Had a good weekend. Amy came up and on Friday night we went to dinner at my favorite place to eat on the planet. If you visit me, we will be going to this restaurant. I am a bit nuts for Hoto right now, the stew type dish (think I've mentioned this before). Anyway, we ate with Dilek, Michelle (from Virginia, I think), Amanda (from Michigan), Adrienne (Virginia), and Ben. Food was damn good, as usual. The lady who seems to run the place told Dilek and I that she appreciates the fact that we keep going back there to eat. She seems like a very nice lady.
After that Amy, Dilek and I went to my place to watch Eddie Izzard. I've turned Dilek on to Eddie and am continuing my quest to inform the world of this great talent. So far the list includes my friend, Gaylyn, my brother, Amy, Dilek and probably several other people that I am forgetting right now.
Saturday, Amy, Dilek and I went on a short shopping spree. Found a store called Bulldog, don't ask me why it's named that, and I spent quite a few yen in there. My apartment is starting to look and feel quite nice. Got some rugs, a couple lamps, and a dartboard. We also went to an electronics store where Amy bought a phone and I bought a computer game. But alas, the computer game isn't working on my computer...language problems; thus the reason I bought a fairly cheap game. I wasn't sure if it would work and sure enough, it didn't. So now I know not to buy games over here. Anyone want to volunteer to send me Age of Empires and its expansion pack? Ah well, Amy is going home for xmas so I'll make a short list and give her some money.
So after shopping we went home and watched a football game I had recorded earlier in the week. And then a little later, I headed down to the sports bar for the evening's rugby games. That is starting to be a habit but hell, the whole thing ends in just under two weeks now so I'll just ride it till it ends. In fact, Sunday night (last night) I had seven people come over to use me for my satellite service. England vs. Wales. There were three of us from America, one from New Zealand, two from England, one from Wales, and one who is half English-half Welsh. Had fun and might end up seeing them all next Sunday as France plays England in a game that gets the winner to the championship game to face either New Zealand or Australia (that game is Saturday night).
Enough about my weekend. I am probably boring you.

So last Thursday I was walking back to the teachers' room with Ms. Ito (head of the English department at the aviation academy) after lunch and she asked how long I was planning on staying in Japan. So I answered her as best I could and then she mentioned that the school is looking for a permanent English teacher whose native language is English and that if I decided in the future to stay in Japan for a while that I could get that job. This took me quite off guard as I've only been here such a short time and really feel that my teaching leaves a lot to be desired. But it was nice to hear. I'm not really thinking about staying in Japan for longer than three years, but who knows? I guess it might happen. Way too soon to start thinking about that though.
But it gets even weirder.
Friday I was at Yamanashi Gakuen (a junior high) and had just finished teaching a class with a guy I don't normally teach with. He and I have talked a bit but he is not one of the teachers I work with. He was just covering for the normal teacher who is in Australia right now. So anyway, he asked me if he could ask a personal question and then proceeded to ask me about my plans for the future. I told him I didn't know yet to which he said that that school is thinking of looking for a permanent teacher (just like the academy) in the near future and that if I wanted the job I would probably be able to get it.
So I have no idea what is going on. Certainly my teaching isn't that impressive. Maybe it's the beard. I don't know.

So get this.....I think I have just about learned Hiragana. Not exactly a speed reader quite yet, but at least I can walk down the street and sound out a sign written in the script. Of course, that's not to say that when I put the sounds together and make a word that I know what it means, but I'll get there. This morning we got some kind of flyer on all our desks and I started writing out all the sounds of the Hiragana symbols underneath the symbols. It was quite fun to do without using my key and I felt quite smart. But then I looked at what I had left and was sorely disappointed to find that probably 75 percent of the flyer was still unreadable to me as it was written in Kanji. Kanji is going to be quite difficult but it is all highly interesting and quite fun. At least it's fun now. Check back with me in about six months.

One more thing. I went running for the first time in about a year this morning. It's time to get back into shape and see if I can run another marathon. I was talking to Robin and we have decided that we'd like to run the Nagano marathon next April. I say "we'd like to" not "we will." But unless my knees keep me from being able to, I think that running a marathon while I'm in Japan would be quite something to do. Would also like to do some shorter races but finding out when and where via the internet last night proved a fruitless endeavor.