This weekend we had the opportunity to eat at two of our favorite restaurants.  On Friday night after work Kuniko and I met in Motomachi for a couple beers at Rokko Beer Diner (they were debuting a new Weizen beer) and then we walked over to Sannomiya to eat dinner at Oliva.  Oliva serves Spanish food, and it had been years since we had been there.  For some reason I thought we ought to go back and give it another try since we’ll be eating the real thing this summer.

The food was excellent as usual, and we really enjoyed the variety of tapas that they had to start off with.  The atmosphere is also very good there, even though it is a tiny restaurant.

Saturday Kuniko had to work most of the day, so I prepared steak fajitas for dinner.  I’m not sure but it might have been Kuniko’s first experience with fajitas.  She loved them, and we killed everything in one sitting.  That and a couple of margaritas made Saturday a fun night.

Then yesterday night we went to a concert put on by some of Kuniko’s students in Kobe.  The mandolin guitar club always does a yearly concert, and Kuniko wanted to see some of her students performing in the club.  We caught the last part of the concert only, and then headed into Akashi for dinner at Chiro.  Dinner there was excellent as usual, and the homemade pasta with pepper sauce and shrimp was the winner of the night for me.  The chef and the manager came out and gave us a warm welcome, so it was almost like VIP treatment.  Nice people there.

Now it is time to get back to work.  This week is my last week of work before Golden Week – I’ll get ten days off in a row starting next Saturday.  It’ll be hard to concentrate on my work with such a big holiday coming up.

Yesterday I taught my first class with the brand new employees at our company.  They have just entered the company at the beginning of this month, and they are undergoing various forms of training for the next six months.  They’ll get on the job training after that, so they’ve got a long road of learning ahead of them.

I had fun talking with the students, and they did very well on the activities in class.  One student is from Bangladesh, which seems to indicate a continuing theme of internationalization at the company, albeit at a very slow pace.

At one point in the lesson the students asked how long I’ve lived in Japan, and I said that now it is getting close to ten years.  Later in the lesson someone asked me if I spoke Japanese, and I gave my standard answer: “Just a little”.  The last thing I want is the students thinking that they could speak Japanese to me and get away with it, so I have to hide my abilities for now.

The student who asked me if I spoke Japanese listened to my response, and shook his head.  “You’ve been here ten years,” he said, “You should be able to speak very well.”  Let’s hope nobody figures it out.

Last night after work I met with Neil Meyer, a guy that has worked with Kawasaki for a long time both here in Kobe and elsewhere.  He is a technical translator, and it was interesting to hear about his job and what kind of challenges he has at work.  But mainly we discussed stuff like travel, living in Japan, and even the train industry.  We ate at an Indian restaurant hidden on a backstreet in Hyogo that I’ve never seen before, and the food was quite good – especially the sag dal.

After dinner we were walking back and saw Gary and Bill drinking at a nearby bar, so we stopped in to say hello.  We didn’t stick around to drink, but just talked a little before moving on.  The place we found them looked pretty interesting, too.  I guess I should explore Hyogo a little more!

Today at the end of my afternoon I’ll be teaching a lesson to the new employees.  It is an introductory lesson, with two follow-up lessons next month, and then I’ll teach all of them again beginning in October of this year in group lessons.  So it’ll be first impression time for everyone this afternoon.  I hope it goes well.

This week we’ve been taking it easy.  Kuniko is working a tough schedule with a lot of late nights, so she comes home, we eat dinner, and then soon after it is off to bed.  Tonight I’ll be breaking the routine a little bit, as somebody from my workplace invited me out to dinner after work ends.  The somebody in question is an American consultant that works as a technical translator and writer for the company, and it’ll be interesting to hear more about him and his background.  Apparently he’s been living in Japan for a long time, and he might have some good insights in long term life in this country.

This week Kuniko will be stuck at school late almost every night, so that means that we’ll have late dinners.    In preparation for that, she made up a huge pot of Japanese curry to have this week, so that gets me off the hook for dinner duty.  I’m going to have to think about what to do with the extra time each evening…

Sometimes something comes up that changes all your plans.  Saturday morning, it was an earthquake.

Friday night I had a nice dinner with an ex-student at a Hawaiian restaurant in Shin-Nagata.  We enjoyed a great meal, drank a few beers, and called it an early night.  By the time I got back home Kuniko was already thinking about hitting the sack so we both crashed out relatively early for a Friday night.

Kuniko was up at 4:30 am on Saturday according to her usual routine, and she kissed me goodbye and left around 5:30.  And then it started shaking.  For the first few seconds I fully expected it to end, so I stayed in bed.  After five seconds I thought I had better get out of bed and head to a doorway.  By the time I made it to the doorway, the earthquake was over.  Kuniko came back to check on me, and then headed back to work.

Turns out the earthquake epicenter was on Awaji island, just a little to the south of us.  All that morning there were aftershocks that shook the house and made me jump a little, but they were small and not nearly as strong as the quake in the morning.

My original plan was to go to hike in Kobe, but a walk to the station showed the trains still hadn’t restarted due to the quake, so it looked like it would be a hassle.  I changed the hike to a walk to the grocery store, a had a low key day at home instead.

On Sunday we both had the day off, so we ended up doing a three hour walk, which scratched my hiking itch.  It actually turned out to be a pretty nice weekend, despite the shaky (ouch) start.

Tonight after work I’m headed to Shin-Nagata to meet a former student for dinner and drinks.  This student was from when I was teaching at Sanyo Electric in the Seishin Minami area, and he got back in touch to find some way to improve his English, as he is starting to go to some international conferences.  I remember him as a highly motivated student, so it’ll be good to talk to him again.

The weather forecast for this weekend is looking good, so I may be able to do some hiking on Saturday.  I’ve got the whole day to myself, since Kuniko has to work and then she has a yakiniku party with Kori in the evening.  It may be time to grill a steak while she is out getting her red meat fix.

I’ve noticed a weird phenomenon these last few weeks – even though we get a lot of sleep at night, we’re still waking up tired in the morning.  I guess that it is probably related to the weather change and the season.  Later in the summer it will be easy to wake up and escape the sweaty conditions, but now it is very hard to get out of the warm bed.  Sometimes we’ve gone to bed as early as 8:30, which in theory would give us a solid eight hours of sleep.  But the end result is the same – sleepyheads in the morning.

Maybe it is time for a coffee machine…

This week I have the unusual opportunity to go to work with Kuniko by car, and it means a lot less exercise because of it.  I’ve tried to compensate at work by doing various stretches and exercises during my breaks.  However, it is very nice to relax in the car and spend some quiet time while Kuniko drives.  Not only did I get a ride to work yesterday, but by chance I got a ride back, since Kuniko was coming home at around the same time I was.

Today we’ll go in together, but she’ll be back later due to some issues at work that she has to deal with, so I’ll hurry back and make some enchiladas for dinner.  We’re working on some turkey from Costco, and the last two nights we’ve had turkey sandwiches.  Tonight we’ll shake it up a bit and stray into Mexico.  Can’t wait!

Kuniko is officially ramping up her new school year.  Yesterday she met her new homeroom students, who she will be guiding through graduation and college entrance next year, and I think she is still a little unsure how they’ll do.  Some of her students are students that have been in her homeroom the last four years, and some other students have transferred from another class.  I guess it’ll take awhile for them all to build their chemistry (teacher included).

Meanwhile my classes are going very well, and I’m impressed with my group this time around.  Some of them are better speakers than I originally thought, which is a relief, and others are warming up after getting to know me better.  Either way, good news.

This weekend we were stuck indoors.  As the weather service predicted, Saturday was raining all day and Sunday was a huge windstorm that kept blowing all day long.  All the time inside was pretty productive, however, and we got the house cleaned up, four loads of laundry finished, we watched three movies (Black Rain, Wreck-It Ralph, and Skyfall) and we cooked some yummy dishes, too.  On Saturday Kuniko made various kinds of spring rolls, stuffed with avocado, shrimp, smoked salmon, prosciutto, lettuce, cilantro, carrot, and even tomato in some of them.  Then last night at my request she made homemade pizzas from scratch, and her dough recipe passed the test with flying colors.  I think we’ve finally got pizza mastered.

This week should be a pretty normal week for me at work.  The classes are now starting to settle into a rhythm and the students are starting to hit the new material that I always start with.  Already I have had a few students changing class times and switching around, and that is always a good sign.  And I’ve got a party this Friday with an ex-student from a long time ago, so there is something interesting to look forward to at the end of the week.

We finally got under some cherry trees yesterday after work.  We managed to hit the blossoms at the peak, with every blossom open and none on the ground.  It was a gray, overcast day, but otherwise perfect for walking around and enjoying the blossoms.  In Akashi park there were quite a few hanami parties going on, but nowhere near as many as on the weekend.  Normally I’d say that this weekend the park will be packed with people, but we’ve got rain in the forecast.  Our timing turned out to be perfect.

Today I’m finishing up the first week of classes, and so far and very happy with how things are going.  My students seem to be getting used to the lessons quickly, and they also seem to be speaking out more than in previous years.  We’ll see how these first impressions hold up…

I’m at that weird stage where I feel 100%, but for some reason I can’t stop coughing now and then.  The little tickle in the back of my throat shows up when talking with students, resulting in lots of coughs during class.  Obviously that is not fun for me or my students.  An-noy-ing!

Other than the tickle things are going pretty well.  I’ve finished meeting all my new students but one, and I think I’ve put together some good ideas on coursework for each of them.  I’m pretty pleased with their abilities at this stage, and I can’t wait to see what they can do after a few months of class time.

Last night after work our timing wasn’t good and we couldn’t stop by Akashi park to see the cherry blossoms.  We ended up at the local yakitori instead, drinking beer and eating chicken on sticks.  Hopefully today we’ll get the timing right and head out there.  It really is our last chance to see cherry blossoms while they are still on the tree…

I’m almost finished at work meeting my new students.  Today is the last day of meeting new people, and so far I’m impressed with this term’s students. Actually one of my students this term will be one of our neighbors.  Mr. Kato lives three doors down from us and is also working at the same factory, so it’ll be a little strange to be teaching him this term.  Previously we’ve only spoken in Japanese, so I’m wondering if it will be a challenge to get him to speak only English in class.  We’ll see today.

Kuniko and I are trying to arrange a time after work this week to walk through the cherry blossoms in Akashi park, but her schedule is a little tricky.  I’m hoping today or tomorrow night we can pull it off.  I’d like to see a little bit more of the blossoms before everything turns green…

Well, my voice seems to have reported back for duty just in time to teach a full set of classes yesterday.  That is very good news.   Actually, it is a little shaky still, and sometimes I cough a few times during the conversation – but it is much better than before.

Yesterday I met three new students and four returning students, so it wasn’t all new faces.  Talking to the returning students I can see that they are very motivated.  The new students are hard to evaluate right now.  Hopefully they will get used to the environment and take advantage of the lessons, but it is too early to say.  Today I’ll meet another big group of new students and get to make a first impression.