We wrapped up a long holiday weekend yesterday with a slow day at home. We only went out to do a little shopping for the week, but mainly it was lounging around the house reading books and doing little chores ahead of going back to work today.

It was a busy holiday! Last Friday I spent the daytime making enchiladas for a dinner party we were hosting on Saturday, but before that on Friday evening Kuniko and I both had a party. I met up with Anthony in Kobe at Rokko Beer Diner. It had been a long time since I had been there, and the bartender commented that he hadn’t seen me in a while. Now that the weather is heating up I suppose I’ll be a better customer.

Anthony had some big news – his wife Risa had just given birth to his second son in Brunei. He was planning on flying out to see them at the end of the week. It was great to hear, and it was also interesting to hear the hoops you have to jump through to get citizenship for your kids. I guess that’s like in an international family.

We drank lots of beers at the diner and also later at a smoky yakitori that he recommended. We then managed to meet up with Kuniko and ride the train back the same direction while they caught up on all the big news.

After drinking on Friday night it was right back into party mode… we hosted Yoshi’s family for a Mexican dinner of enchiladas, taco salad, and Mexican rice. We had a good time recapping our trip to Taiwan, exchanging photos, and eating and drinking until the last train. Akira was a little more active this time – I think he is more and more comfortable around us. I’m trying to use English with him more, and hopefully he’ll start to communicate more in English back to me.

It was a late night partying with them, so we enjoyed a little sleep in the next morning. We did most of the dishes cleanup after the party, so the rest we left to the robot. Sunday we had our third party in a row – a late afternoon BBQ with the Yamajis and Fukumis in the Yamaji’s backyard. It was good to relax outside and (surprisingly) the weather cooperated. We enjoyed lots of little dishes off the grill, and caught up with everyone. We even had a chance to visit with Ana a bit. Everyone had a chance to hold Hiroka for a while, and he seemed to be in a pretty good mood with very little crying.

The Fukumis seemed like they were in a quandary about what to do about their living arrangements. I guess it is difficult to decide to move to Tokyo as a family, or to keep the homestead in Okubo. There are plusses and minuses to both situations, but it seemed clear at the party that there are some disagreements between them on what the best course of action is. I know what I would do if I were them, but it is their problem to solve, and hopefully they’ll come to an agreement that both of them will be comfortable with in the future.

We didn’t stay too late this time around, as Hiroka really shouldn’t party all night, so we got home at a reasonable time, and we were able to get plenty of sleep.

The next two days were all on our own, and we spent much of the time giving our livers a break, cleaning out closets and organizing our dishware. We threw out a lot of old plates, cups, glasses and mugs that we haven’t used for more than a year. It will be a heavy load going out on non-burnable trash day next week.

So today it is back to work, and I feel pretty refreshed. It’ll be nice to have just a three day week, and hopefully my students have been studying during the long holiday. I’ll find out soon enough…

Golden Week holidays this year are pretty strange. Last year we had a scheduling quirk that gave us a ten day holiday, but this year another quirk just gives us six days. Furthermore, the six days are split over two weeks, so we get two days off this week, the weekend, and then the first two days off of next week.

Kinda weird.

My students (and I) are getting excited about the holidays, and today will be the last work day for a while. Unfortunately my schedule is chock full of classes, and it will be a very busy day for me.

This morning I will teach my first class with the new production employees. These are workers that joined the company in April, and will be factory workers mainly here in Japan, but occasionally they’ll ship off to other countries to support production in overseas plants in China, Singapore, the USA, Honk Kong, and possibly India. So somewhere along the line, they may need to be able to at least be familiar with using English.

These classes are always fun to teach, and since I have them only once a month they are something I look forward to. It’ll also be the first time for me to teach with my new supervisor (?) Ayumi, who was my student last term. I hope she doesn’t take out her English frustrations on me today in class…

Lots of things to catch up on in today’s blog. At the end of the last week I finally got a chance to eat ribs at Tony Roma’s in Kobe, and I was very pleased with the quality of the ribs. Unfortunately, everything else really wasn’t that exciting. The restaurant had an odd ambience, also. It seemed like a temporary setup rather than a permanent restaurant. But overall it was a good taste of America for me, and we were able to introduce Kuniko to the baked potato.

Over the weekend we spent most of Saturday at home watching movies and cleaning house, and on Sunday we went out to Kobe to see Kuniko’s students performing in a concert for their mandolin guitar club. It was a long concert but they did a great job on the performance, and Kuniko tells me it is the last time we’ll ever see a mandolin guitar concert. We’ll see about that…

On Sunday night we took care of a few things that we’ve been working on lately. The first was that we booked a flight and hotel for our trip in the winter holidays. We’ll be going to a beach resort in the Philippines, and hopefully it will be a good experience. It should be quiet – the last part of the journey to get there is by boat.

Also I indulged in a little present for the home – a tiny cleaning robot that we received last night. It isn’t a vacuum cleaner, but a mop and sweeper. Since we’re all hardwood floors and we have almost no carpets it makes sense. We’ll be experimenting with it the next couple of weeks to see how it works, but so far it is a lot of fun to watch in action.

I have a short week this week, and I get Thursday through next Tuesday off for the Golden Week holidays. I’m looking forward to catching up on some sleep and doing some household projects. We’ve also got a busy social calendar, with a party on Friday in Kobe for Kuniko and myself (separately) and then Yoshi and family coming over on Saturday and finally a visit to the Yamajis for BBQ on Sunday. Can’t wait!

On my way to work today I looked up the website of Tony Roma’s to give Kuniko the restaurant location where we’ll meet up tonight after work. Alongside a link to the map was a link to the menu, so I couldn’t resist clicking on it and checking out what I wanted to eat that night.

Good news – they have baby back ribs. I love to eat baby back ribs, and probably they are the hardest to find here in Japan. I couldn’t wait to order a rack.

But the bad news was that baby back ribs are the only kind of ribs they sell. No beef ribs, no big pork spareribs… bummer. I guess as far as Tony Roma is concerned in Japan, a rib is a rib is a rib.

I was a little disappointed about it, but hey – life goes on. I guess life is going pretty well for me if the biggest disappointment of my week was having to eat only one kind of BBQ ribs on Friday night.

Anyway, looking forward to dinner tonight.

This weekend we both have two days off, so we’ll probably do a lot of stuff around the house. We have plenty of chores to take care of before Golden Week starts next Thursday.

Can’t wait to relax and spend some slow time with Kuniko. If the weather holds up we may even get to do some hiking to burn off some of the calories we are going to put on tonight…

This is the question that seems to be on my mind all the time while we search out a good getaway for the winter holiday. Lately the focus has been on the Philippines because of the short distance and relatively low cost. A lot of the islands in the Philippines are isolated, and there are some good chances that you won’t have power some times, and internet access and other first world fundamentals may not be anywhere near. But for some people that is the attractive point.

One of the areas we are considering for a trip is near where they film Survivor. Apparently not just the American version of Survivor, but there are Survivors for five or six other countries. Interesting. I don’t know if I’m ready to bump into Jeff Probst on my holiday, though.

Last night’s Costco run was a success, and tonight I’ll be staying up late waiting for my wife to come home. She has to be on study hall duty, which means getting home past nine. It’ll be a quiet night of exercise, salad, and maybe some reality TV. I think the slow pace of Thursday suits me well.

After finishing my recent fantasy book, I’ve turned to another kind of fantasy, a non-fiction book called Home Sweet Anywhere. It is written by a couple who, after retirement, sold (almost) all their worldly possessions, and used their retirement nest egg to travel very slowly to different countries around the world. They didn’t just visit, they actually lived in different cities for at least a month or so before moving on.

By using the internet and different connections that they made along the way, they were able to experience a completely new lifestyle. All this while both of them are over 70… very impressive. The author is a first time writer, and it shows, but as far as travel writing goes it is really entertaining. It makes me think about our eventual retirement and consider what we would like to do.

Tonight after work we have a plan to do a Costco run, and then head home and relax. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick up something yummy to eat as we’ve been eating burritos for the last three days. A nice quiet evening putting away the groceries sounds great.

Monday was a pretty smooth day, at work and at home. At work I had a regular schedule, and I spent my planning time working on basic mid-term plans for all my students. Before I knew it it was time to go home, and I hustled out the door and caught a train back. On the way home I finished reading a great book, called “The Lies of Locke Lamorra” by Scott Lynch. Great fantasy fiction… I can’t wait to try the next book in the series.

We were looking for a restaurant to hit this Friday, since we both have two days off this weekend, and it is going to be a pretty busy week. By chance I stumbled on a news article in the US saying that Tony Roma’s is opening a new restaurant in Japan, and it was without much hope that I clicked on the link to see where the restaurant was opening. I was shocked to find out that it opened in Kobe four days ago. I got right on the phone and booked a table for us on Friday.

I haven’t actually been to a Tony Roma’s in any country, but I know they do ribs, and it is pretty hard to get my hands on good ribs here in Japan. Friday will be an interesting experience.

We’ve also got plans to hit Costco tomorrow, since we partied pretty hard and ran out of supplies. Food in, money out!

The last project that we’re working on this week is getting a handle on where to go this Christmas. It’ll be somewhere warm, but so far that’s all we got. Right now the top 3 ideas are the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam – some stretch of white sand is waiting for us somewhere.

Saturday night we hosted some neighbors for a Mexican dinner, and it turned out really nicely.

We had invited the Tojos and the Katos over a couple of weeks ago, but it was postponed to Saturday because Kuniko wasn’t feeling so well. This time around she was in good condition, and so the party was on.

Most of Saturday was spent cleaning up our house. It had been a while since I could give it a deep cleaning, and so I worked hard – even moving the furniture and cleaning under the sofa.

The next stage was making pinto beans according to my mother’s secret(?) recipe, and also working on making guacamole and salsa. I wrapped things up by the early afternoon, just when Kuniko got home from work, so we had a chance to indulge in a two hour nap to get ready for the festivities.

The Tojos have been over several times before, so they are veterans. This was the first time for the Katos. I taught Mr. Kato in my class at work – he works at the same place I do, and it was everyone’s first chance to meet Ms. Kato and their daughter Miyu. Miyu is eight years old and was very well behaved and very polite.

We had a big dinner of burritos, quesadillas, and chips/salsa/guacamole and the conversations were all over the place. Mr. Tojo and Mr. Kato work in the same department, and so sometimes the topic was work, but I did my best to steer it towards something that everyone might be interested in. Ms. Kato turned out to be a former nurse which was very interesting, and she gave some off-the-cuff medical advice to Kuniko.

We had plenty of beer and wine, and it was going well, but I thought that Miyu looked a little bored. I downloaded an easy game on the ipad but she ran through it so quickly it was a little too easy. I went upstairs to dig through our stash and then I found what I was looking for. I went downstairs in triumph. It was time to play Jenga.

Miyu really got into it, and unexpectedly, so did everyone else. At one point we had everyone on the floor playing, and we had to push some furniture out of the way to make space. I was glad I thought to clean there.

It was a fun night, and I hope they enjoyed their time at our house. I’m hoping we can do it again in the future.

The rest of the weekend we lounged around the house, recovered as much energy as possible watching movies and reading books. We still have a ton of leftovers in the fridge, so we’ll be good until the end of the week.

Our next party is during Golden Week when Yoshi, Mamiko and Akira come over. What to cook… what to cook?

The other day I killed off a box of tea that Yoshi brought back for me from a trip to London. The tea was really good, and I kind of got in the habit of drinking some tea almost every morning.

On a recent cleaning binge we cleared out our pantry of almost all tea bags and leaves – it was surprising how much we had laying around. So it was just after tossing out all the old tea that I was looking for some more to replenish my stash at work.

Luckily I did find in another drawer a contained filled with Chai tea bags that we bought back on our trip to India. I was a little worried that the flavor would have disappeared, but in fact it is really, really good. Now when my morning students show up they are greeted with a big blast of cinnamon and spices. Sorry guys, it is just for me.

It is hard to believe but we are at the tail end of the week. It has been pretty busy at work for both of us, and the last two days Kuniko has driven to work because of all the things she needs to do. She gets home around 9 pm each night, so we are both very much looking forward to the weekend. Tacos are calling our names…

It looks like the season has finally turned, and the weather is starting to improve. I’m hoping that it will hold like this until this weekend, so I can BBQ some meat for our taco party on Saturday. If it doesn’t work out, I guess we can do the traditional(?) ground beef style.

My classes have been really good lately. The students have a lot of energy and they are working hard in class. Some are more talkative than others, but that it completely normal.

For some reason a lot of my students will be traveling to the USA next week on business. Some were able to exchange their class times with other students, some were not. I think next week should be interesting – lots of potential holes in my schedule to catch up on paperwork or do some planning.

Tonight we’ll be enjoying soup again for dinner. It is a really good batch – Kuniko knows how to make healthy things delicious. She should be able to come home earlier tonight, so we can enjoy our meal together at a reasonably early time.

This weekend was kind of a slow one. Kuniko had to work on Saturday, but she got off at a reasonable time, and we could spend time together enjoying steaks and a monster Malbec that I brought back from our last trip to America. Sunday morning we went out shopping for a ton of vegetables, and Kuniko cooked up a veggie soup that will be the base of our dinners this week.

Last week we did a similar thing, and we both enjoyed the extra time we saved. Kuniko said she lost weight as well, so we’re going with that theme again this week.

I have a pretty standard week at work, with not so many extra classes. Next weekend we’ll be hosting some neighbors for Mexican food, so I’ve got to start preparing the beans soon. I haven’t had homemade Mexican beans in a long time.

There’s just a couple more weeks until we hit Golden Week, which this year is a relatively short six days. No plans for all that time off, but I should probably do some work around the house and also scan some photos that I’ve been meaning to deal with.

In an hour or two I’m going to teach my first English class with the new employees at the company. They officially started here at April 1st, but they’ve been doing training at the headquarters in Kobe and now they are finally showing up at their future place of employment. Today I’m going to teach them some basic greetings for business and hopefully give them a positive experience using English at work.

Friday feels good! I think we’ll have decent weather this weekend, and I can rest up tomorrow morning. Unfortunately from yesterday Kuniko is back to her regular schedule of hard work and long hours. She came home last night after nine pm, and she’ll be working tomorrow most of the day. That makes Sundays even more important for her to rest up.

As you might be aware, the entire nation of Japan raised their sales tax on April 1st, the first increase in 17 years. It was a modest increase, from 5% to 8%, and supposedly there is another increase planned for next year that will complete the jump to 10%.

The sales tax increase has been a great chance for everyone to raise their prices and blame the government, and one place that this change unexpectedly affected me was at the coffee machine at work. Every couple of days I buy a can of coffee to enjoy on my break. Usually the can is 100 yen, which is 20 yen cheaper than in the stores. I was surprised to see that this changed to 110 yen from the other day, and so I need to dig a little deeper to find two different coins to pay for my coffee.

I’m not sure how a 3% increase in sales tax causes a 10% increase in price for canned coffee. It sounds like a bit of a scam to me.

This week seems to be moving pretty quickly. I don’t have any big plans this weekend, but I’ll probably spend time cleaning the house, exercising, and catching up on TV shows. The usual stuff, really. Hopefully Kuniko will be feeling better and we can grill some steaks or something…

Last night we hit the official four months before our travel date, which means tickets went on sale for the trains we wanted to use. Good news!

I stayed up with Kuniko last night after work and booked some Eurostar tickets to take us under the English Channel between London and Paris, and also some train tickets to take us across the northern part of France to Rennes. From Rennes we’ll get alternate transport to Mont St. Michel, and then back again to Paris the next day. That is a lot of travel in just a couple of days. That’s cool with us – we like to keep moving.

Kuniko is feeling much better, but still the cough is hanging around. Today is the entrance ceremony for her school, and so there are no classes for her. From tomorrow she’ll actually begin teaching classes, so hopefully her cough is gone by then. Fingers crossed!

Wednesday at work for me is turning out to be a bit of a run. I have nine classes, and just a couple of short breaks during the day. It makes for a very fast day, but I can tell I will be tired every week on Wednesday night. I might have to make a new Wednesday cocktail night tradition.

Yesterday after work Kuniko went to another doctor to find out what he thought about her condition. She had trouble sleeping the last few nights – waking up gasping for air and coughing. The doctor thinks it is some form of bronchitis, and he prescribed some antibiotics. It already seems to be having a positive effect, and we’re thinking Kuniko will be back on her feet by the end of the week.

Meanwhile I’m getting used to my new students while they are getting used to me, and in the background I’m working on logistics for our summer trip. A couple of points will be heavy transportation days, but unlike our previous trip to Europe we’ll be depending on trains to get around. I’m also starting to work on my US taxes – as an overseas filer I get an automatic one month extension, but it would be nice to knock it out now. Once we get through the next couple of weeks, we should have plenty of free time to take care of all this stuff…