This weekend was a pretty active one. I was on my own on Saturday, so I spent most of the day doing odds and ends and some problem solving around the house. In the evening I went over to Anaba, a cool little drinking hole that I only visit about once a year. The husband and wife owners are very friendly, and the average age of the customers is probably around 60 years old. Still, it is good practice for my Japanese skills, and it is fun to try things that I normally don’t eat or drink.

Sunday we got up surprisingly early, and decided to take a long walk to Akashi. We ended up doing the walk in about three hours, and then we did some shopping for dinner and went home. After a couple of bottles (!) of sparkling wine we decided to forgo a nap and do some more walking, so we walked all the way up the hill to Nafco and Izumiya, about two hours round trip.

We had a nice dinner of turkey with grilled veggies, and then watched a movie before bed. It was a pretty good day off.

Believe it or not, Kuniko is going hiking with her students today on a special field trip, so hopefully her legs aren’t too sore to climb a mountain. My legs are feeling a little ache from yesterday, and all I’m doing is sitting in an office chair.

The plan tonight after work is to make a Costco run. We’re having a party next Saturday, and there are some essential party items that we’d like to pick up. I guess the good news is that I won’t have to walk home from work – Kuniko will swing by to pick me at five pm. I’ll take the day to rest my legs…

I was swamped today at work – luckily it is a Friday! I’m looking forward to enjoying a cocktail and maybe firing up the BBQ tonight.

Kuniko is out and about all day tomorrow, so I’ll have to clean house and maybe catch up on Survivor. It should be a nice relaxing weekend.

This week for some reason we’ve been eating pretty healthy. If I had to guess the reason it would be that Kuniko has had a chance to cook a couple of meals this week, and also the cold weather has us making soup or nabe, which are pretty healthy dishes from the get-go.

So I’m not complaining, and I feel pretty good every morning when I crawl out of bed and trudge off to work in the darkness.

Speaking of work, yesterday I had a visit from one of the guys in the HR department. Around this time every year the company selects a small group of young employees and sends them on a six month training program to the USA. There are two Kawasaki production plants there, one in Nebraska and one in New York. As part of the deal, they get some special English training from yours truly before they go. For these lessons they open up the budget purse strings and I end up working some extra time and making some extra money.

I don’t mind the extra work, especially since the students are pretty motivated knowing they’ll be living and breathing English before long. What this does mean is that I’ll be getting home about an hour later every Tuesday and Thursday for the next few months. But during this part of the year I don’t mind trading free time for money.

We’ve got no special plans for this weekend. This Saturday Kuniko has a party after work, which means I’ll be on my own for most of the day. Maybe it is time to break the healthy streak and have a steak or something.

Last night we booked the flights for our summer trip to Europe. We’ll be flying into London Heathrow on August 2nd, and then flying out of Paris on August 15th. What we do in between those two flights remains to be seen.

Originally we had planned to stay in Asia this year, mainly because Kuniko has a lot going on with her students graduating and applying for universities. However, the word was that my parents may end up in Europe for a wedding in France this summer, and on top of that we found really cheap airline tickets, so we decided to go for it.

Now the next step is figuring out what we’ll be doing between those two flights. London, Stonehenge, the Eurostar chunnel train, and after that we’ll see. Something to look forward to this summer…

Yesterday afternoon I had a good meeting with my immediate supervisor about our plans for the next term, and the rest of 2014. I got some valuable information about what I can expect, and that will help me plan this year.

One thing that is decided is that we are a go for our trip this summer to Europe. In the next couple of days we’ll buy some plane tickets that I’ve had my eyes on. Once the tickets are purchased, then the fun of planning what we’ll do begins.

These days the weather keeps threatening to warm up, but unfortunately it hasn’t made any big changes yet. It is hard to believe that we’ll have cherry blossoms in about a month. It seems like it has been dark and cold for a long time.

Next month should be interesting. I’ll have fewer classes as things wind down for my group lessons, Kuniko will have a little more free time on the weekends, and we’ve got a couple of events planned. We’ll be hosting the Yamaji and the Fukumi families for a dinner, and we’ll have the youngest attendee ever. Also we’ll have the chance to visit Kuniko’s folks and help start growing shiitake mushrooms at the farm. Can’t wait!

I had quite an eventful Saturday. It all started off with a walk to the store to do a little shopping. On the way to the store I suddenly felt that itchy feeling on my skin which is a sign of an allergic reaction. Oh no!

Now and then I have gotten these big hive breakouts that come out of nowhere and last for about an hour. Occasionally they have been really bad – in Hawaii I had a particularly bad reaction where I almost fainted.

Saturday’s reaction was just like that one. I got home from the store and thought it might be a good idea to go see a doctor, and since there is an allergy specialist about 10 minutes from our house I turned right back around from our place and went to see the doc.

While waiting at the intersection for the light to change I felt the kind of rushing in your head and loss of hearing that means that you are on your way out, and then the next thing I knew I was kind of kneeling on the ground right next the street – I was lucky I didn’t pass out into traffic. There was another person waiting to cross, and I noticed kind of peripherally that she was definitely looking the other way – she probably figured I was drunk at 11 am in the morning.

I was able to get up though, and walk the rest of the way without losing consciousness. In the doctor’s office I had to wait a while to be seen, and the staff were clearly overwhelmed with all the patients. Finally I got in and talked with the doctor, who told me that I had an allergic reaction (duh), and he prescribed some medicine to combat the hives and shortness of breath. After that I picked up my medicine and went home without incident.

This kind of reaction is a little bit strange – I have had two reactions this month, but the previous reaction was about a year ago, and the one before that was another year ago. Anyway, I’m tracking the food I eat to see if I can find a common point. We’ll see what happens, but next time I feel a reaction coming on I’ll stay home and not attempt another run to the doctor’s office.

Back at home I took the medicine, but the reaction was already fading away. The medicine came with a warning about drowsiness, and it was spot on. After taking the pills I fell asleep within a few minutes, and didn’t wake up for about an hour. I was kind of a zombie the rest of the day, and so I decided to stop taking the meds. The reaction was gone anyway, so I’ll save the meds for another time.

Anyway, it was a wild Saturday, but it ended well – Kuniko came home and we ordered pizza in, drank some beers, and watched a movie. The next day we could sleep in until 10 am. Nice!

Sunday we spent most of the day at home with only a short shopping trip and a long walk to get us out of the house. We watched a Russell Crowe movie while drinking some champagne that Kuniko bought me for Valentine’s day (probably the best champagne I’ve ever tasted) and just kind of snacked all day and rested.

Now I’m back at work, and getting ready for the week. I have a meeting about my time off for 2014, and I hope that goes smoothly. It’s getting to be time to buy some plane tickets!

Yesterday during a meeting with my boss (who I really only talk with about once every two months) I found out some interesting news.

Apparently the guy that helped me land this job several years ago is being transferred from this company to be the president of another Kawasaki related company. The catch is that this new company is all the way out in Hokkaido. I was sorry to hear that he was leaving, but it sounds like a good career opportunity for him. Except for the cold weather.

So now I’ve got to wonder how this might affect me. At least when I first started working at this company directly I think I owed a lot of my presence to his support and belief in the idea of a full time English teacher on staff. He is a pretty high level employee, and so his influence was what landed me the job in the first place. What remains to be seen is whether I will be able to stick around after his influence is gone.

Anyway, I’m under contract through the end of 2014, and so December will be the month of reckoning. Have I done well enough here to stand on my own, or has somebody looking to cut the budget been waiting patiently in the wings to give me the boot? Maybe it is time to pad the emergency fund, just in case…

Tonight after work Kuniko and I will go to our favorite French restaurant in Kobe for dinner. Lately they have gotten some great reviews, and I was a little worried that it would be tough to get reservations, but no problem. We’ll celebrate Kuniko’s birthday in style tonight, and I’m hoping they have a bottle of wine from the Langueduoc region that we can try out.

There are a lot of computers in our place. We’ve got a big laptop we use as our main computer, the jukebox laptop we only use for music, a tiny computer in a box that we use for streaming movies and displaying them on our TV, and finally a big black file server up in the bedroom that holds all the music, movies, pictures, and whatever else we have that is digital.

Recently we replaced the jukebox computer because the old one was choking on very simple tasks, and today we are receiving a replacement laptop for our main living room computer. All this new hardware means a bunch of time setting things up, and every computer I buy has Windows 8, which is something I haven’t completely gotten used to.

Still, the networking performance of Windows 8 is much better than Windows Vista (which we have on our old computer). Hopefully we’ll get used to the new OS soon and be able to use it smoothly.

Last night a big shipment of goodies showed up from my parents – some Valentine’s stuff, some stuff for me, and some presents for Kuniko’s birthday. It is always nice to get a care package from home. Once again the package was inspected by the Japanese Postal Service – we must be on a blacklist somewhere. But everything seems to have arrived without any problems, so no worries. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Today is Kuniko’s 35th birthday, and fittingly she is spending it working until late tonight. We drove into work today because it will be much quicker and easier (and warmer) for her to drive back tonight. She expects to get home between nine and ten.

No mercy for the birthday girl.

I’ll be home waiting for her with a pot of nabe – we’re still trying to kill vegetables. The last few nights have been chock full of fresh foods, and I think we won’t see an empty fridge until next week sometime.

Good news on the health front – all my exercise bike time is beginning to pay off. I’m continuing to lose weight steadily, and it has been a great chance to catch up on TV shows while I ride. This is a habit I intend on keeping for a long time.

It is getting to be the time when we have to declare our holidays for the next year. Unfortunately, my schedule is pretty set, and I have to choose my days off 8-12 months in advance. It takes a lot of forethought to make the right choices.

Today I’ll submit my list to the front office, and hopefully I’ll hear back within the week. The amount of holidays are never the problem, rather it is the spacing between holidays that they seem to be sensitive about.

Kuniko has confirmed that she’ll be able to take a longer holiday this year (there is a long story behind that), so now it is all up to my HR department. Fingers crossed!

Once I get dates approved, it is off to buy tickets and get started on an itinerary. With any luck we might get a chance to see my folks in Europe this summer…

This weekend I pretty much had the place to myself during the day, as Kuniko was stuck working both days. Besides doing housework and laundry I did manage to get in some episodes of House of Cards. I’m looking forward to the restart of Survivor and Amazing Race soon, but until then I’m watching some old stuff that I didn’t have time to see until now.

Also, this weekend we received a bunch of wine that I ordered. I was able to try one bottle – Evodia a 100% grenache from Spain, and it was pretty good for the price. We’ll try some of the other bottles later this week, and hopefully we’ll find some other winners.

I also had a visit from Kuniko’s parents. They stopped by to drop off a lot of homegrown veggies, and give us some other presents that they have been stockpiling. Kuniko’s dad has a bunch of wood that he’d like to grow shiitake mushrooms on, so I promised to head over there one of these weekends and help him out. It sounds like a fun project, and I’m looking forward to grilling those up this spring.

He also passed on an inquiry from one of his friends, who has been studying English and would like a chance to speak English now and then. I may go and spend some time with his friend once or twice a month, and help him out a little bit. I’ve got to speak about with Kuniko, though. I don’t want it to interfere with the already small amount of time we have together during the weekends.

This week should be a pretty standard one, except for Kuniko’s birthday on Wednesday. We’ll be celebrating at Anonim on Friday, so there is something good to look forward to at the end of this week!

Today has been a good day.  Since I had the whole day to myself, I could sleep in a bit, and then start working on a pile of little things that I’ve been meaning to take care of.  I always push stuff to the weekend, and then get caught up in something else.  Today I knocked out a bunch of those little things, and it felt good.  Our new jukebox computer is running pretty well, but I still have bugs to iron out now and then.  It is 100% more stable, though, and I’m spending a lot more time listening to music and less time waiting for something or other to load.

I spent the day inside, trying my hand at some penang curry soup.  The weather was good enough for one load of laundry, but I barely got out there in time when some rain clouds came in.  Tomorrow I’ll have to get out and do some shopping, but otherwise it should be a pretty quiet day on my own.

This is the first time in a long time that I have written on the blog! Thanks to my mom giving me a hard time about not writing, I’m back at it (for the time being). What the heck have I been up to? Well, not a lot.

That’s not entirely true. I’ve been spending time looking for a go-to wine that we can drink at home. For the past year or two we’ve been drinking a lot of Malbec from Argentina and Zinfandel from Ravenswood (thanks, Costco!) In an effort to branch out, I’ve been experimenting with lots of other wines to try and find one that is a good value for everyday drinking. It is sometimes hard to do here in Japan, the land of overpriced wines. This weekend some shipments are coming in, and I’ll have a chance to do some “research”.

Speaking of wine, we were able to meet an ex-student of mine in Sannomiya Wednesday night after work. He brought along his wife, I brought along Kuniko, and everybody hit it off very well. We mostly used Japanese because his wife didn’t feel comfortable with English, but they were really nice people, and I think we’ll probably get together again in the future. Making new friends is always a good thing.

Our holiday situation this year still hasn’t crystallized. However, we are pretty sure we’ll be in Taiwan at the end of March for a food marathon. Last weekend we had dinner with Yoshi, Mamiko, and Akira, and they expressed an interest in joining us. Mamiko is an expert on Taiwanese culture (and food) and so I think they’ll be good companions for a long weekend trip.

This weekend Kuniko is working both days, so she’ll be out of the house most of the time. We are celebrating Valentine’s day today a little on the late side – she expects to get home around 10 pm tonight. I hope I haven’t succumbed to cocktails before she gets back!

It has been a long time since my last post! Coming back from the holidays we’ve kind of settled into the familiar rhythm of work – early morning alarms, icy cold mornings, teaching all day, and then back home for a delicious meal and a ride on the exercise bike before bed.

January is pretty quiet for us socially. We have some get-togethers planned for February, but for now we are staying home where it is warm and they play all our favorite music.

I’ve been riding the exercise bike almost every day. I usually ride for about 45 minutes at a time, which is just enough time to either watch two episodes of The Office or one of Amazing Race. Kuniko also rides the bike now and then – a regular fitness couple, I guess.

The big thing on my mind these days is figuring out where to travel this year. Because of Kuniko’s work schedule we didn’t expect to do much travel – mainly staying in Asia. I’m craving a little bit longer trip, but we’ll see if we can pull it off. Lots of things to work out before we buy any tickets.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll check in later if something interesting happens!

Well, we’re back from our journey to the homeland for the holidays.  Overall the trip went pretty well, thanks to all the efforts that my family went to in order to host so many visitors.  We were all in one house for the first half of the trip, and then we spread out into two houses for the second half.  The Degliantoni’s down the street donated their place to put everyone up, and it helped a lot with the sleeping arrangements.

I think that Kuniko’s parents enjoyed their first visit to California.  Kuniko’s dad was intensely curious about everything around him, and we spent a lot of effort trying to keep him informed and answering his questions.  The only problem was that they weren’t that comfortable just lounging around doing nothing.  They spent hours and hours on puzzles and since they couldn’t really communicate with anyone I think that at times they got lonely.  Luckily once Kuniko’s sister and her husband arrived there were more people they could talk to.

Now that we’re back in Japan we’re looking at our plans for 2014, but there are some question marks in our careers that will need to be sorted out before we do anything major.  Hopefully some of these will be resolved in the near future…