Today was, as predicted, an easy day. I went in a little early since I’m basically copping out the rest of the week. I’m getting four days off for the price of two, so the least I can do is go in a bit early.

Without classes I just studied Japanese, chatted with the history teacher, had a nice lunch at the coffee shop down the road, and really just relaxed. Sometimes I can’t believe I get paid for this.

Towards the end the day – a revelation! Here’s the scoop:

Kids in Japanese high schools attend for three years. The staff of Takasago Minami High School is divided into three groups, the first, second and third year teachers. These teachers teach only the students in their year. I’m attached to the first year teachers, even though I’m a special case and teach all three years of students. Got it? OK.

So the school year is ending, and I’ve been going on the the idea that our students will move on and be taught by the second year teachers, and we’ll get a fresh new crop of faces to teach in April. Turns out, I’m wrong.

We will actually become second year teachers next year, and follow our students through the school. We’ll move our desks over to the second year area, and the third year teachers will move to the first year section and teach the new students.

It kind of threw me for a loop – I was very surprised. I won’t be affected much, but the other teachers follow their students through school, and so that explains all the tears I was seeing at graduation – it’s a three year relationship with these guys.

In other news, I got a request from my grandparents to post some pictures of my apartment, so I’ve posted them below with a short description. Click on the link and the (rather large) picture will load up. There’s more description in the pictures themselves.

I’m starting to feel much better – every day is an improvement. Less nasal activity, which is a big relief. This morning I tried to sleep in but I wasn’t too successful. I slept until about 8:30, which is pretty good considering I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night a couple of times.

Today Miss Kageyama came over to visit – she’s back from Shikoku. She had some interesting stories to relate about the ceremony and some of the traditions. I’ll just say that they are much different than what I’m used to in the U.S. I gave her some gifts for White Day, and she gave me some souvenirs from Shikoku – famous udon noodles, and some orange juice made from Shikoku oranges. I’m going to do a blind taste test with Tropicana soon to see if I can tell the difference.

We cooked up some spaghetti together – she did the sauce, I did the noodles. We even split up making the garlic bread – she crushed the garlic and toasted the bread, I made the butter garlic spread. I popped open a bottle of Italian red that I picked up at Carrefour. It was actually not too bad. After dinner we had some of the chocolates and played Japanese Jenga, which is the same as regular Jenga except that the instructions are in Japanese. It was a fun night and I’m glad that we were able to spend time together.

Monday is going to be an easy day at work – Tuesday is a sumo wrestling match, and Wednesday is Korea.

For a guy that did nothing all day, I sure got a lot accomplished. I was talking to my parents this afternoon and my dad asked me what I did today, and I couldn’t recall anything useful that I did. Now as I sit down to right this, I did manage to do a fair amount.

This morning was the monthly apartment cleanup at 8 a.m. That means I couldn’t sleep in, but the way I’ve been sleeping lately it wasn’t a big deal. I went down and went to work. The nice thing about the cleanup is that it’s for an hour, and not a minute more. I signed in, did the work, grabbed a free milk coffee, and went back home. Melanie skipped the cleaning again – this is the second time. Since she is leaving, I think she’s decided to just skip the whole thing. She’s short-timing already and it’s only March!

Once I got back up to my apartment I cooked up a big omelet with bacon, cheese, and Crystal hot sauce. I ran two loads of laundry and hung out my big blankets to catch some sun out on the porch. Afterwards I chatted with my family on the phone for a while, and then started laying the groundwork for my taxes. They are a little more complex this year, but I should be OK – there is an exclusion for U.S. citizens earning money abroad. Cool!

I ran down to the store for some pork and cooked up a stir fry with some vegetables I had laying around. It turned out OK, but the vegetables were still a little firm after frying. I need more practice! I got a nice email for Miss Kageyama, and it sounds like she’ll be back in town tomorrow. We are going to celebrate White Day together, but I’m not sure what we’re doing. I got her some chocolates, some “Finding Nemo” pencils, and a book full of English words that are a little unusual – I hope she likes them.

I’m doing some cleanup around the house just in case Miss Kageyama comes by tomorrow – it’s amazing how messy things get when you’re sick!

One of the big things they recommend when applying for the JET program and for any kind of international experience is flexibility. This weekend is a great example of this.

Tonight the original plan was for Mr. Komuri, Mr. Hayashi, and Miss Kageyama to join me on a trip to Nara to see the Omizutori festival. It’s a once in a year festival where priests build gigantic fires and draw water through gigantic metal devices. The effect is lots of sparks and a pretty dramatic show. This event is on my “big list of things to do while in Japan”. I told Mr. Komuri about it a long time ago, and he offered to join me. Soon we had a group of four, and everybody was really excited. Yesterday we found out that we had a mandatory staff meeting, so we would have to stick around until 4 p.m. at least. The drive to Nara is three hours (only 1.5 hours by train), so we would probably end up way too far away to see anything. Also, Mr. Hayashi is sick, Miss Kageyama had something come up (more on that in a minute), and Mr. Komuri didn’t think it was worth the long trip – not a lot of payoff.

I ended up scratching that event off my list and moving it to next year. Next year it should be on a Saturday, so hopefully it will be easier to get there.

Miss Kageyama was sitting at home sick last night and her family got a late night phone call – her grandmother passed away unexpectedly in Ehime prefecture, on Shikoku island. They had to drive off to be there last night, so not only is she sick but she is dealing with the loss of a loved one.

I went from being booked up completely to having a completely free weekend in about four hours. What am I going to do with this newfound gift? Probably sit around on my butt and study, eat, rest and read. I want to be ready for my trip next week and I want to be completely healed. A weekend of leisure seems like just the thing.

At work today we had a mandatory fire drill which involved the most inefficient bucket brigade I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of bucket brigades. Well, not really. Anyway, every student had a hand in moving buckets of water from the swimming pool all the way to the baseball diamond. I started walking back after the last bucket left the swimming pool and I got there several minutes before the first bucket showed up at the field. Let’s hope they have a better plan for a serious fire.

Today I brought a bag full of goodies to school – it was payback time for Valentine’s Day. Sunday is White Day in Japan – the day when the boys must give gifts back to the women that gave them on Feb. 14. I had lots to deal with so I got organized last night before bed. I bagged everything up and lugged them to school, and then made deliveries throughout the day. Everyone was very happy and surprised. I got a little worried because I was the only one dishing out gifts – every one of the first year male teachers had received the same gift – where were all the other gifts?

I made a trip up to the second year floor and tried to casually get the attention of the two students that had brought chocolate for me. I got them to come down to the teacher’s room and gave them their gifts there. They both were very happy.

I overheard Mr. Komuri asking Ms. Saegusa why she had gotten a gift from me, and then she explained about White Day. It dawned on me that every single male teacher but me had forgotten or ignored it. After lunch a couple of teachers came back with some gifts, so I guess they didn’t want to look bad. I’m betting that there will be some very elaborate gifts on Monday.

This morning I woke up with no headache, still stuffy, but with an improvement in my health. Finally! For the first time today I didn’t take any aspirin, which is also a good sign. As I write this now I could use one or two but I’m going to try to hold off until right before bed.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with advice and diagnoses. I ended up trying something that was strange but worked quite well. I heated up my bathtub to a really high temperature, and then breathed in the steam – I breathed in and out until my nose loosened up and then I cleared it out and started over. It worked really well.

At school people commented that my voice is getting back to normal, but I still have a cough that freaks people out. I found out today that I infected Mr. Kimura, Mr. Hayashi, and Miss Kageyama with my cold. I felt bad – now they have to go through my hell for a whole week. Ick.

Today I had my last two paper airplane classes, which were also the last two for the entire term. Now I won’t have any more classes until sometime in April. With my sumo trip and Korean trip coming up, I’m going to do all my travel before my official holidays start – now I have to think up something to do for the two weeks or so that I have free.

To celebrate my last two classes I made a custom paper airplane – I found the instructions on the internet and after about forty minutes of folding I came up with a pretty good design. I did some test flights before the class showed up, and it worked pretty well – to a point. It would drift along comfortably for a little, and then take a sudden corkscrew and go diving straight down into the ground. It looks really cool right before it crashes – kind of a suicide pinwheel move. I decided to use it during my introduction, and let the kids see it crash.

So I start my introduction, but the kids all know already what it’s about. The students have been telling each other what is going on here and the students are excited about the prospect of an easy lesson. I get to the part where I’m introducing the topic. I fly the generic easy plane, which makes a short straight flight about three quarters of the way across the room. The class is impressed, a couple of ohhhh’s and ahhhh’s. I grabbed my suicide plane and let it fly.

And it was amazing.

I threw it just as before, maybe a bit more gently, and it flew across the room towards the two Japanese teachers in the back, making a wide banking turn to avoid the far wall, and continuing on a slow circle about a foot above the heads of the students. The plane came back towards me, about the same height as my podium. As it got close I reached out to grab it and it kind of lifted up, and then dropped right into my open hand.

The kids loved it. I loved it – I didn’t know that was going to happen. I just pretended like I knew it all along, but I’m sure the big look of shock on my face was a dead giveaway. With that, I passed out sheets of paper and everyone started folding with a sense of purpose. It was great!

After class lots of students stuck around to talk with me – something that is a little unusual. I had a good talk – some students asked me why all Japanese people have black hair. I tried to tackle that topic, along with identifying various parts of the face in English in Japanese. It was fun – they didn’t want to leave, and we had a good connection.

My new second year ESS student dropped by with a friend to see if we were watching Tomb Raider 2 today, but I had to postpone, I didn’t want to get anyone else sick. She was OK with it – so we set up a time to get together with some of the other ESS members after I get back from Korea.

Tonight I cooked up the spiciest dish I’ve ever made in Japan – a chicken chipotle noodle soup. Delicious!

Even though I am on the road to recovery, I seem to have a flat tire and the auto club hasn’t shown up yet. I woke this morning feeling the same as yesterday, and I’m starting to wonder what it would be like to live the rest of my life this way. Today the pain ratcheted up a notch with lots of pressure from within my nose and head, and I finally gave in and went to the school nurse.

I don’t know why I don’t take more advantage of this handy service. I walk in and get mothered by a professional. Ms. Mizuta bustled me off to a comfortable chair and then asked me a whole bunch of questions. I answered as best I could in Japanese. She nods sagely and goes rummaging around for goodies. Three first year students were there watching me curiously, each with their own maladies to worry about. They grinned shyly at me waited patiently for me to leave. I got the distinct impression that I had interrupted some kind of female medical consultation.

The nurse took one look at my throat and I swear that she winced a little – that’s gotta be a bad sign. She gave me some pills and some lozenges, and wished me good luck. I got out of there just in time to catch the morning meeting with the rest of the teachers.

There is a theory among my teachers about my sickness. They seem to think it is because I take showers in the morning. Everyone in Japan bathes at night and then runs right off to work in the morning, which might explain why everyone is sleeping on the trains. I’ve tried to tell them that temperature has nothing to do with it. I read all about it on the web – so it must be true! Anyway, every day that I come in sick they ask if I took a shower in the morning. I say ‘yes’ and then they react as if I told them I eat dinner in the morning. They can’t believe that I would do something so crazy.

My classes went well today – the highlight was during my first class when I awarded the grand prize to the best paper airplane designer. I gave the student a package of origami paper. The girl looked at it like I was handing her a bomb – maybe she has origamiphobia. Lot of good planes today – I was really impressed with the effort put forth by today’s kids. The boys always sit apart from the girls, and they rarely interact. The beauty of the plane lesson is that the planes are always straying into the boys or girls areas, and so they are forced to say something to the opposite sex.

Mr. Hayashi once again sent me home early – I was gone by 2 o’clock. I made a run into Akashi to pick up some supplies for White Day coming up – I have a lot of people to give presents to! I’m going to pass those out on Friday.

My plane tickets were confirmed today, so they’ll be waiting for me at the airport. I’ll be spending three days and two nights in Seoul. I downloaded some travel guides and so I’m starting to think about what to do. I leave on Wednesday and I’m back on Friday. The day before I leave I’m attending the sumo matches in Osaka with Mel, so that should be fun. I’m going to be busy soon, so I’m hoping I can knock this cold out ASAP.

I feel like I’ve been sick for a month, even though it’s only been since Thursday. I definitely improved today, and slept a little more than normal last night. This morning I lost any ground that I had gained by doing two classes of paper airplanes. The classes went pretty well – I changed the format a little bit and threw some ringers in there to make it tough. I swear some student is going to catch one in the eyeball – I’m sure they’re going to put my head on a spike for that. Until that happens, I’m the most popular teacher on campus.

I sat in on an English teacher’s meeting – one that I normally skip. They wanted me there because we are getting ready to fail one student, and possibly kick her out of school. Her grades were abysmal, and I guess her attitude is pretty poor too. I guess they would feel guilty kicking out one of my students without me knowing about it first. I’m not sure why.

Everyone felt sorry for me and sent me home early – I must be pretty pathetic in there. Miss Kageyama insisted on coming over and cheering me up. I gave her the whole biohazard/quarantine speech but she just ignored it. I’m going to feel really bad if she gets sick. We sat around the house her until dinner time and then we went out for a big bowl of spicy ramen. Afterwards we walked the length of Carrefour to exercise a bit and also to dream up some ideas for Miss Kageyama’s new place.

Tomorrow is her last class at Takasago Minami. Around the 24th of this month she will move to Osaka and start to get settled there. She’s pretty excited about the move, but it sounds like she’s a little scared too. I think she’ll enjoy living there, and it’s only an hour to get home and see her folks – so, no problem.

Also, tomorrow my plane ticket should arrive for my trip to South Korea next week. The plan is to fly into Seoul on the 17th, and fly back home on the 19th. Do I have a hotel? No. Do I even have an idea of what Seoul is like? No. Am I prepared? Not even close. It should be a fun adventure. The ticket is dirt cheap – around $200 for a roundtrip from Osaka. Nice! The next few days are pretty quiet for me, so I’m going to use the time to figure out what to do. Apparently you can travel the length of the country on train in about four or five hours, so I should be able to see quite a bit. I’m going to eat a lot of spicy food, too!

I saw this on Dan’s site, and I thought I’d give it a go. Dan is a guy that I saw at orientation both in Tokyo and Yashiro – he was actually one of Antoine’s roommates at Yashiro. His entries are a lot more exciting than mine, and certainly less verbose. I think he lives in northern Hyogo, so our paths appear to cross here and there, but I haven’t seen him out there yet.

Anyway, the idea is to fire up your music player and write down the first twenty random songs that come up – no skipping the embarrassing ones. Here’s my list:

1. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bad Moon Rising

2. Soil – Road To Ruin

3. Nirvana – Been A Son

4. The Cult – Spanish Gold

5. Massive Attack – Hymn Of The Big Wheel

6. The Beatles – While My Guitar Gently Weeps

7. John Coltrane – Giant Steps

8. John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers – I Don’t Mind

9. Corrosion Of Conformity – Deliverance

10. Soul Coughing – 16 Horses

11. Aerosmith – Back In The Saddle

12. Grim Fandango Soundtrack – Scrimshaw

13. Blue Man Group – Utne Wire Man

14. Al Green – Let’s Get Married

15. ESPN Jock Jam – Tootsie Roll

16. Star Wars Soundtrack – The Last Battle

17. Isaac Hayes – Run Fay Run

18. Moby – Oil 1

19. Deadlights – Sweet Oblivion

20. Incubus – Idiot Box

I was surprised at some that came up. I have the whole Led Zeppelin catalog here, and nothing showed up. I was a little embarrassed about ESPN Jock Jam – where did that come from? Anyway, an interesting experiment.

Today I had my first paper airplane class… and it went well. All during the day all the teachers kept commenting that I sounded terrible, and I certainly felt it. My head is still congested and my ears feel like they need to pop. I ended up going home around 2 o’clock. I’m not sure if I took sick leave or not – probably Mr. Hayashi will only sign me up for sick leave if somebody asks. Sneaky.

The class went really well. The designs were well done and creative. One had a big flap in the front that made it look like some kind of spaceship, and it flew the farthest, but was not very accurate. We did round one were the class just threw for distance, and the best five threw for accuracy. The winning two students threw down the long, long hallway. I didn’t measure out the winner, but it went farther than either of my planes when I practiced earlier.

Everyone got a kick out of the lesson, but it ran a little short. Mr. Hayashi and Mr. Kimura used some of the extra time to tell them about their final English grades. Tomorrow I’m going to try to spend more time on explaining and less time on goofing off. My voice was cracking today, and I’m nursing my throat back to health right now. Now I know what singers feel like when they lose their voice – 50 minutes of projecting your voice across forty people can be tough on a sore throat.

Tonight I took the train out to Kobe and met up with Miss Kageyama and two of her friends. On the way to the train station it began to snow heavily but after about five minutes it briefly turned to hail, and then to rain. By the time I got off in Sannomiya it was just slightly raining – and it stopped a few minutes later. I was very eager to meet Miss Kageyama and her friends.

One friend I had met before in Osaka, and the other was in town to visit from Tokyo. At first I only spoke Japanese, which is pretty scary considering my level of Japanese. Gradually we started to switch to more English, and then I was more comfortable. Miss Kageyama’s friends were a lot of fun, and both very nice people. We talked a little about our jobs and what we do, and also about websites. I gave one of them the address to this site, so she can follow along and see what I’m up to.

I was very impressed with both of Miss Kageyama’s friends – their English was great! They put together sentences nicely and it was easy to understand what they were saying.

We had dinner at a izakaya type place near the station that Nel had pointed out to me a long time ago – he said that it was pretty good. The place didn’t disappoint, and the interior design was traditional and very nice.

Everyone else had a late lunch, so dinner was fairly small. It was nice just to sit and talk for a little bit. I tried to do my best to understand the Japanese, but it is still tough – I’ve got a lot of studying to do to get it down.

After dinner we walked across the street to the station so that Miss Kageyama’s friends could head home. I got the idea to go get pictures taken, so we ducked into a booth and did a set of pictures. They turned out pretty good – everyone got to keep a copy so it worked out well as a souvenir.

After dropping them off at the train station Miss Kageyama and I walked over to get a coffee, and then decided that it was too late to go home. We went south to the monstrous Daimaru department store and Miss Kageyama searched for bargains while I practically passed out reading the price tags. I’m glad my clothes are cheap – some of the skirts were going for $300! Wow.

Afterwards we walked back along the Motomachi, and then uphill towards Tokyu Hands. Miss Kageyama walked through the homewares section getting ideas for her apartment. We still felt like we hadn’t done enough, so we went up the street to the “Old England” – the infamous English pub with the 10% service charge. It was cold enough that we both ordered Irish coffees and split some fried potato wedges. Delicious.

We sat and talked for about an hour and then finally decided that we’d seen enough of Kobe. We walked back to the station, and grabbed the rapid train back towards Akashi. Next week is Miss Kageyama’s last at both her schools, so she’ll be saying a lot of goodbyes – it will be a bittersweet time for her.

I had a long wait at the Akashi Sanyo station, so I listened to some music I hadn’t heard in a while on my player and tried to stay warm. It seems to be cooling off again. Now I’m back and getting ready for bed. Tomorrow it’s back to work. My first paper airplane “lesson” is tomorrow!

This morning it appears that I have slightly less congestion than yesterday, and so there is a light at the end of the nasal tunnel. I’m going to spend another exciting day doing next to nothing at home, with the slight variation of going in to Sannomiya tonight to meet up with Miss Kageyama and two of her friends. We originally were going shopping, but we changed it to just dinner partly due to my cold and partly to accommodate one of Miss Kageyama’s friends, who is a bit nervous about meeting me.

I’ll report back from Kobe when I get back. Until then, plenty of OJ, throat drops and Kleenex.

As difficult as it was, I spent all day yesterday lounging around my apartment instead of enjoying my weekend somewhere. I cancelled plans with Miss Kageyama to go out for coffee. I’m testing the theory that if I rest up all day, my cold will go away and I’ll feel better. I’m hoping it works.

I wasn’t totally useless today – I studied Japanese for two hours, memorizing some verbs that have been giving me trouble for a long time. The trick is to use them in conversation as soon as possible – that helps cement them in my head.

I did a little gardening, too. Andrew (my predecessor) had left lots of gardening stuff on the back porch. I rooted through the pots and tools and then repotted a plant that he had left. It had been doing really well in the shower room. I was so encouraged with this plant that the other day I bought some little tiny ones and some little pots to put them in. Now I’ve got a family of eight here. Usually it doesn’t take long to kill them off – I’m terrible with plants.

Wanting to get plenty of rest I went to bed around nice, and I only woke up four times overnight, which was an improvement over last night. Hooray for progress!

My mission to Toys R Us in Akashi was a success. Here’s some pictures of some of the fun stuff they had there.

The last picture is of a tiny remote control car that you use your cellphone to control. They had a lot of cars to choose from – I thought it was kind of a cool idea.

Warning: The following content may contain material that is gross. If unusually large nasal activity is something you’d rather not read about, you should skip the next section.

Holy crap! It’s as if somebody left the snot generator in my nose on the highest setting and then left. I’m home from school hacking and spitting up a variety of phlegm colors, kind of a green tinted rainbow of nose grease. I’m writing this down because someday I’m going to look back at this entry and I want to remember the sheer amount of snot my nose is producing.

OK, I feel better venting about that. Today Mr. Hayashi and I graded exams during the day, while I sniffed and coughed in the corner. He felt bad and let me go home early, so I went over to the store to buy more vitamin C, some orange juice, and some noodles for dinner later on.

At home I went right to bed after dosing up on the C – I probably have 10 grams of the stuff running through my body. I woke up around four o’clock, made some kimchee ramen for dinner, and now I’m sipping some hot vitamin C drink and downloading the latest Survivor. I had a nice easy week this week, and I was hoping to go into Akashi and throw some darts. Now I’m thinking I’m going to have to stay in tonight and rest.

This weekend is looking to be very quiet. I originally was going hiking tomorrow, but if I’m sick I’ll have to skip it. Sunday I might join Miss Kageyama and two of her friends on a shopping trip in Sannomiya. It’s in the planning stages, so I’m not for sure on that yet.

Tonight I may get proactive and go out to Akashi and check out Toys R Us – I think the Japanese version might be very interesting. It seems like I was just sick, and as I recall, it ruined a perfectly good weekend. I might have to play through this one.

If I go to Toys R Us I’ll take lots of pictures and post them here – we’ll see how it goes!

Last night I broke one of my cardinal rules again – I went drinking with Melanie. My rule is not specific about Melanie, actually, more about Englishwomen in general. I had a short day at school, and I came home to do chores and study. Around six o’clock Melanie dropped by and said “Do you fancy a beer?”. I can’t think of any other way to answer that question.

We walked over to the yakitori where the master was working alone. The master was fighting a cold – he said that he picked it up overnight but he’s doing OK. He sounded terrible though. Melanie and I looked at her pictures from Sapporo and Nagano. She made a trip to see the snow monkeys that bathe in the hot springs, and the pictures turned out great. The monkeys had kind of a “I’ve seen it all” look on their faces as they soaked in the hot water surrounded by snow and tourists.

We were ordering beers – I had one before I left for the yakitori, and Melanie and I were matching each other drink for drink. We ended up pretty drunk. At about eight o’clock we called it quits and staggered home. Melanie went up to watch some DVDs she had rented, and I went inside to drink lots of water, take some aspirin and hit the hay.

At about three in the morning I woke up with a completely congested head. My nose was stuffed up, my ears were plugged – I was a mess. I finally went back to sleep after some Vitamin C and more aspirin, but when I got up in the morning I was still all stuffed up. I’m sure I didn’t catch it from the master – it was way to fast for that to happen. Bummer!