Ok, these are the last of the bunch. Sundai, third class.

The cat is heavy.
But Why is the cat heavy
The cat is lion.

Or it's Amy's cat, Birdie.

In the winter morning
I can't get up from cold
but I'll try head all day!!

There's an obvious joke here but I won't mention that. I'll just say that if you spend all day trying to get out of bed, you ain't trying very hard.

I want to sleep
I'm really really sleepy
I want to sleep

How about trying really really hard to write a better haiku.

I enter my room
Then my bedding blows away
I was startled by him

What does this mean?

I look round to
pour lights into scenery
so far went summers.

Profound? Or nonsense? You be the judge.

I was very hungry.
But I endure it.
Then my belly sound.

Houtou anyone?

He's the cleverest boy
He knows everything. But
he can't run fast.

Well, you can't be good at everything.

Help I need somebody
I need someone to help my homework
Tomorrow is dead line.

Next time get someone else.

Mr. Watt: Will you tell your name?
Mr. Will Not: Will Not. Would you tell your name?
Mr. Watt: Watt is my name.

This is actually quite brilliant for a young English language student over here. Nice play on words.

The cat look at lats
What is the most delicious
that lat or this lat?

Think and hope he meant "rats". Funny though.

Women like the sales
because there're many cheap things
so they often go sales.

Guess women are the same the world over. Ha ha, this one cracked me up.

That's all for now. Tune in after April sometime when I torture next year's students with this assignment.

More Haiku. Sundai junior high, my second class.

I like sports
but I don't like study
how about you?

At your age, same.

I have a hard time
getting out of warm quilt
in cold winter morning

Me too.

I play soccer very much
But I don't play it very well
So I plactice it

I appreciate your honesty.

I can not speak English.
But, my class friends is speak English.
So, I go to England.

Is that how it works?

When we have much snow.
It is danger and very cold
but I'm very glade.

Me too.

My dog attacks me.
Or I'm always played by him.
But I love him!

My dog attacks me and he ain't my dog anymore.

English is important
English is very interesting.
But it's very difficult.

Not for me.

I am riding a bike
and I am very very hurry, Why?
Maybe late

Ok, but just watch those blind curves.

The sun is shining.
My homework don't end at all.
sad story in summer.

Hmmm....that is sad.

He went to the shop.
But he don't have a money.
He goes back home now.

Yeah, that happened to me at the train station the other morning.

Apples were eaten by him.
But they were rotten a little.
He got a stomahache.

Would one notice that the apples were rotten before one ate them?

Hello! I'm Yohe!
I am very very femous
All eyes on me.

Maybe. Have any of you in America ever heard of this guy?

The wallet is lighe.
No money is in my wallet
I'm dying to be rich!

But money can't buy you love, my brother.

Will write the third class's stuff later tonight.

Good news. Over the weekend I managed to get my kerosene heater working. It had been blowing smoke every time I'd tried it and I'd temporarily given up on it thinking that either the kerosene was bad (not sure how kerosene would go bad) or that the heater itself had some problem. I wasn't sure what to do about it all. But this weekend I tried it again and after the third try the smoke stopped and the thing blew only heat. So I let it run a few minutes (I was doing all this outside for obvious reasons) to make sure all was ok, then brought the thing in and now, I am happy to report, I am not a prisoner in only one room of my apartment. Now the problem is....how do I go about getting more kerosene? I could easily take my large jug to a gas station and have them fill it up, but the catch is getting it home. I imagine it's about a five or six gallon jug and is too big and heavy for me to carry home all that way and I don't think it will fit in the basket on Amy's bike. So that is the next obstacle. But for now I do have a little left in the jug and the tank in the heater was filled yesterday. So for now I am ok. Damn nice, though, to be able to heat more than just this one little room.

This morning Amy and I woke up (she stayed over after watching sumo and then the playoff game, tape delayed between the colts and chiefs) around 6am. When she stays on a night before a workday (this is usually due to our Monday evening Japanese lesson) she has to catch the 6:50am train in order to get back to her place and then to work on time. So she left around 6:30am this morning and I continued getting ready for my 6:55 departure. I had to get up to Shizen Gakuen today (small school up in the hills) and always catch the 7:21 train. But about five minutes after she left, my phone rang. So I picked it up expecting it to be Amy on her cell and sure enough it is. She tells me, "It's snowing out here," to which I look out the window and try to see snow with the sky just beginning to show signs of light. Sure enough, it was snowing. Not really hard and not sticking, but snow nonetheless.
So with the wet pavement and the assumption that snowflakes would be getting in my eyes, I decided to leave a little earlier than normal. So I left at 6:50 giving me a full half hour till my train was to leave. It was cold outside but there was that insulated feeling one gets with snow. So it really was rather nice and I enjoyed my ride to the Kencho. I locked my bike up and then walked to the station with that great feeling one has when one is a little early for something. I had no worries and was happy to finally be going to a school instead of sitting at the Kencho.
But as I rode the escalator up and removed my gloves in order to be able to get my wallet out, something hit me. I wish I could say it was just another little snowflake in the eye, or even a snowball in the back of my head, but no, I realized I had forgotten to grab my wallet on this, the most expensive of all my travel days. So I checked my pants pockets, my coat pockets and even my bag, just to be sure, but yes, I knew it, it was nowhere on me.
I wasn't sure what to do, but I really had no choice. I spared the Japanese people any expletives I was thinking in regards to myself as I will spare you them, but I was not happy with myself. It would be one thing if all I had to do was bike home, bike back, catch the next train and be a little late to school. But I knew that this was more than just that. My trip to Shizen Gakuen runs like a well oiled machine. I catch the 7:21 train to Nirasaki and get off at 7:35. Then I catch the bus at 7:40 and ride up the hill to Shiokawa where I get off at about 8:30. Then I walk over to a small bus and take it the last fifteen minutes to school where I walk into the teacher's office at 8:45 and then begin my first class at 8:50. So you see, if any one of these steps is off by more than a few minutes the whole thing breaks down. So here I was at 7:10am in the Kofu train station with enough change on me to get me to school but not enough to get me back. Later I thought that I probably could have gotten to school and then borrowed the money to get home, but I really didn't want to do that and it didn't occur to me until I was already halfway home anyway. I also considered going home and then showing up at the Kencho at my normal time, telling them the story and letting them call the school to say that I wouldn't be in today. But that thought lasted about three seconds. I didn't want to spend the day at the Kencho and besides, that would have been giving up too easily. I had to at least make an attempt to get out there.
So I walked back to the Kencho, grabbed my bike, and headed home for the wallet. I got home, grabbed the wallet and then checked the train schedule. Next train to Nirasaki, 7:51. Now, that's only half an hour behind schedule but I had no idea about the bus situation and I don't have a schedule (not even sure if they make 'em). So I biked back to the Kencho, locked the bike, walked to the station, bought a ticket, and went down to catch the train.
About twenty minutes later I got off the train in Nirasaki (now 8:05) and went over to where I normally catch the bus. The schedule is printed on the pole where you are supposed to wait, but much to my chagrin, the next bus wasn't until 9:25. That would put me at the school at about 10:30 and that was only if the connection up the hill worked well. But even if it did, 10:30 was too late for my liking. So I walked around a bit not sure what to do when I noticed the taxis.
Now, as some of you may know, taxis over here are pretty expensive. Just to get in one is 650yen (about $6). So I was hesitant because of the price but also because somehow I had to tell the taxi driver where I wanted to go, and I knew that Shizen Gakuen would not be one of their normal destinations. But what else could I do? I wasn't going to give up. So I walked over to the taxi and poked my head in the back door.
"Sumimasen," I said, interrupting the guy on his cell phone. ("Excuse me")
He told the person on the other end of the phone to hold on, "Hai?" he said to me.
"Uhmmmm.......Shizen Gakuen....?" I was hoping he'd heard of it.
"Shizen Gakuen awakahimusensatofugajima," he said to me. (that means nothing and is about what I heard)
"Uhh...." I pointed to myself, "Shizen Gakuen eigo-sensei." ("Shizen Gakuen English teacher")
"Ah," he said to me and repeated the school's name and then a lot more that once again I had no clue about but thought I'd heard the verb for "to go".
"Hai," I said still rather tentatively , "Uh...ikura des ka?" ("how much is it?")
I'll spare you the rest of my pathetic Japanese but I did manage to get a rough estimate of about 8000yen ($75). So I thought about it for a couple seconds and came to the conclusion that I was being paid enough to correct my own mistake and told him I'd do it. And I knew I had enough in my wallet.
So we left and then he said something to me and then we pulled into a small parking lot where he stopped the car and did a little paperwork. I was very confused at this point but thought to myself, "Hell, I've done everything I can. If this guy wants to stop to balance his receipts, then so be it." But really I thought, "he might be figuring out what the fare is going to be just to make sure I have enough." Strange but what else could it have been? I really had no clue. But then another guy came over to the car, they said a few words to each other ("Shizen Gakuen" being two of them), the old driver got out while saying to me "Sumimasen, arigato" ("excuse me, thank you"), the new driver got in greeting me with "Ohayo gozaimasu" ("good morning") and we pulled away. But a few seconds later we stopped next to what was obviously his car where he said to me "Sumimasen, chotto mate" ("excuse me, just a minute") and then got some stuff from his car. He came back with a few things, two of which were one plastic bottle of tea and one small can of cold coffee. He handed the coffee to me saying, "dozo" ("please") and we were then off for real.
So I just sat in the back of the taxi, drinking my coffee, hoping that all this would work out. And lo and behold, about 40 minutes later we pulled into the school, I paid the guy 7530yen ($71), told him "thank you" several times (in Japanese, of course) and walked into the teachers' room a mere fifteen minutes late. Success!
And get this...after I apologized to Shindo-sensei for being a little late, she told me that she had just assumed that the bus was having trouble getting up the hill on the partially snowy road. She really hadn't been worried about my late arrival in the least. But I did end up telling her the entire truth about what had happened and she looked at me in shock that I would make such an effort and then thanked me many times for coming to school today. And so, at this point I decided my $71 taxi ride was well worth it.
Hope I don't have to do that again, though. Is one of those things that is fun to look back on but is not any fun living through.

Ok, that seems to have reset the thing. Not sure what happened. But I think lock applies nicely there to the caps lock feature. Anyway, don't start reading here. Start below and then come back up.

Eventually Yamashita asked if I was filled up enough and wanted to take a walk to the local shrine. I said that would be fine and he, his 8 year old and I set out. His son once again decided run everywhere and we walked the narrow street about 15 minutes to the shrine.
At the shrine we did the small prayer, took a piece of paper with a fortune on it, read it, tied it to some string outside like you are supposed to do, and then I was able to capture his son for a brief time so that Yamashita could snap a picture of us. Of course, Yamashita told me a little about the history of the shrine and the guy who built it and all that. We then walked back to his place where he brought out a bottle of shochu.
At this point I still thought I was spending the night and was pacing myself on the drinking. His father kept trying to get me to go faster but I would not as I figured I still had many hours left to stay awake. We sat around and talked and got to know each other and then Yamashita mentioned that at 5pm there would be some ex-students of his coming over and that he would need to take me home soon. He was very apologetic about it but after the initial confusion wore off I didn't think it was any big deal. I am getting quite used to functioning on very little concrete information over here and am nearly always ready to change my plans on a moment's notice.
So about a half hour later his wife, his younger son, he and I climbed into the mini-van (his wife did the driving) and they dropped me off at my place. Yamashita had drawn out a map for me earlier in the day so that I can "come over anytime you like," and his wife added "and please bring Amy next time."
Nice people.

Ok. One last story from my vacation. This one involves Yamashita-sensei.
On my last day out at Sundai (Tuesday--junior high) Yamashita and I were talking about the day trip he wanted to take Amy and I on. This is the trip I already wrote about. So we were talking about where, when and all that when he mentions that he'd also like me to come over to his house at some point in the near future. "Yeah," I said, "That'd be fun." He mentioned that I could meet his wife and his two boys, eat some food, have a few drinks, and then says, "And you could stay overnight." (enter the sound of a hard braking car) "Come again," I thought to myself. I was confused about this and was thinking back to my childhood days when one would have sleepovers at one's friend's house and began questioning just how old I was.
But he continued, "Yes, I will pick you up and you can come over and in the morning I will take you back to your apartment." Still confused I said, "You want me to stay the night?" "Yes," he said, "You see, I want to drink with you and....."
"AH HA!" the bells rang in my head, "Drinking and driving in Japan....ZERO tolerance....no ride home....must stay night." So at this point and under a sigh of relief I listened to him explain this reason and decided that yes, I would go have a few drinks with him and his family and stay the night at some point in the near future. It would be fun.
We never decided an exact time to do all this but upon dropping Amy and I off from our day trip, I had said, "Ok, I guess I'll see you on January 20th," (my next day at Sundai) to which he replied, "I will call you before the new year." I wasn't sure what that meant exactly but said ok, and left it at that.
So on Dec. 30th the phone rings and it's Yamashita. "Hello, Marcus-sensei, this is Yamashita."
"Yes, hello."
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
Baffled I thought of the crack in my glass window, the dishes that needed washing, and the laundry piling up. "No, I don't think there is anything you can do for me," I said, unsure of his question's real meaning.
"I would like to have you over to my house. When is a convenient time for you?"
"Oh that's what you mean," I thought and said, "Well, I am going to go to Takeda shrine on the first, but anytime after that is ok." So we decided on Friday, the 2nd, when I would meet him and where.
I met him and his eight year old son that morning at 11am with my backpack full of night clothes in hand. First we drove over to the local art museum which was closed but the grounds were open and we walked around a bit and talked. His English is really quite good, although sometimes it is a little awkward, aka. the first question of his phone call. But we had a short walk and a nice time while his son ran hither and yon in an attempt to scare birds or take flight or generate some wind, I guess. That kid was running everywhere.
After the walk we drove to his house during which time I was informed about his parents who were still in Yamanashi (they live north of Tokyo somewhere) from their holiday visit. Turns out that his wife's and his parents had come to stay for the New Year holiday. But as her parents live very close they returned home whilst his parents remained. I was ok with this but was beginning to wonder about the status of my sleepover.
So we got there and his mother came to greet me (very friendly) and his father then greeted me (also very friendly) and then they asked if I preferred beer or sake. It was about 11:45am. Now, I have nothing against having a beer at this hour but I thought that Yamashita and I would be doing some evening drinking and a certain lady's voice ran through my head, "It's before noon. You can't have a beer yet!" as if there is some law against it. But if there is a law against it, I figured that I was out of its jurisdiction and looked at the kindly old lady and said, "Biru, please."
So she brought us two glasses and a can of beer and poured it for us while we, Yamashita, his father, and I sat under the kotatsu (the low table with heater). Yamashita and I said "Kampai" and drank and talked while he translated for his father. It was all very low key and nice.
Then his mother brought over a tray of food (don't ask me to name it all) and then two large bowls of salad. What struck me here was that his father was not eating and his mother who sat with us a very short time then got up and left the room. Where did she go? Into the next room and sat alone! Yamashita had mentioned that they would be introducing me to some typical Japanese New Year's food, yet grandma and grandpa weren't eating and we weren't waiting for his wife and other son to come home (they were at the son's kendo practice). Where I come from, if someone has gone through all the trouble to prepare a meal and you are expecting a guest, you wait till everyone is present and then you all eat together. But what was I to do? So I ate and drank and had some conversation.
Yamashita's father seemed like a very nice man although, of course, there was the language barrier. But he kept telling me to drink. Normally I would admire his enthusiasm but at noon on a day when you don't exactly know what it is you'll be doing, you tend to want to stay relatively sober. So I was drinking very slowly.
Eventually grandma came back into the room and brought us over some more food and then a bottle of sake. "These people certainly are attempting to fill me up," I thought as I sipped the sake and beer and nibbled on the food. The food was all pretty tasty and mostly stuff I had never had before. Some seafood, some chicken, some egg-like things, and various other things I'd never seen before except perhaps on menus here and there. Yamashita explained to me what it all was and the significance of it in regards to New Year's.
Not too much later Yamashita's wife and son came home. His son greeted me and I never saw him again, but his wife sat with us and was extremely nice. She spoke a little English but I think she understands it better than she lets on. So we sat around and talked and had a great time.

(Hmmm.....I have a little more to write but the caps lock key feature is stuck in the on position and I am having to hold down the shift key to keep from writing in all capitals. Can't seem to fix it. I will shut this thing down and see if that corrects it.)

Kanji. Have I mentioned Kanji here? I'm sure I must have at some point.
In case you don't know, Japan uses lots of Kanji. Kanji is defined as, and I'm quoting here, "A Japanese system of writing based on borrowed or modified Chinese characters." Ok, that's simple enough. But what it doesn't tell you is how complex the system gets. And I am only scratching the surface here because that's all I can do at this point in my education of the stuff.
I was studying a bit of Kanji yesterday when I came across the symbol for "mountain" (I'd write it here but I have no idea how to and your computers might seize up anyway). I know this symbol well due to my prefecture. I live in Yamanashi, a word that when written in Kanji consists of two symbols. The yama part means "mountain" and the nashi part means "pear" or at least this is what I've read. Quite often, though, you'll see Yamanashi written with three symbols and I assume the third symbol means "prefecture," but I am not really sure of that. And, just for some extra info that you can take to the office to share, Kofu, the city I live in, is also made of two Kanji symbols; ko(u) meaning "armor" and fu meaning "government center" or "office";　thus Kofu is an "armor coated government center." Yamashita-sensei explained to me that it is the mountains surrounding the city which represent the armor. So there you are. It all makes sense up to this point.
But back to my story.
Yesterday I was looking at my Kanji book and came across the symbol for yama, aka. "mountain". So I was looking at it when I noticed that they used it in two examples. The first was in "volcano". This word is made of two Kanji symbols, the first being the symbol for "fire" and the second for "mountain". "Well, that makes perfect sense," I thought to myself. But then I noticed that you pronounce the word for "volcano" as kazan. "Kazan?!" I said in my head, "Where the hell is the yama part?" So I did a little more looking over the explanation of the symbol and noticed that it can also be pronounced as san (or zan). Turns out that Kanji symbols have two readings; one is called the on reading, the other the kun reading. Apparently the on reading is based on the old Chinese way of pronunciation and the kun reading is based on the newer Japanese way of pronunciation. But also apparently, both are still used, though to what degree I am really not sure.
So the word for "mountain" is yama and the word for "fire" is hi (hee) yet the word for "fire mountain" or "volcano" is not hiyama as you might expect it is kazan which combines the on readings of ka for "fire" and san for "mountain". You with me?
Now, I am sure that those of you who can speak and read Japanese are laughing at me, but that's ok. I take no offense to such things.
To continue....the other example using mountain was the two symbols that make up "mountain" and "water". You know the two readings for mountain now and the symbol for "water" can be pronounced as either sui or mizu. When in a restaurant and you want a glass of water, mizu is what you ask for. Anyway, you can put these two symbols together to mean two things (by my book's explanation) and you put them in the same order; first the symbol for "mountain" and then the symbol for "water". One is pronounced yamamizu which means "mountain water" (hey, that's easy), the other is said sansui, which according to the book means "mountains and water, landscape." So I guess that depending on the context in which they are used you can either have nice mountain water or a nice landscape. I don't know.
So have I thoroughly confused you? If so, don't feel bad cause I too am lost over here. Seems to me that this system wouldn't really be too efficient, but since it's worked for so long I don't feel I can make that claim. And please don't forget that hiragana and katakana are also in use over here. And all three are used at the same time. As another book pointed out to me, the simple sentence "I am an American" uses hiragana, katakana and kanji to get its point across in Japanese writing.
So if I come back to America in two or three years unable to read this language, you now know why. I ain't giving up just yet, but I think that climbing Fuji next summer will be much easier on the body than learning Japanese will be on the brain.

My little adventure on the night of New Year's Eve turned out to be very nice but very short. I really had no expectations for the whole thing, though, so I just went into it with an open mind.
Mashi called at 11:45pm, "Hello.....this....is Mashi." Then he said in Japanese we go to Tokoji shrine now. So I told him I'd be right down. I was impressed with myself that I understood the name of the shrine and the verb for go, but not too impressed. So I headed down and met him and his wife just outside their house and we walked to the shrine, about five minutes.
As I had been coming out of my apartment I noticed the quiet of the night being enhanced with the sound of what was obviously a big bell. "That must be Tokoji shrine," I thought and wondered if this was the beginning of the 108 rings. So we made our way there with Mashi taking out three scraps of paper he'd written on and a small flashlight and explaining to me the significance of the New Year's celebration. His English is very rough but he told me about the striking of the bell, the significance of some colored beads, and a couple other things. Apparently he'd spent some time that day in a Japanese to English dictionary looking up words and writing them down on these small sheets of a paper; an effort that I can and did appreciate very much. Mashi really is a great guy.
So we got to the shrine and joined about 50 to 75 other people, most of whom were outside and in line to ring the bell. Mashi and his wife showed me into the main shrine (kinda small) and he showed me how to do the little prayer and light the incense (you don't blow out the flame, you merely wave it out with your hand I found out). So after that we went back outside and got in line to ring the bell. At this point I was wondering about the 108 times he'd mentioned a couple times. I tried to ask him about it but couldn't get my point across. I was wondering if someone was counting because there were quite a few people here, each ringing the bell once, and I was thinking, "Do they stop the 109th person from ringing it should that person show up?" or "What if only 93 people show up? Does someone get up there and ring it 15 more times to bring the total up?" You see how my mind torments me?
Anyway, we waited in line during which time the year clicked over to 2004 (or 16 by the Japanese timeline), some fireworks popped nearby, and his wife brought to us a non-alcoholic but fermented rice drink that I have forgotten the name of. It was white and had small pieces of rice in it. Mashi said it was good with sake in it, but we didn't have any (it was good without it too). Eventually our turns came and Mashi went up, then I went up, and then his wife went up. We each made a small bow, clapped once, and then pulled back on the medium sized log held up with ropes and rammed it into the bell. GONG!
And then we walked home. All in all, a very different New Year's for me. I am glad I decided to stick around.

The next day I hopped on my bike and rode up to Takeda shrine. Took a while to find it as I rode a little too far west and then took the right up the mountain. I knew I'd done something wrong but I kept thinking that if I could just get to higher ground, I'd be able to look back down and see it. Well, eventually that did become true but not without a bit of a workout.
So I rode back down the hill at one point and found the place. And it was damn busy. They had the normal street fair vendors out in front of the shrine selling all kinds of food and little toys and stuff, and some of the shops right there on the street were wide open for business (holiday? what holiday?).
So I walked across the small bridge and to the entrance of the shrine where there were some crowd control cops controlling the crowd trying to get into the shrine. So I waited with about a hundred other people and then the rope was lifted and some of us were allowed up the steps. But when I got up the steps there was just another long line, about ten people wide and 80 meters long or so, slowly shuffling their way up to the shrine itself. To get to the front of the line must have taken at least 20 minutes and when I got up there I decided what the hell? and threw in a 100yen coin and did the little Shinto prayer.
After that I stood off and snapped a few pictures and then bought two arrows that have New Year's decorations on them; one for me and one for Amy (who missed all this, by the way). Then I headed back down to the street, walked around a bit, bought some yakisoba, sat down and ate it, and then hopped back on the bike.
Again, I was happy I decided to stay here. Now I know how the Japanese do it.

Vacation time is over and I am at the Kencho this entire week. I have plenty to do though, so no worries. I'm actually rather happy to have a few days here to get my mind back in gear and to be able to prep a few things before I hit the classrooms next week.
When I got here this morning, though, I noticed that all the men were wearing suits. "Hmmm," I thought, "wonder what's going on." I wasn't sure if this was just a first day back at work type of thing or what, but coming in dressed in only my pants and turtleneck I wondered if I was going to be underdressed for something. Normally these guys wear buttoned shirts with collars and about half the time they wear ties, but it is all very casual looking most of the time, so usually my pants and turtlenecks are fine (this has become my cool weather attire). But this morning they all looked a bit more formal.
Then, about ten minutes later, Ono-san says to me, "Ahh, Mr. Marcus, today...11:45am...office picture," and explained what it was. Ah ha! So I said to him, "Um, I didn't dress for it," not thinking of getting out of it but just to let him know that I was aware of the rags I was wearing. "It's ok," he said back to me, smiling, and probably thinking to himself, "These stupid foreigners. Don't they know anything? We do this every year!"
So a little after 11:30am we all headed out to get our picture taken. The whole Kencho was down there in the parking lot and they had small sets of metal steps that were staggered (kinda like a small set of bleachers) with a row of about eight seats in front of each of them, and in front of each setup there was a camera on a tripod. So we waited our turn (I guess each group represented an office) and then got up on the steps, had two shots taken of us, and that was it. I was definitely the most underdressed guy around, but it wasn't really that bad. I just look at it as I am representing us Californians and we are known for our casual dress.
A little later the lunch announcement came on and I got up to leave when Yamaki-san looked at me and then said something to Ono-san who said to me, "Mr. Marcus, today we have sushi lunch," and motioned "here, in the office". They had told me about this two weeks ago and I had forgotten about it in the aftermath of that rather disappointing end-of-year soba lunch, but I sat back down and waited. I do like sushi.
So I began reading thinking that lunch would arrive soon. But about ten minutes later Ono says to me, "Sushi is delayed." "Hmmm, yes, I can see that," I thought as my stomach's gastric juices circled like a shark in thin chum. But he assured me that it would arrive at 12:30.
But apparently 12:30 actually meant 1:10 because it was ten minutes after the return-to-your-menial-tasks-you-drones music that signals the end of lunch sounded. So at 1:00pm I was actually wondering if dinner would be my next meal. But, thank the Shinto gods, the sushi showed up and we ate, albeit rather quickly. It was just your average sushi but was good and was appreciated much more after thinking that it wouldn't be coming at all.
And one more thing on this rather strange day of surprises. Upon my arrival this morning it seemed to me that everyone was greeting each other much more formally. Normally each person walks in and says ohiogozaimas a couple times and the others will say it back. I've noticed that it's really more of a gozaimas with some, a zaimas, and with others still just a ahsssssss, which sounds like the way snakes might greet each other to me. But anyway, this morning they were coming in, giving full bows a few times, saying something that I didn't understand and looking rather humble through it all. The big boss came in and said something pretty loudly with a big smile to which all replied and bowed. So all this is just the new year, post-vacation ritual, I guess.
But also, throughout this day, other people have been coming to our office in small groups, maybe three to five, and bowing and saying things and going to the boss's desk and addressing each other, and each time nearly everyone in the office stand up and bows and greets them. I say nearly everyone because I just sit here oblivious to it all until it is too late. The people have passed behind me, everyone else is standing, and it's halfway over before I realize anything out of the ordinary is happening. It's amazing how quietly the whole room can stand in unison. But it doesn't seem to be offending anyone. "Oh, you uncultured American. Just stay seated and try and look busy."
Ah well, live and learn. Next year I will wear that suit on the first work day of the new year, not expect lunch at lunch time, and put a mirror on my desk so I can see what's going on.

Have to tell you about what I did for New Years, but as I have four more days here after this, I'll just save it for one of them. Hope everyone had a good celebration and that the new year is off to a good start.