Today I’ll teach the production department’s new employees in training.  It is always one of my favorite classes, because of the eagerness of the students and the unique environment where I teach.  These guys are getting trained every day, both in the factory and in the classroom.  I’m there to give them a chance to use the English that they’ve been learning during their other classes, and it is kind of a break for them from the technical training.

Another milestone – I’m wearing short sleeves for the first time this year.  The summer is long and hot, so I’ll need to buy some more short-sleeved shirts soon.  Maybe next week…

Yesterday I was a little surprised to receive our summer bonus.  Starting at a new company means a new bonus system, and I was a little unprepared for a sudden influx of money.  But it is always nice to get some extra funds.

This week is going to be full of rain.  The weather report is all clouds and blue umbrellas – with no end in sight.  The humidity is also back, and now that it is July we feel no guilt about turning on the air conditioning once in a while to cut the humidity inside the house.  And this is just the beginning…

At work two of my students are off to America for a training program, and so I’ll be getting some substitute students over the next couple of weeks. I’ve met one of the students that will be joining my class, and he’s got an interesting job at the company – managing overseas currencies to minimize company risk due to fluctuations in the market.  The other student I haven’t met yet – but I’m looking forward to it.

Friday night turned out to be a great time to visit Costco.  I met Kuniko in Motomachi after work, and she picked me up on the way home.  Costco was only about 20 minutes by car on the way home.  We stocked up on the usual stuff, and then headed home afterwards to chill out and relax.  Saturday we had plans to visit Kuniko’s parents after Kuniko got off of work – but by the time Kuniko got home she was pretty much dead on her feet, so we postponed until Sunday.  Finally, yesterday we drove over and visited for a little while after lunch.  Niro and Keiko both looked well.

Both days during the weekend were full of rain, and this week should be rainy pretty much every day.  The rainy season is officially here, and we’ll have to deal with this for the next 2-3 weeks.  After that it should just be hot and muggy for the rest of summer.

Tonight after work we are going to run to Costco to stock up on some supplies for entertaining and summer BBQs.  Tonight we’ll pick up some supplies – meat, beer and some cheese.  We’re also going to pick up some goodies for Kuniko’s folks, because we’re planning on visiting with them (and Kuniko’s sister) on Saturday.  Kuniko will pick me up from Motomachi station and take me over there, but it’ll be our first time to try the new Costco after work on a weekday.  I’m hoping it won’t be packed with customers.

Yesterday at work I was trying to explain sarcasm and understating to one of my students.  We were studying using a TV program where one of the announcers said to an interviewee, “You seemed to enjoy that a little” after the interviewee had clearly enjoyed something quite a bit.  It is pretty hard to explain the concept of understating for humor, but once I thought about it – it is something that English speakers do a lot.  Another one of those challenges of teaching, I guess.

Last night I had some extra time before Kuniko got home so I made peanut butter s’mores.  The recipe is here:

http://www.howsweeteats.com/2012/06/no-bake-peanut-butter-smores-squares/

They were easy to make, but after tasting some afterwards – wow – too sweet.  I had cut the recipe in half, but it will still take a long time to get through these in our household.  I may try to distribute them around the neighborhood to balance the calorie load.  But they do remind me of campfire s’mores – it has been years since I’ve had them.

Last night I got home after Kuniko, which meant that I would be treated to dinner – ready to go as I walked in the door.  She made a green salad topped with boiled strips of pork, tomatoes, okra, and a roasted sesame dressing.  Also she made some mabodofu on the side, so we had a hot and cold combo that was a great match for the warmer temperatures.   Yum!

Today should be a pretty normal day.  Some of my students are coming back from business trips overseas, and I’m spending time with them recapping their experiences and identifying what activities and expressions were difficult for them while they were there.  In the next few months we’ll focus on those activities and try to bump up their skills a bit more.

I’ll get home before Kuniko today, so maybe I’ll roast some potatoes with garlic and herbs tonight.

I decided to take on the most recent season of Mad Men, since I don’t really have any TV shows on these days.  I was able to get the whole season, so I should be able to watch an episode or two every week.  I don’t know why I didn’t catch the first time it ran, but I’m looking forward to enjoying it at my leisure.

Recently work has been busy but good, and my students are about halfway through their six month course.  This week I’ll be doing evaluations of their progress, and discussing with them the last part of the course.  For some students this will be a wake up call, I think.

Tonight Kuniko should get home at a reasonable time, so I’m glad she’ll be able to get some more rest than usual.  Her schedule continues to be brutal, but we’ve just got a couple more weeks until things get back to normal.  We’re almost there!

A couple of weeks ago one of my students mentioned that he hiked out to a park in the north of Uozumi and was able to see fireflies floating around.  After some research it turns out that the park has a special program to attract and protect fireflies, and that the park was only about a 40 minute walk from my house.

I had a few false starts between then and now, but finally on Saturday night I hiked out there to see them.  Thanks to my phone and the GPS function it was easy enough to find the place.  It was really out away from the town, and it was fun hiking through fields and past the neighborhoods to an unknown destination.  Once I found the park I was surprised how big it was, and I just had to follow the sound of kids to find families gathered in the dark alongside a stream.  At first we saw only one or two fireflies, but after a time more and more came out, until we could see around 50 floating around.

I guess this time is a little past the peak of the season, but I was happy to see any at all.  I decided to make this a yearly ritual while walking back.

Unfortunately while I was watching the fireflies, their cousins the mosquitoes were taking the chance to bite every bit of exposed skin.  It was an itchy walk back.  Next time I’ll remember to use anti-bug spray before I arrive.

Tonight after work my plan is to meet up with Yoshi and hit a yakitori in Tarumi.  The town is closer to both our places, so the return trip afterwards should be pretty painless.  It has been quite a while since I met up with Yoshi.  I’m looking forward to catching up with him and seeing how his family is doing.

Last night Kuniko and I both arrived at almost the same time at home, and so she treated me to dinner – a beef and vegetable stir fry with tofu and tomato salad.  Dinner was delicious, and it was nice to take a night off from the kitchen.  This weekend I’ll have more chances to try some new dishes.

I also made some margarita popsicles last night to prepare for the hot weather.  I mixed up the recipe, and we’ll see how they turn out sometime this weekend.  I hope they turn out well…

Yesterday I stumbled across an interesting link to a documentary by the BBC posted on Youtube about the working poor in Japan.  Although it was filmed three or four years ago it is a nice look into “behind the scenes” Japan.  The goofy director did a good job of interjecting humor into what was a difficult situation, and the result was a really well-done documentary.  It is about an hour long, is a little heart-breaking as well as humorous at times, but if you are interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_l5b6lZ0mM&feature=related

Yesterday in an unusual move, they decided to let everyone go home at 3 pm, in a bid to get everyone home before the brunt of the storm hit.  For me it wasn’t a big change in my schedule – I could leave two hours earlier.  But for some of the other hard-working employees it was a big deal.  They usually leave between 10 pm and midnight, so they got a lot of extra time.

I still had to walk through a lot of wind and rain, but I got home around 4:30 in the afternoon, which is pretty much a world record.  The typhoon itself passed to the south of us, so we didn’t really experience much but a lot of rain.  No problem!  The next typhoon should pass near the end of this week, but it is much weaker than the previous one and shouldn’t cause any issues.

On top of that, Kuniko got home from her baking lesson early, and so we could enjoy sandwiches on fresh baked bread last night.  It was nice to have a full evening to relax together for a change…

It looks like the typhoon will end up coming through today, with the center arriving around 3pm this afternoon.  I’ll be holed up at work, but hopefully everything will survive around here while we’re gone.  Because of the timing, I don’t think anybody will get a holiday.  Bummer!  Other than the wild wind and rain, it should be a regular day at work, though.

Once again we are entering the typhoon season, and after three misses so far this year, typhoon #4 seems to be aiming at Japan.  It looks to be a big one, but it is still about two days away.  That leaves plenty of time for it to weaken and turn away from Kansai.

If it does come, I’m going to have to go secure all the stuff outside – something I haven’t done in a long time.  We’ve been lucky on the typhoons the last couple of years.

The weekend was good – mainly just relaxing at home.  Have of it was raining, and Kuniko had to work both days as usual, but other than that it was fine.  We made a run to drop off a father’s day present at Niro’s place, but nobody was home, so we had to leave the present with a note instead.  On the way back we tried to find a park to see some fireflies, but unfortunately we couldn’t figure out where it was.  I may try to check it out on my own depending on how much time I have during the week.  Unless they all get blown away during the typhoon…

Last night after work we finally got our mittens on a couple of glasses of half frozen beer.  The experience was pretty interesting.

First of all, drinking it was hard.  They pile on the frozen beer on top, and it is pretty hard to avoid that with your nose while drinking deeply.  Inevitably, you end up with a little dab of frozen froth on the tip of your nose, which is fine for romantic comedies but doesn’t really go with the atmosphere of a blue-collar izakaya.  I think the best approach is to kind of attack from the top and suck up all white foam off the top.  It keeps your nose clean, but I don’t think sucking off the white head of the frozen beer looks all that cool either.

Once you get past that obstacle, the beer was quite good.  The frozen foam stayed on top and the beer did remain very, very cold.  The foam itself didn’t really taste that great, though.  Maybe they make it from flat beer?  It had a strange taste.  Overall, the beer was good, but it did feel a little strange and the cold temperature wasn’t enough to offset the weird taste of the foam.

So I don’t think we’ll be investing in a machine to do it at home.

Still, that is the fun kind of experience that I came to Japan to get.  Hopefully I’ll have more chances in the near future to try another strange experience…

I find myself strangely excited about the prospect of enjoying some semi-frozen beer after work today.  Kuniko and I will meet after work in Motomachi and check out an izakaya that is supposedly serving the special beer.  I hope it lives up to my expectations…

Last night Kuniko came home on the later side, so that left me plenty of time to sip red wine and watch the Tigers game on TV.  The Tigers aren’t doing so well these days, and it was a little like watching a car accident in slow motion.  I did turn down the sound and listened to music instead, which bumped up the entertainment factor a bit.

It should be a normal day otherwise, so we’re off to catch the train and see how it shakes out.