Well, I\u2019m back to updating after an extended break. What happened? <\/p>\n
The server that hosts my website, all of fredricks.net, my dad\u2019s stuff, my brother\u2019s stuff, everything – it died. There was no warning, and it left me and my hosting company standing around looking confused. My hosting company is still standing around looking confused, but in the meantime we\u2019ve moved to another server and things should run a little smoother now.<\/p>\n
The nice thing about all this was that I got a couple of weeks break from blogging. I\u2019ll try to sum up all the highlights here, although I\u2019m sure I\u2019m going to miss some stuff. <\/p>\n
The biggest change is that now Kuniko has completely moved into my place, and now it\u2019s not my place anymore but our place. We\u2019ve been getting along pretty well, and settling into a daily routine that works for both of us. Right now we\u2019re both on a summer schedule, which is always variable and hard to predict. Some days Kuniko goes into work late and some days she comes home early. My schedule is pretty much from 7:30 in the morning until sometime in the afternoon – I do like the nice air conditioned environment at school. <\/p>\n
As for living space, we\u2019ve both had to make some adjustments. Kuniko doesn\u2019t have that much stuff, so it\u2019s been fairly easy finding places to put things. Still, I seem to have a lot of junk leftover from the previous occupant, and I didn\u2019t get rid of it because I was wondering if Kuniko would have some use for it. As we start to go through stuff we\u2019ll make more room. <\/p>\n
This past week we started to bring bento lunches to school. It was Kuniko\u2019s idea for us to save money, and it\u2019s a good idea. Right now at school my cafeteria is closed, so I would always go out and buy a sandwich or sushi or something cheap. Still, it\u2019s a lot cheaper to bring your own lunch, and so Kuniko wanted to do ours Japanese style. <\/p>\n
In Japan it\u2019s a man\u2019s world, and around here if you are married your wife will often make you a bento lunch in the morning before you go to work. Kuniko wanted to make one for both of us, and I felt (and still feel) pretty guilty about her getting up early to make the lunches. There are some things I can do to help out though, so I\u2019m getting up at the same time to help out. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always been impressed with the lunches that other teachers bring to school, and Kuniko has made some really good ones for us. We picked up a bento box at her parents\u2019 house, and it has several layers. The bottom level is for rice, the top is split three ways and you can put whatever you like in there. Little hot dogs, tamagoyaki, pumpkin, cabbage and pork, bacon-wrapped asparagus, fried chicken, tomatoes, salads – all kinds of good stuff. <\/p>\n
My work schedule is very easy. I study around four to six hours a day, and then head home to do some chores and relax. At work the vice principal is in charge of my schedule, and he enjoys dropping hints during the day on when I can leave, even though I already know that anytime after lunch is OK. There are hardly any teachers here at all, so it\u2019s a quiet and cool place to study.<\/p>\n
One interesting development at work is that Yamamoto sensei, the head of the English department, asked me if I would be interested in doing a weblog in English for the school\u2019s website. I thought that was a great idea, so he\u2019s going to check with the school to get approval. I\u2019ll probably update it once a week at first, and if it\u2019s fun I\u2019ll do it more, and if not I\u2019ll scale it back to twice a month or so. I couldn\u2019t imagine doing it in Japanese, but maybe the parents will be interested to see some English on the website. <\/p>\n
Speaking of Japanese, I think I\u2019m marginally improving. I\u2019m starting to read more Japanese books, and even though I\u2019m very slow and spend a lot of time looking up words it is a great way to learn vocabulary and grammar structures. Right now I\u2019m reading \u201cHoles\u201d in Japanese, and it is a really good choice because I\u2019ve read the English version and I\u2019ve also seen the movie. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m getting more comfortable speaking Japanese, and I think it\u2019s just a matter of knowing your limits and to a certain extent, just going for it. There are lots of times when I say something and people look at me like they completely don\u2019t understand. If you say a word tentatively, often it is hard for them to understand. If you say it confidently, they will very often understand it, or at least pick up on your confidence and pretend they do. I\u2019m also starting to build useful phrases and structures in my head – I just mentally switch out words and then they pop out more or less intact.<\/p>\n
We caught a pretty good movie last week called \u201cTeam America: World Police\u201d. It just arrived here in Japan and it\u2019s only playing at small theaters – it\u2019s not getting a big run. We really enjoyed seeing it, and I downloaded the soundtrack to listen to while we are hanging around the house. There are some really catchy (and raunchy) tunes on there, and it is one of the great joys of my life to see Kuniko walking by singing \u201cAmerica, Fuck Yeah!\u201d or \u201cEveryone\u2019s got AIDS!\u201d Hard to explain without seeing the movie, I guess. Never mind, moving right along…<\/p>\n
Last week we went into Kobe to spend some time at the wedding place planning the ceremony. We made a few big decisions, and some of them were surprisingly tough. For dinner afterwards we went to a Spanish restaurant that served tapas, and we had an assortment with some good draft beer. The sirloin steak on top of the cheese risotto was mind-blowing. It was a really good place, and it\u2019s right along the road to the wedding chapel, so we\u2019ll have plenty of chances to be tempted by it again.<\/p>\n
Kuniko and I have been splitting the cooking duties this summer. Once school starts, I\u2019ll probably be doing the cooking during the week, since she\u2019ll be getting home pretty late every night. I\u2019m the one with the easy work schedule, at least for the next year, so I\u2019ll be taking care of dinner. Once we both are working tough schedules, then it\u2019ll be a little tricky to figure out.<\/p>\n
Finally, this weekend Kuniko has a seminar (in Japanese: \u00e5\u0090\u02c6\u00e5\u00ae\u00bf) for the weekend, and so she\u2019ll be living with her students in Nishinomiya for the next few days. She\u2019ll get to come home on Monday, but that leaves me with an empty house for the weekend. I\u2019ll spend this weekend studying, cleaning, and staying out of the hot, humid weather. <\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s all I can think of right now. I\u2019ll get back in the routine of writing daily, and hopefully there will be some interesting things to say during this slow, hot month of August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, I\u2019m back to updating after an extended break. What happened? The server that hosts my website, all of fredricks.net, my dad\u2019s stuff, my brother\u2019s stuff, everything – it died. There was no warning, and it left me and my hosting company standing around looking confused. My hosting company is still standing around looking confused, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-cj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}