song Fred Durst style with so much irony that I almost missed it.

After about two hours, Ben played a particularly lively song, wrapped it up, said goodbye to the audience, and threw his piano stool directly at the keyboard of his piano. It bounced crazily to the side with surprising velocity, and then it was over.

We stopped for a quick bite to eat at a nice restaurant, and Yamamoto sensei treated us to dinner. From there, I caught the train back to Akashi. By sheer chance I bumped into Jane, my upstairs neighbor on the platform, and we rode the train back together.

She recently got serious with her boyfriend, and she asked me all kinds of questions about love, relationships, and timing. Interesting conversation. It made me feel old.

Today the weather was windy and much cooler, and Kuniko and I both enjoyed our day off more than usual. For Kuniko it’s pretty rare to get a day off during the weekend, let alone three in a row. It made a big difference for her to take care of everything she’s been wanting to do. For the most part we had the day to do whatever we wanted.

We did laundry and hung things out to dry on the sunny back porch. The wind made it easy for things to dry out fast. We had chili for lunch, and afterwards I made up guacamole for the dinner that evening. Everything was moving slowly, the temperature was cool so you weren’t sweating all the time, and for the first time we both got a really strong feeling of the impending fall season.

In the evening Tamura sensei and Takuma-kun came over for a taco dinner party. We sat around and ate lots of tacos, and drank lots of beer. Takuma-kun drank quite a bit, and I felt slightly guilty breaking out the whiskey for sipping afterwards. Our dessert was a combination of Japanese desserts that they had brought as omiyage and also American candy bars that my mom had sent for my birthday.

It was fun to relax with them. We took some pictures of the fun we were having, and eventually it was time to get them home. We’re hoping to get together again next month and try to make it a monthly thing.

Today is a national holiday to celebrate the coming of Autumn, and so we got to sleep in and have a relaxing morning. I got a message from Antoine wanting to meet up, but since we had plans already this evening, I went into Sannomiya to have lunch with him.

Kuniko let me borrow her commuter passes for the train so I didn’t have to pay anything to get there – a big bonus. Round trip it costs me around $12 to get to Sannomiya, the heart of Kobe. I met Antoine in front of the movie theater and we walked around town until we settled on Chinese food in Chinatown.

We ate lots of gyoza and some nikuman, and washed it down with cold oolong tea. We chatted about the upcoming year – it’ll be a pivotal year for both of us. Antoine is going to try to stay in Japan and find a good job here. He’s a little worried about the timing, and whether he can make enough money to sustain himself here.

I stopped in at a local store to buy some garlic paste. There are a lot of stores in Chinatown that specialize in non-Japanese Asian foods – things from Thailand, Korea, the Phillipines, etc. While I was getting the garlic an old guy spoke broken English and tried to get us to buy other (more expensive) things. He tried to get us to buy a monster jar of garlic, and then advertised the flavor of little chips that he said had lard inside. He took the jar off the shelf, twisted off the lid, pulled back the safety seal, and had us smell inside. We agreed that it smelled good, and then he put the safety seal back on, put the lid back on, and put the jar back on the shelf. Yikes!

On our travels we found a new import foods store near the station. Import food stores in Japan are pretty much the same wherever you go. They have the same items, probably because they buy them all from the same wholesaler. This store was different – they were buying products from somewhere else. I scored a could of containers of Stagg chili, and some Kraft macaroni and cheese. They had some pretty good beers there, too. Still no cake frosting, though. That’s apparently impossible to buy in Japan.

I came back in the afternoon and hung out with Kuniko, and then we gathered up our gear, drove to Carrefour to buy steaks, and took everything over to Kageyama headquarters in Kakogawa to cook dinner for her folks. The steaks were decent sized, and pretty fairly priced. I rubbed them with garlic, olive oil, salt, and some spicy rub from America. Then we panfried them quickly and served them up. We also served some microwaved potatoes, but they weren’t completely microwaved and some of them were a little tough. They had to go in again to finish up. We also had a good bottle of wine from JVB vineyards in Kenwood. We picked it up on our last trip to America and it went really well with the red meat.

Kuniko and I finished our meat quickly, but her father and mother savored theirs and ate slowly. I don’t think they have steaks much – it’s still considered a luxury item. It was good to cook for them for a change and give Kuniko’s mom a break.

Kuniko borrowed their sewing machine for a school project that she is working on, and we took off around 10 p.m.

Instead of heading home we drove all the way to the Akashi bridge, and enjoyed walking along the water and taking in the view. It was breezy but not cold – a perfect night to be out there. There were fishermen along the water, too – they were using glowsticks and little lights on their lines to catch fish. When they cast the line out, you could see the glowstick arcing against the night sky and finally drop into the dark water.

We waited around for the lights to change color on the bridge, and then heading home. Along the street there were cars parked – some cars with all tricked out and looked like gangster wagons from L.A., and some had couples inside who can’t afford a love hotel. We jumped in the car and drove back along the water to Futami, and we hit the rack. There’s still two days left in the weekend!