Day 99 in Japan - Didn't Leave the House! :D

Today was the first day that I didn't set foot outside the house at all. We bludged. There is no other word for it. We slept in, made a lazy brunch (that turned into lunch), played on our computers, watched TV and generally laid around the house in clothed that we wouldn't wear in public and chillaxed. Yeah, I wish I knew a less terrible word to express that, but we did indeed chill and relax. I read a few hours of a fairly dry book on Roman history, then gave up and finished replying to a bunch of my student's journals. It has taken me a really long time to do it, but I have written a one page letter back to eat student who bothered to write to me. Some of the entries were absolutely fantastic! I got about 120 in all - just under 1/3 of the first year students. Not too bad for a voluntary assignment.

Pancakes with whipped cream and maple syrup for breakfast. おいしい！

One of the cuter journal entries that I received.

Day 99 in Japan! I can't believe it has been that long. Even though we are fairly comfortable here now, it still feels as though we have only just arrived. We have to much of Japan to explore and see - I can't believe that over three months have passed already. And I also can't believe how soon Mum and Dad will be here!! Only 5 days to go.

Food Highlight of the Day: Today I invented a new food. Dessert onigiri. I INVENTED THAT (that's supposed to be a Zoolander quote). I used leftover rice from dinner, mixed it with a little brown sugar, vanilla essence and a tiny bit of milk, and (the piece-de-resistance) MILO. Then I put some caramelised apples in the middle and onigiri'd it. It was actually pretty delicious - like apple and chocolate rice pudding, really. I am pretty proud of myself, and very full from eating two of them, because Sam didn't share my vision.

Day 98 in Japan - Sam's Last Saturday

As Sam will start work next Saturday, and he will work from 10 am to 6 pm, today was his last Japanese lesson with me and Kojima-sensei. It was a confusing lesson, as we got interrupted halfway through to evaluate a pamphlet to help foreigners to live in Akashi made by a local elementary school. The pamphlet turned out to be pretty difficult to read, and we spent most of the rest of the lesson poring over the complicated words to pick up a few new cultural points (e.g. we learned that we may have been accidentally insulting people's cooking by now replacing the lids on any food we eat when we are done).

After the lesson and lunch at a chain restaurant called Sukiya (who made a decent gyudon, but I wouldn't replace my lid, if you know what I mean), we wanted to get back to Okubo to get our shopping done fairly quickly in order to fit in an afternoon nap. We went to the cheapish home wares shop Nitori and got ANOTHER futon. And another chair. We can now seat 4 people and sleep 5 - ready for Mum and Dad to visit next week! The Christmas decorations had just hit the shelves in Nitori, so of course we had to take a photo for evidence.

Japanese Christmas decorations in October.

Then we carted our purchases home - we took turns lugging the double futon the 45 minutes to home. When we got back, we had a big spring clean in the rain. Set up new bed, kotatsu properly set up (no futon, so instead used doonas to make it comfy - like sitting inside a teddy bear), and then enjoyed the spoils of our cleaning.

Are these pumpkins or melons? Either way, it's not
normal to see them growing off the ground, right?

Sam carrying the futon (1)

Sam carrying the futon (2)

Cool abandoned house that we found on the walk
home - it's some sort of official building, but we can't
read enough kanji to figure out what it is.

Missed Halloween parties last night and tonight, because we didn't have costumes, and really wanted a down weekend to just hang around and rest. I think we are both pretty happy with this decision right now (but may regret it when we start to see the photos of the parties appearing on Facebook). Watched Sherlock (brilliant show!) and I replied lots to kids English journals. Went shopping at 8 pm on a Saturday night, which was really awesome. Actually not being facetious - it was grand to just do boring and banal things with the time on my hands to appreciate doing them.

Food Highlight of the Day: 8 pm Saturday night purchase - white and dark chocolate sweets which were actually quite light. It was like one thinly piped dark chocolate layer, then a thinly piped white chocolate layer, then dark, then white. Can't believe we are still finding so much new chocolate to try!

Day 97 in Japan - Happy Halloween!

Today's classes ran really well. I had my first first fully, completely, really alone lesson, where I actually had to teach the kids a proper lesson that they will be tested on. Eek! It went quite smoothly. I think I need to start stuffing these up, or more teachers are going to decide that they can happily leave me to my own devices on class.

Found out today that I have to go to a mid-year seminar in the middle of Mum and Dad's visit. I shouldn't have to stay overnight, but it will probably mean a few early mornings and late nights while they are here. And I'll probably miss any fun after parties as well. Boo.

English journal marking all afternoon in my free periods - I am trying to write at least a page reply to all of the students who wrote to me. There were more than expected, and while it's quite nice and fun to read all the the students' favourite foods and places in Japan, it is difficult trying to not repeat myself too much in my replies. Apparently a lot of the kids like Hokkaido, Okinawa and Kyoto the best, and I'm trying to think of new things to say about them in each reply.

After school, we had the long-anticipated ESS HALLOWEEN PARTY! Yeah, I partied with 15-16 year old Japanese school kids. That's pretty hardcore. I wasn't sure what to expect, so I turned up with only chocolate, thinking that the kids would prefer to just hang out and talk and eat, but in the end I ran back to my office to print off a heap of Halloween word puzzles and games. Lucky I had spent some time gathering resources. We played a Halloween version of Battleships which saw them practising "Does Bill like Spiders" (Grid reference: Bill and Spiders), "Yes, he does" (Hit) / "No, he doesn't" (Miss), and some Find-A-Words and other word puzzles. And we ate a LOT of junk food. It was surprisingly fun, and we made a lot of jokes (anime character impressions, Dasshutsu Escape game jokes and gently making fun of the boys).

This is the process that we use to make decisions about groups in ESS club -
you write all the people's names up the top, and then the categories
along the bottom. Then start at the person, and draw a
line taking every cross path you come across until you hit the bottom.

Team "Star Chips" versus Team "Hyaku-en shop"
FIGHT!

Then home, quite late. Summary of night: Community, scribblenauts, study, kotatsu, preparation of mashup karaoke. Wait, let me elaborate on that last one. Sam and I really like a mashup of Take Your Mama, No One, Respect (George Michael) and Respect (Aretha Franklin). The original (by DJ Earworm) can be found here. So, we decided to spend about 3 hours tonight trying to figure out an arrangement that we can do at karaoke. Yeah, we are THAT nerdy. But if you are reading this then you probably already know that. I am pretty happy with what we came up with, but we need to practise before we make our public debut.

Food Highlight of the Day: Cooked-from-scratch spaghetti sauce (although we couldn't find any tomato paste, so we had to improvise).

Day 96 in Japan - Kotatsu HAJIME!

Pouring rain was a surprise, so I woke up a bit late. When it's raining, I have to catch the train and bus to Shimizu, or else be totally soaked on my way to work. It's really hard to stay dry while riding a bike, although the Japanese do have a full body raincoat thing that they use for riding bikes. I do have one, but riding up the hill means that I get quite sweaty and damp and uncomfortable inside the raincoat. Anyway, since I didn't know it was supposed to rain today, I wasn't up in time to be on my train, so I didn't get onto the bus (it was too full), and I had to walk half an hour to work in the rain. At least Shimizu days are consistent :P

Four students wearing the whole body raincoats on their way to school.

Today I started teaching Halloween lessons, and I learned two things. One: Charlie Brown It's the Great Pumpkin, while a classic, IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. Two: don't underestimate the capacity of teenaged boys to eat a lot of candy very quickly. I suspect that the two boys who cam to ESS club may have been sick tonight. I let them eat as much candy as they wanted in the 20 minutes of club (they came really late), thinking that they couldn't do too much damage. WRONG! They probably hammered at least 3 handfuls of hard sugar lollies each in that time. Gross. If it was chocolate, on the other hand, I would have been fighting them for it...

Colour? At Shimizu? Some pretty doorknob hangers that the very
talented students made.

Tonight, it was absolutely freezing. Actually, scratch that - today it was absolutely freezing. So today Sam and I turned on the kotatsu for the first time. It was susrprsingly comfortable to sit under a warm table and study Japanese. I was very good tonight and did about 2-3 hours of Japanese study (and another 2-3 hours of Community at the same time - I am really enjoying that show!).

Food Highlight of the Day: Today I award ice-creams the ironic food of the day. I realised that I was sitting under a heated table, thinking about how cold it was, whilst snacking on a frozen treat. Idiot me.

Day 95 in Japan - Making Ghosts

Today was cold! Not like "Ooooo, maybe I'll wear a long sleeved shirt" cold, but proper "Where are my hat, gloves and jacket" cold What? I checked the school thermometer at lunchtime, and it was about 8 degrees celsius!

Today's classes we super fun! Although pretending to have a sore throat is starting to give me a sore throat - I'll have to cut that out. Finally finished grading all of my mid-term tests! Forgot to order lunch again, but after Aaron and Corey and then Jakub visits, maybe skipping a few lunches isn't too bad a thing...

A teacher asked me to help him understand a few of the finer points of a BBC Comedy show called "Mock the Week" - similar to Good News Week but English. Some of the humour was a little risque (in Japanese terms), and it was slightly awkward trying to explain what lube is, why it would be cherry flavoured, and what "sexing something up" (where the usage that means "fucking up") means in a suddenly very quiet Japanese staffroom. We got through the first 7 minutes of the show, and I'm looking forward to round two :P

In ESS club we made Halloween decorations, which meant that we were very late out of school. Hit up the CO-OP on the way home for some Halloween candy. I made a Mario and Genie ghost, and a lopsided, crappy Jack-o'-lantern. We are lucky to have some very artistic students amongst the group!

ESS Club with our Halloween decorations (can you see my Mario and Genie ghosts?)

Made pork and spinach and mashed potato for dinner, and watched a LOT of Community. I think we have cleared most of the available episodes in just over a week. It's a great show, and seems to be getting better as it goes on.

Food Highlight of the Day: Mashed potatoes - I managed to co-ordinate having potatoes and milk and margarine and salt and pepper all in the house at once, and we did the mash. Best mashed potato I have made in YEARS! (Note: this is the second time I have made mashed potato in years, and the last time I didn't have any milk).

Day 94 in Japan - What a Difference a Day Makes!

So yesterday was crap. If you read yesterday's blog post, you would know that.

Today was the TOTAL opposite. I rode my bike to work, and the air was crisp and clear and even a bit cold (bring it on, winter). Akashi kita High School really turned on it's charm for me today - the kids all smiled and said happy hello's, the flowers we planted last week looked bright and colourful, the teachers all said "Ohayo gozaimasu" to me, and someone had left lollies for me on my desk. Just as I was smiling to myself about how much better today had started, a teacher came to my desk for the following (annotated) conversation:

"Anna-sensei, the first year students wrote comments on their English classes"

"Oh, OK" (Thoughts: Oh crap, they are going to be horrible comments about how boring the classes are, complaints about not being able to understand me, me speaking too fast, and the test being too hard)

"Would you like to see them?"

"Yes, please. I want to try to make the classes better, so..." (glance down at the translated comments) "Oh..."

"The students are very happy with your lessons. Out of the 40 students in my class, 36 of them wrote something nice about your classes"

"I... uh..." (Yeah, fantastic demonstration of why they are paying me to be an English teacher right there) (commence wiping away happy tears, then give up) "I'm going to cry now, I'm sorry. Thank you so much, Yokoi-sensei."

"I wanted to show you to make you happy that you are a good teacher" (Yeah, that is an actual quote. Boo. Yah.)

And that's the story of how I cried at my desk on a Tuesday morning, and then had one of the best day's teaching that I have had the whole time I have been here. Of course, being me, I have another another story about teaching today...

My pants pockets have developed holes. No big deal - I don't really use my pants pockets so I have haven't fixed them. Even if I COULD fix them I probably wouldn't because I just don't care. But today I got off my bike and shoved my keys in my pockets without thinking about it, and then didn't realise that they were there until the beginning of a class. No worries, I thought, I'll just leave them there and then put them back in my bag when I get back to my desk. Five minutes later, I felt them beginning to slip through the hole in my pocket. I tried to reach into my pocket to grab them, but it was too late - they were through the hole. I hoped that they wouldn't go too much further (my pants aren't too loose - thankyou Japanese chocolate!), but of course, they did. I was in the middle of explaining the difference between "I have a cold", and "I feel cold" when... yes... my keys fell out of the bottom of my pants. In front of the room full of students. HA! I think that I laughed harder than they did, but it definitely caused a minor ruckus. But it was a good ruckus, and one that obviously got the kids talking, because two different teachers asked me about it this afternoon. Oh, the whacky hijinks I get up to. :P

I tried to pay some bills after work by hightailing it there as soon as I got out of my last class, but aparently Japanese banks are every bit as slack with opening hours as Australian banks - I think they are open 10-3! Which will make it very hard to pay the money that I owe to my employers, because ironically I will be too busy working to get to a bank during opening hours before the money is due. Sing about THAT, Alanis Morissette!

Food Highlight of the Day: Choc chip melon bread. No melons are involved - the bread is just shaped like the Japanese obviously think that a melon is shaped.

Day 93 in Japan - One Wrong and One BIG Right.

Today was a pretty rotten day for me, but I am trying to look on the bright side, because it was a good day for Sam. I'll start with my bad stuff...

First, teaching was crappy today. The weather was grey and drizzly, the kids were silent and dumb, and the teachers were about as bad as the kids. It was a Shimizu day, which are mostly a little harder to enjoy than being at my base school, but it was a particuarly bad one. And it was no made better by the news I got at lunchtime - I didn't get an ARC Discovery grant. I shouldn't be surprised, and I'm not really, but it doesn't stop a little bit of disappointment. The success rate for applications of my type was 13%, so I can console myself with the fact that I am definitely not the only one in this position right now. But, looking at the positives (as I am desperately trying to do), I can now figure out what it is that I WANT to do, and give myself a new goal. If I want to do science, I can figure out WHERE I want to do science. If I don't, then I can stay in Japan longer, or head to a new and exciting place. Now let me rock back and forth a little while, eating an entire tub of Milo, and repeat that to myself over and over again...

Ha, no, not really that bad. Except for the Milo. I am eating Milo from the tin with a spoon right now.

So... today's absolutely brilliant thing... Sam started his job today! He started training in Osaka, so he is still gone right now (at 9pm at night). He's teaching evenings at a place that is only a 10 minute walk away, but we don't know a lot of details right now. Oh wait, just walked in the door. Good, I can get a "first day of work photo". Yay! Click! He says he had a good time, and blahblahblah. Crap, I've already started to tune out the work talk. No wait - he enjoyed his day, but the place is a little dodgy in it's work conditions, and it's hard for him to get holidays. Whoa, and he has to pay THEM if he misses or is late for a shift. Crazy place. OK, off to get a good night's sleep so that tomorrow will be better than today.

Sam coming home from his first day of work in Japan :) (with snacks :D)

Food Highlight of the Day: I had to eat my pride, so I guess... no, moping will finish right... now. But the highlight is still the slightly sad but very delicious Milo (proper Australian Milo, brought by Aaron and Corey), straight from the tin with a spoon.

Day 92 in Japan - Goodbye Jakub

The morning was pretty much lost, as Sam and Jakub slept forever (and I was happy to let them sleep, while I read my book and felt generally sore and sorry for myself - the sinus infection thing hasn't gone away yet). By the time we all got mobile, it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, so we turned on the TV... only to see MY HIGH SCHOOL MARCHING BAND! Yeah, that's right! There was a brass band festival on in Akashi Park, which was apparently televised, so we got to see the kids doing the cool marching number that I have heard them parctising for months, and then a really awesome number that they have only been practising this week - THRILLER! I guess it must be for Halloween, but they were doing the whole Thriller dance thing. It was really awesome, and I was so happy that I got to see them do their thing. Akashi kita, I love you!

After that, we did head out for lunch - we ended up having okonomiyaki at a place we haven't been to before in Okubo. It was really quite good, and we'll totally go back. We also got roped into filling out what we thought was a questionnaire about internet. We MAY have signed up for NTT internet? I don't know. I don't think so. Anyway, we got a pumpkin balloon out of it, so I'm pretty happy with the results. We all were, as you can see below.

Pumpkin ballon. YEAH!

Headed into Sanno to say goodbye to Jakub and did a bit of shopping. Went into a bookstore that turned out to be an adult shop above the first floor. Of COURSE we stayed, but only for a few minutes, because it was all dudes inside and I was startgin to get some really odd looks (and paranoia that any moment one of my teachers or students would walk in). But we didn't flee before taking a photo of the used panty wall. Yeah, they really do exist. My day was made and my faith in humanity destroyed. There were also a lot of fleshlights. If you don't know what that means, don't google it.

Maybe best not to look too closely at this if you want to be a happy person.

By now, I was starting to feel really crook - I had a full on temperature (and not just from the used panty wall), and it was really time to get home and rest. The rest of the day passed pretty peacefully and in a bit of a blur - I slept on an off, had a bath to try to stop the aching in my joints, and washed my eyeballs with soap to try to forget the weirdness of the bookstore.

Food Highlight of the Day: The okonomiyaki lunch was really good! The modanyaki (like okonomiyaki with noodles) with mochi cheese was gooey and delicious, and they make it on the grill in front of you, which was fun to watch.

Day 91 in Japan - Conquering the Mountain

Japanese lessons - totally over my head. A bit sick. KFC.

Back to wake up Jakub. Decided to head up on the cable car to Mt Rokko to see the sights, and left the house without really knowing where we were going or what we were going to see.

First stop Sannomiya, where we went to the shinto shrine there. Sam and I had walked past it a few times, but never been in. Was a cute little shrine, and obviously lots of people use it for their day-to-day Shinto needs. Lots of really cool prayers (?) on wooden boards up around the place.

I also had my first game of pachinko. I think it will be my only game of pachinko. We just wanted to show Jakub how the game worked, and we really didn't know what was happening at all. Here is a picture of the machine - of course it had to be Evangelion-themed.

After the shrine in Sannomiya, we headed up and out of the parts of Kobe that we are familiar with. We caught a Hankyu train up to Rokko station, then a bus further up the hill, and then caught a cable car/train thing up to the top of Mt Rokko. Mt Rokko is supposed to have one of the 3 best night views in Japan, so we timed it to get up to the top of the mountain about 45 minutes before sunset so we could try to see Kobe/Osaka in the daylight and at night.

There was an art festival on, so there were cool light displays around the place.

The cable car to take us to the top of Mt. Rokko.

Looking out over Kobe from the top of the cable car.

Kobe!

More cool art displays

View towards Osaka from the Rokko Garden Terrace.

Inside the cool dome observatory thing that was lit up for the art festival.

Dome thing from the outside.

Kobe/Osaka at night.

We ended up going for late sushi train after our night up Rokko. Up the mountain, it was actually cold. I only had a t-shirt on, and I actually needed a jumper. Woo, autumn is here!

Food Highlight of the Day: Today's dinner was sushi. My favourite sushi is plain old maguro zushi (tuna sashimi on rice), and I enjoyed every bite of it during dinner.

Day 90 in Japan - My friend from Korea

There were still exams on at Akashi kita today, so I didn't teach any classes again. However, I didn't even have time to eat my lunch, because I had 400 exams to mark. And 12 English journals to read and return. And two papers to write and/or change for sciences at home. And a blog to catch up on. But I only got to do that in the morning, because at lunch, when the students finished their last exam, it was FLOWER PLANTING DAY! Each class was in charge of one flower bed, and they had to weed it, hoe it, add some fertiliser and till it, and then plant pansies, crocus and tulips. It was really fun, and a great way to get the students to work together, while doing something to brighten up the school. And that's why Akashi kita is great :) I got to plant flowers with one of the classes, but when I look at the photos that Ito-sensei took with my camera, my knickers are showing in most of them. Oh dear. I didn't put any of the shots with my undies in the them below - this isn't that kind of a blog.

I loved this answer - the students had to listen to various sentences
and fill in the missing words. This was supposed to read "main".
Maybe they are having a little trouble with my accent?

The kids were surprised, confused and a little happy to have me help.
I will read nothing into the fact that they gave me a hoe.

The girl with the fringe and the skirt is in my ESS club,
and has been practising her speech with me all week,
which explains how thrilled she looks to see me.

The 1-9 students (the science course class and my secret favourites)
spelled their class number out in flowers. 

Story: the guy standing without a watering can had been
trying to fix up a bulb that needed more dirt over it for about 3
solid minutes, and every time he bent down to try again, he got watering canned.
The watering can guy kept laughing, and saying (in Japanese)
"No, this time I won't. It's OK", and the 5 seconds later - WATERING CANNED.
This continued until there was no water left, and we were all laughing until we cried.
Some humour is universal.

As the speech contests are tomorrow, we had ESS club practise ALL AFTERNOON. I am talking like 3 solid hours of listening to the same two 5 minute speeches over and over again, while I looked longingly at my uneaten lunch over the other side of the classroom. The girls were really excellent, and I gave them a present from Australia because I am so proud of them. I hope that it was a nice gesture to show my appreciation for their hard work, as I intended, not a creepy thing to do. 

Oh, a major achievement of today was finding something even WORSE than a socks-and-sandals combo. I recently bought tabi socks (socks with the big toe separated from the rest of your toes - toe apartheid, I guess), and this morning I was a little late, so I just shoved on the shoes closest to the door. Which happened to be thongs. Yes, tabi socks allow a very comfortable socks-and-thongs combo. As I have to change to my indoors shoes when I got to Akashi kita, I pretty much got away with it. But I am actually pretty ashamed of doing this. Only time will tell if I'm ashamed enough to not repeat the same mistake twice...

Tabi socks and thongs. So who wants to put in an order for tabi socks now?

After my ride home, I had a peaceful and unproductive hour reading a book - I am addicted to Kindle app! It's so nice to be reading various stuff again, even if almost all of the free books that Amazon has offered have been classics or "erotic romances". Due to my propensity to just hit YES! if the book is free, my recommendations list is now populated with some really odd things. Reading this afternoon was just killing time while we were waiting for our new arrival - JAKUB! Jakub is a guy with Polish parents from South Australia who I met doing my PhD in Wollongong. He now lives in Korea, so it was really confusing when people with only a little English asked me where my visiting friend comes from.

Jakub managed to get all the way to the station by himself - walked down and met him. Came back home and dropped off his bags, then headed out to our izakaya. I think we are regulars now - they remember us! My favourite waitress was working tonight - Asuka! She is so cute, and I wrote a recommendation for her in very poor and slightly drunken Japanese on the suggestion sheets in the toilets. I am pretty sure she will know it was me. Met two dudes whose job was making big steel buckets. They were really friendly, and it was awesome that we got to talk to some people who weren't just out to improve their English, but actually wanted to tell us a bit about their lives.

Jakub was kung fu fighting. He was as fast as lightning.

We weren't ready to stop making noise, but also weren't really up for too much more izakaya fare (and Asuka's shift was over), so we headed to the only place you can be loud and annoying late at night in Japan - karaoke. Was a pretty poor karaoke effort after the majesty of Aaron and Corey's visit, so we called it a night after one hour. Finally got our tired heads to bed after midnight.

Food Highlight of the Day: My midnight microwave cheeseburger from the Lawson. It was terrible and scarily unrefrigerated for a "meat" product, but it was the right food at the right time in a country sadly devoid of kebabs.

Day 89 in Japan - Some good news!

Woke up with dodgy sinuses but still biked to shimizu. not the best idea, but bike ride means that I get to leave the house later, get a bit of excercise, and still get money. Still, meant that I felt really ordinary wile teaching.

Had first real lesson with one of the classes today - the teacher I am supposed to team teach with hasn't actually shown up before today, and really he may as well have not shown up today either. He sat in the back of the classroom and read a book. I had to call to him three times to get him to help me demonstrate a conversation - if it had been a student playing that little attention, they would have gotten into trouble. Grrrr. Other classes were OK, then I had ESS speech practise with the boy from Shimizu, which was horrible. Although the speech contest is Saturday, he hasn't memorise his speech yet, and I spent 2 hours trying not to look too bored while trying to read the same 30 sentences over and over again outloud. The best part of the day (as almost always at Shimizu) was streaming down the giant hill on the bike ride home.

I called Sam while on my bike ride home, to find he was snacking on one of the ingredients for tonight's dinner. I got unreasonably cranky (sinus infection made me have a temperature and foggy brain, and general aches and grumpiness), yelled at him and then headed to the supermarket on the way home to replace it. He must have felt bad, because he came to meet me at the supermarket, and then explained the reason that he had eaten the food - he was celebrating because he GOT A JOB!!!! YES, IN CAPITALS NOW, SAM HAS A JOB!!!! I felt horrible for being cranky, tried and sick, and still really happy for him. He'll be working a lot of evenings and weekends, which will mean less time together, but he will be teaching English to people at an English conversation school exactly like he wanted. We had celebratory nachos (with freshly purchased corn chips), and pear Natchan instead of champagne to celebrate his win!

This was my "I'm sick and I have to study position". Was not moving.

See how utterly thrilled I am with Sam having a job. So happy.

HAJIME! (That means start in Japanese. I KNOW BECAUSE I STUDIED).

Food Highlight of the Day: The made-up chilli I cooked for the nachos was decent enough, but Sam's job meant that they were VICTORY NACHOS - the sweetest nacho of them all.

Day 88 in Japan - Wagyu Looking At?

Big bag of cans for recycling this morning.

School - no classes, big and long day at my desk. Lots to do, surprisingly. Science stuff, lesson planning (illness worksheet preparation turned into an epic saga- Aaargh!), ordered-in bento, not many teachers at all - didn't realised that they would all take leave as well. Actually read a news website - nice to know what's going on at home. Read a few English journals, but really didn't have much time to myself, despite the lack of teaching.

My CLAIR language course came! We JETs have the opportunity to sign up for language courses via mail, and mine showed up in the mail today. I'm excited to start it! After school, I started my first lesson from the book book. It's way too easy right now, will have to be good to keep motivated - I have a feeling it's going to get difficult fast.

Then Sannomiya for dinner with Jodes, Arjan, Graham and Jodies pregnant older sister (whose name I THINK was Joanna) for Kobe beef. Had a beer, and a nice talk with everyone while crowded around a hot plate, where a nice man cooked up grilled vegetables, delicious wagyu Kobe beef, and a LOT of dried garlic. First real Kobe beef in Kobe, and it was pretty awesome. 

Arjan didn't get enough meat at the steak restaurant.

Food Highlight of the Day: Kobe beef sirloin steak, no question. Though it was a little pricey, it was so tasty, and really soft.