Ok, folks, the decision has been made. It was easy to decide to stay here a second year. There was practically no thinking involved in that one. But the decision over a third year has proven a little more difficult to make. On the one hand, we could stay a third year and keep doing what we are doing; it isn't a bad job, the pay is good, the living quarters are nice, I've made many new friends, and I am getting used to not knowing what is going on half the time. On the other hand, my job is not as fun as it used to be and is frustrating sometimes, I've figured out that I'd rather write for a living than teach, I miss certain small things, and I am not sure how much I would get out of a third year. There is a delicate balance between leaving too early and possibly regreting it and staying too long and leaving with a bad taste in my mouth. It is with this in mind that I weigh the pros and cons to staying and leaving.
But like I said, the decision has now been made. We are leaving next summer.
We have decided that we are going to live in LA and Amy will work towards a Master's degree in Education and I will be her house boy, err, I mean, I will try to get some kind of job that will put a foot in the door in the world of writing. Writing what or doing what in that world, I have no idea, but I am sure the plan will come together eventually. Amy said I would probably start as a copy-editor or something like that. I really have no clue as to how I will get into this world but great things always start as nothing more than an idea.
The good thing about all this is that we've made the decision quite early and I feel I can get to work on researching my options before I'm actually there. How much I can (or will) do remains to be seen but at least I have an idea and some time.
So if you are going to come visit us over here you have been warned that we are leaving next summer. I would advise coming from anywhere around the February time to early June. After June we will probably be quite busy packing up and all that kind of stuff.

Today was mildly interesting. I got to the Minobu train station and went out to wait for the bus up to the school. But it never came. I waited for just under and hour with the sense of "Hmmm...." And then I did what anyone who has been forgotten would do...I boarded a train for Kofu. I wasn't sure (and am still not) what happened. Kobayashi-sensei may have screwed up the dates, the bus might have broken down, the driver could have been sick, I have no idea. But I checked my schedule and I was supposed to be there this morning. So I came back and walked into the Kencho and told them what happened. They then called the school and all I heard about was "Okay".
Living in the dark over here.

Sumo started yesterday and as you can imagine I am quite happy. I missed most of the last basho due to some wedding on some remote island on the other side of the planet, but I will get to see all of this one. Asashoryu is once again on a historic run. Only this time it isn't consecutive wins of individual fights, it's consecutive basho wins. He's won four straight as of now and if he wins this one will join two others for the five straight mark. One guy has done six straight but Asashoryu has to get through this one first before we should start discussing that record.
Anyway, I will keep you posted as I know you have come to expect.

In other sporting news, tonight I will be able to watch the first regular season football game over here. I'm not sure who's playing but I don't care. It's FOOTBALL!

Ok, that's all for today.

Oh, one more thing. My father brought it to my attention that the comments appeared to be for members of this journal only (of course that would just be me). My mistake and I have now fixed that. You'll have to post them anonymously and then just write your name in the text itself. We at Notes of Nihon apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and would like to inform you that we are working diligently to avoid all future oversights.