Still in pain. I think it's a little less pain than yesterday though. Had trouble at times getting comfortable last night with my neck the way it is but I managed. Sure could use a nice masage about now. I try to rub my own back and neck but it's never the same, you know? Plus it's damn hard to reach. There are spots I touch on my back, though, that hurt when I touch them. Ah well, I'll heal.

At the Kencho today and what arrives in the mail but a packet of stuff for the Japanese class I am taking. This is a free class offered by the JET programme where they send you a small book every month, along with a test, and you do the stuff in the book, and then send in the test by the due date. Should be good for me. So with this and my Monday evenings with Tomoko, I should be able to finally order that meal I've been wanting. Getting quite hungry. I am actually beginning to recognize some hiragana I see around town. Can only make the sounds though, translation is another thing altogether. But I'll get there. Probably be ready to have an in-depth conversation right about the time I leave I imagine.

I have just about finished the book I am reading, Hokkaido Highway. It's by a guy that was a JET a few years ago and at some point decided to hitchhike from the southern most town on the southern most island, Kyushu, all the way up to the northern most town on the northern most island, Hokkaido. He had decided to follow the sakura, aka. the blooming of the cherry blossoms. It is quite a good book written almost in the same style that Bill Bryson writes his books and has been made even more enjoyable by the fact that I am actually in Japan. Many of his observations I can very much understand and relate to. Pick it up if you like to read travel narratives.
Anyway, I mention this because I am almost done with it and was looking for something to read the other day. Amy and I were wasting some time before our class last Monday (or maybe the Monday before), and went up into this department store to look at books. Of course, 99 percent of the books up there are in Japanese and of little use to me or her, but she was looking for a language book so I went over to a small (very small) turnstyle that holds a few books in English. Most of them are of the bestseller variety that I stay away from but they did have Hemingway's True at First Light. Now earlier in the week I had thought to myself how much I'd like to read a Hemingway book. For some reason it just hit me on the train down to Minobu that I really wanted to read a book by Papa. And the funny thing is that I've read everything he's written except this book. What luck! This is the one that came out a few years ago. I guess his son or his widow or someone like that had found the manuscript in a trunk or closet or someplace and it was published in 1999. So anyway here it was; the perfect drink for a mighty thirst. So I bought it and paid a pretty yen for it. Small standard sized paperback, about 300 pages, 1380 yen. That's about $12. What's that? About twice the price it would have cost me back home? Oh well. Papa's worth it.

Saturday night I went out to a sports bar with a few friends to watch the rugby game. England vs South Africa. There are quite a few JETs around here from England and this was a big game so we all went there to watch, drink and get rowdy. They stood up during the English national anthem, God Save the Queen, and looked quite nervous about this game, so of course, I stood up when the South African anthem came on. I was the only one standing and they looked at me like I was nuts and the enemy. It was great fun. England ended up winning and they were all happy and the drinks flowed freely (but were not free). Rugby is a great sport. Still makes less sense to me than football or baseball or soccer, but I'll get there.

Ok, just a short note today. Don't have much to say. I don't think I have to come back to the Kencho for a couple weeks now. Got schools the rest of this week and then the first three days of next week. Next Thursday and Friday is the mid-year conference and then that weekend is a three-day weekend. Seems like every 3 or 4 weeks around here is a three-day weekend. Quite nice. Anyway, I'll write in here when I can.