I just wrapped up a very relaxing four day weekend, and it is once more back into the trenches. I have just three more workdays with my current students, and then I’ll kick off my new course with students next week. The next few days will be spent discussing study plans for the future, taking interview tests, and the like.

As for the weekend, it was very nice. I spent time hiking, shopping, reading, studying, playing video games – you name it. Last night Kuniko and I met after work and tried to go to a Vietnamese restaurant that we have been hoping to visit, but because of the holiday weekend they were closed on Tuesday. That meant a backup dinner at home of grilled pork quesadillas – which is not a bad backup at all.

OK – off to work and to see what the rest of the working world has been doing while I’ve been gone.

We are in the midst of a very long weekend. Kuniko has to go to work tomorrow, but I have another day to spend relaxing before going back to work. With just a three day week ahead of me, and a party on Friday night, things are looking pretty good.

Last night one of my ex-students recently finished moving into our neighborhood. He and his wife built a house a few minutes walk from our place, and they came by last evening to bring an introduction gift and also to introduce themselves (and their dog). Mr. Tojo (TJ for short) and his wife are a really nice couple and I’m hoping that we can spend more time together once they settle in and finish unpacking.

The Friday before a four day weekend feels different. More significant, somehow. Kuniko and I have normal schedules today and should be back home tonight at a reasonable hour to crank up the music, start the disco ball spinning and pop some bottles. Friday is always a celebration at our house. Unfortunately it isn’t a full-blown celebration – as usual Kuniko is working on Saturday. We’ll have to skip the trapeze, beer bong and breakdancing tonight.

I heard an inspiring story from one of my students yesterday, but as I was the only one he had told it to, and some other students do read this blog, I am unable to share it. I’ll just say here that some people are going to some extraordinary lengths to help people in the disaster areas. Sometimes it isn’t enough to just donate money or collect aid.

The last three days have been cold, cold, cold. I was all prepared for spring and getting excited and now there is ice everywhere. Yesterday at lunchtime there was some pretty steady snow as well, so I guess winter is hanging on just a little longer.

I was talking with a student yesterday who has family in Tokyo, and he was a little frustrated with the lack of information coming from the government, the media, and his lack of access to what information is available. Although there is plenty of information out there in English, it is after the official Japanese release, it is based often on poor translations or filtered through cultural views making it suspect and usually way behind the news curve.

I have been following news from a couple of sources that I have been following since I came to Japan – japanprobe and more recently gakuranman. They are doing a good job of covering the news in a little more level-headed way.

The local news is also pretty good at updating what is going on for earthquake and tsunami news, but as for nuclear power plant news the web seems to be better. Like a lot of other people in Japan I don’t believe what the government is saying about the radiation levels – their top priority is to prevent a panic. As one of my students said yesterday, who knows what is really happening?

Yesterday I spent the day saying goodbye to about 1/3 of my students. They finished their course a little earlier than the rest, so it was our final class. Some of them I can tell will continue to study and continue to improve their English. Others will fall right back into non-usage of English and wonder why my class didn’t help them. My last class I always turn into the nagging teacher – explaining how to keep improving, what they need to focus on for the future, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. It is always a little sad to say goodbye to them, but I usually bump into them again somewhere around the office.

The disaster news kept coming throughout the day as it usually does, but we were happy to see a couple of channels of regular programming on TV last night. I measure the return to normalcy around here by how many food shows are on.

Once again, everyone here is healthy and life is completely normal. Work continues, and people (especially in Japan) love to get to work to forget their troubles. This will pay off in the near future – there is a lot of work to do reconstructing the part of the country destroyed by the triple whammy of disasters.

Yesterday was my first day back at work after the earthquake, and as you might expect, things were completely normal. My students wanted to discuss the earthquake, and although many had relatives in the Tokyo area, nobody had any friends/relatives in the harder-hit Tohoku area. That was certainly good news, but the bad news was that I had to teach words like ‘aftershock’, ‘nuclear power station’ and ‘radiation’ over and over again.

As for the factory, although there was no damage from the disaster, they do purchase a lot of parts and equipment from vendors in the Tokyo area, and it is unclear when (or whether) those parts can be delivered in the near future. Transportation is in an on-again off-again status right now in the Tokyo area. Because of intermittent power outages, poor communication, and what appears to be indecisive power company executives, nobody is quite sure when they can travel to Tokyo and whether they can go to work.

In true Japanese fashion, the news was filled yesterday with everyone trying to go to work in Tokyo, waiting in huge lines for trains that may or may not run, and long, long delays. I would be calling in sick and waiting for things to settle down, but it seems like everyone knows that the best way to get the Japanese economy running again is to get back to work and start producing ASAP. Or maybe they just wanted to get out of the house after a weekend of non-stop disaster coverage on TV.

Over the weekend the television has been running nothing but disaster coverage non-stop on every channel. A close eye is being kept on the nuclear reactors, and a series of rolling blackouts will start in eastern Japan today and continue for what could be as long as several weeks. My friend in Chiba reported that their water has been stopped, and that they only get a few hours of electricity a day. Luckily his family is OK.

Having heard nothing to the contrary I’m preparing to go to work this morning. Although I’ve heard that some factories in the Tokyo area will be closed, I’m sure that mine will be open and everyone will be twice as busy as they were before. When you already work 15 hour days there aren’t a lot more free hours left, however. It should be interesting to see the reaction to the disaster through the eyes of my students this week.

Although power and water conservation is on the menu for eastern Japan, here in the west we’ve heard nothing about any kind of change in utility service. We’re doing small things around the house to save power just in case, but according to the news the energy grids are completely separate between eastern and western Japan.

One bright spot was this morning’s TV news – there were actually commercials every few minutes. I haven’t seen a commercial on Japanese TV since the disaster, and maybe this is a sign (albeit a weak one) that things are shifting towards normalcy.

OK, I’m off to work to see what happens… should be an interesting day.

Yesterday afternoon at work I was sitting with one of my students discussing his recent work issue when suddenly I felt the floor move slightly. I stopped talking and looked around and everything appeared completely normal. I asked him if he felt an earthquake and he looked at me strangely and said I needed to take a rest. But we fired up the homepage for Japan’s seismic events and there it was – a big one northeast of Tokyo.

Just about then everybody in the 12 story office building simultaneously did the same thing, and my office computer’s internet connection croaked. So we finished up the lesson, and he went back to work, and between classes the rest of the day I checked for news via my cellphone. Slowly I could see the nature of the disaster, and students that came afterwards described what they knew (in English!) and finally I wrapped things up and went home.

That’s about all I’ve got to tell from Japan. We are in a very safe spot. Our location is on the inland sea protected by Shikoku, Awaji island, and the southern part of Osaka. According to the reports the water level to the south of us went up only 10 cm momentarily. Our house is quite a ways inland, and sits on a slight hill above other houses. In addition it is a newly-built earthquake-safe compliant building, and Kobe house builders know a lot about earthquake safety.

As one of my students said yesterday, people around this area are used to earthquakes, having survived one of the most devastating earthquakes in Japanese history. People in the Tokyo area are not as experienced, and so it will be tough on them in the coming days.

This morning Kuniko went off to work. I’m doing chores around the house this Saturday morning. It’s business as usual for us.

There was a big quake to the east but here in Kobe it was very quiet. Everybody is fine and no damage to report here. I’ll write more tomorrow – we’re tired out from watching so much TV news…

I had a great time with my former students from Mitsuboshi last night. They are a great group of people that really enjoy spending time together, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether they use Japanese or English – everyone is relaxed and talkative. We caught up on what they’ve been doing, and enjoyed some pretty good izakaya food in the process.

As always, Maki had a lot of interesting stories about his quest to get married through an arranged marriage. He’s been working at it a long time, but he hasn’t quite found success just yet. Jun, Ai and Naoko also filled us in on what they’ve been up to (in English). I was struck by how willing to speak about private issues they were when using English.

I shared a train ride in the same direction with Naoko. She recently got married (to a Kawasaki Heavy Industries worker) and is living at the KHI company housing in Higashi Kakogawa. She related a scary story – she was mugged near the station at Higashi Kakogawa recently. I was shocked – quiet, sleepy Higashi Kakogawa? Some guy pulled a knife on her and took her wallet, and then ran off. She called her husband who came as quick as he could, and together they talked with the police, but unfortunately no results. Scary story!

Partly because of that story I went to the station to meet Kuniko who arrived home pretty late and walked her back. I guess you never know when crime will strike…

Tonight’s original plan was to go out with Antoine, but he reported in as under the weather, so we’re postponing the get-together until another time. Instead Kuniko and I will just hang out in Okubo tonight as she has to work early on Saturday.

Tonight kicks off party week… I’ll be meeting up after class with some former students, the gang from Mitsuboshi Belt. It has been a long time since I’ve seen them, and they were some of my favorite students ever. We’ll go out to a place near Shin-Nagata station to catch up tonight. Hopefully I’ll be home fairly early as tonight is a school night, but no such restrictions will be in place the next two nights – hopefully I’ll have some time to recover my energy on Sunday.

Last night Kuniko got home earlier than I did, and cooked up spaghetti with a crab sauce that knocked our socks off. We were pulling bread out of the freezer to defrost just to soak up all the extra sauce on the side of the bowl. So good. We washed it down with a Ravenswood Zinfandel, so life was especially good.

OK, I’m out the door and back to work. Hopefully I’ll be up at this time tomorrow to update…

Part of the end of each teaching term is an effort by the scheduler of my classes to reach some kind of equilibrium between all the students. During the term there are many business trips, overseas transfers, important meetings, and it is just about impossible to have everyone end up with the same amount of classes. The last couple weeks of the term are therefore reserved for adding and moving classes around to fit the overall schedule better. What ends up happening is that whichever days don’t end up getting filled with moved classes are mine to enjoy on my own. Usually I take these days and work on planning for the upcoming term, thinking about what worked well and what didn’t in the previous term, and organizing my documents and computer for the new students. But sometimes I go hiking.

This term will end with a couple of days available for this sort of thing. I like having the extra time – because I’ll certainly be lacking it once the classes kick in.

Around here the cold is continuing to hang on, and other than a long weekend a couple of weeks ago I’ve had to continue wearing my old man underwear to stay warm going to and from the office. But there is hope – some of the plum trees around our neighborhood are blossoming, which means that the cherry trees are a few weeks away from their annual presentation. That means hanami party – and I’m hoping that we can enjoy some good ones this year.

For the last couple weeks I’ve had a stiff neck. Usually it is worst when I wake up, and slowly gets better during the day. I guess this points to bad sleeping posture, but nothing much has changed as far as pillows and blankets go. At work I try to stretch my neck but wearing collared shirts makes it a little tough to get full extension. I guess this is just what it’s like getting old. Ick.

I’m looking at the last three weeks of classes for my current students. We’ve got lots of stuff to do to wrap up the course, and I’m trying to spend some time reviewing what they’ve done in the past as well as some exit interviews to try to measure their progress. Some of my students I’m sure have made a lot of progress, while some seem to be exactly where we started. The most improvement was from the students that studied at home, while the least progress was from students that just came to class and answered my questions. Something to think about for the next round of students in April.

We did spring cleaning the other day, and in a bid to keep the number of trash bags to a minimum we’ve been doing it room by room. Now the bedroom is cleaned out, but I’ve got a lot of heavy trash bags to take with me when I leave to work. I can’t believe we had so much crap in our closet! I better get going if I’m to gather all these bags and hit the road. More tomorrow….

Our Friday night yakiniku party was everything we’d hoped it would be. Possum Chip was slightly different from traditional Japanese yakiniku places, and that meant spicier food, a little taste of curry in the bibimba, We ate plenty of meat, and left the place with our meat cravings satisfied for at least another month.

Since we both had Saturday off we took a long walk along the beach from Okubo to Akashi, and then on Sunday I spent most of the day catching up on my American TV shows and playing video games while Kuniko was off at a seminar. All in all a pretty relaxing weekend.

The end of this week promises to be exhausting but fun. I’ve got three drinking parties in a row, from Thursday to Saturday, and I’ll be able to catch up with some good friends in the process. I have no doubt that next Sunday will be a sleep in kind of day.

It is finally Friday, and we’re both happy that we both have Saturday off. Unfortunately Kuniko has to attend a seminar all day on Sunday, so we’ll party hard tonight and pay the price tomorrow. Our destination is a small Korean-style yakiniku restaurant near my office called “Possum Chip” which hopefully is actually a Korean word, although I have no idea. We’ve heard good things about it, so we’ll go to check it out after work today. Probably our bodies will be completely saturated with garlic tonight and tomorrow, so I think a quarantine tomorrow at home is probably the best bet.