Today I went by the Kencho for an hour. Had to use a computer that will take floppy disks as one of my classes at the academy wrote letters for English class, put them on a disk, and I had to take a look at them. Easy stuff. Anyway, before I got out of there and back to Yuda I was handed my recontracting papers. Funny what a difference a year makes. Last year I was quite happy to get the forms. This year I am not as it means that soon I will have to let them know that I don't plan to stay another year. Hopefully no one takes it personally.
I still have a while before I have to hand them in with my decision, though, but as most of you know, my decision has been made. Got till Feb. 4th to let these people know, though. And I think that I will only tell those people who ask before then. Usually that just means a few students and the occasional teacher. The people at the Kencho tend not to ask me about such matters until need be.

Right now I am not getting one, but two two two football games. Can you believe it? This weekend I discovered another channel that shows NFL games and was quite happy about it as you can imagine. So tonight I am getting the Giants/Browns game and the Buccaneers/Broncos game. Hell, I am getting more football in a week here than I could get in the States. All I have to do is avoid the sports news and I'm good to go. Monday night football, Wednesday night football, Thursday night football, Saturday football, Sunday football. It's a football fest over here. Nothing nicer on a chilly autumn evening than a football game a couple beers.

Finally saw the movie "Lost in Translation." Have to admit that I really am not sure what the heck that movie was about. I thought it would be about an American in Japan. And at first glance it just might be. But upon further review (yeah, football again) I am not so sure. Seems to me that the story could have taken place anywhere. I had the feeling that the writer/director just wanted to show Tokyo (please read NOT JAPAN) to Westerners who might not have ever been there. And if that was the goal then job done, not well done, but done.
But let me say this...that movie did not humanize one, no, not one, Japanese person. They were all made of cardboard. Yes, it's true that a foreigner can go to Tokyo and get lost in the crowd and feel a bit at odds with everything, but that is the nature of any city. You can get lost in LA or New York or London or Paris or anywhere. So if you think this movie was about Japan, please watch it again. And if you think that the Japanese people you saw in that movie are the whole of what make up Japan, pull your head out of your.....
The only thing it may have gotten right was some of the sights and sounds of Tokyo (again NOT JAPAN). A techno club, a kareoke bar, a pachinko parlor, walking or riding the streets and seeing the signs in Kanji, Hiragana and/or Katakana going by and the illiterate feeling that goes along with it, the trains passing by, the look of the taxis, etc. These things were superficially done, but did give me some of the same feeling as when I go to Tokyo.
But this movie really had nothing to do with Japan. Perhaps I went into it expecting too much, expecting to see characters interact more with Japan than with each other and espeically their own minds. Perhaps if the two characters had tried to explore a bit instead of sitting in a bar, they might have discovered themselves in Japan. But it is not characters' faults that they don't explore the world around them, it is the writer's fault. Yes, I realize that we all travel in our own ways, but if Mrs. Coppola's experience of Japan is what I saw in that movie then she wasted her time here.