Friday night we headed over to Ciro for a birthday dinner.   This was the first time testing out our secret way to get reservations at the restaurant (bypassing their rule of taking reservations only two weeks in advance), and it worked perfectly.  Our secret method is pretty simple, ask the manager.  As usual, dinner was excellent.  They make a huge assortment of antipasti, served both chilled and warm, and it was fun to select some for ourselves this time.

Saturday, Kuniko had to go to work for most of the day, so I met up with Yoshi and we did a climb up Mt. Rokko.  Our starting point was new – Okamoto – and from there we made the climb up to the summit in about three hours.  On top we took a break to recharge our energy.  I was pretty tired when I got to the top.  It was my first hike since before summer, so my legs were just 0n the edge of cramping up.  Luckily some nuts and chocolate saved the day.

Yesterday Kuniko again was gone all day at work, so I spent the day resting my legs, catching up on Survivor and Amazing Race, and playing games. For dinner I grilled some chicken thighs, made some fresh salsa, and served grilled chicken tacos.  Yum.

Now I’m off to work.  I’m trying to build the habit of going to work early these days.  Monday is tough, though.

Yesterday was my 41st birthday, and it wasn’t really a big event.  Kuniko and I had decided to move the party to tonight so that we could do something fun.  The plan is to go to Akashi after work and have a nice quiet dinner at Chiro over a bottle of wine.  I can’t wait.

Although yesterday was quiet, there were still some birthday events.  Kuniko bought me a new necktie, which is starting to become a tradition, and a package and birthday card arrived from the USA.   The Birches sent the card, which was pretty funny (as usual), and my parents sent along some goodies.  One of the funniest things they sent was a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine for Kuniko to check out.  The cover has lots of attention grabbing articles like “How To Have Sex That Will Knock Your Panties Off”, which I think cross some serious cultural lines.  Should be an entertaining read this weekend.

Yesterday I was feeling a little bit under the weather.  On the train to work in the morning I was getting cold sweats, and I was pretty listless at work despite having new lessons in all my classes and even a class for the production workers in the south part of the factory.  I taught there just before lunch, but by the time we wrapped everything up and I walked back across the factory to my regular classroom, I had only 45 minutes to have lunch and get ready for my next classes.

The end result was that it was a battle with my body to get through yesterday, and I was very happy to get home and crash.  It turned out that yesterday Kuniko was off a little early from work, so she had dinner ready for us when I walked in the door.  After dinner I took my temperature (normal) and then went right to bed.

I feel a little better (although still sleepy) this morning.  Mission accomplished?  We’ll see how things go at work today.

We had a lot going on this weekend.   Friday night we met up after work to go to Costco and stock up on red wine, beer, and other goodies for the household.  We bought some pre-cooked ribs and a Korean salad to bring home, and they were a big hit.  The Korean salad was a first for us, and although it was a little salty, it did taste pretty authentic (and went well with the beer we were drinking).

Then on Saturday we met up in Kobe for some shopping and to see a concert by Kuniko’s students near Mosaic south of Kobe station.  The usual suspects were there – lots of familiar faces among the teachers and parents that came.  After the show we went back into Sannomiya to do a little more shopping and then had dinner at a “French” restaurant that had more Italian food on the menu than French.  Dinner was fine, but the service was a little kooky.  Wine was poured from our already opened bottle elsewhere and then delivered to us, food came up from a dumb waiter elevator from the ground floor, and even the salad took 30 minutes to prepare.  A little strange, but the food itself was quite good.

Sunday we again met in Kobe in the afternoon, this time for a jazz concert by a guy named Ozone (pronounced Oh-Zo-Nay) and his band, No Name Horses.  Kuniko had received a great price on the tickets at her school, and there were lots of school staff there, too.  We sat near the back of the performance hall (it turned out row 5 on the ticket meant row 5 from the back) and enjoyed the two hour performance.  The first half was quite good, showcasing most of the performers and changing styles between latin, blues and piano jazz.  The drummer was the most impressive musician, and I think the band was very aware of that.  He had plenty of solos.

As soon as the performance ended we rushed out the door, picked up a couple of presents at Kobe station, and then brought them back to Okubo to bring over to the Fukumi’s house for dinner.  They had invited us over to look through pictures from our respective holidays, and enjoy some dinner.  Sayaka had cooked shepherd’s pie, quiche, and they even surprised me with a birthday cake and candles.  It was very nice of them – and a big surprise for me.

Their pictures of their trip to Italy were really well done.  They had gotten a new camera, and they like to take pictures with lots of goofy poses, as well as the landscape and sights.  You can tell they really enjoy their traveling holidays.

After four bottles of wine, dinner, and cake, we walked back home to get some rest, and kept on resting all the way through the Monday holiday.  It was a good thing we had the holiday, because I think it would have been very hard to go to work after all the rushing around on the weekend.

We’re going to make another run to Costco this weekend.  It is no secret that we’ve been there much more often now that it is so close to us.  This time we’re stocking up on wine.  I’m not sure what else we’ll pick up, but it’ll be fun to poke around.  When it was a two hour drive to Costco we’d save up for a long time and then go nuts filling up the car with goodies.  Now we seem to go to Costco even for just a few things, since it is on the way home for us.

I’m finishing up my first week of classes with the new students.  I’m pretty happy with most of the classes, but there are still some that need improvement.  Next week I’ll focus on those particular classes to try to get the balance right.  It’ll take a while to get everybody comfortable, but once that happens I think the classes will run much more smoothly.

Friday is here – and I’m already thinking about the upcoming three day weekend…

We’re past the midpoint of the week, and already the hustle/bustle of a new term is slowing down.  My current project is to find some good workbooks to use in class as homework assignments.  It is surprisingly difficult to find ones that I like.  Mainly I want the students to work on vocabulary at home, and then we’ll do grammar and speaking skills in class.  I’ll continue to dig through Amazon Japan – hopefully something will turn up soon.

The upcoming weekend is looking like it’ll be a busy one.  Two jazz concerts, a party, a lunch, some shopping, and a trip to Costco.  Luckily it is a three day weekend, and we can do almost nothing on Monday.

This morning we got up even earlier than usual as an experiment.  This term I’m teaching some early classes, and the classes begin at 7:10 on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  Usually I arrive at work at 7:00 every morning, but only a 10 minute safety margin had me a bit nervous.  We’ll try catching one train earlier than the usual today and see what time I show up.  Hopefully I’ll have enough gas in the tank to get me through the day…

Yesterday I met so many new people, and that will continue until Wednesday or Thursday this week.  Hopefully they had a good impression of the class, and we can start to move into more challenging topics in the next couple of weeks.  Some of my students made a big impression on me, as well.  Today I have a combination of new and returning students which should work out to a nice blend of personalities.

Yesterday I also proposed to buy a few textbooks to fill out my selection at work, and unfortunately my request was shot down.  I think if I spoke better Japanese I could have made my case better, but in the end I got the message – the budget is tight, so try to make do.  I ended up ordering the texts myself at home.  A teacher buying their own materials to help their students?  Not exactly unheard of.

Starting from today I’ll get a brand new set of students to teach for the next six months.  This week will be full of self introductions, nervous people, and a lot of sweating.  Hopefully the students will also feel some sense of relief when they discover that speaking English 100% of the time isn’t all that bad.  The first week in my class will be pretty gentle – first impressions in these situations mean a lot.

Yesterday we had a typhoon come through – lots of wind and rain, and we were sequestered at home all day.  We made the best of it by watching movies and snacking all day.  We watched “The Descendants” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, and by the time dinnertime rolled around we weren’t that hungry.  I decided to cook one of the packages of rice-a-roni that we had brought back from Hawaii this summer.  It is one of those dishes that is near-impossible to find here in Japan (even Costco doesn’t carry them), so it was a rare treat.  Yum.

Yesterday at work I had mainly just paperwork and preparation to do.  I joined a few other members of the HR department to do orientations for my next classes starting next week, but other than that I was just doing deskwork.  It was the first time in a long time that I didn’t have any classes while being at work.

As for the orientations, I thought they went well.  The new employees that joined this year will be taking group lessons, and it has been roughly five months since I’ve seen them last.  Now they are coming to terms with their actual responsibilities in the company, and I noticed significantly less smiles than before.  I’m sure I’ll be able to get them back on the fun track once we get into class.

Today, besides the paperwork, I do have one consultation with an ex-student, and then I’m off to the bookstore to check out the textbooks.  I’m looking for some supplemental materials for some classes.  Of course I am going to buy the actual materials online where they are cheaper, but at the bookstore I can spend my time thumbing through the materials to make sure I’m getting what I want.

Tonight Kuniko has a party after work, so I’ve got to figure what to do for dinner.  BBQ at home? Go out?  Something fun to think about during the day today.

Last night I cooked up the “All B Panini” – basil, bacon, blue cheese and brie.  It might have been the most unhealthy panini I have made so far.  I thought the taste was pretty good, especially the tang of the blue cheese blended nicely with the saltiness of the bacon.  Unfortunately I thought it was missing something.  I’ll have to experiment again (maybe roasted hot peppers?) to try to find the final ingredient.

Yesterday I officially finished up my last four classes, and now it is all paperwork and orientations the rest of the week.  Time seems to go a lot slower when you are behind a desk working on paperwork, but there is a fair amount of work still to do.  Hopefully I can get it all wrapped up by the end of tomorrow.

At work this morning I will finish up with my students for this six month term.  I had a really good group this time around, so I think I’m going to miss them. The good news is that I’ll have a lot of new students starting next week, though.

This afternoon and the next couple of days will be filled with activities to wrap up last term and prepare for the next.  For the first time in a long time it’ll be me doing most of this stuff.  Hopefully it’ll go smoothly!

And, tonight I’m thinking about making some more panini sandwiches for dinner.  We’ve been on a panini craze, and I just can’t get enough.  Considering some brie, bacon, blue cheese and basil sandwiches for tonight.

So happy that the last couple of days have dropped to cool temperatures.  Some of my students have commented that it is almost time to go to long sleeve shirts, but I’m walking around enjoying the free air conditioning.

I was invited yesterday to play “hand tennis” with some of the employees at KHI.  The guy who invited me usually says hello in English now and then on the way to work. I visited the court at lunch, and watched them hitting a small inflatable ball around a mini-tennis court.  They used paddles that were bigger than table tennis paddles but much smaller than tennis rackets.  It was interesting to watch them hitting around the ball, and they seemed very serious about it.  They were wearing t-shirts and tennis shoes, so they must change clothes after lunch and then go to play.   Since I was still wearing business clothes, I had a nice excuse to get out of it.  It was nice to see that some people were staying active at lunchtime, though.

My classes this week are mostly doing final comments, final tests, and saying goodbye to students.   I do have a few students returning next time, though.  It’ll be nice to have some familiar faces next time around as well.  There are a lot of things that I need to do before the new term starts.  Luckily I have half of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to work on those.  It’ll be an interesting week.

Friday night Yoshi and I met up in Sannomiya to hit a yakitori and have some local beer. We started at the yakitori, a kind of dark, small, back alley kind of place that was surprisingly nice. There were only eight seats in the place, though. We started with a big combination plate of raw chicken parts – from slices of raw breast meat to liver, heart, and gizzard. It was my first time to eat so much raw chicken in one sitting, but after a little salt and sesame oil they were pretty good.

Yoshi and I sat on one side of the counter, and directly on the other side the two staff cooked and served dishes. Yakitori restaurants can be smoky, but they had a clear plexiglass shield between us and the grill, and a huge exhaust system directly overhead to suck out all the smoke before it filled the small room. This plexiglass shield ended up saving us from more than smoke, however. Some other customers had ordered some champagne, and the staff made an error opening the bottle. The bottle started spraying, and the staff tried to get the cork back in the bottle. It ended up intensifying the spray and completely hosing every customer in the place except for us. The plexiglass was covered in champagne that would have otherwise ended up on us.

Saturday Kuniko brought some of her coworkers over for dinner after her school’s culture festival. We grilled burgers and sausages, mounted the giant patties on giant buns, and struggled to finish them off. Seriously, huge burgers. Every key seemed to like them, so mission accomplished.

Sunday we spent recharging our batteries at home. I
mainly was reading, while Kuniko slept most of the day.

This week I have my last three days of classes for this term, and also the orientation meetings for my new students. New classes start next week!