hey all,
Got another busy week here. Job applications, maybe teaching as a substitute on Thursday, and the rest of the time just teaching. I've even got a special lesson this Sunday: a special lesson so parents can come and see their kids' classes.
The weekend was nice and relaxing though. Michi, her father, and I went to her family's second house near Karuizawa. The place has a lot of interesting history. Several hundred years ago, a nearby volcano erupted, and the area is still strewn about with lots of rocks, boulders, and solidified lava. More recently, John Lennon took a liking to the place as a good getaway from the heat and crowds of Tokyo.
So Michi and I got to do a little bouldering, but the rock was really weak: maybe half the hand holds would start to crumble or just break away completely when you tried to put your body weight on them. We also ate some incredible duck soba, and did a little gardening. Can't say the gardening was too exciting, but I did get to climb a tree and hack off some branches that had been creating unwanted shade in their yard. (Of course, I got to use my rock climbing harness and some slings to make sure I was safe while in the tree, too.)
I'm still on a tight budget: I have 25 days until my next pay day. But there is light at the end of the tunnel: my next several paychecks should be good, plus this past weekend I hardly spent any money at all. It is hard to refuse when your girlfriend's dad (who is built like a football player, and actually reminds me of a lot of my late grandfather) insists on paying for everything.
Something of a culture note. When you first come here and start to ride the buses, trains, subways, and what have you, you might notice that the Japanese announcement seems to last a lot longer than the English announcement. This is because they are telling you things that have apparently been deemed not important to tell foreigners. They tell you to watch your step when you get off the train, sometimes they tell you what side of the train the exit will be on at the next stop. On my bus, they tell you all about the shops and sights close to each stop, none of which would be interesting to foreigners, of course. We hate shopping and seeing things in the countries we're visiting/living in.
Also, as you start to become a little better at the local language, you'll start to wonder what people are talking about. They'll sound so upset, or excited, or it'll just seem like a really fun conversation, and you wish you could understand what they were saying. And then one day, on your morning commute, you'll find yourself wishing that the two school girls behind you would stop talking about how there are no cool, handsome, fun, sensitive guys at their school, and how so-and-so is so lame, or such-and-such is nice but lives too far away. And you'll realize that these are the same conversations that people are having in English in the US, it's just that you understand English perfectly, and so they're boring and even annoying to you, while the foreign language around you is just that: foreign, with different sounds, a different writing system, and a vastly different grammar, used by people coming from a wildly different history than your own country. And yet the school girls are still talking about how there are no cool, blah blah blah blah BLAH.
Anyway, I need to shower, brush my teeth, and shut my brain down for the evening.
Cheers,
