It’s Friday, and we’re both looking forward to a fun weekend. Kuniko’s weekend is three days long, which is a pretty rare thing for her. Tomorrow we’ll go visit Risa and Anthony and their new son Kohki over in Asagiri, and then Sunday we’ll make a Costco run to stock up on goodies for the upcoming autumn.

Although Kuniko (and most other people as well) has the day off, I’ve got to go in to work on Monday. I’m sure she has some fun activities planned, though. Next week I’ve got Friday off though, so some small consolation.

Survivor is back on TV, so last night I could watch again for the first time in a long time. Now it is the only TV show that I’m watching, until Amazing Race and Mad Men come along. It’s kind of nice to catch some cheesy American TV now and then…

I received the class list for my next course starting in October, and it held a couple of surprises for me. Most of the members are taking the course for the first time, but three of the members are taking it for a second time. And I was scheduled to meet one of these guys that very evening at a drinking party.

Getting a second shot at my course is a pretty tricky deal. You have to have either some pretty compelling reasons to need an intensive English course, or you’ve got some pretty good connections in the HR department. I’m not sure which of these categories my repeaters fall into, however. But it’ll be nice to see some familiar faces this time around.

After work I met up with two of my students – one current student and one former/future student. We met up in Tarumi, and they took me to an izakaya that they apparently frequently visit. Since they both live in the employee dormitories that are in Tarumi I guess they know the area pretty well, and they picked a pretty good place to eat and drink. We talked mostly in English at first, and as we drank more it kind of shifted into a combination of English and Japanese. Speaking a couple of languages is a funny thing – if you ask me today what subjects were in English and which were in Japanese I couldn’t tell you. We each just kind of used whatever seemed the most appropriate to get our ideas across.

We called it an early night since it was only Tuesday, but it was fun to hang out with these guys and chat. I don’t usually spend time with them outside the classroom, but I hope we have a chance to do it again in the future.

After all the parties and drinking over the weekend, last night we gave our livers a break and had just soda water and juice. Dinner was a very healthy dish – cold udon noodles topped with kamaboko and green onions, and I had a small bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for dessert.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Where did you find that in Japan, Bryan? Junky cereals that remind me of my childhood are definitely hard to come by in Japan. I’ve found some mail order companies that will sell them to you for 2000 yen a box. That’s $25 US dollars for one box of sweetened oats. Until recently I refrained from buying from them – the allure wasn’t quite strong enough to fork over the big bucks.

Last week I was talking with one of the inspectors at work. He’s ex-military, and he told me that he often goes to the commissary at Iwakuni military base to do shopping, and sure – he could pick me up some cereal. I gave him a list of four cereals that I was looking for, and yesterday he delivered three of them to me.

I asked for and received two boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, one of Captain Crunch, and one Peanut Butter Captain Crunch. Unfortunately they didn’t carry Golden Grahams. He joked that perhaps the Marine Corp didn’t consider Golden Grahams to be quite manly enough for them. But I didn’t care – I got three of my old favorites – four boxes for ten US dollars.

So this week I’ll be working on sweetened cereal in the morning, and try not to think about what this stuff is doing to my intestines…

Friday night I met up with some of my ex-students to go to a beer garden in Kobe after work. We had tried previously to go, but they are pretty popular, and we weren’t able to make reservations. This time we were able to pull it off, and we sat underneath Hotel Okura while drinking some beers and eating some snacks. It was fun to hang out with these guys and celebrate the upcoming end of summer. One of the guys is getting married in November, so I told him all about the American tradition of the “bachelor party” – something that hasn’t come to Japan yet. He seemed pretty interested, but where am I going to find a strip club around here?

Saturday Kuniko and I spent the day doing fun stuff in Kobe. She had to work in the morning, but we met on the always half empty Rokko Island to see “Tree of Life” at a deserted movie theater. I’m not sure how they stay open – there were just a handful of customers. The movie itself was slightly baffling but interesting enough. Not sure if I could recommend it, though.

After the movie we went back to busy Sannomiya to do some shopping for some friends, and also to hit a few stores for ourselves. We had fun in a few stores in Motomachi – a spice store in Chinatown and Kaldi import foods. We made a stop at one of our favorite cheese stores – they recently moved across town to a better(?) location. We were able to snack on a few pieces of cheese and drink a couple of glasses of wine right there in the store, but the atmosphere wasn’t quite what I expected. What they really need is a window, I think.

Finally we went over to Kobe and had yakiniku at 満月 (Mangetsu). The place was busy but we were able to get a table and kicked off our meal with a plate of ユッケ (yukhoe). Afterwards we filled up on meat – loads of meat. We don’t usually have very much meat during the week, so I think we ate several weeks worth in one meal. We grilled it ourselves at our table and were very satisfied with the result.

Sunday we spent mostly at home, just going out to do a little bit of shopping for dinner. We watched a concert I downloaded of Cocco, and I grilled up vegetables for our dinner using a siracha marinade that really livened up the veggies.

It was a good weekend, but a hot one. Hopefully in the next few weeks the temperature will start dropping…

Yesterday there was a pall thrown over the workday when we found out that one of the employees at the company where I work had died suddenly at home the previous day. He was forty years old. He lived alone, so he wasn’t found until his boss went over to his place to try to find him.

I taught several of his coworkers yesterday, and what resulted looked more like a therapy session than an English lesson. I’ve always had an attitude of “enjoy life now, before it’s too late” because of some experiences in college and soon afterwards that had a big effect on me. So it was more of the same during my classes yesterday. Most of my students overwork as a general policy, and to suggest that they don’t work until 10 pm every night is something like heresy. But yesterday I think a couple of my students saw the light – or pretended to, anyway.

This weekend is a little bit busy – Kuniko has a big presentation that she will make today, and we both have drinking parties afterwards. Tomorrow we’ll go catch a movie in Kobe, try a wine and cheese tachinomi place in Sannomiya, do some shopping for some friends, and cap off the day with yakiniku. Sunday will be completely open and free – I’m sure we’ll be looking to burn some calories by then.

This month I’m wrapping up the six month course and my current group of students will be done with their twice-a-week English lessons. I was very happy with the students this term, and I’m hoping the next batch are just as good. Some of my students were very shy this term, and it was sometimes difficult to overcome that in class. Now I think I’ve got just about everybody chattering away in relative comfort in English.

As usual the end of the term is always a little strange in terms of scheduling. Because we want to leave some flexibility for sudden changes, business trips, and any sick days on my part there is about a week to ten days that are open right now. Some of those days I’ll teach a half day of classes, and on another day we’ll have an orientation for the new students starting in October. Hopefully soon I’ll have the schedule for my new course, and that’ll tell me when our starting day is. Since the schedule is in flux I may get a few days off, but these days will be spent making lesson plans for the new students. Based on the number of classes next term, I’m hoping to get a lot of time off to work on lesson planning – I have no time available during the regular work day to do it.

When I first came to Japan I inherited a small noisy washing machine that was stored outside my house on the balcony of my apartment. I would throw my clothes in there with a little detergent, and then come back outside in an hour and pull the clothes out and hang them up right on the balcony to dry. It is a pretty common way to do laundry around here, but during cold weather you can freeze your ass off hanging the laundry, and if it is raining you can pretty much forget about doing laundry at all.

That’s why I love our washing machine now. We are pretty busy and not around very much during the day, but that doesn’t stop us from taking care of the laundry. We load up the clothes in washing machine, and then set a timer. After nine hours it kicks on, washes the clothes, then goes ahead and dries them for us, too. I get home twelve hours later and the warm, clean laundry is ready to be folded. Rain? No problem. Typhoon? Who cares? I’m glad I experienced doing laundry on the cold balcony so I can appreciate the technology we’ve got now.

Actually, there are a lot of timers in our house. Our rice cooker, living room and bedroom air conditioners, heated floors, computers and media server, ventilation fan for the shower, dishwasher, and even the digital picture frame operate on timers. Living in the future!

After a very wet weekend Monday came as a bit of a surprise. Cool, refreshing weather with cloudy skies and a nice breeze now and then. It felt exactly like the middle of October. I’m too much of a veteran of Japanese summers to get excited – I know this is a very temporary situation and we still have a couple weeks of hot and humid weather ahead of us. But it was nice to lounge about the house with the windows open and the air conditioners turned off. And it was nice to wake up this morning without a layer of sweat on my forehead. Fall is on its way.

I took advantage of the nicer weather to go outside and fire up the grill to cook some kangaroo meat on skewers. The other day I ordered some meat online as an experiment, and I couldn’t resist buying some kangaroo as I’ve never tried it before. After cooking the skewers last night, I can tell that I’ll be trying it again. I had steeled myself for some gamey, intensely flavored meat, but it turned out to be quite good – tender and delicious. The skewers came marinated and peppered, so it was a little bit like beef jerky without the toughness. Now I’m wondering what a kangaroo burger would taste like…

We managed to survive the typhoon – a slow, lumbering storm that dropped enough water to cause landslides in Wakayama, and wash several people away. Even a guy from Kakogawa was missing after the storm. Around here it was not so windy, just a consistently heavy rainfall. No problems here, though, other than being stuck at home for a couple of days.

Originally we had planned on dinner at Yoshi’s on Saturday, but because of the typhoon we postponed it until later. Instead we drove over to Swaad for some Indian food. The owner was very interested to hear about our trip, and he served up a delicious meal for us. Very, very spicy. We spent the rest of the weekend indoors watching movies, listening to music, and enjoying wine and cocktails.

Although I had bought some kangaroo kebabs to grill up this weekend, the rain never let up and I couldn’t pull it off. Hopefully I’ll have a chance early this week… I can’t wait to try them.

We’ve got a typhoon coming in today and tomorrow – a big, slow-moving one that should be hanging out here most of the next two days. It shouldn’t have a big effect on work, other than walking to and from my job in a lot of wind and rain. We had planned to go visit Yoshi tomorrow night, so depending on the strength of the typhoon we may or may not be able to go. We’ll see…

Yesterday I got a little more information about my next course at the Kawasaki factory. I even got to see the beginnings of my next classroom, which will be a little bit of an upgrade for me. There are a few other changes this time around – but most are top secret at the moment.

OK – I’m off to trudge through the wind and rain. I guess there are some downsides to relying on public transportation….

Kuniko made up a batch of curry the night before last for our dinner last night. One of the fresh vegetables she put in was goya – a very bitter gourd that is popular around here. Each one has enough health points to just about bring someone back from the dead, but the drawback is an intense bitterness overwhelms just about everything.

Luckily the curry held up against the bitterness, but I had to eat some chocolate afterwards to balance the bitter aftertaste. I think in the future I’ll take my curry without the bitter gourd.

Tonight after work I’ll meet up with one of the factory inspectors at the tachinomi for what is turning out to be our monthly meeting. Kuniko has a party tonight after work, so it works out well for me. Hopefully it won’t rain all over us tonight – a typhoon is inching its way towards the center of Japan. Maybe just in time to rain on my BBQ plans.

Yesterday morning on the way to the local station I was passed by three junior high school aged kids who were either not going to school anymore or enjoying the last few days of their summer vacation. One had yellow hair, and you could quickly tell that they were troublemakers. The were also making sure to make lots of noise to gather as much attention as possible from the people around them.

After they passed me they rode their bicycles right past a policeman on a scooter waiting at an intersection. They continued making noise while waving at the cop, and then a few hundred feet past him one turned around and yelled “Baka!”, which is a pretty good insult that isn’t thrown around casually in Japan.

I looked at the cop, but he looked straight ahead and ignored the kids. I was waiting for him to roll out and go give them a talking to, but he didn’t move a muscle. Would the police do something in other countries?

Later I passed the kids when I arrived at the station. They were sitting in the middle of the road smoking cigarettes and trying again to get lots of attention. They smiled at me when I walked by and said “hello” in English, but I just gave them the cold stare and kept moving. That’ll show ’em.

Starting yesterday I began a busy schedule of drinking – four out of five days of drinking/parties. Last night I kicked it off with the Denya master and the other regulars in Tsuchiyama. It had been a long time since I’d seen the gang from Denya, and they were doing pretty good. The master looked happy and healthy, and the other guys seemed to be doing well. We caught up on what we’ve been up to, and shared some travel stories as well. I didn’t stay late last night, getting home around nine.

Tonight we have no special plans – just kicking around the house eating curry made from the veggies from Kuniko’s parents. This will be the only slow night the rest of the week, so we’d better take advantage of it.

Yesterday after work I dropped by the optometrist to buy some new contact lenses. This guy’s office is right down the road from our place, so it is easy to drop in anytime. Despite that, I only go about twice a year.

Usually when I go I receive about 3 months worth of contact lenses. Each pair of lenses should be worn for two weeks each. But somehow I get busy and never pay attention and end up wearing each pair about a month. I’ve never had any problems and they never get uncomfortable, and it is not like I’m trying to save money. Still, it is hard to stop wearing perfectly good lenses.

So the last few times I’ve gone into the office, the nurse gives me a stern warning about wearing the lenses too long. I always say “I understand” in Japanese, and she seems satisfied. Then I see the optometrist himself who gives me an even harsher warning. This time, however, he seemed to have given up. He asked me if I knew what he was going to say, and I responded “Yes, of course”, and so he just shook his head with a smile and sent me on my way with the new lenses.

I think this is the first time I’ve actually worn down an old Japanese guy with perseverance. I guess it really does work – I’m just wondering if it is a battle worth winning.

Now that I finished blogging our trip to India, I figured I should get back to what’s happening these days. Last Friday I went out with the usual gang of ex-students from work, and we visited a couple of places including Bar Mar. It is one of our favorites – lots of affordable wine and some pretty good Spanish appetizers. Luckily this time wasn’t quite as crazy as the last time – no squid ink stained fork in my bag this time around.

Saturday and Sunday I purposely kept my schedule clear, and spent most of the time relaxing at home playing video games and staying out of the heat. It was pretty oppressive outside this weekend, and Saturday night there was even a powerful thunderstorm that passed through right before I was ready to go outside and grill up some chicken breasts. I’ll have to consider a roof over the back patio, I guess.

While I had a life of leisure this weekend, Kuniko was busy kicking ass. She went off to work on Saturday and got back around seven at night, doing classes and getting her hair done. Then Sunday she went off to take care of some errands coming back in the late afternoon. No rest at all for her, and now we’re already getting the next week going.

Last night we went over to visit Kuniko’s parents, for the first time in a long time. We looked at pictures from our trip, caught up with what they’ve been up to, and had a big dinner. As usual everything was delicious, and we left with full stomachs and bags full of fresh vegetables. This time around we received potatoes, okra, eggplant, green peppers, shiso leaves, a pumpkin, and some tomatoes. We’ll have to figure out what to make to use them up as soon as possible. Maybe curry?

We arrived safely back from India on Saturday evening, and after a short decompression period on Sunday I’m back to work. In a cruel twist Kuniko had to go back to work yesterday.

The trip was great! I posted lots of pictures here, so take a look when you have a chance. I’ve got quite a bit to blog, so I’ll work on it slowly over this week and next weekend. Once I get through this Monday I should get some posts up.