Yesterday I met the group of new hires for the Rolling Stock company, and taught them some basic English for about two hours. The overall impression I have is that their English level is above average for the company – which makes my job a little easier. There is even a Swedish employee who speaks English and Japanese fluently, so I don’t think I’ll be seeing him in any of my classes. I was glad to see that there are a few more international employees working around the factory in Hyogo.

My goal for this week is to put together a good teaching plan for the next time I meet these students on Friday. The HR department wants me to teach them formal introductions and telephone English, so I’ll start with that plan and see how it goes.

Last night after work Kuniko invited me to go out to eat, so we ended up at the Italian restaurant here in town, called Da Lorenzo. It is a pretty good place considering it is in Okubo, and the cook was all alone, so he was the waiter as well. He did a great job – as usual we had a delicious meal for a reasonable price. Also, plenty of Moretti beer…

Today at work I have a chance to teach a double lesson to the newly hired employees at Kawasaki Rolling Stock. There are around 30 new employees, and I’m going to spend about 90 minutes with them to see how they do in an all-English environment. The idea is to teach them a couple of times this week, and then maybe in six months or so after they have settled into their training schedules I think I’ll teach them again in small groups on a more regular basis. It should be fun today to see how they do in class.

This weekend we had a chance to go out on Saturday after Kuniko’s school’s concert, to a restaurant called 全州. It is a Korean restaurant, and when we arrived the place was packed. As soon as our reservation time came up two people left, and we took their seat. The place was very small, and filled with Korean people, most of whom spoke Japanese. The food was great, and we made the mistake of over-ordering a bit. It was a good mistake to make, though – lots of great food, especially the japchae.

This week should go pretty quickly – it is the last week before Golden Week. Can’t wait for a whole week off!

This week is just about wrapped up, and we’ve just got one more work week until Golden Week. It seemed so far away just a couple of weeks ago, but time at work is absolutely flying by. Since about 90% of my time at work is teaching classes, that makes things go quickly.

Tomorrow Kuniko and I will attend her school’s mandolin guitar club performance in Kobe, and then afterwards we’re off to try a Korean restaurant in Sannomiya that was recommended by one of my students. Since the weekend is rainy, I think I’ll spend much of the weekend indoors.

We’re also starting to plan our trip to Bali in December. Choosing a place to stay is first on the list – should it be a hotel, resort, beach house? We’ve also got some flexibility in terms of length of stay. How much relaxation on the beach is enough, I wonder?

Yesterday afternoon during my last class of the day my student took me out into the factory to give me a guided tour in English. The tour was not for my benefit, but as a practice for another tour he’ll have to give in English tomorrow. It was a good opportunity to practice important stuff like “watch your head” and “please stay on the safety path”, but also to make sure that I could understand what he was saying in the noise of the factory floor.

It was only my second time into the factory, and it was pretty interesting. This is the biggest train making factory in Japan, and we saw them building not only the regular commuter trains for customers inside and outside Japan, but also my student showed the building of the bullet trains and explained that process as well.

We spent a little more than an hour on the tour, and I think the actual tour will take longer, as the guests are sure to ask many questions as they go. It should be an interesting time for my student today – I’m looking forward to hearing his recap on Friday.

Kuniko is back at it, taking baking lessons from a friend in Kakogawa, and that means lots of yummy stuff for me. Last night I came home to a pizza, green olive focaccia bread, and orange rolls for afterwards. The cooking lessons are a good way to get out of her regular routine, and I think Kuniko really looks forward to them.

Meanwhile at work classes are going really, really well. I’m liking my group of students so far, and they are putting a lot of effort into the class activities. I hope they can sustain that effort over the next five months. One student is so talkative I can barely get a word in edgewise. That can be good and bad, I think. He is a little bit overconfident, so in the near future I’ll have to get him to come back down to earth and think a little bit more about his English before it comes out of his mouth.

I’m also starting to line up projects for Golden Week – coming up at the end of this month. I’m thinking about putting in a drip watering system outside so that I don’t have to bother the neighbors to water our plants every time we go on a trip during the summer. Also I want to take a closer look at the wiring in our house and try to run some LAN cable through the basement under our living room. Time to get some tools and do some home improvement!

Last night we had the great pleasure of digging into some leftovers from my parents’ visit. My mother had brought some big foil trays and loads of ingredients to make homemade enchiladas for our family and friends. We spent a weekend going through two big trays, but luckily there was a small tray that we stuck in the freezer. We pulled it out yesterday and it tasted great.

The enchiladas were a big hit when my folks were here. Enchiladas don’t make an appearance in Japan very often, so it was a good experience.

I think we’ll be working on clearing the freezer over the next few weeks. It was jam-packed!

On Sunday we were driving to Kuniko’s school in our new car, and out of the blue we were rear-ended at slow speed. The guy behind us was driving a Mercedes Benz, which is a good car to be hit with, and he leaped out of the car and apologized when we got out to check out the damage. I think he probably felt like crap when he hit us, and then I jumped out of the passenger side and he must have thought, “Oh man, I gotta do this in English?” The look of relief on his face when Kuniko stepped out of the driver’s side was perfect.

Anyway – like most things in Japan – it works differently around here. The first thing he said was “I’m so sorry!” in Japanese, and Kuniko said, “No, no, don’t worry about it” in Japanese, and then we drove off to the side and exchanged business cards. I took pictures of both bumpers, but clearly ours was the loser. His license plate did most of the damage, but it really is just some deep scratches and one or two punctures through the bumper. The next step is that his insurance company will call our Honda dealer, and they’ll pay for everything to get back to normal. They’ll give us a car to drive while ours is being repaired, so it really won’t affect us much. And in the end, nobody was hurt, and that’s the important thing.

For dinner we finally visited the Thai restaurant that opened here in Okubo. First there was an Indian restaurant, and now a Thai restaurant – Okubo is getting more and more international. This place was designed to look like a street market in Thailand, and they did a good job of recreating the feel of eating from a food stand. The food was above average – not as good as our Japanese standard Baan Thai, but better than any others we’ve tried in Japan. And considering that it is a few minutes walk from our house, it is very much more convenient. The price was a little high for what we got, but I’m fine with that. The staff were all Thai, and very friendly (especially to a fellow foreigner like me). So overall it gets a good review, and I’ll try to go back as much as I can to help them stay in business. Okubo is full of old people that probably are not big fans of Thai food. I don’t know if they’ll be able to make it.

We’ve finally reached the end of a pretty busy week. I think we’re both looking forward to some time off this weekend. Kuniko has a wedding to attend on Saturday, but I think we’ll both be able to relax on Sunday. Can’t wait!

Behind our house yesterday they started to dig up a portion of the farm, and soon I expect that they’ll start working on building the retirement home back there. We received some paperwork saying that they have changed their original schedule, and now they’ll be working from April to August. I feel bad for the poor workers who have to be out there in the summer doing physical labor – it is brutally hot around here at that time. But it’ll be interesting to watch the progress daily from our patio.

Yesterday was a rainy day, at least until the afternoon, which had the effect of killing any chance of a hanami party Wednesday after work. Since Wednesday is “no overtime day” at work, many people schedule parties with their coworkers that evening to ensure that they’ll be able to attend. And since this is the peak of the cherry blossom season in Kobe, I think a lot of people had plans to sit under a tree yesterday evening and drink their selves silly. Sorry folks – maybe today.

The rain wasn’t quite hard enough to knock off the blossoms, however, so I expect that Friday night will be the last hurrah. I’ll also go out Friday night to a welcome party with some of my students, and we may find a lonely cherry tree to park under for the duration of an alcoholic beverage or two. I can’t imagine living in parts of America where they get so strict about open containers of alcohol – that wouldn’t really work here.

Last night we finished off the last of the leftovers from my parents’ visit, but we’ve still got a freezer full of bread that various neighbors dropped by while my parents were here. I’ve got to figure out a way to kill off 3 loaves of bread and a bag full of rolls. Luckily the freezer buys us some time to figure something out.

Yesterday at work I was busy meeting new students. One new student lives in the same town as ours – Okubo – and he lives just down the street from our favorite Indian restaurant, Swaad. I recommended the restaurant to him, and he said that he had been there before. I guess he wasn’t as enamored with it as we were. Once we get to know each other better I’ll try to get the details.

As far as the new students go, my overall impression is that they are a little bit higher level than average, so I’m looking forward to working with them on some more challenging projects. One student grew up in America from age 1 to age 8, but since has not studied English at all back here in Japan. It will be interesting to see how much of that English knowledge we can unlock during this term.

During the last couple of days I have met with new students and former students at work. While the new students don’t really know me well enough to talk about, my former students (and repeating students) are very surprised about my recent move to Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Apparently there was some sort of announcement made that included all the new employees from April, and my name was included in the list. And in Japan, foreign names really stand out in a list.

I guess the hardest thing for me to adjust to is that now all the people at KHI are co-workers, not customers. When I first started working there through a staffing company, I always had to keep in mind that KHI was paying my staffing company to have an English teacher there. They weren’t paying to have Bryan Fredricks there – just an English teacher. In other words, I could be replaced in a second. Now that KHI has bought the cow, so to speak, and I’ll be doing my best to make sure that they are satisfied with the investment.

For the past two weeks my parents have been visiting our place here in Japan. On Saturday they flew back home, and so now we’ve got the place to ourselves once again. Originally I had envisioned that each day I could get them to blog about what they did, but in the end everyone was too tired after all the activities to jump on the computer and write it up.

The visit went pretty well, I thought. We knocked out all the things that they requested, including seeing the cherry blossoms, visiting family and friends, eating conveyor belt sushi, okonomiyaki, seeing Nara and more of Osaka, and more. On top of that my parents managed to find time to cook several huge trays of enchiladas and a couple of lemon cakes.

Each day we’d come home after traveling all over the place, and feeling pretty tired out. But I think it was a good balance to all the calories that we were taking in.

So now that I’m getting back on a normal routine, I’ll have more time to blog. These days I’m going in to work a bit earlier than before, but I’m getting home earlier as well. I might have to change my blogging time depending on how things go.

Anyway, thanks for your patience, and welcome back!

My folks are getting started with their visit to Japan, and we put them through their paces the last couple of days. The first day we drove out to Costco to stock up the house with supplies, and then came back to eat dinner at home. Kuniko cooked up a semi-traditional Japanese dinner with chikuzenni, fried tofu and various side dishes.

Yesterday we went into Osaka to visit the aquarium, walk through Namba and Shinsaibashi, and also paid a visit to Yodobashi Camera – a huge electronics store in the center of Umeda. For dinner we ended up going to Swaad for some Indian food – yum. Swaad was packed when we got there, but luckily some patrons saw the distress in our eyes when we showed up, and hit the road.

Today we’re getting ready to drive to Nara, to look at some of the traditional side of Japan. On the way back we plan on having dinner at Denya in Futami, to catch up with the master and maybe some of the other gang. So far, so good!

This morning I got up at the regular time for the last time in a couple of weeks. Starting next week I have only a half day of work until April, so it felt nice switching off the alarm. I’m looking forward to the time off – there is a lot of stuff I need to get done next week. I don’t think I’ll be blogging regularly during the break, but I’ll try to jump on once or twice before my new term starts in April.

Today is the last day of classes with my current students, and it’ll be a little melancholy to say goodbye to my students. Some of them are certainly happy to wrap up the course, others not so much. Who knows? Maybe they can sign up for my next term.

Tonight Kuniko has a baking lesson from one of her friends who owns a bakery, so she’ll be getting home a little late. I’ll be relaxing at home – but I’ve got to figure out what to for dinner tonight. Maybe something with a lot of garlic…

Today at work I have another weird schedule. My classes will end at 2:20 this afternoon, and there are no others scheduled the rest of the day. As an OTC employee, that would normally mean that I would go home. Right now I’m an OTC employee – they pay my wages and are responsible for my actions while I’m at work.

As a KHI employee it means that I would stay until 5 pm whether I had classes or not, and take the opportunity to catch up on paperwork and other things before I left for the day. Right now I’m not yet a KHI employee, but I’ll become one in a few weeks.

So the question is, what should I do this afternoon? I’m thinking it is probably best to stay until 5 pm, just to make a good impression. But likely whatever I do, nobody will ever notice. Nobody else works in my classroom, and the bosses have many other things on their mind. What would you do in my situation?

Kuniko has the day off today, so she’ll be able to rest up at home – lucky girl. She had a tough situation at work yesterday with one of her former students, so maybe some time today to refresh will do her good.