Solving the Energy Crisis

I’m so tired today! I’ve had a busy week/weekend with a lot of martial arts, a lot of Christmas shopping and a lot of friend and girlfriend time, and today I’m reeling from it all. If I don’t get a full night’s sleep tonight I’ll die on my feet in class tomorrow. The funny thing is I don’t even want to go rest, I just want to go do more aikido. If I were in keiko (practice) right now I would be the awake-est, genki-est kid on the planet...it’s only the times outside of aikido that I feel tired. Recently I discovered the expression “genki wo morau,” meaning that you got energized by something, or literally that you receive genkiness (“feelin’ peppy”-ness) from something. At the end of an aikido class last week when we were all exhausted and sweaty and had trained really hard, I was glowing from being so happy and one of my sempai said, “jeez, how are you so genki right now?” I said, “I was tired all day but as soon as we started training I got all this energy from you guys.” The response was “thief! Give it back!” I love aikido. Tonight I want to go to keiko in the nearby town of Namikata, but I feel like I have to be prudent and take care of my leaving-the-country preparations (which are significant). I don’t want my last day here to be too frantic and awful...but knowing my track record, there exists a good chance that Thursday afternoon will find me crying into a half-empty suitcase as I contemplate going out to buy one last missing present for a friend back home with an hour left before my bus leaves for Tokyo. If only I had done all this last week, then I could be doing more aikido!

I'm a-Comin' Home!

I'm coming home! ON FRIDAY! FOR THREE WEEKS!!! WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!


I have been super busy gift shopping and figuring out what to bring back and cleaning my house. It's exciting but also stressful, and the truth is I have no idea what I'm going to do when I get back. I want to see friends and family, I want to just relax and be with people, watch American television and go to the movies, get a cup of free-refill coffee, hear some new jokes. I'm coming home!!! YAY!

May the Schwartz Be With You!

Hot Pockets

In Japan people buy boxes of these little chemical-filled heat packs that go in your pockets and in your shoes and on your backs underneath your shirt (they come in adhesive appliqué or as little baggies). Today the school’s special needs teacher, Maki sensei, asked me if we use these heat-packs in other countries. A better question is, Why do they use them in Japan? The answer to that one is that it is freezing cold inside schools and homes in Japan for about five or six months of the year. This is most pronounced in schools, which are horribly cold all winter long. But Maki sensei and I start to talk about this, and it ends up being a really nice conversation. We talk about building styles and school uniforms, and also the way that effecting new changes works in Japan vs other countries, and about how, from an outsider’s perspective, the strictness of the system here seems only cruel and unreasonable even if it seems like “just the way you do things" from the inside. (If you need an example of “cruel and unreasonable strictness,” girls here are required to wear skirts all year round, even if it’s a 15 below 0-degrees with a 20-degree windchill and hail. I am not exaggerating.) But I said that if Maki sensei were teaching in America, she would surely spy out a million crazinesses that escape the average American.

It was really neat having this as a “good conversation” instead of a “rant about Japan.” It was also neat being listened to and talking to someone on the inside, and getting to use all these new words I’ve learned. I’ve been studying with the JET language correspondence course, and I really have learned a lot, even in only the first month. I got to use all kinds of new words, like “progress” and “mail” and “call for” and “compliment” and a bunch more, and I got to use new tenses for giving and receiving actions and things; it was so cool! I even had to think back to the dialogues in the textbook and be like, “what was that expression that Pochi the Puppy’s father kept using? That's what I want to say right now.” It was really awesome—studying totally rocks. Every day I study, my skills get a little tighter and their base a little broader, and everything gets a little easier to use. Go, studying! ROCK ON STUDYING! WOO!

Surprise!

On today's awesome list: although aikido class was only mediocre, jodo class was freaking awesome. I get there and start to put down my stuff and take out my jo (fighty-stick) and the head honcho teacher--the only guy who gets to wear all white like a crazy old stick-wielding jedi man--he comes up to me and says, "let's do it." HELL YES. Let's GO, old man. And he gave me a really great class, like a one hour private lesson really, and I got way, way better during it. I figured out a lot of the things I'd been having trouble with, and I made him laugh a lot (with me...with me) and I just felt like a million bucks. He is not only a really good jodo guy, but also a really good teacher. Like, he gave me lots of encouragement and advice: he even said--get this--he said that I was great at handling a sword, that he was very surprised I hadn't had formal sword-art training, and that if I was this good at the stuff, this good at responding to the things he was telling me to do, and this into it all, that I was probably a samurai. THAT IS FUCKING AWESOME. THE ANCIENT SAMURAI MAN SAID I WAS LIKE A SAMURAI. I AM AMAAAAAZING!

He ALSO said that if I keep going at the rate I'm going at now, I'll be a shoe-in for a blackbelt in August. Now I know that that's not the end-all be-all of doing martial arts...but WOOHOO! I could leave Japan with a black belt in aikido and a black belt in jodo! I would be so cool! I wonder how many other black belts I can pick up while I'm here. I better take up something else in a hurry. Can you get a black belt in like, tea ceremony? Or BABES?

BABES???

Today's Highlights

I woke up today with the same cold that I'd gone to sleep with last night, and I woke up as late into this morning as I had retired into the sneezy, coughy evening before it. This meant that I was late to work, but I was at my lovely middle school in Tamagawa and no one really minded, even though I had class first period.

The kids mostly floundered when they had to do on-the-spot presentations today, but one kid. Hiroshi, whom I adore despite his inability to heretofore display any real progress in English, he just stole the show. He had to talk about “a place I want to visit” and started out saying in Japanese over and over to himself, “oh crap! umm, a place I want to visit...place I want to visit...a place...” right up until I was going to give him a leading question, but just before I spoke he started going. All in one breath, he said, “I want to travel all over the world. I very much want to go to China and the United States, because China is the most beautiful country and the United States is the most popular country to visit. I want to go there and eat the country’s popular foods, for example American pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers.” I was totally bowled over: he was so good! That’s more than I can say in Japanese! I was so, so super proud of him. He had it in him the whole time! What a great kid. It was a great breakthrough for him.

Naked Swimming Pool Aikido

Can I explain it any better than just saying, "naked swimming pool aikido?" I probably can, but it's late now and I'm very tired from doing aikido randori naked in a swimming pool with four friends for over an hour. Can I also say that it was the most fun thing in the world? This is the strangest country ever.

Presto!

Hey Obies, did you know you can still log into Presto? How funny is that! I just looked over all my stuff and saw my transcript and things, and tried to Add/Drop a Winter Term project for 2007 (apparently I need to go pick up my time card from the registrar's office). Yeah, just enter your T# (it still rolls off the memory like your own first name once you see that prompt) and hit "Forgot Your Pin?" and you can get in no problem. Dude, I was awesome! I graduated with Honors in English and a 3.43! Fuckin' hell yes! Sure, I could have done better and that sucks, but holy crap! I'm awesome!

AND, when I was biking home today, two hot Japanese girls holla'd me down from their car at a stoplight! I got holla'd on my BIKE from TWO GIRLS IN A CAR. They were all, "Wayne! Wayne!" I'm like, "I'm not Wayne, bitches!" They're all, "daaaamn, you're not Wayne!" in Japanese, and then we held up traffic for a while and I put the mack down. I ain't making this shit up! I AM A GOLDEN GOD! A GOD!

Wh-Huh?

Today I brought in omiyage for the teachers at one of my elementary schools and met with an unexpected reaction. Omiyage are gifts, given to people when you've gone somewhere cool and come back home. Omiyage reflect or embody the place you've gone: either a local specialty product that's made or grown in the place you've been to, a postcard from a famous place, or some regional paraphanalia. Most often omiyage take the form of a small confectionary, perhaps molded to resemble some notable personage (often humourously) or else printed with the name of the place, usually containing a special local ingredient or made in some traditional fashion. Think of it as if they made tiny New York cheesecakes in the shape of IHeartNY t-shirts (actually, that's a good idea...beats Manhattan clam chowder anyway).

Usually you'll get omiyage at the office; it's a work culture here (excepting women of child-rearing age), and the idea is a staple--everyone work so diligently here that whenever anybody gets to go away for a weekend, it's a big enough occaision that they bring back omiyage for all the other people in the office. It's pretty cool actually, though it gets pricey. But imagine that in your office, every week or two weeks you'd get a little snack on your desk from someone who'd gone away somewhere, and then you get to ask them about their trip and everything. "Oh, you brought me a buckeye! You must have gone to Ohio! You know, my son went to school in Ohio. Now he's in Japan, but apparently 'ohaiyo' means good morning over there, so he's never really gotten out."

I've been doing some traveling wth Sayo-chan recently (in October we went to climb Ishizuchi-san, guardian mountain god of Western Japan, then later to Kochi city for a friend of her's wedding, and this past weekend to Kyushu together for a getaway...Flickr pictures to come soon), and I've been trying to do a good job of bringing back omiyage for my schools and dojos and places. Everyone is really surprised and really touched, and everyone likes asking me about where I've gone. I think no one expects to get omiyage from foreigners, or at least not from me (which is fair, it's not like I've been doing this regularly for the 15months). Today's school got a set of reeeeeally good wagashi (old-fashioned Japanese sweet cakes) from Kyuushu, and when I was passing them out the vice-principal says, "Wow! You didn't have to do this!" 'I know, but I thought it would be nice,' I tell him. "Josh, your life is so difficult! Don't you go worrying about buying us gifts! You funny boy! You go on vacation and you just go have fun, you!" Yay Japan.

THX1138

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"
"I think so Brain, but if we didn't have ears, we'd look like weasels."

I like school!

I love school! I even got here early today. EARLY! By a HALF AN HOUR! ME! Even my students know that Josh 先生is not an “early” person. But it was a lovely experience: I had a very relaxed, non-frantic bike-ride here and a nice sit-down cup of coffee when I arrived, and had plenty of “I’m here at school to work today” brain-change time before class started. Apparently it feels great not to arrive somewhere just-on-time. Who knew? I always thought it would be boring to arrive somewhere early. I wonder what it’s like to arrive early for a train, or not have to sprint to the bus stop. Just when you think you know everything about life, you learn something new. Will the wonders never cease?

And I’m already done with classes today, after three lovely periods with seventh and eighth graders. We did phonics games and had little conversations. Ahh, the easy life. They really treat me well at this school—they know that I can bring special things to their table and they encourage me to teach the students new and exciting things in new and different ways, and they don’t pretend like it’s my job to teach the students English (because it’s not—that’s their job). It’s a great life here.

And the students! Oh, I just love them here. They’re just great. Today I doled out special homework to one of my favorites, a great kid named Taiga, whom I call Tiger. Today Tiger came into the teachers office to say hello to me and when I said, “how are you today,” he answered “Josh, I’m very sleepy today.” So I asked him what time he went to bed last night and he said 2:30. Because he was studying! “Tiger,” I says, “I am giving you special homework tonight, to go to bed between 10:30 and 11:00, because even if you study all night, you still need sleep. In Japanese I added, 寝ることを忘れないで！勉強するも、寝るも、両方は大事なことですよ！もし２４時間勉強したら、０時間しか寝なかったら、次の日にテストをうけることがぜったいできません！生活することもできないね！今日、よく寝なさい！This all means, “don’t forget to sleep! Studying and sleeping are both important things. If you study for 24 hours and sleep for 0, you can’t take a test the next day. You can’t live your normal life either, with no sleep! Today, SLEEP A LOT!” The funny thing is, since I’m a teacher and the students are trained to do whatever the teachers tell them, when I give him “sleeping” as homework, he’s totally obligated to do it! And he knows it! “Tiger, your homework is to go to sleep between 10:30 and 11:00,” I say, and his face just lights up: “Ah, Josh, thank you!!” What a funny, wonderful place.

BED!

Highlight of the day today was talking with Tsukihara san (Tsuki-chan) after ukulele band practice, he talked my ear off for a while telling me all kinds of things about playing music, especially about which hand is important to focus on when you're learning how to play--he says that although you'd think it's best to concentrate on the left hand, you should focus more on the right one; the left one's the shakaijin, the worker, and the right is the geijutsuhito, the artist, and the worker's going to learn his task because he just has to and that's the way of it, but the right one either has it or it don't, and if it's got it then it's got to work and work and work to really bring it all out...and besides, the right one's the one making the damn music happen. It was great to talk to him though; I think if he weren't there I would cry most nights after practice for feeling so cast adrift, but he really makes me feel like part of the group. It's hard there, like, very hard. I think everyone must not realize how difficult (as in impossible) their conversational Japanese is to follow. They speak REALLY quickly and with thick accents and slang and jargon and dialect...it's like if a Japanese native came to the states and sat in with a group of Italian apple sellers and tried to figure out their conversation using his middle school English textbook. This is what it's like. But I think they maybe think I just don't like talking with them...rather than, "I can't." Well, anyway Tsuki-chan likes me, and he talks to me, and I am a better ukulele player than any of the other Junior Ukulele Scouts, as I call us (with the exception of Nabe-chan, a relative newcomer and instant fanatic). I think it makes a difference that I have like a million other things going on in my life, and none of these people, lovely as they are, has much else. Like, my week's schedule involves practicing Japanese, studying Japanese, teaching at six schools and lesson planning and material making for each of them, doing lots of aikido, doing even more aikido, keeping an aikido journal, doing jodo, praticing jodo solo on my own time, going to ukulele practice, practicing ukulele on my own, staving off feelings of discouragement when practicing ukulele on my own, planning out and broadcasting a live radio show, teaching adult conversation class, and a million other things, not to mention that I bike everywhere except when I take the train into Matsuyama for aikido. Biking takes time! And energy! And all of this is on top of normal life stuff like eating and doing dishes and seeing my girlfriend and reading the paper (the American paper). So it's all well and good for Nabe chan to become an instant ukulele fanatic if he's got all this time for it, but me I've got to bike a half an hour to the store and buy some eggs, for which I first need to spend half an hour making sure I know how to ask for eggs in Japanese. It's a busy life! And if I spent all my time practicing the ukulele for you people, I wouldn't have studied enought Japanese to be able to talk with you at all! Sheesh, give a guy a break!

Okay, bedtime. I have to leave the house at 7:30 tomorrow, so counting backwards that means packing my bag at 7:25, breakfast at 7:20, getting dressed/teeth and contacts at 7:10, shower from 6:50, hunt for a towel at 6:48, out of bed at 6:47.999999999.
Tomorrow's breakfast is A BAGEL!!!! Or yummy cereal, but I may be out of bran flakes, and then I would cry. WORD.

NIGHT!

Good Heavens!

The funny thing is, this is the first day in a month where not too much notable has happened, and it's now that I'm sitting down to post and drawing blanks as to all the great things that have been making me too busy to write over the last four weeks. I've been busy! Life has been pretty good though. It's been full of good things. I've been having a much easier time writing about the bad parts that come between all the good things though; it comes out easier than recalling all the fun stuff. I guess that's the way of things; when it's all good, you think you'll write it down tomorrow or the next day, and then it's the day after that, and then it's never. When things are all six kinds of awful you're just burning to get it out of your system and down onto the page as quick as you can, but then they're not really worth sharing anyway. Well, some notable moments of the past month, in a very abbreviated fashion (it's late, apologies), and in no particular order.

• I went out to a Korean place with Judo man and his family, and their friends who we went to the beach with during the summer. I love those two little kids of theirs. And them, too; I really love them too, Judo man and Chie. They have some very basic kihon parenting skills to learn, which is a somewhat alarming and somewhat amusing and somewhat baffling thing to witness unfold as they wrangle with their two-year-old. I mean things like, if you don't put your kids to bed when they're tired--say, you take them out to a restaurant until 10:30 or 11 at night, say, when they're bedtimes are at 8 or 9--then they're going to be very cranky and unreasonable for the last two hours that you're out! Like: duhh! Things like that. It's like watching someone drive with the emergency brake on. Don't you know not to do that? But they're sweet and loving, and I do love them all.
  
• I'm back in amongst the aikido crowd in Matsuyama! And I LOVE them! I just love training there. One of the senior students there told me last week (at a demonstration in Kochi that I went to with Sayo) that the Sensei told her how happy it makes him that I come to class! How amazing is that! He's like the most amazing person I have ever known almost. The feeling I get whenever I train with him, their sensei--our sensei, my sensei--is seriously different than maybe anything I've ever felt from another person before. He smiles this big smile when you're training with him and it's every singly kind of feeling wonderful that you've ever known all rolled into one, like getting out of an onsen bath, winning a sweepstakes prize, falling in love, and tickling children all rolled into one thing. It's like being made of gold.
  
• I have gold in me! A teacher gave me omiyage from Kyoto, from the old imperial palace. Apparently all the teachers from this school went together during the one weekend in the year when it's open to the public and they bought me a special sembei (baked puffy rice crackers) with GOLD ON IT! I HAVE GOLD IN ME!!!!
• I broke it to Mayu-chan that I'm girlfriended, and she did not take it exceptionally well. She did not take it exceptionally poorly, and I suppose I should be flattered, but, well. I wish that it were easier for men and women to be friends here.
• I raced in a bike race! 50km! To an island! It was awesome! I am a demon!
• I am doing jodo! It's like aikido, except that instead of peacefully blending your body with your partner's body when they grab you with their hands, you hit your partner with big sticks when they try to get you with a sword, and everybody YELLS AND YELLS AND YELLS, ALL THE TIME!!!! One woman yells just like Chun-Li!
• Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii need to go to bed.
  

Love you all, more soon,
-josh

Me Talk Pretty One Day

After ukulele practice a few weeks ago I was looking to go get something to eat and called up my friend Mayu chan. She's a girl who I am an alternate-universe away from happily dating; had we only met a day earlier, rather than the day after I started seeing Sayo chan. It's one of those things I guess. But Sayo chan's really sweet, really matter-of-fact-but-crazy in a very warm, likable way, and it's not like I wish I were dating this other girl instead. It's just one of those things you think about. You wonder if this other girl would somehow be a match for you in the ways you've already realized that the current girl isn't ever going to be (at least, you think you've realized this). Or else you think, 'boy, if I were just less busy, I could see them both in secret! If Mayu chan came over at six she could be gone by the time Sayo got here at eight, and maybe she'd clean the place up before she left...'

I don't actually think it through this way a lot, but you know, the possibilities are funny. Logistics would be on my side, since Sayo lives in Matsuyama over the mountains and Mayu lives next to the gym where I do aikido and works just down the road from my house. Anyway, it's not going to go anywhere with her, but the other week I called her out to go for a bite with me after uke practice and we end up going to this place called Marco, an upclass bar overlooking the harbor and the castle. I know the owner Kenichi through Judo-man, and though I haven't seen him in a while he's really happy to have me there and we all start talking together at the bar while he makes our drinks. We're getting on really well, excepting a moment where Kenichi says, "so Joshuu, do you have another girlfriend yet?" That jerk. But we are getting on really great, all three of us. Kenichi tells us about his next gig at a music studio over the river, Jamsounds, where it turns out is the same place I got my ukulele; so we all talk about music, playing it and listening to it, and the CD that Mayu gave me; and he and Mayu start talking about cooking; and they talk about teaching, which she and I both do, he asks some questions about martial arts stuff, we talk about the radio show. And then Kenichi says the damndest, damndest thing. He says, and the whole bar just kind of stops like you do waiting for the punchline of a joke, "Joshuu," he says, "you know why you've got so much going on, and so many people you know? I know why: it's cause you're so easy to talk to!"

Now, think about this. We all did, sitting there a bit dumb in the mouth while the harbor wind breezed in through the chinks in the windows, and coming up dry. I had a lot I wanted to say back actually, but I couldn't think of how to say any of it in a way Kenichi would understand. Not because we don't communicate well, but because he doesn't speak English. And I don't speak Japanese, or not enough to say any of this to him in it. He doesn't speak English. He doesn't speak English...and I don't speak Japanese. Think about this now, and then try to come up with, "easy to talk to" as a first-off description for me...this is a strange and awesome land. It delights me that someone would come up with "easy to talk to" as a way to describe me. I really must be doing something right; I guarantee it's not the speaking. But it's got to be something; with no tongue to speak with and no ears to hear, I can still be a friendly, easy-going conversationalist; how cool is that?

Gay Men's Chorus

Gay Men's Chorus
Originally uploaded by sneakypeteiii.

It's like this is too amazing to have actually happened, but lo, here it is.

YATTA!!!!!!

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!
I MADE IT 1 MORE!!!!
I'M 23!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'd like to take a chance to review the year's foibles and fares, triumphs and traumas, achievements and idiocies, BUT I really haven't the time right now. I'm still rather frenziedly working on my assignment for Fodor's, due Friday. Back to work, I'll still be 23 next week...

I Got Flowers!

Tonight I had a birthday party! I know it's early (only by a week!) but tonight a bunch of people I know from the radio station had this big birthday dinner for me and three others, Aoi-chan, Maahk-san and To-kun who all have September birthdays and lots of nice people gave us presents! Yay party! I also got to sit next to Hazuki-chan, who, although she's apparently just been recently engaged to be married, is one of those "I will forever hold a candle in the window for you" kind of girls, and always makes my night feel special when I see her. And it was my birthday! Yaaay! AND SOMEONE GAVE ME FLOWERS!!!!!!!! I think this is the first time I have ever gotten flowers. I FEEL SO SPECIAL! They are pink roses with little green squiggly flowers all arranged around them. I know it's the silliest thing in the world, but it seriously makes me feel almost giggly with happiness. I got flowers! Yay Japan, where men can get flowers. Tonight when I was buying gifts for the others (flowers for Aoi chan and plants for Mark-san and To-kun) and the ladies were wrapping up the bouquet for Aoi chan I reminded them that the flowers were for boys and they said they'd wrap them appropriately...this apparently involved pink and peach colored paper and a lot of lacey ribbons that they made all curly with scissors. What?? The party was very laid back and super fun, and I'm happy to be in with these people again; we all had kind of a drifting apart over the summer. Anyway, here's my pictures of MY PRESENTS AND MY FLOWERS! YAAAAAAAY!
I got super nice smelling bath soap, hair gel gooey stuff that smells like grapefruits, a set of incredibly nice cups for Japanese tea, a reDICulous Pringles picture frame from someone who knew how funny it was, a really pretty candle holder with sea-glass sides to refract the light AND, BEST OF ALL (besides the flowers), a HAPPY MONKEY FM RADIO!
HAPPY MONKEY FM RADIO! HAPPY MONKEY FM RADIO!
I spent a great deal of the party saying IGOTAHAPPYMONKEYFMRADIO very excitedly. Some people were like, "wow, you must have really been hoping to get that Happy Monkey FM Radio." It is pretty amazing. It took me about thirty minutes of fiddling around with it at home to realize how to change the station, since there's not only no instructions, but also no discernable controls whatsoever. "So what," you think, "obviously, you just turn its arms around!" Oh touche; actually, you have to PUSH ITS EYES IN. So, so weird. O Japan, where men can receive hair curling products that smell like grapefruits and monkeys get poked in the eyes.

With the Fishes

Today I got a phone call from my friend Daisuke at the kaiten-sushi place next door, saying that everyone there was worried about me because no one had seen me in so long, and was I OK and would I come in to see them all soon?

I need to remember that things like this happen, especially at those times when I get frustrated about being here in the Twilight Zone; this place can be pretty amazing for all its strangeness. So I went to the sushi place and I brought omiyage that I had bought for all the staff on my trip to Ishikawa-ken (chopsticks from the morning market in a city called Wajima on the Japan Sea, famous from bygone days for its laquerware, and some beautiful watercolor postcards on thick rice paper from Kanazawa's kenrokuen, one of the Three Best Gardens in Japan according to canon). I ate lots of sushi, I chatted with everybody, I enjoyed me some life. And then tonight I get this email from Daisuke...I think it is perhaps the best single piece of correspondance I have ever received in my life, despite an indecipherable part in the middle. It goes:

おみあげをどうもありがとう。Ｔｈａｎｋ ｙｏｕ ｓｏ ｍｕｃｈ ｆｏｒ ｓｏｕｖｅｎｉｒ ｆｏｒ ｍｅ。 Ｙｏｕ ａｒｅ ｓｕｃｈ ａｎｉｃｅ ｆｒｉｅｎｄ。Ｗｅ ａｌｌ ｌｏｖｅ ｙｏｕ ｅｖｅｎ ｓｏｍｅ ｗｏｒｋｓ ｗｈｏ ｗｏｒｋｓ ｂｅｈｉｎｄ ｔｈｅｃａｕｎｔｅｒ。 Ｗｈｅｎ ｙｏｕ ｃｏｍｅ ｉｎ ｏｕｒ ｒｅｓｔａｕｒａｎｔ、 ｅｖｅｒｙｂｏｄｙ ｌｏｏｋｓ ｈａｐｐｙ。Ａｎｄ ｔｈｅｍｏｏｄ ｈａｓ ｇｏｔｔｅｎ ｂｅｔｔｅｒ。Ｗｅ ｌｏｖｅ ｔｈａｔ。Ｔｈａｎｋ ｙｏｕ ｆｏｒ ｃｏｍｉｎｇ ｔｏｎｉｇｈｔ。おやすみ。

I love Japan? I love Japan.

手紙を書きました！

よし！日本語で手紙を書きました！はじめて日本語の手紙ですよ。すごく変なかんじかもしらないやけど、できました。この手紙は前の彼女、長谷部由ちゃんへ。最近由ちゃんと話ししたくなりましたから先週電話でかけてみて、嬉しかった。さ、読んでみてね！

こんにちは！この間話してくれて嬉しかったよ。由ちゃんは８月にも９月にもずっとや休みがありまが？学校へ全然行っていないですか？うらやましいぞ！昨日から仕事しおる。火曜日は鴨部小へ行きましたけどあまり何もしなかった。お昼まではぜったいひまだった、少しじゅんびをしたけど。給食が終わってから１年生と５年生授業しました。５年生は携帯電話ゲームをした：音楽をかけているところに、子どもたちが二つの携帯電話を回せて、音楽が止めたら持っている人は会話をする。"Hello,　what's your name?" "Hello, my name is Yumiko. How are you today?"　そんなかんじだ。１年生は伝言ゲームと鬼ゲームしました。子どもたちと会って、子どもと私もすごくよろこんでいますよ。

今日は玉中に行っている。今１０時４５分ですが、授業もう終わりました；今日は１時間目と２時間目だけ。おかしいね、この仕事。２時間働いたら、何で８時間務める？たまにおかしいね、ここの生活は。

由ちゃんは休みのとき何しおる？だいたい暇だったら、合気道はよく練習しますか？僕最近あまり練習ｓていないよ。。。よくないけどしかったがない、ぜったい忙しかったけん。
でも今頃何してるの？まだ前のそば屋で、とかご両親のラーメン屋でバイトしていますか？どこか旅行に行きましたか？よく、飲みに行きますか？

でわ、また時間あったらメールしてね？bye bye------

Bed Time

So I'm breaking my 12 o'clock bedtime rule (it's more like guidelines) but today was a good day, and a web post is a nice way to finish it. Right now I'm drinking kabo-cha, the delicious savory tea which mysteriously tastes exactly of very good chicken soup, and eating a small helping of two dried apricots, three prunes and some cashews off a very nice black triangular dish I bought the other day for a delightful 150 yen; the domesticity of all this produces really a very calming, tranquil effect for me; even though my apartment has devolved to a shambles from the relatively well-ordered pad it was only a few days ago, I've got a little corner of refined sanity to keep me stable. Sanity, thy name be dried apricots and tea.

Today was the first day of school for me, and although I did remember on an intellectual level how much I love my kids, I didn't remember how truly amazing and lovely and loving they all are. All they wanted to do today was play with me and dance with me and pick me up and get picked up by me and smile at me, and at the end of the day I was petitioned to walk about a million of them home; they were great in the games (a Pirates game and a song-and-dance with the 6th graders, a Hellos relay with the little little ones, a thump-the-desks rythm chanting game with the third graders, all as fun for them as for me, the mark of a good game). I was nearly overcome today with how wonderful they all are. They wanted to talk and talk to me, they wanted to have piggy-back rides, they wanted to teach me how to whistle like an owl...I just couldn't be luckier. Yay school! I was so apprehensive about returning, too! Yay for kids, the wonderfullest people ever. Here's a picture from a while ago, albiet of a different school than today's, but full of lovely little ones all the same. I'm actually in this picture if you can find me. It's like Where's Waldo, except with Josh. Where's Josh? He's in JAPAN.