This morning I walked to the train station dressed like I am going on a polar expedition. Thick socks, underwear, long johns, and slacks on the bottom half, t-shirt, thermal long sleeve, dress shirt and jacket on top. I was also wearing gloves and scarf that my grandparents sent me for Christmas.

I’m walking to the station, and women are riding by on bicycles wearing skirts! I’m worried about whether my snot will freeze in my nose and they are pedaling by in skirts and heels. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m a warm weather guy for sure.

I recognized one of my students on the train, and she said hello in English. She sat a discreet distance away from me to make sure that she wouldn’t have to speak English with me on the train ride, and went out a different door so she wouldn’t have to walk with me to school. Despite things like this, I feel like the students enjoy talking with me at school, especially outside the classroom, and I feel like I’m making a positive impact at school. I’ve heard stories of JETs getting burned out and indifferent, and so I’m hoping that doesn’t happen to me. The lack of positive feedback can be frustrating for some people.

During the day the history teacher came by to sit down and talk with me several times. We joked around quite a bit, and we keep trying to set a time to go “bar-hopping” as he put it. He’s looking for a girlfriend, and I’ve promised to “give him some tips”. He’s a really conservative Japanese guy – I’m surprised that he talks with me at all. He’s got a very traditional view of Japanese women and their role in the family.

After school I stopped by the local grocery and picked up a 10 kg bag of rice and loads of vegetables. Tonight was a vegetarian meal (if you don’t count the piece of beef jerky I snacked on while I was waiting for the rice to cook). Tomorrow is more of the same – I’m trying to use as many of the fresh veggies as I can before they go downhill.

Melanie turned me on to a new source of Guinness in cans in Akashi – I’m going to have to make a beer run in the near future. No plans yet for the weekend, but we’ll see how it pans out. I’ll probably stay local this weekend. January and February are pretty slow for events in Japan. The weather is so cold that festivals don’t go over well. There is a big snow festival up in Sapporo, but that’s a long ways to go for me and it’s a bit last minute. I’ll wait until Spring, and then there are tons of things to do. I’ll also have spring break to explore and 15 days of paid holidays that I can burn before I get a recharge in July.

I just downloaded and watched Lost In Translation, and it’s another great movie that I highly recommend.

An added bonus if you watch this movie – you can see some parts of Japan that I’ve become very familiar with. I can’t help but wonder if I had been more affected if I had seen this before coming here. The scenes in Kyoto were especially beautiful.

Back to the grind at Takasago Minami! I had three classes today, all about my trip to Australia. The students were full of energy, but not quite ready to be back to school. It was really nice to spend time with them again – and it sure beats sitting around the office all day.

After the student inspections last week, the students are expected to come in and show that they fixed whatever was wrong – be it a haircut, fingernails, uniform problems, whatever. Lines of boys and girls were presenting themselves in the teacher’s office, being scrutinized by various teachers.

Mr. Hayashi is planning a “cheer me up” party for Mr. Kimura later this month. He wants to go to a (you guessed it) very expensive restaurant in Kobe and eat some great food. I signed up, it would be fun to help Mr. Kimura out and also eat some great food.

Miss Yamamoto was running around trying to print out my website, but she was disappointed to find that she could only print the most recent entries. Mission accomplished! I explained that every day the old stuff is pushed off the page, but she was bummed out. I offered to bring in any pictures that she was interested in, but she didn’t take me up on it. What was she looking for?

People are talking about snow in the forecast. Right now it is 4 degrees Celsius out there, so I guess there is a chance tomorrow morning. The wind is cold and blowing hard, and that makes it harder when I’m walking to and from work. The train is a nice break, with the big heaters under the seats running full blast.

One of my ESS students walked me from school to the train station on the way home tonight, and we talked in English the whole way. She is taking a college entrance exam next weekend – it’s a two day exam. She is studying to become a teacher – she wants to teach English. I was impressed how much better her English was when she was away from her friends. She’s also a big fan of Lord Of The Rings, and we’re both looking forward to seeing it when it comes out next month.

I just finished off some creamy pasta and made my lunch for tomorrow. I’m off to lay down, watch a movie and stay warm.

Today I spent the morning and afternoon cleaning, vacuuming, and doing the domestics that my co-workers like to tease me about. When I tell them what I did this weekend, they will be very amused at the thought of a man doing laundry and cleaning house. My favorite response: “Who else is going to do it?”

Around four o’clock I jumped on a train and met Miss Kageyama at the JR station in Kobe. I owed her a dinner from a while back, so I had called a Brazilian restaurant and made reservations (in Japanese, no less) and set something up. We got to the restaurant about half an hour early, and had an all-you-can-eat (called “Viking” style in Japanese) Brazilian meal. It was quite good – and I ate big.

Miss Kageyama has been fighting off some flu symptoms, and she didn’t put away that much food, but I pitched in a bit and we kept both plates clean. After dinner we walked around and explored some of the shops in the area. The highlight – a store that sold clothes for dogs. You could dress up your dog like Winnie the Pooh, or in a baseball, hockey, or football jersey. They had cowboy outfits, a king’s robe complete with a crown, just lots of strange and surreal doggie outfits. They were all small dog sized – German Shepherds were out of luck.

We walked back along the waterfront and passed an “Old Spaghetti Factory” – one of my favorite restaurants from the U.S. It was pretty cold so we ducked into a Starbucks and had some hot coffee and warmed up a bit. Finally we went back to the station and called it an early night – we both have to work tomorrow at Takasago Minami High School.

After sleeping in for a while I got my act together and headed out to the local shopping center. The living area of my apartment has a hardwood floor, and I’ve discovered that even though I wear socks while walking around, a lot of cold temperature gets transmitted through my feet. I decided to get some slippers to wear around.

Once there, it was tough finding them in my size. The men’s large didn’t quite fit. Finally I found a pair of men’s double large – called “Britishism” on the top of the slipper. They are really ugly – I feel like Thurston Howell III walking around in these things.

On my way back home I passed the construction site near my place. It turns out that this site will be a gigantic Ito Yokado shopping center. Ito Yokado is usually an upscale supermarket, but they also throw in restaurants and other types of stores. It is supposed to be finished in September of this year. There is also a new train station that they are putting in right next door. The upside of all this is that I will be literally next door to a major shopping center, saving me lots of money in train trips every time I want to go somewhere. I’m pretty excited about it – it will mean much easier access to groceries, too.

Antoine called around four o’clock and said that he was planning on meeting some friends in an Irish pub in downtown Osaka. I ended up meeting him at Nishinomiya/Kitaguchi, and from there we took the train into Umeda. Umeda is the section of Osaka where three major train lines meet, so there are a ton of stores and restaurants trying to lure you in to eat and spend.

I found a strange little alley off the main thoroughfare of people, and we walked into a trendy restaurant and sat at the bar. Antoine doesn’t know much Japanese at all, so I was left to decipher the menu. I identified a few things that seemed familiar, and so we ordered up. We had three good fried rice dishes, one with Kim Chee, a decent cheese and onion omelet, and grilled thin sliced beef tongue. Delicious. The waitress was young and very patient with us as we ordered – I’ve noticed that the older the person the less patient they are with my strange mix of Japanese and English.

A girl across the restaurant kept looking across at us, and it was making Antoine nervous. We get stared at quite a bit anyway, but this one kept coming back to look at us again. Since my back was to her, I didn’t have a problem with it. After the meal I was putting on my jacket, scarf, and manpurse, and sure enough, she was burning a hole through us. I bowed and smiled to her, and she returned the smile. We got out of there quickly, though.

Three subway stops later we were in Shinsaibashi, and incredibly concentrated restaurant and bar district. Mostly young people were walking around, and the place seemed pretty foreigner-friendly. Hawkers outside the restaurants tried to get us to come in, but we just bowed and gave them a “sumimasen” (excuse me) and walked right on by.

Antoine got lost – the last time he was at this bar he had been drunk, and he couldn’t find his way back. All the streets looked the same, and without being able to read the signs, it was pretty difficult. Antoine stopped a random guy on the street by saying “sumimasen”, but then froze up when he realized that he had no follow-up. I had to jump in and ask where the place was, but it was no surprise that they didn’t know. This district was huge.

Antoine sent a message with his keitai (cell phone) and one of his friends met up with us, and led us back. His name was also Bryan, and so it was easy to remember. We found the Irish bar finally (we weren’t even close) and met up with a group of folks there. Half of them had just arrived from an “all-you-can-eat-and-drink” dinner, so they were pretty sloshed. Some of the girls were having trouble standing up, and everyone was smoking. Ick!

One of the girls was hitting on me heavily, and noticed that I was subtly ducking the cigarette smoke. She asked me what I thought of girls that smoked, and I told her the flat out truth. She laughed, and kind of shrugged it off, but take that American tobacco companies! An American told her that it wasn’t cool… maybe it’ll stick and she’ll quit.

After three Guinness time was up and I had to head off in order to safely catch the last train. I said goodbye to everyone and backtracked my way to the subway, the JR station, the Sanyo station, and then my apartment. It was a long way to go for three Guinness, but getting there was half the fun.

It was a pretty nice hike, actually. I started off at the convenience store next to the train station, and I bought three onigiri (rice balls) to take with me on the hike. It took about 35 minutes on the train to get to Sannomiya station, and then a brisk walk up the major avenue to Shin-Kobe station.

I’ve been here quite a few times, but usually with company. This time I was able to take my time, take some decent photographs, and walk around a bit off the beaten path.

I spent about two hours hiking, mainly uphill – it was hard work. It’s been a while since my last real uphill hike, so I could feel the effects of the time off.

Everyone I met on the trail seemed to be in an unusually good mood, with lots of “konnichi wa”s and other greetings that I didn’t understand.

After a few hours hiking I went into town and searched high and low for lamp oil. To make a long story short, no luck. I’m sure it’s out there, I just can’t read the labels. I’m going to do some research on my dictionary and get a Japanese person to help me find it.

Tonight I cooked up some macaroni and cheese that my folks sent over – it was delicious! Something so simple, but I missed it a lot! I had the Japanese equivalent of fish sticks along with it, and the meal turned out great!

This morning we had the monthly “clean up around the apartment” drill. We are expected to pitch in once a month and work around the place for an hour. It’s no problem – sometimes it interferes with other plans, but considering the low rent at this place, it’s something I don’t mind dealing with.

Yasu was there so we worked together raking and gathering leaves. Some of the more macho guys were chainsawing tree branches, but it looked a little too much like real work to me. After our hour was up, Yasu invited me up to his place for tea, so we sat around and spoke in English. He had loaned me a DVD, and I found a program on the internet to allow me to play Japanese DVDs on my player.

I’m planning on heading into Kobe to do a short hike on Mt. Rokko today. It’s pretty cold out, so a hike might be just what I need. This weekend is panning out to be a quiet one, so I’m looking forward to the chance to relax a bit and plan some new adventures.

Today was an actual full day at work – from 7:30 to 5 p.m. It’s been a while. I didn’t have any classes today, but I did get to watch the semester inspection of students, which was pretty interesting. They focused on whether eyebrows were excessively shaved, hair was too spiky, uniform was correctly worn, and more.

I was surprised how intensively the students were scrutinized – it was a really big deal. Mr. Hayashi insisted that it was really just a way to keep the students out of trouble for one period, but it seemed pretty serious to me.

I spent the morning finishing the decoration of my classroom, and I’m pretty pleased with the result. There is still plenty of room for more pictures and postcards, so I’ll keep posting things as I get them. Still, it looks a lot more interesting than it was before.

I found out just recently that this weekend is a long weekend – I have three days to burn. Antoine called from Takarazuka and reported that things have been going “terribly” for him lately, and he sounded pretty stressed out. We may postpone the Takarazuka shenanigans until later. Miss Kageyama showed up today at work at Mr. Hayashi’s request, and she looked like she is feeling better. We didn’t get a chance to talk much, but I get the impression that she is starting to get pretty busy with both of her part time jobs.

Tomorrow morning I have neighborhood cleanup to attend for an hour, and then I perhaps have three days stretching out before me with no plans. It seems like events have shifted around me, and so I’m going to have to come up with something impromptu and fun to do on my own. I’ll put my thinking cap on tonight and let you know what I end up doing – could be something boring or something exciting – whatever it is has to be something cheap!

So this is the first post at the new location, and if you are reading this, thanks for following me here. Why the big change?

A long time ago I showed Mr. Komuri a picture on the website – a picture of him from the Hanshin Tigers victory party. Today he remembered that the site was there, and asked me to punch it in so he could look around. I was pretty reluctant to do it, but I couldn’t exactly say “no”. There is nothing bad in there – but I didn’t want everyone in the school to be reading what I was doing when I wasn’t at work.

As soon as he’s got the site on his computer, everybody walks by and says “What a beautiful site”, and they start crowding around. Some of the teachers are writing down the website address, and I’m desperately trying to remember if there is anything that will get me in trouble on the site. Most of the teachers cannot read English well, but still – I was sweating bullets.

After work I came home and made some changes, and to tell you the truth, it is high time that I did. Every time I update the site I have to think about what I can say and what I cannot. The solution turned out to be to have two sites – one for everyone that knows me personally, and one for everyone else.

The old site will have updates, but only three days at a time will show on the page, and there will be no archives to dig through. This site will continue to have almost a week of updates on the page, and the archives will be wide open.

Anyway, thanks for your patience! Today we had our opening ceremony, and the principal made a big speech. It was a pretty long one – one of the students passed out from exhaustion while he was speaking, and that created quite a stir. The teachers took care of it right away, and he was able to walk back with the nurse to get some TLC.

Most of my day was spent preparing lessons for next week. Mr. Hayashi, Mr. Komuri, and Mr. Kimura joined me for lunch at the little cafe next door to the school. Mr. Kimura still looks pretty depressed, and we all tried to cheer him up, but it’s going to take some time for him to feel better. We enjoyed a set lunch, full of some different things to eat. It tasted great – but Mr. Komuri wasn’t too impressed.

Tomorrow is exams for the students, to test that they have studied over the winter break. I’m going to use my free time to finalize lessons and print worksheets for the students.

Tonight I’m off to the ramen place for a gigantic bowl of hot noodles. Miss Kageyama has a fever and so we’re going to put off seeing a movie until later. She really looked sick the other day – I hope that she will feel better soon. I’m going to walk to the noodle place – it’s a decent walk but the hot noodles on the other end will be worth it. Afterwards I’m curling up in my sleeping bag on the couch to try and finishmy book.

Today all of the teachers were at school, because we had a mandatory meeting at 10 a.m. Some of the teachers I hadn’t seen in a long time, and so it was nice to catch up with everyone. Mr. Kimura came in, and he looked pretty bad. His mother passed away just before the holidays, and now his household is just him, his brother, and his father. Mr. Kimura was lamenting the fact that there are no women in the house, and I think that is a big problem for their family. Women are seen as the natural caretakers of the home, and the Kimura family males are now having to do that for themselves. I suppose that if you have never had to do it your whole life, it must come as a bit of a shock. Regardless, you could definitely tell that Mr. Kimura’s head was somewhere else.

During our meeting, we were told that we will have two new students starting here in the middle of the school year – they are identical twins from Tokyo. All the teachers got a big laugh – I guess they are a bit of a handful, and it will be interesting to see how everyone deals with them.

After the meeting, several teachers geared up to go out to lunch. As we were getting ready one of my ESS students came in and was getting yelled at by her homeroom teacher. It was weird, but I felt like I wanted to help her out. I know that she probably deserved it, and I’m sure she was expecting it, but I just felt like I should do something to show her that it was going to be OK, even if it was only a smile from across the room. In the end I didn’t do anything – when you can’t understand the situation at all, it’s probably best not to get involved.

After a big lunch I spent the next hour or so kicking around the teacher’s room. Miss Kageyama came in at Mr. Hayashi’s request to go over some homework, and she looked terrible. She said that she wasn’t feeling well, and she looked it. I chatted with her a little while, but her heart wasn’t in it. We were supposed to go out for a movie tomorrow, but I’m not sure that will happen – she may need some time to get over whatever is ailing her.

After work, I met Yasu at the yakitori, and boy can he eat. He ordered eight different dishes, and we washed them down with beers. The yakitori was dead, so the master appreciated the business. We talked about all kinds of things – Yasu is planning on taking the English STEP test this month, so he’s been practicing his English very hard. I gave him some good practice tonight, and I hope it helped him out.

Tomorrow is the big assembly for the students to welcome them to their next term, and after that they will go home. I’m stuck at school doing nothing in particular until three or four p.m. I’m planning on creating some lessons and then decorating my classroom a bit. Woo hoo!

This morning I bundled up and headed off to school, showing up a few minutes before nine a.m. There were lots of cars in the parking lot, but hardly any teachers were there. I did a few more “Happy New Years” for some teachers, much to their amusement.

I spent my two hour work day taking down Christmas decorations in my classroom and getting some other decorations ready. I have a pretty good stack of postcards from people that have sent them along, and also some pictures of mine that I printed out. The other night I drained my ink cartridges printing so much.

Around eleven o’clock the office lady came in and told Mr. Hayashi that a package had come in for me. I went in there to pick it up, and I found that it had been waylaid by the customs office in Japan. They had levied a duty on it, but it was only 2100 yen (around $17). No big deal – I was just happy to get a package!

Mr. Hayashi gave me a ride to the station, and I lugged my package home. I set up in the living room, and opened presents for a while.

I scored a lot of great gifts – everyone was very generous. I’ve got some warm clothes to wear, a new alarm clock, some great food, new DVDs to watch (the Alien Quadrilogy), lots of great stuff.

Afterwards, I went right back out to the train station and rode to Befu. I had tried to get a haircut over the holidays, but everyone was closed. This time I had to wait about 20 minutes, but then I was in the hotseat. I explained as best as I could in Japanese what I wanted, and the whole barbersop, including the customers, listened carefully to me. The barber had a few questions for me, and then some of the customers had some other questions, but the barber told them to just wait and see.

This is my second haircut in Japan, and it was just as scary as the first. There are a lot of razors and blades flying around, and it takes a long time. I was in the chair for an hour, which is a pretty long haircut. A couple of times I looked in the mirror and thought, “Whoops – that looks terrible”, but then it would improve again, so no worries.

They laid me back and gave me a shave with a straight razor, and then a girl came up and washed my hair for me, and then styled it afterwards. Finally, the barber comes back to give the final touches, and then the girl rang me up and sent me on my way.

I picked up some printer cartridges next door, walked through the supermarket to eat free samples and take some pictures in the dried fish section, and then I went home.

On the way home I picked up some beer at a local liquor shop. I usually buy beer and wine at one of the big supermarkets, but this place was on my way and I occasionally buy wine there. I got 4 big bottles of Kirin, and the guy helping me suddenly burst into English. It turns out that he lived in San Francisco for five years a long time ago. His English was excellent – just like a native speaker. All the other employees came up to listen to him speaking to me, and one of the girls kept giggling – I don’t know exactly why, but she was very entertained.

Tomorrow night I’m meeting Yasu for beers at the yakitori. He was pretty excited about my trip to Australia, and so I want to catch him up and how it was. Thursday night I may go see a movie with Miss Kageyama, and then Friday night may be pretty quiet – I have to get up early on Saturday to do the monthly apartment grounds cleaning. Saturday night I may go out to Takarazuka with Antoine – we’ll see how it goes.

I’m back from work already – just a few hours in the office saying “Happy New Year” to everyone. I had to memorize a new phrase in Japanese to pull this off, it’s a tricky one: “Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu”, which is a bit tricky to say when you are walking by someone in a hallway.

I passed out some of my omiyage from Australia – I brought some “Australian” candies. A lot of teachers had taken today off, so I just left them on their desks – a nice sweet surprise when they come back.

It was interesting to watch all the teachers come in and bow deeply to each other, wishing each other a Happy New Year. Mr. Hayashi casually said “omedetou…” to teachers from his seat – he didn’t really get up or anything.

I spent most of today just catching up with Mr. Hayashi – he was talking quite a bit. He gossiped about former JETs that had been working with him, and it was interesting to find out that I am the only unmarried JET that he’s worked with. He thinks that it’s much easier managing a single JET – there is a lot more flexibility.

After work I did a quick shopping trip at the local grocery, and then came on back. I’m going to use my extra time this afternoon to do some studying. It’s pretty cold out right now, so it’s nice just to relax on the couch and hit the books.

I got up early this morning to go to Universal Studios Japan with Miss Kageyama. I got out to Akashi at 8 a.m., and then we had prearranged to meet on one of the cars on the Special Rapid Service (shinkaisoku). It worked out pretty well – it’s a great way to meet people. That way they don’t have to get off on the platform and wait around for the next one.

It took about 50 minutes to get to USJ – a lot quicker than I expected. We bought tickets from the JR railroad company before we got there and saved lots of time. We walked towards the park and passed through the “city walk” that is just like the one in Los Angeles. There was a Bubba Gump restaurant, McDonald’s, Wolfgang Puck’s, and other American staples.

Once we got into the park, we walked along amongst thousands of thousands of people, and headed for the rides. The first one we did was Jurassic Park – a water ride that looked pretty tame. It wasn’t too bad, but we did invest in some ponchos from a vending machine in line. Even after wearing the poncho, I got a face full of water – apparently the only person on our boat that even got wet.

After getting doused we went to see the Backdraft attraction – I thought it would be a good idea to warm up a bit. We had lunch at Mel’s Drive In, and then walked aimlessly around the park for a while. After walking for a bit we went to the Back to the Future ride, and had our picture taken there. The guy taking the picture got us to smile by saying “Back… To… The… PICTURE!” Imagine that in a Japanese accent – it was really funny.

Walking around the park I saw that they had hired lots of foreigners like me to work there. I expected more foreigners to be among the guests, but I’d say that I saw maybe only one or two others that looked like patrons. Walking around with Miss Kageyama earned me a lot more stares, but I just take it as an opportunity to smile and nod at people. I think some were wondering if I was an employee – during a parade there were foreign guys walking around in sunglasses and a suit – and they were supposed to be “movie stars”. They just walked around and waved, and the crowds ate it up. Maybe I can get a job here if when my teaching gig ends.

The Back to the Future ride was a lot of fun – and all the rides I would guess have an American equivalent somewhere. The actors in the ride’s videos spoke in dubbed Japanese. I missed a little bit during the rides because I wasn’t catching the narration, but it was still fun.

We finally finished up at USJ and went back into Osaka. Miss Kageyama knows a lot more about Osaka and so she pointed us in the right direction to find a good bookstore (found a couple of good kanji and Japanese grammar books). She took me to a big shopping center, and at the top was a Ferris wheel. The mall was packed with people, but the Ferris wheel was relatively quiet, so we took a trip around that. It was a full sized Ferris wheel, so if you can imagine how high you go on a regular one, try one on top of a seven story building. Wow! I got some great pictures from up there.

Afterwards we went over to a Korean restaurant that looked appealing. It was a “take your shoes off” kind of place, and we sat down and had some really excellent spicy Korean dishes. Almost everything was much spicier than traditional Japanese fare, and I had a great meal.

We were looking at the menu, and Miss Kageyama pointed out a drink called Jima, and said that she was going to get that. I had never heard of it, so I ordered one, and when they arrived, I was surprised the see that we had ordered Zima. I was hoping to try some traditional Korean beverage, and I got a Zima. Oh well, it was actually better than I was expecting.

After dinner we walked back to the train station and headed back. We were both pretty tired from running around, but it turned out to be a lot of fun.

Antoine pointed out that we were well documented at the Osaka “meat-market” when we went. You can see some pictures from the official website here. There’s a nice shot of my arm in the bottom left pic.

Today I slept in a bit, and then jumped on the train to Kobe. I wasn’t really shopping for anything, I had just heard that it was a big shopping day, and one of the biggest days of the year for shopping in Japan. Since I was taking the train, there were no parking hassles, so I thought it would be fun to look around.

There weren’t as many people as I expected, but it was very busy. Some streets were impossible to walk through, and a couple of times I had to turn down an alley to cut across another way. Since I wasn’t really going anywhere, it was no problem.

The big temple in Kobe was hosting a New Year’s celebration, so I went in there and took some pictures. It’s a pretty nice temple, and it was packed. I’m glad I got my New Year’s prayers over with the other night.

I had lunch in a food court in an underground shopping center that I had gotten lost in just a few months ago. There was a juice bar there, and I had a banana and milk drink that was OK, but didn’t rock my world. I do miss Jamba Juice.

Finally I decided to head home. On the way back I did my good deed for the day by helping a lady carry her suitcase down the stairs at Akashi station. At first she was worried, but then she thanked me in English when we got to the bottom of the steps. I hope that makes up for knocking down the old lady in the elevator the other day.