That was a serious typhoon! It was consistently windy and rainy for a long time, and a lot of stuff was damaged around my neighborhood. It’s not exactly a war zone out there, but pretty messy by Japanese standards.

I’ve been on a new routine where I wake up an hour early to have some time to myself, instead of rushing out to catch the train. I hardly miss the sleep, and it’s nice to wander around my place with tons of time to spare. This morning I made a nice big egg sandwich for breakfast, had a cup of tea in the living room, and did some stretching to loosen up my muscles for the day. Uh oh, break out the granola and the meditation books!

The students were back at their exams, and I enjoyed a few hours of studying in the teacher’s office. We decided to go over to visit Mr. Harada in the hospital. He’s recovering little by little, and so Mr. Hayashi arranged a visit for us. Japanese tradition is to give somebody an envelope of money when you visit them in the hospital apparently, and I contributed what everyone else did, 2500 yen (around $25).

Mr. Harada was looking really good, actually. He’s off smoking and salty foods – two of his favorite things. Really simple decision about smoking – the doctors said that if he smokes again, he’ll die. The way it was translated to me made it sound like the first puff and his heart would explode. I’m not sure it would be that serious, but I’m no doctor.

Mr. Harada was really happy to see everyone and spent a little time talking to each person. He even talked to me a bit, half in Japanese and half in English. What a nice guy – we didn’t talk very much at school, but he always had a big smile on his face. He’s about my age, but looks about ten years older. Maybe the cessation of smoking will help.

Afterwards I came home, and on the way through Ito Yokado found a steak at a low low price, so I had that and fried up some potatoes that Kuniko’s mom had sent over a couple of weeks ago. It was delicious. She also sent some yams, but I have no idea what to do with those. I’m not a big yam fan.

When I had finished dinner Jane knocked on my door and invited me over to Ito Yokado for dinner. I went along and got a dessert and watched her eat some pepper rice and steak – it looked great. After dinner we bumped into two other new ALTs, and they had me do some translation with the clerk about delivering some merchandise. They are a quirky Canadian couple – they always seem to share a little too much information about their private lives. Tonight they complained that the boyfriend was so weak from a recent sickness that he can’t pick her up and take her to the bedroom anymore. Oh, thanks for the info.

To wrap up the evening I went along with Jane as she shopped for supplies, and even had a free sample or two of the food from the friendly vendors. Then we headed back and I’ve been cleaning up a little for Kuniko’s visit this weekend. It’s also the Futami matsuri on Sunday, so I’m looking forward to that. This week has flown by!

I went into work today with the rain pouring and the wind blowing. My new umbrella bent under the force of the wind, but I think I can repair it. Once I got to school I noticed that there were no students, which had a very good meaning for me, in a couple of different ways.

Since today’s exams were cancelled, the students will have their exams from today rescheduled to Friday. Friday’s classes will be cancelled. That means that I don’t have another class the rest of this week, and in all likelihood, I’ll be able to go home early on Friday. Woo-hoo!

I spent the day studying Japanese at my desk. Mr. Hayashi came by to help me by correcting some of my work. Afterwards we sat back and relaxed, waiting for noon when they’d send us home.

Around noon they did a final meeting to tell everyone that we were free, and off we went. Mr. Komuri gave me a ride home, and I was glad for that, since the weather was blowing really strongly by lunchtime. I went inside and I haven’t left since.

Throughout the afternoon the rain was falling consistently, and according to the website I check daily, we got about six inches of rain throughout the day. The wind blew it all over the place, so I’ll be washing windows this weekend. I stuffed a towel in my mailslot since the wind was blowing in so hard through there that it was creating a cold breeze in my house, even with all the other windows closed. It was a strong storm.

After the biggest part of it passed, Yasu came over to study some English. We sat and chatted for a while, and I helped identify some music that he had recorded, but he didn’t know the name of the band. I listened to the lyrics and then researched it on the internet. What would I do without it?

Simple dinner tonight, curry and rice. I need to whittle down my pantry a bit before my next trip to Ito Yokado.

The rain has really started to come down lately, and tomorrow a new typhoon is threatening Japan. This year has had an unseasonable amount of typhoons, and I’ve gotten two days off work from them. That’s pretty nice.

The bad news is I have to take an umbrella in to work every day. Today somebody swiped my umbrella from the rack in front of the school, which is apparently a common occurrence. This is the first time it happened to me. I’m trying to think of a diabolical scheme to keep it from happening again.

After classes finished today Mr. Komuri had invited me to join him in making homemade soba noodles. We gathered a group of teachers, did some shopping at the local grocery, and made them from scratch. The base is a buckwheat flour that Mr. Komuri buys in Nagano. It was fun to watch, and amazing that noodles actually came out of so much kneading and hard work.

Afterwards we ate the soba in the traditional style, served cold and dipped in a soba sauce that we spiked with various vegetables and wasabi. It was great – an awesome meal. The key is having all the materials to do it – you need a big board, rolling pin, special buckwheat flour, etc, etc. I’d like to do it at home, but I think I’ll just wait until Mr. Komuri wants to make it again.

I came back home using a spare umbrella that I had stashed away for such an occasion, and bought some ground beef at Ito Yokado. I had a big taco meal with a couple of beers – they’ve started carrying Anchor Steam beers next door. At almost $4 for a bottle of the beer, it’s pretty pricey.

I did a little bit of studying, and then watched “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” on my computer, downloaded via the web. I also cleared off my back porch in preparation for the big one tomorrow. We’ll see if it lives up to the hype.

Examinations have started today for my students, and they’re busy working hard during the first half of the day. I’m quite free during the day to study or relax, and I’ve been studying most of the time.

Today we had a free lunch brought in, and it was one of the better bento lunches that we’ve had. The food was a good mix of fish and meat, and the rice was sushi rice, rather than the traditional white rice you normally get.

Mr. Hayashi and I cut out of school early today and we went home. I spent the morning taking a nice nap, trying to shop for shoes at Ito Yokado (sorry, your feet are too big), and doing some housework.

Jane had invited me to dinner with some of her friends, and so I joined her and three other people for a big chili and rice dinner. It was awesome – great salad, the chili was excellent, and we had Haagen Dasz ice cream for dessert. Yum. Two of her friends were also new ALTs here in Japan, and one was the nice lady from the bookstore that speaks such great English.

I think the highlight was when one of the new ALT’s had used the expression “packing fudge”, and then had to explain herself to the poor Japanese lady. It was a classic moment.

I’m back home now and getting ready for school tomorrow. I received my correspondence course materials for my Japanese language course, so I’m reviewing that here at home and then studying at school.

Today I got all dressed up and trundled off to my school to make the easiest money I’ve ever made – working the STEP test. When I got there my contact lenses were bugging me just a bit. My vision was cloudy, even though I put brand new ones in this morning.

I took them out and rinsed them in clear tap water, and that cleared up my vision nicely. And then my eyes started burning. They didn’t stop burning for four hours. Oh, my, god.

The good news was that the most visible part of my job was taken care of before the burning eyes, which is the meet and greet thing I do. I stand in the hallway as people go up to the test room, and I make sure they don’t walk the wrong direction. Today I decided to pretend I didn’t speak Japanese and so I just spoke English with everyone. These are people that are testing for English proficiency, so it’s a good experience for them. Some spoke in Japanese anyway, and some were too nervous to even return my “Good morning!”.

Anyway, after everyone was settled I rinsed off the contacts and was in agony for four hours. Finally at lunchtime to pain abated somewhat, and I survived the rest of the day with just a little discomfort. Maybe something was in the water?

At the end of the day I collected 14,000 yen from Mr. Hayashi and went home. Easy money.

While I was at work I finished a book that my parents had sent for my birthday, Dove. It’s an autobiographical book about a boy that set off to sail around the world alone at sixteen years old. The book was great and even though it happened back in the late sixties, it was still a great read. A lot has changed in the world since his adventure. Anyway, I recommend the book. If I could figure out why books like Dove and this seem to call to me, maybe I can figure out what my next adventure will be.

Today I woke up with a diabolical hangover, an open schedule, and a pocket full of cash. I used the free schedule to work on the hangover, taking aspirin and sleeping throughout the morning. I won’t bore you with the details – hangovers suck.

I gathered the surprising amount of empty bottles and cans and took them to the recycling bin at Ito Yokado, and then tried to pick up some dry cleaning there. Unfortunately, it hadn’t arrived yet, so I was a little worried about whether it would make it in time for the STEP test on Sunday.

I did get a chance to talk to my grandparents and parents on the phone, and everybody sounded great.

Around four o’clock I went to Akashi and met up with Mr. Komuri to go to the Miki matsuri. Matsuri means festival in Japanese, and almost every town has one. I went to this one last year, and this time it was just as fun. We enjoyed the matsuri from a different location this time around, at the top of the hill where they pull up the mikoshi with rope to help the poor guys trying to carry them.

One thing I noticed was that I was understanding what was going on a lot better, and it made it that much more interesting to watch. I got lots of people that said hello to me, just to try out their English. Lots of girls flirting and giggling, lots of little boys just giggling.

We bought some fried chicken and some beer and watched all the action from the side of the temple, underneath a platform. At one point a lady was trying to get her daughter down from the platform, so I helped ferry the little girl down. Then the lady surprised me by asking me to do the same for herself. Mr. Komuri just laughed and laughed.

Mr. Komuri’s friend was supposed to be there this year, but there were so many people that we couldn’t find him, and since he’s from America he didn’t have a cellphone that worked in Japan.

On the way out of there I stopped to play a traditional game – you try to scoop little rubber balls out of the water using a plastic loop with paper stretched over it. Eventually the paper gets wet enough to rip, so you need to just get as many balls as you can before it does. I did well for a beginner, 54 balls. I got a cheesy prize (some super-rubber-balls), woo-hoo.

On the drive back Mr. Komuri and I decided that we were hungry. A couple of months ago he taught me an expression that is used in Japan. When somebody pays you a compliment, you tell them “I’ll buy you sushi”. Apparently you don’t really do that, it’s just an expression.

In the car he asked me, “Am I handsome?”

I was a little nervous when I told him “Of course”. But then he said, “I’ll buy you sushi!” And he did.

We went to the great little underground sushi place in Akashi. The place was full when we arrived but quickly a few spaces opened up. Mr. Komuri did the ordering – I had some great sushi there, and even some beef – grilled beef on sushi rice. Excellent.

Mr. Komuri was telling the sushi master about how so many girls at school and at the matsuri think I’m great looking. The sushi master was commenting that I must be very popular. The master asked me what I thought about all the Japanese girls’ reaction to me, and I told him that I’d have to buy them a lot of sushi. The line brought the house down, mainly because nobody expected me to know it, and certainly didn’t expect me to say it.

We got out of there and headed home, Mr. Komuri to his place and I took the train back to Futami. A quick stop at the dry cleaners and then I was home safe.

Today’s classes went really well, and I was busy studying Japanese in the afternoon, so the day went by quickly. One interesting thing that happened was that I got called into the principal’s office. There the principal and vice-principal gave me another secret mission. Once again, the board of education supervisor had called my school and asked for me specifically to help coordinate the mid-year conference in Hyogo. This means that I’ll be plenty busy, but I’m not sure what my responsibilities are yet.

Since I had to stay late the day before, I took off early today and went home to get ready for poker night.

We had four people for poker this time, and I had the master of the yakitori make a bunch of food so that I could take it home and serve it. The food turned out great. Antoine and Struan found their way to my place after walking through Ito Yokado, and Yasu came over from next door.

We played lots of games, starting out slow for Yasu’s benefit, since he hadn’t played in a long time. We soon made our way into other more exotic games like “Screw Your Neighbor” and “Roll Your Own”. We started with beer but moved quickly to the red wine. The selection was great – we had a Chilean Cab Sauv, an Italian Chianti, a California Pinot Noir, and an Australian Shiraz.

The last hand of the night had by far the biggest pot. I was in a lucky position by being guaranteed from the first card that I would split the pot, so I raised and raised. Antoine was putting down big money, too, for some reason – probably because it was the last game. In the end Yasu and I split the pot – it was a big haul and made for a great end to the game. I said good night to everybody at the train station and then I went home and went right to sleep – I was exhausted!

Today was much like any other, except that I had a lot more time to study. My classes flew by without a hitch, and I concentrated on studying in the afternoon. Mr. Hayashi had me bring in my books into one of our team teaching classes. He had the students studying for their exam next week, so we used the time to brush up on my Japanese.

I brought in one of my textbooks that I had bought, and asked Mr. Hayashi a few questions. They were multiple choice, and strangely, he said that on some of the problems, all of the choices were correct. He demonstrated by calling up a couple of students, who all picked two or three of the four possible answers. It was a real eye opener for me. I had been studying this book looking for some kind of rule or method to know when to use certain words, and in the end it there was no right answer – they were all right.

I got roped into attending the teacher seminar. The topic was how to get student’s Japanese language ability to improve. The seminar was a classic scene – one poor consultant up front trying to lead a discussion, and forty teachers falling asleep and not really paying any attention. Ironically, the speaker’s topic centered around the idea that unless you engage the student’s attention, you won’t be able to teach them better Japanese. Most of our teachers were engaged in snoring.

The speaker at one point had some English as part of his presentation, and I perked up for that. As far as I could tell, he was encouraging teachers to pay more attention to the students, and I swear he told us to touch the students. Mr. Hayashi was joking around afterwards about sexual harassment and I think the speaker might have lost his credibility at that point.

I went home around six o’clock, and stopped in at Ito Yokado for some supplies for dinner. I made up a rice bowl of Korean BBQ beef with some Korean veggies that they sell there, and a side of kimchee. I was sweating at the end of the meal which must be a sign of quality.

I chatted with Kuniko via my cellphone. She’s so much faster than I am so I imagine that it’s a bit frustrating for her to wait for my slow responses, but it’s cheap and easy, and great practice for my Japanese.

Now I’m getting ready to go out with Jane for a beer at the yakitori. She’s getting back from a late night class, and then we’ll head out. It’ll be nice to catch up with her.

This morning it was below 20 degrees for the first time this season, and it was that much harder to get out of bed. I can see a trend here – the difference in temperature between the inside of my bed and the outside is getting bigger and bigger. Almost time for the electric blanket. Several weeks ago I was wiping the sweat off my face during class.

Speaking of class, I did a couple of new lessons today on movies. Movies are one of my favorite things to talk about. I love them so much, and the difference between watching movies in America and Japan are many, so it makes for an interesting topic. In my class we watch a couple of scenes from the first Harry Potter movie, and also we do a bit of drawing.

I’m on this thing where I have students draw, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a popular activity among the English teachers. They may think it’s a waste of time, but when I walk around and point at things that would take an hour to describe, the students are eager to find the English word. It’s fun, and it gets everyone involved, even if they’re not so great at English. Today’s lessons were a success in that regard – we had some great pictures.

The latest on the music teacher with the heart surgery is that he is going to be OK. He’ll be in the hospital for a couple of months, and so we had a new teacher come in to take over his music classes. Mr. Hayashi is still stuck with taking over his homeroom class, and the big joke around the staffroom seems to be that Mr. Hayashi is finally going to have to earn his keep. He’s been busy running around and we’ve exchanged only a few words all day.

I met with some of the students from ESS and we worked a little bit on the English bulletin board. I came up with a word of the week “junk”, and we put up some comics. I had cut out an English comic to post, but the students want to redraw the comic in a bigger size. Pretty ambitious, but it’s their project so I’ll let them do what they want.

After school I went straight to Ito Yokado and had a quick dinner of donburi and a “twister” from KFC, which is just a couple of pieces of chicken wrapped in a tortilla with lettuce and some sauce. Then I was off to Azusa’s for an English lesson. She did much better this time around, and I gave her some limericks to work on her L’s and R’s. Even after the practice that we did for an hour I could notice some improvement. She said she’ll practice them every morning on the train – which should make for some interesting situations.

I came home and stopped by the yakitori to arrange for dinner on Friday for the poker game. The master quoted me a great price on some food – now I won’t have to spend my time cooking – I can play poker more. I also dropped by to visit with Jane, who is doing well. She’s been super busy and is wondering whether there is an end in sight. I told her that it’s bound to slow down soon, but she has two schools and all the staff from both of them to invite her out – she’ll be busy for a while. We’re going to have a late night beer at the yakitori tomorrow night and catch up a little more.

Well, off to bed. My schedule tomorrow should be really easy – I need to clean up the place tomorrow and get ready for cards.

Some days seem like normal days, and some days seem like everyone is staring at me. Today was one of those days where everywhere I looked, someone was looking back. It’s all a matter of how I perceive it, because I realize of course that nothing has changed. I have no major pimples on my face and my clothes seem to be free of dirt and chalk.

On the train one of the ladies that sits across from me every day smiled at me, but instead of looking away like she normally does she held the smile and kept watching me. It was a little uncomfortable, and for once I could feel what it’s like for the Japanese people that I smile at all the time.

At school I had four classes. Three were classes for the second year students. A week or so ago while I was planning the lesson I was having trouble coming up with an activity. I hit upon an idea while thumbing through the JET manual – it was talking about life insurance and I thought, “Let’s write our own wills in class!”

I’m a freaking genius! I wrote a quick will, mainly pulling words from TV shows that I watched when I was a kid, and when I was done, it looked great. I drew a little headstone with my name on it, and then put a big R.I.P. on it. It worked really well – the picture got the student’s attention right away, and then everybody was bequeathing their possessions to their loved and unloved ones.

I walked around and tried to get the students to leave me stuff, but they were pretty adamant about giving me nothing. So adamant, in fact, that I was afraid that they might have misunderstood and thought this was a legally binding document. I was tempted to collect the worksheet after class as a joke, but decided not to.

The best part was when we had the students read their wills at the end of the class. We’d pick a student, and they’d stand up and solemnly (because that’s the only way they know how to read English) say, “I, Akiko Matsuda, leave this document as my last will and testament. I leave my room to my mother. I leave my dog to my brother…”

After school the history teacher was sitting at the desk next to mine waiting to talk to me. He’s actually staking me out, now. Yikes. We talked about how much fun last Friday night was, and he was eager to discuss the merits of “Deep Space Nine” with me. Lucky I know a little Star Trek lingo to teach him. This is how you pronounce “port nacelle”…

Next week exams start, so we’re prohibiting students from entering the teacher’s office. The first few days are tough because the students don’t read the big sign at the door and walk in. The first person they meet is me. I know they are about to get screamed at, but there isn’t much I can do. Lately I’ve been trying to get their attention, and I saved a few students from an auditory ambush today. If they are students that misbehave in my class, I just let them go through. Karma, man.

I’m off to do a little studying and hit the sack. Tomorrow I’m going to be teaching Azusa again. This week is flying by – pretty soon it’ll be the weekend again!

Today after about thirty minutes and several signatures I am a cell phone carrying person once again. It’s going to end up costing me around $30/month to be carrying one around, but I hope the convenience is worth it. Japan’s social culture is married to portable phones, and now I’m part of that.

I’m pleased with the phone – I’ve been fooling around with it this afternoon and it’s pretty complicated. I has a camera and it does web and mail and you can even watch TV on the thing. Kuniko sent me a couple of messages and I sent some back, in English and Japanese. Actually, it’s easier to mail in Japanese, so I’ll probably stick to that. Maybe I can budget it as a study tool?

After getting the phone I walked Kuniko back to the train station so she could go visit her family. We said our goodbyes there in front of the station, and I walked back alone to my apartment. I cleaned up a bit after having company for the whole weekend, and now I can enjoy the rest of my day. Luckily today is a national holiday, so I can do whatever I want. I’m thinking about celebrating my birthday with a $50 bottle of wine that I bought in Australia, and cooking up a katsu donburi bowl.

Maybe I’ll curl around my phone to watch some TV…

I spent today in Kobe with Kuniko, and we made the most of the beautiful weather and open schedule. We started by going into town and hitting the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art. There were two special exhibitions going on there, one about Louis Vuitton and it’s brand’s history, and the other about how clothes worn by the nomadic cultures along the silk road in eastern Asia helped influence fashions of today.

In the permanent collection of the museum they had some disturbing artwork by Yokoo Tadanori – lots of angst, kittens, nudity, and blood. We walked through the entire museum, taking our time and completing the building in about two hours.

After walking all over the place we decided to rest over some coffee and sandwiches. The back part of the museum opens out on part of the Kobe Harbor, so we could enjoy some sea breezes as we sat in the shade. From there we plotted our next move.

We went into Sannomiya to wander around, do some shopping, and kill some time. We explored Tokyu Hands, and then walked around the eastern part of Kobe to sneak up on the Kitano district. Near Shin-Kobe station we bumped into an NHK marketing group who took our picture with some of the mascots from the station.

We walked the mountainside towards Kitano and spent some time among the old western style buildings there. They are kind of a tourist attraction – not many big western style buildings can be found in Japan. The area is also known as kind of a romantic lover’s walk around place, and there was evidence in the bridal shops and wedding planning services all over the place. This is like ground zero for overpriced Japanese wedding services.

Finally we headed to the restaurant where I had made reservations – Graciani’s. Kuniko and I hadn’t been there in a long time – almost six months. Mr. Hayashi stopped inviting her to places since she was so busy with work, and for some reason he wasn’t too keen on going to Graciani with me around.

The waiter recognized us immediately, and if he noticed that we appeared to be in at least a dating situation, he said nothing about it. He did (as is his job) approve of my wine selection, telling Kuniko in Japanese that it’s a pity that Mr. Hayashi won’t let me order wine there for fear of embarrassment on somebody’s behalf. The wine turned out to be quite good – a French Cote du Rhone that was easy to drink. Our meal was roasted beef, the salad was a risotto and seafood mixture, the soup was a purple sweet potato, and the dessert was chocolate mousse.

After a brief skirmish Kuniko insisted on picking up the bill, and so we walked back to the station with full stomachs. They were so full, in fact, that we decided to walk along Motomachi to the Kobe station and save a little money and burn a few calories.

Since we ended up at the Kobe station, I bought Kuniko a drink at Like, Like – one of the places that Antoine, Nel and I used to visit fairly often many months ago. The bartender was the same guy I remembered, and he had a funny conversation with Kuniko about Antoine and his antics from day gone by. We’ve definitely got to the gang back together and head over there.

We got off the train in Futami and cut through Ito Yokado. Kuniko has been researching good deals on cell phones for me – after three or four mishaps where I didn’t have any way to reach the people I was meeting, I was considering getting one. Especially since I’m on foot all the time, it might be a good idea.

We looked around and found a likely phone. I couldn’t believe how many things it can do free of charge – cell phones have come a long way since I last had one. I guess being in Japan helps. The phone guys had already gone home, so we went back to my place talking about maybe getting one the next day.

Kuniko has to leave tomorrow morning to go visit her family, so we made today my official birthday celebration. It was a great day – we’re both exhausted from walking all over the place, but we more than made up for that in calories from dinner.

I woke up this morning a little tired, but doing OK considering the amount of food and drink I had the night before. I did a quick check of the weather forecast, and the typhoon that was approaching was apparently going to miss my area of Japan. The day was cloudy, but not rainy, and it looked like I’d be able to do some fun stuff.

To start I talked to my brother and parents on the phone. We spent some time talking about Mark’s birthday, and their plans for the weekend. They’re still without a kitchen, so that definitely affects their entertaining options.

I spent most of the morning cleaning my house. The place needed some serious help. I also went into Akashi, where I found out, much to my dismay, that I had missed the deadline for the Japanese exam I was hoping to take in December. In fact, I had missed it by a whole month!

Fortunately, they have late registration available and there is an outside chance that I can get registered this week. Still, oops!

Back home I did a little pleasure reading, and had a fairly boring dinner of plain white rice. Around six o’clock, Kuniko messaged me to say that she was on her way to my place.

We spent the evening exchanging gifts (she got me a wallet, my parents got her some Elmo socks and a set of Judy Blume books). We ate niku-man for dinner, and went to bed early. Tomorrow we’re planning to spend the day in Kobe to celebrate my birthday.

The weather today was rainy, ahead of a big typhoon that is supposed to hit this weekend. I was looking forward to teaching two new lessons, one for the first year students and one for the third year students.

The third year lesson was first. It was a class that I came up with after reading through some old teacher’s handbooks from other JET participants. The idea was to teach the students how to greet someone in the western style.

I started by doing a greeting Japanese style with a volunteer from the audience, in Japanese with the bows and everything. Then I showed them how to do it in English, with a handshake. The handshake was tough – I must have shaken everyone’s hand two or three times. I had them practicing with each other, which was amusing to a certain degree. Boys don’t shake hands with girls, and vice versa. I was the only exception, but I think it made some of the girls nervous to shake hands with me.

Eye contact was a real problem for everyone, so I tried to show them how to shake hands and still have eye contact. They caught on eventually, but it was pretty tough for some of them. It was a little harder for the girls, but that is probably because I am a boy, and eye contact is a bit like flirting in Japan.

Overall the class went well, I declared it a moderate success. Much more successful was my first year class about movies. I love movies, and I poured a lot of that energy into the lesson. We talked about why I love movies so much, I told them about my favorite movies, and we even watched a few scenes from a Harry Potter DVD. The students wrote as much as they could about the scenes that they saw, and it was a good way for them to struggle for vocabulary. It had everyone digging through their dictionaries, which is always a good sign.

The Japanese teacher that did the class with me, Mr. Oshita, was a little disappointed that the students didn’t do better, but I assured him that I wasn’t expecting much, and just the act of stretching their minds for the right words – and making sentences with words that they did know – was a positive English lesson.

After school we had an assembly for all the students to describe the overseas trip to Australia. I put in a brief cameo to ask a question in English of the students that went (they had the answer already, but don’t tell anyone). The students did a great job – they weren’t nervous at all. Mr. Hayashi brought in a tape that he recorded from one of the teachers in Australia – he had called her and asked her to give a message to everyone. The only problem was that Mr. Hayashi played the whole tape, so everyone had to sit through all his chit-chat before and after, and since it was in English almost nobody could understand it.

Afterwards I went over to the table tennis club and hit the ball around with some of the members. I’ve been playing the first year girls, and they do a rotation, so that I’m always playing and there’s no lag time. They’re really good – we haven’t really played a game, we just rally back and forth. After, they asked me to translate some of the English comments that I had made on their homework, so I explained those to them – they were very happy with the results.

Mr. Hayashi, Mr. Komuri, Mr. Kimura, and Mr. Urakami (the history teacher) all took me out to a birthday dinner at Amuse. We were just there a couple of weeks ago, but they decided to go back. The food was great. They had splurged on a couple of Kobe steaks for me. I was the only one having steak, and I felt a little guilty so I cut it up and shared it with everyone, but they had another one on standby, just in case. So I ate that one myself. Very tender, and very delicious. We had lots of beers and told lots of stories. In the end they all split the bill, and from the amount that they split the total was around $300. Yikes!

I walked home with Mr. Kimura, and he went onward to his house near Higashi Futami station. I’m settled in for the evening – tomorrow is supposed to be a typhoon, so I’ve got supplies and I’m ready to clean house and stay inside all day. It could be a wet and windy day.

Thursday is my easy day. It comes at the perfect time, too. After wrapping up three classes in the morning, I was all set to relax and study in the afternoon. I declined an invitation today to join the PTA on a trip to Okayama prefecture to do some wine tasting (!) and eat lunch at a French restaurant. It sounded like fun, but the price tag was around $60, so I think I’ll skip it. Still, the wine tasting might have been fun. I’m going to file away that idea for later on.

We still haven’t heard how the teacher is doing that is in the hospital. The students are being kept in the dark, and the teachers aren’t allowed to tell them what’s going on. I’m not sure why – but hopefully he’ll be better soon.

Today we had a rehearsal for a presentation that the students that went on the Australia trip are doing. I have a small part – I’m supposed to ask them (in Japanese) if they plan on going back to Australia. The students were nervous and excited – they are making the presentation in front of the whole school tomorrow.

When I got home I had a package notice in my mailbox, the second one in two days. Since I had the evening free, I walked to the train station to pick them up at the post office.

As I was walking to the station it started raining, and I was totally unprepared. I had to stop in at Carrefour to buy an umbrella. As soon as I went outside with my new umbrella the rain stopped. It didn’t rain again the whole night. I can control the weather, apparently, for the cost of a mere umbrella.

I picked up my packages and brought them home, and my folks came through in a big way for my birthday. A warm pullover sweater, cookies, a jumping monkey toy, tortillas, some books, a salame, and lots of hot sauce. My brother sent a T-shirt from his radio station, so I can advertise that around Japan. I had a great time opening presents, even though it’s before my birthday. I used the tortillas as an excuse to open things up, and then I just went nuts. It was great!

Tomorrow we’re going out to celebrate my birthday. It’ll be me, Mr. Komuri, the history teacher, Mr. Hayashi, and Mr. Kimura. As Mr. Komuri says, it’s a “sausage party”. I taught them that expression a while back and it’s really catching on. They love saying it loudly in English in the middle of the staff room – nobody else, not even the English teachers, have a clue about what it might mean.

This weekend another typhoon is coming through to coincide with my birthday. I don’t know how big it will be, but I’ll have to spend some time on Saturday tying things down on the porch.