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.

Well, not really. But I did manage to get my paperwork into the immigration office, meaning that I may be able to pick up my new visa in the beginning of April, which would be perfect for me. If they aren’t ready by April 4th, then I’ll have to wait for Golden Week in May. Let’s hope they are able to get it done quickly!

Yesterday I shuttled back and forth between the Kobe immigration office and the Akashi city office. Luckily there is a satellite city office inside of Akashi station. That meant I could take the train there, get off, and get my paperwork done quickly. Unfortunately the immigration office is a bit of a hike from Sannomiya station, so I got some good exercise yesterday.

After all of that I spent some time in the bookstores looking at textbooks for the next term, and also doing a little bit of shopping around Sannomiya. Kuniko and I had dinner at Com Coka, and as usual the steamed spring rolls were awesome. We also had some fried rice, some pho, and fried soft shell crab. Yum!

Today I’m headed back to work, and Friday will be the last day of the term. We’ll do a final presentation next week on Tuesday, but I’m pretty happy to be closing out this course this week.

I must be some kind of glutton for punishment. Along with all the paperwork that is required at Kawasaki, my visa will come up for renewal in June, and so I’ve got to start getting the paperwork together now. The only time to apply for the visa is during normal business hours, and that means that I must take two days off to take care of it (one day to turn in the papers, one day to pick up the visa). According to “the rules” you cannot apply for a renewal until two months before expiration. My two months begins April 6th. Until April 6th I have about 11 days off, so this would be an ideal time to do it. After April 6th I have one day off only.

So, my job today is to go to the immigration office and try to convince them to do the visa paperwork a couple of weeks early. Flexibility? In the Japanese government? I don’t know what I’m thinking.

Anyway, after they turn down my request I’ll spend time in Kobe today doing research on textbooks for my future students, and doing some shopping for some other stuff before I meet Kuniko for Vietnamese food in the evening. I already planned the cheer-myself-up party – that’s how confident I am about how things will go with the government officials today.

I spent a big chunk of this weekend working on paperwork related to entering Kawasaki as a contract employee. Actually, Kuniko did a lot of work, too. I can write in Japanese, but to write down, for example, my street address it takes nearly 60 seconds. For Kuniko to do it, it takes about 5 seconds. I had tons of paperwork to do, so we kind of teamed up to do it. But Kuniko did most of it.

It is not done yet, however. I need to get some documents from my current and soon-to-be-former employer, OTC. Tomorrow I have a day off, so I’ll head to the immigration office to get some more paperwork from them. You wouldn’t believe how much paperwork is involved here.

Today is a regular day of classes, but starting tomorrow my schedule gets weird. It will stay weird until the beginning of April, so I expect blog updates to be intermittent for a while. Maybe when my parents arrive at the end of this month they can do some guest blogging.

This morning I got up at the usual time and opened up my last box of imported American cereal – Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Maybe when it is easy to buy breakfast cereal any time you like the attraction is hard to understand, but one box every five years… delicious.

Today Kuniko has another day off of work, and this weekend is off for both of us. Three days off in a row? Unprecedented. Kuniko promised to make Italian food for dinner tonight, and I can’t wait to open up a bottle of wine to celebrate the end of the week. We’ll go catch a movie this weekend, maybe visit her parents, and I am going to get some rest and get ready for my last week of classes. Looking forward to it…

These days I’m working hard wrapping up all kinds of paperwork, and now and then some translation jobs come in which I have to do on top of my teaching work. Translation is interesting, and I think as long as it is going from Japanese -> English I enjoy it. Going the other way is much more difficult, and my skill level is not quite high enough to do it professionally.

In addition to this work, my classes are entering the end phase, and I’m doing interview tests and trying to measure the improvement of my students’ English skills (or lack thereof). So far there has been some pretty good students, and some that haven’t quite improved as much as I would have liked. I’m very proud of some of my students – especially one that has come a long way over a year. I think he’s ready for an overseas business trip to see how he does in a real business English situation. But right now there is nothing on his schedule.

This weekend should be more paperwork, this time at home. I have tons of application forms and documents to fill out for Kawasaki, so I’ll be confined to quarters this weekend until I can get it all done. Ugh.

Today Kuniko has a day off from work, while I have a regular work day. Right now the term of her school is winding down, so she’ll have some chances over the next few weeks to rest up here and there. I’m glad she has the opportunity – she deserves it.

Getting ready to enter KHI as a direct hire employee, and I’ve got a huge laundry list of paperwork and documents that I need to provide. In addition I have a lot of paperwork wrapping up the current term, so that means that I’m going to be a desk jockey the next few weeks. Maybe I can sneak in a hike this weekend to get some exercise.

That’s it – gotta run…

The heavy rain is continuing today, and although the crappy weather is no fun to walk through on the way to work, some of the optimists in my class say that it is a sign of the changing of seasons. If that’s the case, I guess I can deal with a week of rain.

Last night after work I attended an unofficial meeting with my OTC contact, and I told him about jumping ship to Kawasaki. He took it well, even with a sense of admiration, and I guess he’s going to tell the rest of the company tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll go smoothly.

After a relatively normal week this week things will get surreal with lots of strange scheduling as we wrap up the current term at work. A day off here, a block of empty time there, and by the end of that week I should be pretty much done until April. The ends of the terms are always a scramble to get everyone’s classes in and most students finished at the same time. Something to look forward to…

What a weekend – a lot of things happened, and I finally can blog about it.

First, last week I wrapped up negotiations with Kawasaki, and from April 1st I will now work directly for them, effectively cutting my staffing company out of the loop. Negotiating with a giant company like Kawasaki was not easy – they are very comfortable playing hardball – but thanks to some good conversations and some well-placed people I am very happy with the contract that I signed. I’ll be under this contract for the rest of the year, and we’ll discuss a new contract towards the end of the year as we evaluate how 2012 goes.

This month I will have to ease out of my former employer’s grasp and move into Kawasaki’s (hereafter shortened to KHI for Kawasaki Heavy Industries). Hopefully my current employer isn’t too pissy about the change. My contact person at the company seems cool about it, though, so it should work out OK.

Now that I have a job lined up for the rest of the year I could go ahead and pick some holidays. Part of my contract was a ton of paid holidays – I get 22 days a year. I signed up for some time this summer, and we’re already booked for a trip to Hawaii to visit my cousin and her family for a week or so. Then I got some time off for the winter holidays, and we’re planning to spend the time in Bali doing the relax thing. 2012 is the year of the beach, I guess.

Not only did I wrap up the new contract, but today we picked up our new car. We decided to take it for a spin to the new Costco in Tarumi, and it did great! Kuniko really seems to like the car – it is a lot more comfortable than the old Mazda Demio that we had. As for Costco, we were pleasantly surprised. It is a nice one, and despite being there in the middle of the day it wasn’t completely swamped. We’re hoping to visit more on weekday evenings when there are fewer people.

After coming back we also had a visit from Mr. Tojo down the street. He and his wife had attended an oyster festival near Himeji, and he brought back a bunch of oysters still in the shell for us. We already had dinner cooking, but we still fired up the grill in a slight drizzle and grilled those oysters up. Yum! With our dinner we also opened up a nice bottle of champagne to celebrate the new job and new car, and now we’re just taking it easy this evening getting ready for the work week ahead. It was a big weekend…