Last night I was hitting the exercise bike as usual. Five or six times a week I spend 45 minutes on the bike burning calories, and it has turned into one of my better habits for watching my weight.

However, all this riding had apparently taken a toll on the equipment, and suddenly the bike started making clanking noises. There were strange noises now and then over the past month, but this time it was serious. I pulled apart the box to see what was going on, and it is a complete mystery. The mechanism is some kind of magnet, a wheel, and a belt system. There is something wrong inside, but I have no idea what.

So I guess my $200 exercise bike is kaput after 10 months of riding. Kuniko is going to call the company and see if they have any big ideas, but I have a feeling that we’re out of luck with this particular model. I’ll start looking around for a replacement – maybe I can find something a little more durable.

Around here the humidity has really kicked in, and you can clearly see that the air conditioners are going to be needed soon. At work I’m using the office AC to keep the air dry and cool, but soon we’ll need to run them at home as well. Summer is definitely on the horizon.

At the end of last week, Kuniko’s dad got in what seemed to be a minor traffic accident. He was riding his scooter and was hit from the side by a car. He was knocked to the ground and hit his (helmeted) head, but luckily he was able to get up and walk away from the accident.

That night he complained of some serious headaches, so he ended up catching an ambulance ride to the hospital to see what was going on. It turned out to be a serious case of swelling of his brain, and so they went right to work on him. After some serious surgery he was out of danger, and now he’s resting up in the hospital taking it easy.

Most of this we heard after the fact. It all happened so quickly, there wasn’t much time to let people know. But we did get over to see him on Saturday, and he’s looking good. He had his head shaved and he looked like a military version of himself – I told him it was a good look for him. He was able to walk around and talk with everyone, so I suspect he’ll be out of the hospital soon. A doctor will consult with him today and make the final decision on how long he’ll need to stay in bed.

On Saturday we went over to see him in the hospital, and while we were driving there, we witnessed another scooter accident, with similar results. Scooters can be pretty dangerous I guess.

Anyway, Kuniko was working hard this weekend, so she didn’t have much relaxation time. Sunday night she came home around 5 pm, and we had grilled veggies and pork, along with a bottle of Spanish red. We watched a good movie, and then we headed off to bed. This morning it was tough for her to get going, though. She was wiped out and it is only Monday. Still two more weeks before she gets a day off.

Well, the rainy season blew in here with a vengeance this morning. I looked outside to see wind gusting the rain horizontally, and plenty of water everywhere. It started sometime overnight. I resigned myself to a soaking wet lower half, and possibly a broken umbrella.

Luckily Kuniko decided that she would rather drive through the rain than walk through it, so we had an uneventful trip to work. She has to work late tonight, so I’m on my own for getting back home. I think the weather should be better by then, though.

Yesterday I had a relatively light workday with a couple of empty class slots to work on other projects. Recently this is a very rare occurrence. As if to make up for it, I’ve got nine classes today and tomorrow, so I’ll be plenty busy.

I think I’m finally getting the knack of cooking Southeast Asian dishes. After my success with dim sum last weekend, I thought I’d have a go at the leftovers last night, and came up with a Thai stir fry that I liked a lot. It was just shrimp, carrots, mushrooms, onion and leeks, and cilantro, but it turned out better than I expected.

June will be a very busy month for Kuniko. She’ll have only one day off this month, so I think I’ll have a lot of opportunities to do some cooking. With the temperature rising and the rainy season rolling around any day now, I’ll have to think of some non-BBQ dishes to prepare.

On Saturday I bought a bunch of ingredients and made my own dim sum dishes for the first time ever. I’ve made gyoza plenty of times, but perhaps I was inspired by our trip to Taiwan, so I wanted to branch out and try some new things.

I made two kinds of basic fillings, one that based on ground pork with chopped shrimp, Chinese chives, garlic, sesame oil, sugar and chili peppers. The other filling was a vegetarian one with maitake mushrooms, carrots, tofu, chopped leeks, with lots of spices and a little corn starch to hold it together.

I spent the afternoon wrapping them up, making dumplings and shumai, as well as bigger ravioli versions that were delicious but didn’t have the right balance of wrapper and filling for me.

So Saturday night was a big dim sum night and we enjoyed a movie and relaxation, which kind of carried over into Sunday as well.

The temperature has been heating up quite a bit lately, and we’ve started to consider the air conditioner as an option. I imagine that we’ll be using it by the end of the week if it stays like this. Any day now the rainy season will start up, and then we’ll mainly need it for drying out the rooms.

This week is a pretty normal week, which is nice considering how busy I’ve been recently. I’m hoping that things go smoothly today and that nothing unusual comes up.

Today is the last class for our new employees. The last two days we’ve been working on various basic English tasks – using the telephone, making appointments, describing products. Our plan today is to move to making a basic English presentation. It is a variation of another activity I usually do with small groups later in the year.

Since I’ve been spending so much time focusing on these intensive lessons, I’ve had less time to do other stuff. Once I wrap up today’s lesson, I’ll be able to get to other items on my todo list.

Last night Kuniko had a baking lesson after work, and she brought home some delicious “red wine” bread, that was stuffed with dried cranberries and cream cheese. Wow – it was really good. We’ll be able to enjoy it for the next few breakfasts. Usually Kuniko doesn’t have time to bake at home, and next month will be especially busy for her. The nice thing about the lessons is that the baking time is a reserved appointment, and she can’t easily put it off until later.

In Japan they are proposing a new holiday, called Mountain Day that would happen in August. On the surface, it seems like Japan already has plenty of holidays. According to the news Japan has the largest number of public holidays of any of the industrialized nations, and so you’d think that everyone is just relaxing and enjoying them.

In fact, the pressure on workers (from their coworkers, bosses, neighbors, and family) to NOT take a paid day off is very intense. If someone takes a day off for themselves during the middle of the week, they will be worried about the troubles they have caused all their coworkers and customers, and nobody is having a good time. The solution is to make a national holiday that everyone is taking off – that way it is “fair” and everyone can get some rest.

Lots of cultural mysteries here for someone like me. Luckily my holidays (at least so far) have little effect on my coworkers and I can usually take them as I see fit. We’ll see if I still have a job next year, though…

Friday night after work we met up in Akashi with great anticipation, and then walked over to Ciro for dinner. It has been quite a while since we’ve been, and we were looking forward to dinner all week.

The staff recognized us right away and gave us the best table in the restaurant – with a nice view of the Akashi bridge and a pleasant breeze blowing through the windows. It was a lot like eating outdoors.

As usual the antipasti was excellent, and I was able to pick out a nice wine from the list to enjoy. Unfortunately the pizza was a little disappointing. It was a mozzarella, basil and porcini mushroom pizza, but there were just two or three leaves of basil on it, and the porcini were inexplicably distributed so that 40% of the pizza had no toppings. We did some rearrangement of the toppings, but it was odd that we had to. On the menu it used to say “buffalo mozzarella” for the pizzas, but this time I noticed it only said “mozzarella”, so maybe they are cutting costs? We weren’t thrilled with the pasta selection either – only tomato sauce pastas were on the menu, no pesto and no cream sauces.

We did order some shrimp and lobster, and they did a great job cooking those up for us.

And to top it all off, our “connection” wasn’t working there, and we found out from another staff that he moved to Osaka. Too bad – he was a really nice guy.

So this was a bummer for us – Ciro used to be our “go-to” restaurant if we wanted a guaranteed special meal. We’ll try them again after a while but if it is a repeat performance of this weekend, we’ll be on the hunt for somewhere new.

Saturday we went into Osaka to attend a beer festival at the invitation of Yoshi and Mamiko. The meeting time was at 1:30 pm, so we went out to Osaka a little bit early and played tourist around Namba. Kuniko and I almost never go to Osaka, and I couldn’t remember the last time we had been there together. We walked through the tourist dotombori on the river and enjoyed some street food and beer while taking in the sights. It was an odd feeling – it seemed like we were visiting a different country, and I really got the feeling like I was seeing Japan again for the first time. Kuniko and I agreed later that we’ll try to get into Osaka more often, and that might end up being a resolution to our problem with Ciro.

We met up with Yoshi and Mamiko and walked through the beer festival. The focus of the festival was the craft beers of Japan (especially Kansai) and so there were lots of good beers to try. Some were great, some not so good, and some bordering on outlandish (soba beer?) but it was fun to try everything. For 2000 yen we got tickets for six beers, so the price was very reasonable. We brought lots of snacks, and they had some good food on sale, and I even bumped into one of my former students from KHI. Good times.

We did a little wine shopping on the way home, and then just ate a salad for dinner. We were tired from being out in the sun all day drinking beers, so Saturday night and Sunday were pretty much just relaxation time.

We’re all geared up and ready for a busy week at work. I’ve got some intensive classes Monday through Wednesday, and a special lesson to plan for next week. It is a busy time for both of us, so I’m sure we’ll be looking to the weekend soon.

Today marks the end of the week. For me it is also payday, so we’re going out to one of our favorite restaurants, Chiro, for dinner tonight. If that wasn’t enough fun, we’ll be meeting Yoshi and Mamiko in Osaka on Saturday afternoon to attend a beer festival that they heard about. So it is definitely a lively weekend to look forward to.

I’m pretty much all set up and ready for the new employee lessons I have next week. My lesson plans always turn out a little different than what I intended, but I don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing. We’ll see what happens on Monday.

Also I saw on the news that the situation in Thailand is deteriorating lately. That is always a bummer to see one of our favorite countries suffering through the mess that its in. I’m also glad that we didn’t end up deciding on the beaches of Thailand for our trip in December. I’m sure things will be sorted out by then, but in the meantime it would have made for a little bit of stress as we watched the situation with a close eye.

Day by day I am making headway on my lesson plans for next week’s classes. There are three classes next week that will be fairly intensive, and then after that it will be a regular schedule until September. Just a bit more work to get through before I’m ready for the students next week.

Last night I agreed to go out to a tachinomi place with Mr. Kiriki. He works in my department (Human Resources) but I’m not exactly clear what his role is. He’s always the life of the party, and that can sometimes lead to trouble.

I wasn’t exactly sure why he wanted to go out, but he tried to explain by giving me a copy of the passport of a young man from the United Arab Emirates.

As it turned out, Mr. Kiriki is hosting the young man for a few months, and he is a friend of Mr. Kiriki’s son. He spoke perfect English and just a little Japanese, so it was a good chance for him to talk with someone who could understand him. We went to a local place and had beers and talked for a while. Mr. Kiriki was happy to put the two of us together, and sat contentedly drinking shochu and making comments now and then.

I didn’t stay too long, but I promised to try to meet up with his guest in the future, and started to make my way out of there. Mr. Kiriki wouldn’t let me pay for my drinks, which was very nice of him, but he did ask me to do him a favor. After buying my drinks I could hardly refuse him, so we ended up walking a few hundred yards to another drinking place, and he led me inside and introduced me to the whole place.

It was kind of a snack style place, but all of the customers and staff were women. The customers seemed to want me to join them, but I was able to avoid that situation. The owner of the place produced her daughter, who was probably high school age, and they made her try to speak English with me. I tried to make it easy for her because it is no fun to be forced to speak another language under the pressure of an expectant audience.

After a little more chit-chat Mr. Kiriki and I left, and I was able to head on home. It was an interesting evening… not the usual pattern I follow, but definitely entertaining.

This week and next will be a little extra busy.  I’m teaching some special classes to the new employees, both white collar and blue collar, and the lesson planning has been taking up most of my “blog time” in the mornings.  I should have everything sorted out by the middle of next week, but in the meantime I’ll try to blog here and there in the evenings when I have time.

Last weekend we had a dinner party with one of my ex-students and his wife.  The last time we met them was in Sannomiya for Spanish food, and shortly thereafter they announced they were pregnant.  Now she is about halfway through her pregnancy, and that meant that there wasn’t quite as much eating and drinking as usual.  We still had a great time with the Kato family, and we’re looking forward to meeting their new baby when it makes an appearance later this year.

After that party, we are now officially holding a clean slate and we have no other house guests planned in the near future.  I’m hoping that we can get Antoine and his family over sometime, and also a couple of my coworkers.  For now, we’ve got nothing to keep us honest about housecleaning.

Recently Kuniko’s schedule has had her at work well into the evening. She has been working on some big issues with grades and students, and that is definitely top priority.

The good news in this for me is that I have plenty of time to exercise and stay caught up on reality TV shows. I also have a little more time than normal to prepare dinner and maybe try something that needs more time to complete. The other night I cooked up a bunch of veggies into a ratatouille that ended up being pretty good. It had enough time for the flavors to blend together and I was really happy with the result.

Tonight is another night when I’ll have a lot of time to dream something up. Kuniko requested avocados, so whatever it is will probably be green. Hmm…

For some reason I’ve been spending a lot more time reading lately. Reading on the train, reading on the sofa, reading at lunch – whenever I have a chance. Maybe that is because we have our trips mostly planned out for the year, and I’m ahead of schedule with my lesson planning at work.

Anyway, it is nice to have the time to read whatever I like. Once I finish my current book I think I’ll get back on the language study wagon, and start working on some basic expressions in French and Portuguese for the summer trip.

Today Kuniko has a short day at work, so she should be waiting for me when I get home. It is a nice chance for her to relax since she usually has to work on Saturdays. The schedule on Tuesday is meant as compensation.

Tomorrow we’re planning another Costco run – we have to do some shopping for our party on Saturday. Hopefully it won’t turn out to be too expensive…

Word came to me last Friday from Florida, where Mark and Susan had their second baby, a daughter named Maya Rose. Kuniko and I were happy to hear the news, and we’re looking forward to meeting Maya someday. Congratulations to Mark, Susan and Charlie.

Other than that big news, things around here have been pretty quiet. Kuniko had to work both days this weekend, so I had a lot of free time during the day to exercise, read books, and do some cooking. Saturday Kuniko requested shrimp and scallops for dinner, so I went out and bought a lot of both. We peeled and marinated the shrimp in olive oil, garlic, cilantro and sriracha sauce, and just dusted the scallops with lemon pepper and a bit of salt. They both turned out great – but I think I overbought on the shrimp.

This week is pretty standard for us, and this weekend we’ll be hosting some new visitors to our place for Mexican food. Hopefully there will be something interesting to blog about in the interim…

Last night we received mail from London – our train passes for the summer trip are here, charged up and ready to use. I just hope we don’t lose them between now and then.

I’m happy that it is Friday, and I’m looking forward to the weekend. Unfortunately it will be without my wife since she’s working both days. She’ll be showing up in the evenings, though, and I’m hoping to grill some seafood for her tomorrow night. I’ll be on the hunt for some shellfish tomorrow morning. Luckily it is relatively inexpensive and easy to find here.

OK – one more day at work and then I’m back in holiday mode…

So yesterday was our first day back to work, and for both of us it was just a regular work day. I have two more days and then I can enjoy the weekend, but Kuniko has Friday off, and then she has to work both days on the weekend. Our schedule is a little weird right now.

Once I wrap up this week, I’ll have ten weeks in a row without a special holiday. It is a long run without a national holiday to break things up, but I think it’ll be a great chance to get a routine going that involves hard work, exercise, and a bit of weekend relaxation.

There is a really nice thing to look forward to at the end of the ten weeks – an entire week off in July. It is called a “Power Saving Holiday” and it is for my company only. That means everyone else will be working and it is a great time to go to places that normally would be packed with visitors. Unfortunately, it will be in July when it is brutally hot.

Anyway, I’m eager to get the routine going starting next Monday!