Saturday I couldn’t really shake my sore throat – I still felt good but the throat was annoying. I was pretty bummed out because it buts a damper on my weekend. I went and did some shopping around lunchtime, and then came back here to rest. Around three o’clock Miss Kageyama came over – we originally had considered going out to dinner in Tarumi, but since I wasn’t feeling great she insisted on coming over and checking in on me.

She brought some goodies – some Valentine’s chocolate, Tomb Raider 2 on DVD (in Japanese and English!), and a new CD by one of my favorite Japanese groups, SPITZ. We settled on simple dinner of rice with chicken and egg – kind of a Japanese comfort food.

While we were eating dinner the weather started blowing pretty good – it was raining and howling outside. I walked Miss Kageyama back to the station because I hated to send her off in the weather… then I came on back and went right to bed.

This morning I woke up even more stuffed up, and so I’ve been resting today and trying to recover. Next week is a big week for me – I’m going to be teaching a lot more classes than usual. I’ll need my energy. Today I may just lay around the house and rest.

One thing I rediscovered lately is that I can listen to NHL hockey games over the internet. It’s nice to catch up with the Sharks and Sabres here in Japan of all places.

Today was Friday, the last day of the work week and also the last working day before Valentine’s Day. This week I had no Friday classes except my adult class, and even that one only had two students today. Anticipating an easy day I brought in a book to do some pleasure reading.

When teachers started arriving, there was a buzz in the air – something was different today. Then I realized what it was – Valentine’s Day. In Japan, Valentine’s Day is celebrated by the females giving the males chocolate. The guys just sit back and watch it roll in. The payback comes on March 14th, called “White Day” in Japan. Then the boys return the favor by giving white chocolate to the girls that gave them something.

I was certainly happy that it worked out this way – if it was the other way around then I wouldn’t know who to give something to and who not to. Just as this alleviates social pressure for me, it creates a lot of tough pressure for both male and female students at my school.

The girls have to work hard to make candy – I understand that they usually give out homemade candy and chocolates to the ones they REALLY like, and store bought for everyone else. The boys have to sweat about whether they are going to get anything or not. Talking to some of my adult class teachers – their sons had been really disappointed the last couple of years that they didn’t get anything. Ouch!

Miss Yamamoto, Miss Kotera, and Miss Saito all went in together and got some really expensive chocolates for the first year teachers. They put in a nice note (in Japanese) but with Miss Yamamoto’s help I could translate it OK. The chocolates look great – truffles from a confectionery store in Kobe. One of my adult class teachers got me a small box of rum filled chocolates (wow!), and then Miss Yamamoto got me a bottle of wine, too. It’s a bottle of 2000 Rabbit Ridge Zinfandel. I couldn’t believe it! She said that there is a great wine store near Sone (north of the school) and that they had lots of interesting wines there. A while back she had asked me for some wine varietals that Mr. Hayashi might like. I had given her a list like Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Zinfandel. I guess in order to thank me, she got me a bottle too. Now I have a really good California wine for my collection.

She had also picked up a bottle for Mr. Hayashi – I asked her what one she got, and she couldn’t remember the name. She went back to her desk, opened up the bag and pulled out a 1997 Benziger Reserve Merlot!

I almost fell off my chair! I explained my history of having worked there, and she just laughed and laughed. Apparently the store owner had recommended it to her. Now I have to get to that store and check it out. Miss Yamamoto said that she would drive me there sometime after work to see it. Amazing that a wine like that is even in Japan, let alone in my neck of the woods. I can’t imagine what it cost her, but Mr. Hayashi was very happy with it. Mr. Hayashi drinks three liter casks of cheap California wine all the time, so it’s a bit like pearls before swine – but he’ll enjoy this one for sure.

After school ended I had several visitors come in to say hello, and one student even came by to give me some homemade chocolate. It was a second year student that I had talked to (mainly in Japanese) a while back – she was showing me pictures of her family’s new puppy. Anyway, she remembered that and decided to bring me chocolates. Very cool. I wrote down everyone’s name and next month I’ll be on the lookout for some white chocolate to pay back everyone.

Tonight and tomorrow Melanie is having all her girlfriends over to stay, so I’m anticipating a lot of giggling, pillow fights, and Guinness consumption upstairs. As for me I’m just trying to get over this cold – I’ve taken enough Vitamin C to start to worry about toxicity levels. I’m downloading Survivor now, and hopefully I can watch that this evening and then hit the hay early.

As I was going to bed last night I felt the dryness in the back of my throat that usually means an oncoming cold. I took action immediately, taking two vitamin pills, drinking a hot brandy, and going straight to bed with the heater and electric blanket both cranked up pretty high.

This morning I woke up with a run-of-the-mill sore throat, but that’s it. The sore throat isn’t bad, today I was sucking on some cough drops during the day, and I had some spicy soup for lunch and dinner to try to burn the engine clean. Hopefully it won’t turn into a full-blown cold. The timing sucks – right before the weekend. Ugh.

I had two classes today, and we reviewed songs by Britney Spears, Sum 41, White Zombie, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones. Nobody has picked Frank Sinatra yet, but I’m hoping it will happen soon. Next week I’m going to force my students to review some stuff they’ve never heard – it will be fun.

After school Mr. Hayashi and I taught some of our students how to prepare for the STEP test coming up. We did mock interviews so that they could get a feel for it, and they were really nervous, even for the fake test. I hope that they do OK for the real thing.

After school I got a ride with Mr. Hayashi to the Kakogawa station, and from there I took the train to Uozumi to pick up a package that my folks sent. It was full of good foods and spices. There was even some Valentine candy hearts – I’m going to take them into school tomorrow and pass them around. On the way home I grabbed a big bowl of ramen with kimchee, and then I went home to rest up. I’m off to bed early tonight – I’ve got to let my white blood cells do their work.

Today is a holiday here in Japan, and I finally took an oft-postponed trip to Kyoto to do some things on my own. The last few times I’ve been with other people and this time I wanted to set my own pace and look around. The trip to Kyoto takes about an hour and a half from my doorstep to Kyoto station – just 30 minutes longer than a trip to Osaka. With all my gear in my bag, I made the trip, rocking out to my mp3 player the whole way.

I had an improvised itinerary thanks to Yasu, Miss Kageyama, and some other folks at school. I walked a big loop in eastern Kyoto, starting with a 20 minute hike to the first temple, Sanjuusangendou.

This temple is a Japanese National Treasure, and is famous because inside the huge building are 1001 statues of Buddha. These statues are human sized – and they really fill up a temple. No pictures allowed, but I managed to sneak one without the flash. It didn’t turn out great, and it does no justice to how awesome it is to walk through the smoke and incense in the temple under the eyes of all those statues. There is one gigantic statue in the middle of the temple, where everyone was praying. On either side there were 500 statues made of cypress, and painted gold. The whole site was amazing – I spent about half an hour walking back and forth past the statues.

Afterwards I walked past the Kyoto National Museum, which was featuring a special exhibit on the art of Star Wars. Unfortunately it was only for the last two movies, so I decided to skip it. I walked north from there to Kiyomizu-dera, a temple built on the side of a mountain. The hike was pretty steep to get there, and the pathway that I found went through a huge graveyard. It was an amazing sight to see all the gravestones stretching up the hill.

At the top was a huge orange gate, and beyond that the Kiyomizu-dera temple. I walked around the area and took lots of pictures. Mr. Komuri said that the balcony of the temple is famous – apparently it used to be believed that if you jumped off while making a wish and you survived… your wish would come true. It was a big drop to the ground, I can’t imagine many people surviving the drop.

At the bottom of the temple grounds there is a waterfall, and the water is supposed to have healing properties. I paid 200 yen to collect some water in a cup and drink it. It tasted great, by then I was pretty thirsty.

I made my way north from there and passed many smaller temples – the area is full of religious areas. I found myself at Yasaka-jinja, a somewhat newer temple that had some music going on. An old lady was singing a traditional Japanese tune, and boy was it terrible. Maybe I haven’t listened to enough of that kind of music, but it sounded really bad – kind of like a cat in heat. It probably sounds a lot like what Corrosion of Conformity sounds like to my students. Anyway – just relating my thoughts here. I didn’t clap at the end of the song.

Getting out of earshot became top priority, so I went behind the temple and found it surrounded by smaller temples – set up in squares somewhat like booths at a fair. Beyond the small temples I found a park that Yasu recommended, Maruyama-koen. The park was pretty bare right now – there are cherry trees everywhere, and soon they will blossom and create a tourist stampede. The park was nice to explore, and I took lots more pictures here.

Beyond the park was another huge temple, Chion-in. The gate is enormous, and once you walk through there are gigantic stairs that lead to the main temple. When I walked through the gate and saw the stairs, I realized that I had seen this before. It turns out that they had filmed part of The Last Samurai here. If you watch the trailer you can see the stairs that I’m talking about – in the trailer there are two guards flanking the steps. There’s also a castle at the top in the trailer – something that they added later with computers.

The temple was pretty active. There were priests praying and chanting, lots of incense burning, and plenty of tourists running around. I walked through the grounds and went all the way back down the huge staircase before I realized that I missed seeing a 67 ton bell that they ring every year. I turned around and went right back up the stairs and found the bell. It was enormous – apparently it takes seventeen priests to ring it.

I took a shortcut back since I had done the stairs three times, and I got to see some lonely temples on the way back. At the bottom of the hill I went due west, and entered the downtown Kyoto area. I flirted with the idea of getting a traditional lunch/dinner here, but Miss Kageyama had warned me that the prices were way too high. Instead I went back to the station, and walked through the underground shopping center. I found a good ramen place with homemade noodles, and I sat back and slurped noodles happily.

I got back on the train, and got home around six o’clock in the evening. It was an easy day trip, and I got to see lots of new things. There is still a lot more of Kyoto to see, but I’m on a temple burnout right now. It was great exercise though, and it sure beat sitting around the house on a holiday. I took 140 pictures, which is pretty good for just one day’s work.

Today I kicked off my new lesson on music, and I have to say that it worked pretty well. I’ve built in some precautions to make sure that I don’t get bored with the lesson, and there is also some inherent randomness in my system, so things stay interesting. I’m always pumped on the first day of a new lesson – hopefully this one will keep my interest through the next two weeks.

I printed up a big list of music for the students to choose from, and then they actually do a music review of three songs. They have about thirty to choose from, and I tried to do a wide selection of genres so that it isn’t just pop music, which is very popular here.

I’ve set it up so that I can choose songs for them to review or they can, depending on how I think the class is going. In the classes that were excited, I let them choose. There was a big fight in my last class on who got to request a song – one of the guys that usually sleeps through class was wide awake and making requests.

Other classes were quiet and afraid to make a request. In those cases, I picked the songs or had the Japanese teacher pick the song. At one point I had the whole class listening to Corrosion of Conformity. It’s a metal band I really like (here’s a clip of one of their songs). The class sits in stunned silence and then almost everyone writes a scathing review. One student really liked it, though. We talked about his other favorite bands after class.

After school I made the long journey to Nishinomiya Kitaguchi to get my camera back from Antoine. He had taken tons of pictures at the car show, and once I looked at the pictures he took I realized why he went. Here’s a sample:

I think I got the ratio about right – he had 28 megabytes worth of girls and cars from the Osaka car show. Antoine is actually a big car fan, and he runs a big Mazda bulletin board website. Still, most of the pictures were girls, and that shows you exactly where Antoine’s mind is these days. Not that I’m complaining, really.

I had to get the camera back because I’m planning a solo trip to Kyoto tomorrow. I’m going to hit a few shrines that I’ve heard good things about, so it should be fun. I’m staying up late tonight getting ready, and then I’ll sleep in a bit tomorrow and head out. Tomorrow is Foundation Day, a national holiday. I should have some great pictures from Kyoto posted here soon.

Sometimes the smallest little things provoke the strangest reactions here. Today I brought in some leftover pizza to eat for lunch. No problem – no big deal. Then I pulled out the carrot sticks that I cut up at home and got an amazing reaction from teachers and students alike. They couldn’t believe that I was eating a raw carrot. No spices? Not cooked? Mr. Komuri said that “I must be a horse”. Other teachers gathered around to watch me eat the carrots, and oohhed and aaaahed when I chomped one down.

Some students were asking about the bag of carrots that I had on my desk, so the teachers asked me to go out into the hallway to show them. They were laughing hysterically as I ate the carrots. I felt like charging admission and taking my show on the road.

I had my last official Valentine’s class today, and it was with my rowdy group of kids. They were a little better today, because the lesson was a little more interesting, but they were pretty much ignoring most of the lesson. Mr. Kimura was extremely frustrated, but he couldn’t really do anything about it. I went into a zen-like state – I taught the lesson, but without getting worked up about whether the kids were “getting it” or not. No frustration that way.

Mr. Hayashi was going through some kind of guilt trip today and so he said that I should leave early. I took him up on it and left about an hour early from school. As I walked by the outside of the school grounds, I passed a group of three schoolgirls from another school. The giggles started up, and then I could hear running behind me. One brave girl said “Hello”, and I turned and smiled and said “hello” back. Her friend said something in Japanese that I didn’t catch, and then she said “I love you” in English. I said “thanks” and kept walking – I guess it was a successful intercultural exchange.

One of my male students rode by and his bike and gave me a big grin – he had overheard what happened and wanted to see my reaction. About two blocks later I heard running behind me again and got worried, but it was two female students from my school this time. They asked me to pose with them for some pictures, so I posed with each of them as they snapped photos. They were very polite and it was nice to talk to them.

The attention I get is a lot of fun, and I have to admit that I enjoy it quite a bit. It is dangerously inflating my ego, but on a more positive note it’s a great opportunity to show a positive foreign face to people. This morning as I walked to school, three people on my route said good morning to me first – all my smiles, bows, and good mornings of the past have been paying off. I feel like I’m making a positive impact on my little corner of Japan, even if it’s only in the smallest of ways. It’s been a while since I’ve made an impact on something other than some company’s bottom line.

Today was a pretty relaxing Sunday. I spent some time on the phone with my folks and my brother in the morning, and then I worked on a project for the next lesson at school – it came out looking pretty good.

I got a call from somebody that spoke only Japanese. After a fair amount of slow talking I figured out that it was the STEP test headquarters, inviting me to be an interviewer during the next STEP test. The pay is good – one day’s work pays almost 30,000 yen (around $300). When I worked at Barnes & Noble it took me two weeks of sweating and lifting boxes to earn that kind of money. Here I am qualified simply because I speak flawless English. Miss Kageyama is going to take the interview test for the 1st grade – it’s the top level, and she’s been studying hard to try and pass it. She failed last time, so she really wants to get through it. She’s testing at another school, so there will be no chance of anyone from Takasago Minami cheating her through.

I spent the afternoon pleasure reading, and then around 5 o’clock Miss Kageyama dropped by for dinner. I had been hoping to have a pizza delivered at some point, and the master of the yakitori had given me a nice big ad full of different pizzas. I had translated a couple that looked good, so Miss Kageyama called it in for me, and twenty minutes later the guy was knocking on my door. Unfortunately he didn’t have change for the big bills I tried to give him, but Miss Kageyama came through with some small bills.

The pizza was pretty good. It had a lot of toppings on it, and although it was just a little bland, it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a splash of Crystal ‘extra hot’ hot sauce. Miss Kageyama even took a shot at the Crystal and she liked it. Definitely an atypical Japanese reaction. Maybe next time she’ll be ready to try the Yucateco habanero sauce.

After dinner I walked her back to the train station. She had ridden her bike to the Takasago station and then taken the train over. The difference in cost is about 400 yen – so she saved about eight bucks by riding the bike. Good call.

Antoine hasn’t been feeling great the last couple of weeks. He’s had some minor health problems, his computer croaked on him, and he’s also starting to feel a bit homesick. We cooked up the idea a week or so ago that we’d go into Osaka, find a Mexican restaurant, and eat some spicy food to remind us of home.

I met Antoine in Umeda near a car display in the Hankyu station entrance. The Hankyu station is visually the most impressive of the stations in Osaka – it’s built into part of a shopping plaza, and the architecture and layout are a lot of fun.

First thing I wanted to check out was a place called Joyopolis near the station. It is an arcade/amusement park sponsored by Sega. We walked across the street but had trouble tracking it down. We ended up asking some employees in the lobby of the shopping center we were searching. Before I could ask in Japanese one of the employees asked me in English if he could help us. I realized that he was a foreigner – maybe European. He had blue eyes – something I haven’t seen in a long time. They were so strikingly blue that Antoine and I later conjectured that he was actually a robot – some kind of weird Osaka AI experiment. He creeped us out a little.

Anyway, he told us what we wanted was on the eighth floor, so we went on up, and then walked around the amusement area. There were little booths were you paid 500-600 yen and then walked through “Virtual Reality” exhibits. We ponied up for Terminator 3, which turned out to be pretty strange.

First, the guy asked us if we spoke Japanese, and I told him that we only spoke a little. He got a worried look on his face, and then asked us to wait outside. He ducked into a little room, and popped out two minutes later in full military gear and a gun. It was a little shocking, but he had us stand up straight, salute, and promise that we wouldn’t hurt anyone. His English was broken but quite good.

We walked in, and there were a number of cheesy things in there – a broken mannequin on the floor that was supposed to be the last people that went through, and a couple of robots that shot “bullets” of compressed air across the dark room. The best part by far was the cheesy acting by our guide – I’m sure it was more compelling in Japanese, but he did his best in English, and we were laughing pretty hard. At one point he tried to say “fuck” in English, but pronounced it wrong, and so with all the “bullets” flying by and the robots bouncing around we taught him how to pronounce it correctly.

At the end some poor employee dressed up in an alien suit chased us down the hallway towards the exit. Very cheesy, but I think I got my money’s worth of entertainment. We decided to forgo some of the other rides – although some names were pretty good. There was a bingo parlor that looked interesting, and a giant room full of print club picture machines. You could even rent strange costumes to wear while the pictures are taken. I tried to get Antoine to rent the French maid outfit, but he wasn’t going for it.

We took the subway from their to Shinsaibashi, and our first landmark – Bar, Isn’t It? Above that bar was one that was open, so we went in there to have a couple of beers and get our bearings. After chatting for an hour or so and drinking Coronas, we headed over to the Mexican restaurant, and found it closed. Ouch.

We did a quick check for another place, and found one called Ola Tacos that sounded promising. After a ten minute walk we found it – and it was closed too. It seemed like a bad time to close – Saturday night was jumping.

We were pretty bummed, so we ended up going to an Italian place for pizza. We ordered up two pizzas, and enjoyed an atmosphere strangely reminiscent of Bucca Di Beppos back in California. The pizza was a little plain, but tasty enough.

We left the place still hungry though, so we went back to Umeda station and found a little place there to eat yakisoba. I ordered a beer, but Antoine was trying to rehydrate and he ordered water. The older lady that was helping us gave him a look of disapproval, and then gave him a tiny glass of water from a big bottle that they had there. He drank it in one gulp, waited about five minutes and asked for some more. They glared menacingly at him, and said that they only had tea, trying to sell him a can of tea. The bottle that they poured from was still right there, but they were getting greedy on us. Antoine insisted on water, and so they poured him some from the tap – and set it down in front of him. We decided to pay up and leave – we weren’t feeling very welcome there so we split.

Antoine is going to a car show on Sunday, but he was bummed because he still doesn’t have a camera. It’s a big car show, one that he’s really excited about, so I loaned him my camera for the show. He was really happy, and I think that seemed to cheer him up the most of the whole night. I’m going to have to come up with another camera for my trip to Kyoto on Wednesday, but Kyoto will be there all the time, and the car show only comes once a year.

We split up from there and on the way home I bumped into Chris Yapp, an ALT that I know – he lives in the next town over. He was coming back from an Iron Maiden concert in Osaka, and so he told me all about that. He’s from Hawaii originally, so he’s having a tough time dealing with the cold weather around here. Chris said that he’s sticking around for year two, so we might have a chance to see a show together in the future sometime.

With no classes today except my very casual teacher’s class, I was pretty bored. I studied a bit, but people kept coming by wanting to talk with me, so I quickly gave up on that idea. Usually when it’s busy in the teacher’s office I go upstairs and lock myself in my classroom, but today they were waxing the floors, so I had nowhere to hide.

At 4 o’clock the second year students got back from the airport and their trip to Hokkaido. They all looked exhausted, and the teachers even more so. I think that they will be getting some good solid rest this weekend. Mr. Urakami and I jumped into his car at around 5, and by six o’clock we were sitting in his favorite restaurant in Himeji. I was in for a surprise.

A while back Mr. Urakami had asked me what my favorite foods were, and apparently he was taking notes. He passed this information on to the chef, who is a close friend of his. We were introduced as we went inside, and she and her staff were working hard on all kinds of things in the tiny kitchen.

Everyone knew Mr. Urakami – he was like Norm from Cheers. We sat down and then the drinks and food started coming. I didn’t have to order, because the entire four course meal was based around my favorite foods.

I’ve never had the priviledge of having a chef cook a meal based on what I like, and it’s a pretty amazing experience. First, they brought out shrimp, prepared three ways. There was a shrimp salad, grilled and butterflied shrimp, and fried shrimp on a big plate with spicy sauce to dip into. We each had our own plate so no worries about who was getting what.

Next they brought out tacos – two tacos for each of us with grilled chicken in one and spicy beef strips in the other. There was a very spicy homemade salsa to put on top, and the tortillas were homemade and had a nice herbal flavor to them – excellent. The fresh salsa was too spicy for Mr. Urakami, so I ate his too. Salsa is impossible to find in Japan, and when you do it’s the stuff in the jar that is just so-so. This was a special treat.

By now I had figured out that he had passed on the information, and I was desperately trying to remember what I told him. The chef had worked hard on this meal and things that just popped out of my mouth were coming to life on my dinner plate. What a surreal experience.

The next dish was homemade raviolis stuffed with shrimp, cheese and basil. There was a rich red sauce over the top with lots of garlic and herbs, and little bites of sausage mixed in. This was really good – the homemade raviolis tasted great and I was in heaven.

After the raviolis they brought out ribs. When I had told Mr. Urakami how much I liked pork ribs, he couldn’t believe that anyone would eat pork ribs. The Japanese don’t really like to eat the ribs, and so apparently the chef had gone to a butcher and requested a special cut. We were served two big spareribs glazed in a sweet orange ginger sauce with just enough spiciness to make your mouth burn just a bit. There was also a homemade sausage served with them and fresh baked bread with a cheese filling inside. On the side was a big salad covered with a vinagrette sauce. Mr. Urakami did a good job on the ribs. I was happily picking them up with my hands and eating them – something that is definitely frowned upon in Japan. Eating with your hands is considered low class here, but I had explained at the outset that it was the best way to get at the meat, and it makes you feel like a barbarian. Mr. Urakami hesitated a bit and then dug in.

On the side they served four fresh sushi rolls – we had talked about food when I was craving sushi, and so that was on my list of favorite foods as well. They made sure that it was included on the menu.

Altogether it was a stunning meal, one made more special by the fact that it was created just for me. We were served draft Guinness while we ate, and then we switched to some other imported beers that they had in the bottle. I was overwhelmed and stuffed with food at the end of the meal.

Mr. Urakami organized it to say thanks for taking the time to talk to him during school, and also to show me that Mr. Hayashi isn’t the only one that knows a good restaurant or two. He wouldn’t let me help with the bill, and I have no idea what something like that must have cost.

We had a great time, and on our way out we said thanks to the master, and then stopped by the kitchen and talked with the chef. She had enjoyed undertaking the challenge of such a wide variety of foods, and the ribs were her first try. I told her how great everything was, and she was genuinely pleased.

Afterwards we went to a bar that Mr. Urakami likes. It was a strange place called, get this, The Spooky Angel. The place was dead with just one lady at the end of the bar. We had a couple of drinks there, and then got out of there. The place was OK, but not my kind of place. Somehow it reminded me of a Hollywood bar on Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Urakami was a bit the worse for wear, so he called a service to help him get home. They send two people and a car. One guy drives you home and the other guy drives your car home. The service only costs 1000 yen (around $10). What a great idea! I got on the train and took a short ride home. I’m back now and it’s still early. I’m off to bed soon. Tomorrow I’m hoping to go into Osaka and cheer up Antoine a bit. We’re on the lookout for a Mexican restaurant in the area.

Earlier this evening I wrote a nice wrap up of today, but somehow it got lost when I tried to post. Bummer. This is the second attempt – I hope it works!

Snow fell twice today at school, once in the morning and once just before lunchtime. The morning snow was lots of small flakes sprinkling everywhere, and the lunchtime snow was big gigantic flakes. The big ones fell slowly, and there was something beautiful about watching them come down on the school on an otherwise sunny day. I’ve never been much of a snow guy, but as long as it doesn’t end up in piles all over the place, it’s not bad.

The wind was blowing big time today after lunch, and at one point it blew right through one of the exhaust ports of the teacher’s room heaters. The result was a huge bang, causing the lid and protection screen to go flying in different directions. Mr. Hayashi joked that I didn’t have to go to Iraq to get bombed – it’s just as dangerous here in Japan.

I only had two classes today – the last two Valentine’s Day classes. Tomorrow I only have my adult class, so I will spend most of the day putting the finishing touches on my next two lessons. After school I’m going to Himeji to have dinner with Mr. Urikami.

For dinner tonight I went over to the yakitori. I haven’t been in a long time, and it was good to catch up with the master. We talked about all kinds of things, including next weekend – he’s going to be practicing softball. He invited me to come – I think he wants me to try out for the team, but I said that I’d see what happens (a polite way of saying no, thanks). I put myself on the mercy of the court and had the master order two items for me. It turned out that I ate beef heart (心), and then I had an interesting one – chicken wrapped in basil leaves with a sour plum sauce smothered on top. It was actually pretty good, and since the master had a 50% discount on beer I got out of there cheaply.

One thing he commented on was that my Japanese seemed to be improving. He asked if I had been studying more lately, and I told him that I had. After putting in quite a few hours, it felt good to find someone that noticed the difference. Mostly I speak English with people at school, so they wouldn’t really notice. Woo-hoo!

I’m munching on some microwave popcorn – I think I figured out how to cook it correctly with my microwave. The highest setting is 500 watts, so it takes a little while and some kernels don’t pop. Still, the bag is almost three quarters full, and it isn’t burnt. Nice!

After unsuccessfully looking for sushi yesterday I tried another store today and found three long sushi rolls for only 100 yen each. I ate them tonight for dinner with some homemade miso soup, and it was good!

I confirmed today that Melanie, my upstairs neighbor from England, is not going to return next year on JET. She is going to go home for a while and then try to do some traveling in Africa. I think she was in a tough situation here on JET, and that contributed to her decision to leave. She was working at two schools, so she had to split time between the two and get to know two staffrooms full of teachers. Her primary school has three ALTs working – and they all work together in the classroom. There is no lesson planning for her, and she gets about 15 minutes of teaching time during any given class. That means that most of her day is spent at her desk sitting around waiting for the day to end. Also, I think that things can sometimes be tough for women in Japan – it is a very male centered society, and a strong female personality can come as an unwelcome surprise to some Japanese.

As for other JETs that I’ve gotten to know here, Antoine is staying for another year at least, Carrie is signed on for another year, and Nell has signed up, too.

Anyway, I’m going to meet up with Mel in the next couple of weeks at the yakitori and talk about it with her. This means that I’ll have a new neighbor upstairs next year – I hope they are nice!

The history teacher Mr. Urikami and I have been chatting quite a bit lately, and today we went out for lunch. We had some curry at a local restaurant. I asked for extra spicy but it still was very mild. It was also fairly expensive – for the same price you can get all-you-can-eat authentic Indian curry. I was a little disappointed, but it was fun to try a new place.

On Friday he invited me to join him for dinner at one of his favorite restaurants in Himeji. The chef is an ex-girlfriend of his, and I guess they are still on good terms. When Mr. Hayashi found out that we were going out without him, I think he got a little jealous. He jokingly called our dinner a “sausage party” and tried to get us to invite a female teacher or two along with us. We’re just there for a little dinner and some Guinness, so we’ll pass on the teachers. Then I had to explain what a sausage party was to Mr. Urikami, who got a big laugh out of the definition.

The teacher’s room is pretty quiet these days with the second year teachers gone to Hokkaido on the school trip. All of the second year students are on the trip, the third years are on mandatory vacation, and so it’s just the first year teachers and students running around.

Today was the first day of spring (or so I’m told), and so there are some Japanese customs that were brought to my attention. The first one I found out about when the cafeteria staff gave me a small packet of beans with my lunch. They were packaged like snacks, with the head of a devil on the wrapper.

I took them in to Mr. Hayashi, and he says that the beans are considered good luck to eat. Apparently tradition is to throw the beans (inside the kitchen, I guess). After you throw the beans you collect them and eat them. You are also supposed to eat one bean for each year that you’ve been around. Mr. Hayashi and Mr. Komuri both joked that there weren’t enough beans around to do that one.

Another tradition that Mr. Hayashi mentioned was that you are supposed to eat a sushi roll while facing south. I thought that was an interesting one – so I said that I would stop in for sushi on the way home. I guess the tradition is popular, because two supermarkets I went to were cleaned out of sushi. They had stuff to make sushi, but I bought some Chinese rolls and ate them facing north in my apartment.

After one of my classes today I was reading the journals from the students. One mentioned that he broke his foot over vacation. Later on he mentioned that he went to visit his aunt in the hospital. I marked on his paper that it sounded like he had a rough winter vacation. Two papers later, another student wrote that he broke his foot, and visited his aunt in the hospital. The next paper also said the same thing. Not the smartest thing to write about if you are going to cheat.

I consulted with Mr. Kimura, and he said to give them all zeroes, and so I wrote a note saying that it isn’t nice to copy, and it’s definitely not good to loan out your paper for others to copy. I put the notebooks out to be delivered back to the homerooms, and within an hour I had a pissed off student complaining in Japanese to Mr. Kimura. Apparently he was the one who wrote the story originally, and so he didn’t understand why he got a zero. Mr. Kimura explained the whole situation to him, and said that if he wrote about something else he could turn it in again tomorrow. The other two guys had to eat the zero.

I was kind of surprised that the kid had the nerve to come down and complain about getting a zero. He’s admitting that he lent out his paper for his buddies – and in my book that’s just as bad as copying initially.

Tonight I cooked up kim-chee ramen, and did some audio editing and burning for my next lesson on music. The lesson will either be the coolest lesson I’ve done so far or a spectacular flop. I’m trying to inject some variety into the class, and get the students thinking up spontaneous things in English.

Tomorrow is just two lessons, so I should have plenty of time to dream up lessons for the second year students.

Monday morning, and according to my schedule I have one class for the day – and it’s during sixth period. That means that I had all day to do whatever I wanted. I spent the time planning my next first year lesson. The lesson will be on music, and I’m trying to think up ways to make each class different while still teaching some English in there.

The history made frequent trips across the room to talk to me. Over the last few weeks he’s said that he wants to spend 15 minutes a day talking with me. Today we probably talked about two hours. I usually enjoy our talks, but his timing wasn’t that great today. I hate to be impolite – so I’m going to have to figure out a way to get our talk time down a bit. He enjoys saying something in rapid fire Japanese, and then asking me if I understood. Usually he uses Kansai-ben (the local dialect) or he uses a Chinese expression that has been adapted to be used in Japan. Either way, I’m usually lost.

I’m experimenting with a new diet – instead of ordering salty or fried food in the cafeteria, I’m just ordering rice and soup. The soup is a clear broth with a little salt, and the rice is very filling. It only costs a dollar for a meal, as opposed to the three dollars I would normally spend on something else. It’s also a lot healthier for me. I’m going to try it for three weeks and see how it goes. The dinner diet remains the same. This morning I weighed myself and I weigh 187 pounds. On October 20th I weighed 192 pounds, so I haven’t really changed in three months. The wildcards here are all the alcohol I consume and all the exercises I do every night. I do a lot less hiking than normal, but I am walking all over the place every day. I guess the important thing is that I’m paying attention – we’ll see what happens.

This morning I met up with Miss Kageyama on the train platform in Akashi, and we took the super express train into Osaka. There were a couple of things I wanted to see in Osaka. The first was the aquarium – it has a great reputation in Japan. I also heard that the smallest mountain in Japan is near there, so I was eager to climb it.

The aquarium wasn’t too hard to get to. We made two subway switches and then we were there. Next to the aquarium was a big shopping center, and in front of the shopping center was a huge ferris wheel.

In front of the aquarium there was a small area where some emperor penguins were enjoying the great outdoors. There were people milling about, and it would be easy to stick your hand in there and get bit. I was surprised that they were so close to the public. There were also a couple of minders there to politely ask folks to stand back if they were getting too close.

The aquarium layout was really interesting. You start at the top of the large building, and then work your way down into the depths. They had some huge tanks, some of the biggest I’ve seen. Even the monstrous whale shark had lots of room to roam. As you proceeded deeper in the aquarium, you are able to see animals swimming deeper and deeper. At the bottom are jellyfish, giant crabs, and it is pretty dark. We took about an hour to go through the aquarium, and it was really interesting. I took lots of pictures, but most didn’t come out very well – just blurs of fish whizzing by at full speed.

We left the aquarium and went over to ride the ferris wheel. The sign out front said it was the “world’s largest giant wheel”. I don’t know if that’s true – I went on the London Eye a couple of years ago and that was pretty big. The ride took 15 minutes to go all the way around, and the views from the top were fantastic.

Afterwards we went into the nearby shopping center to get some snacks. We tried some Chinese meat rolls (called “nikuman”) and then ate a few more selections from the food court styled places. We asked around afterwards, and found the direction we needed to go to climb Japan’s smallest mountain. It was only a fifteen minute walk north.

The mountain is called Tenpozan (天保山), and when we got there we saw why it is the smallest. Miss Kageyama took a picture of me standing on the summit. It wasn’t much of a climb.

After our “strenuous” hike, we went back to Osaka to see meet a friend of Miss Kageyama’s – she works at the Umeda Sky Building – one of the more interesting architectural wonders of downtown Osaka. I had always wanted to go check it out, and it turns out that Miss Kageyama had an insider track to get in.

We met her friend in the lobby, and then she got us a discount to go to the top observation levels. The view was the best yet of Osaka. We were even above the ferris wheel from our previous trip.

By that time we had hiked all over Osaka. We were both tired, so we decided to skip dinner in Osaka, and I invited Miss Kageyama over to my place for dinner. Surprisingly, she accepted, and so we had to sneak her into my apartment. I stopped at a grocery store to buy some supplies, and then we walked the long way to the apartment complex. We checked to see that everything was clear, and then we walked up and in.

Miss Kageyama helped me cook up some spaghetti with a white mushroom sauce, and then we ate a pretty simple dinner and talked about our day. After dinner I walked her back to the station – by then it was dark so I think we escaped undiscovered.

I’m glad I posted that bit during the day, because Friday turned out to be full of adventures. First – the tug-of-war turned out to be a lot of fun. I ran out there for sixth period, and all the students were very competitive. The homeroom teachers were rooting on their classes as they tried to pull themselves to victory.

I was a judge for one of the areas, and it was a lot of fun. What a rush to be able to blow a whistle and have all the students start pulling like mad to try to win the event. One homeroom teacher kept second-guessing me – he was convinced that since I didn’t speak Japanese I didn’t know the rules. I just let him be mad – I knew I was doing it right so that was what mattered.

The winning team was awarded cream puffs – the second place team got a cup of pudding, and everyone else got a polite thank-you. After the winners and losers were decided, all the teams lined up to watch the worst student team challenge the teachers. I was put at the anchor position, which is in the very back. I was pleased to see that I had a pretty big fan club – lots of students lined up near me and said things to encourage me, like “Fight!” and “Win!”. I wrapped the rope around my arm and dug in.

After giving ground a little bit, the teachers came on – and there was a time there when I stopped trying to not lose and tried to win. And that’s what we did. We pulled the students to the ground, and they lay there heaving while the teachers walked away. I went over and gave them some encouragement, and that seemed to raise their spirits a bit. After all, they lost to everyone, even the teachers!

After class Mr. Komuri mentioned that he was hoping to head over to Donkey after work, and since I had no plans I said that I would join him. He has been trying out darts, but the guys at Donkey have made it pretty complicated for him. I felt that it was necessary to intervene a bit and make sure that he has a good time while he’s playing.

We met up at Donkey around 7 p.m. and had a couple of Guinness to build some courage. Right away when I walked in a couple of ladies in there were giving me the eye. When I told Mr. Komuri, he got all excited and tried to get me to ask one of them out. Uncomfortable situation.

There was a regular dart player there, who was quite good. Everyone was watching me when I stepped up for my first throw, and unfortunately for me I hit a bulls-eye and two very close ones right outside the bull-ring. After that, everyone was expecting a lot when I stepped up, which made it a high pressure game.

I did pretty well, but lost the first game to the regular. He taught us a new game, and so I beat him at that pretty handily. Mr. Komuri was having a great time – I gave him a few tips, and his game improved significantly while we were there. It was fun to see him get excited as he improved.

The regular tried to get me to join his dart team. The master of the place came out to watch me and he tried to get me signed up. Apparently if you are on the team you drink for free while you are playing, which is a heck of a benefit, but I politely declined. The last thing I need is free booze – I drink enough as it is.

Despite eating some snacks while we played Mr. Komuri asked me if I wanted to go out and eat some sushi. He promised me a traditional Japanese sushi experience, so we packed up and settled up our bill with the proprietor of “Donkey”. As I left the girls were leering at me in a big way, and I think our timing was good – they might have gotten physical if we stuck around any longer.

We walked back towards the station, and then made a right turn into the basement of a large shopping complex. One floor down, and around a corner was a tiny shop. As we walked into the shop three people were just leaving, and it was just as well – there were only five or six seats in the place.

The master was a really nice old guy that knew enough English to encourage me to eat more and give me directions. His wife was there too. She didn’t do much work, just kind of keeping an eye on things. The place was tiny – the whole restaurant was about the size of my bedroom, which is pretty small – believe me.

Everyone was surprised to see me eat sushi. I am used to the “Wow, he’s good at using chopsticks” comments – I get them everywhere I go. Mr. Komuri was astonished that I liked sushi, and that I ate what I did. Andy, my predecessor, was here for three years, and somehow he got through the experience without eating fish and rice. I guess he was a bit of a picky eater. I was glad to show them that I could eat raw fish with the best of them.

I put myself in Mr. Komuri’s hands – and he handled the ordering. We had sashimi first – raw yellowtail, squid, and tuna. Afterwards, we had some sushi on rice, and then Mr. Komuri ordered four pieces of fugu. Fugu is blowfish – one of the things I had heard about fugu before I arrived is that there are poisonous parts, and only licensed sushi chefs can serve it. I don’t know if our guy was licensed – the place didn’t seem like the kind of place that would be licensed.

I had always pictured going to some expensive restaurant in Osaka and ordering Fugu. I expected to pay big money for it, and that it would be something akin to culinary Russian roulette.

As it turned out I was served two big slices over rice in a smoky sushi bar underground in the heart of Akashi. Not anything like what I pictured. They served up the fugu, and I took a nervous sip of beer. The master, his wife, and Mr. Komuri waited eagerly for me to eat some.

And just like that, I popped it in my mouth.

My first impression – I’m in trouble. The taste was delicious. The flesh was a little tough but delicious and the bit of sauce he had put on top was spicy with little onions in there – it was excellent! I’m in trouble all right – it was the best sushi I’ve ever had. I would like the most expensive one.

Along with the fugu they served a glass of hot sake with a somewhat crispy fried fugu fin floating on top. Mr. Komuri poured me a glass, and it was pretty good. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Afterwards we cleared our palate with another beer and some octopus, and then we got up to go. Mr. Komuri said something in Japanese to the chef to the effect of “bill me for this later” and so I didn’t even get to pay for the experience. I tried to pay, but he wouldn’t let me. Next time, I said.

I caught the train with a half hour to spare, and now I’m home getting ready to go to bed. Tomorrow I’m off to Osaka with Miss Kageyama to see the aquarium there. It should be fun!