Day 38 in Japan - Last Day of Summer...

Something much more important than Japan happened today - our good friends from Melbourne, Adam and Mel, had a baby girl! Her name is Sophie Anne, and I actually cried when I saw the photo at work today. Actually, I have happy tears coming even as I am writing this now. Congratulations to all involved! It certainly made my day, and put some of my fears about the upcoming teaching year into perspective.

My most-seen view in Japan.

This is garbage collection on a burnable trash day
(Tuesdays and Fridays for us).

Today is the last day of summer here - the last day of freedom and the last day of limbo. I'm actually quite glad that the wait is almost over, but I am also completely terrified about the next few days. At least by the end of this week, I'll have a few classes done, and a better idea of what I am actually in for in the next 11 months! But for now, it was just a last day of preparation, planning, translating, sorting calendars and... honestly... Facebooking. The listening test I recorded is going to be broadcast over the school's PA system, so I got the joyous task today of sitting at the CD player, repeating the "test" track I recorded to get the levels right over and over while the other teachers ran around to all of the rooms to check that all of the speakers were working OK. I've never loved the sound of my own voice, but after 20 solid minutes of "Testing, 1,2,3. Testing 1,2,3" I think I loathe it more now that I ever have before.

One of the teachers brought in all of the tomatoes he had
harvested from his garden. They were really sweet and delicious.

Today was my first day of deliberate language study. Apparently the cool thing to do here is go to Starbucks and sit there with your books for a few hours, so that's what Sam and I did. We practised Kanji (I'm getting better), and then I read him my speech for tomorrow in Japanese. I am more watched here than I realised, because another ALT in the area messaged me and told me that "a little birdie" told her I was practising in the Starbucks. I was totally blown away that someone who knew her could have seen me, put two-and-two together, and let her know. When I practised my speech to introduce myself to the students, I think I accidentally introduced myself to the whole of Okubo - HI OKUBO!

Studying at Starbucks with the cool kids.

I'm pretty nervous about the talk tomorrow, so I'm going to try for a decent night of sleep. Sam tells me that I've been practising Japanese and talking to the teachers at my school in my sleep. It's obviously stressing me out a little more than I had realised. Maybe time to have a few more nights at home? Nah, I'll just get bored and stressed if I do that.

Food highlight of the day: Choco banana Pocky - "Pocky" is pretzels covered with chocolate, but this was fancy pocky! Pretzel sticks covered in banana mouse, then drizzles with milk chocolate. Thankfully there are only three in a pack, because I haven't been running yet this week!